Engraver Sergent, since called Agate Sergent; thou Huguenin, with the tocsin in thy heart!  But, as Horace says, they wanted the sacred memoir-writer (sacro vate); and we know them not.  Men bragged of August and its doings, publishing them in high places; but of this September none now or afterwards would brag.  The September world remains dark, fuliginous, as Lapland witch-midnight;—­from which, indeed, very strange shapes will evolve themselves.

Understand this, however:  that incorruptible Robespierre is not wanting, now when the brunt of battle is past; in a stealthy way the seagreen man sits there, his feline eyes excellent in the twilight.  Also understand this other, a single fact worth many:  that Marat is not only there, but has a seat of honour assigned him, a tribune particuliere.  How changed for Marat; lifted from his dark cellar into this luminous ’peculiar tribune!’ All dogs have their day; even rabid dogs.  Sorrowful, incurable Philoctetes Marat; without whom Troy cannot be taken!  Hither, as a main element of the Governing Power, has Marat been raised.  Royalist types, for we have ‘suppressed’ innumerable Durosoys, Royous, and even clapt them in prison,—­Royalist types replace the worn types often snatched from a People’s-Friend in old ill days.  In our ‘peculiar tribune’ we write and redact:  Placards, of due monitory terror; Amis-du-Peuple (now under the name of Journal de la Republique); and sit obeyed of men.  ‘Marat,’ says one, ‘is the conscience of the Hotel-de-Ville.’  Keeper, as some call it, of the Sovereign’s Conscience;—­which surely, in such hands, will not lie hid in a napkin!

Two great movements, as we said, agitate this distracted National mind:  a rushing against domestic Traitors, a rushing against foreign Despots.  Mad movements both, restrainable by no known rule; strongest passions of human nature driving them on:  love, hatred; vengeful sorrow, braggart Nationality also vengeful,—­and pale Panic over all!  Twelve Hundred slain Patriots, do they not, from their dark catacombs there, in Death’s dumb-shew, plead (O ye Legislators) for vengeance?  Such was the destructive rage of these Aristocrats on the ever-memorable Tenth.  Nay, apart from vengeance, and with an eye to Public Salvation only, are there not still, in this Paris (in round numbers) ’thirty thousand Aristocrats,’ of the most malignant humour; driven now to their last trump-card?—­Be patient, ye Patriots:  our New High Court, ’Tribunal of the Seventeenth,’ sits; each Section has sent Four Jurymen; and Danton, extinguishing improper judges, improper practices wheresoever found, is ‘the same man you have known at the Cordeliers.’  With such a Minister of Justice shall not Justice be done?—­Let it be swift then, answers universal Patriotism; swift and sure!—­