One can judge what stir there was now among the ’thirty thousand Royalists:’  how the Plotters, or the accused of Plotting, shrank each closer into his lurking-place,—­like Bertrand Moleville, looking eager towards Longwi, hoping the weather would keep fair.  Or how they dressed themselves in valet’s clothes, like Narbonne, and ’got to England as Dr. Bollman’s famulus:’  how Dame de Stael bestirred herself, pleading with Manuel as a Sister in Literature, pleading even with Clerk Tallien; a pray to nameless chagrins! (De Stael, Considerations sur la Revolution, ii. 67-81.) Royalist Peltier, the Pamphleteer, gives a touching Narrative (not deficient in height of colouring) of the terrors of that night.  From five in the afternoon, a great City is struck suddenly silent; except for the beating of drums, for the tramp of marching feet; and ever and anon the dread thunder of the knocker at some door, a Tricolor Commissioner with his blue Guards (black-guards!) arriving.  All Streets are vacant, says Peltier; beset by Guards at each end:  all Citizens are ordered to be within doors.  On the River float sentinal barges, lest we escape by water:  the Barriers hermetically closed.  Frightful!  The sun shines; serenely westering, in smokeless mackerel-sky:  Paris is as if sleeping, as if dead:—­Paris is holding its breath, to see what stroke will fall on it.  Poor Peltier!  Acts of Apostles, and all jocundity of Leading-Articles, are gone out, and it is become bitter earnest instead; polished satire changed now into coarse pike-points (hammered out of railing); all logic reduced to this one primitive thesis, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!—­Peltier, dolefully aware of it, ducks low; escapes unscathed to England; to urge there the inky war anew; to have Trial by Jury, in due season, and deliverance by young Whig eloquence, world-celebrated for a day.

Of ‘thirty thousand,’ naturally, great multitudes were left unmolested:  but, as we said, some four hundred, designated as ‘persons suspect,’ were seized; and an unspeakable terror fell on all.  Wo to him who is guilty of Plotting, of Anticivism, Royalism, Feuillantism; who, guilty or not guilty, has an enemy in his Section to call him guilty!  Poor old M. de Cazotte is seized, his young loved Daughter with him, refusing to quit him.  Why, O Cazotte, wouldst thou quit romancing, and Diable Amoureux, for such reality as this?  Poor old M. de Sombreuil, he of the Invalides, is seized:  a man seen askance, by Patriotism ever since the Bastille days:  whom also a fond Daughter will not quit.  With young tears hardly suppressed, and old wavering weakness rousing itself once more—­O my brothers, O my sisters!