O Heavens, in these latter days of August, he is come!  Durosoy was not yet guillotined when news had come that the Prussians were harrying and ravaging about Metz; in some four days more, one hears that Longwi, our first strong-place on the borders, is fallen ‘in fifteen hours.’  Quick, therefore, O ye improvised Municipals; quick, and ever quicker!—­The improvised Municipals make front to this also.  Enrolment urges itself; and clothing, and arming.  Our very officers have now ‘wool epaulettes;’ for it is the reign of Equality, and also of Necessity.  Neither do men now monsieur and sir one another; citoyen (citizen) were suitabler; we even say thou, as ‘the free peoples of Antiquity did:’  so have Journals and the Improvised Commune suggested; which shall be well.

Infinitely better, meantime, could we suggest, where arms are to be found.  For the present, our Citoyens chant chorally To Arms; and have no arms!  Arms are searched for; passionately; there is joy over any musket.  Moreover, entrenchments shall be made round Paris:  on the slopes of Montmartre men dig and shovel; though even the simple suspect this to be desperate.  They dig; Tricolour sashes speak encouragement and well-speed-ye.  Nay finally ‘twelve Members of the Legislative go daily,’ not to encourage only, but to bear a hand, and delve:  it was decreed with acclamation.  Arms shall either be provided; or else the ingenuity of man crack itself, and become fatuity.  Lean Beaumarchais, thinking to serve the Fatherland, and do a stroke of trade, in the old way, has commissioned sixty thousand stand of good arms out of Holland:  would to Heaven, for Fatherland’s sake and his, they were come!  Meanwhile railings are torn up; hammered into pikes:  chains themselves shall be welded together, into pikes.  The very coffins of the dead are raised; for melting into balls.  All Church-bells must down into the furnace to make cannon; all Church-plate into the mint to make money.  Also behold the fair swan-bevies of Citoyennes that have alighted in Churches, and sit there with swan-neck,—­sewing tents and regimentals!  Nor are Patriotic Gifts wanting, from those that have aught left; nor stingily given:  the fair Villaumes, mother and daughter, Milliners in the Rue St.-Martin, give ’a silver thimble, and a coin of fifteen sous (sevenpence halfpenny),’ with other similar effects; and offer, at least the mother does, to mount guard.  Men who have not even a thimble, give a thimbleful,—­were it but of invention.  One Citoyen has wrought out the scheme of a wooden cannon; which France shall exclusively profit by, in the first instance.  It is to be made of staves, by the coopers;—­of almost boundless calibre, but uncertain as to strength!  Thus they:  hammering, scheming, stitching, founding, with all their heart and with all their soul.  Two bells only are to remain in each Parish,—­for tocsin and other purposes.