for Peltier (in vision) saw them massacring the very patients of the Bicetre Madhouse ‘with grape-shot;’ nay finally they are ‘twelve thousand’ and odd hundreds,—­not more than that. (See Hist.  Parl. xvii. 421, 422.) In Arithmetical ciphers, and Lists drawn up by accurate Advocate Maton, the number, including two hundred and two priests, three ‘persons unknown,’ and ’one thief killed at the Bernardins,’ is, as above hinted, a Thousand and Eighty-nine,—­no less than that.

A thousand and eighty-nine lie dead, ’two hundred and sixty heaped carcasses on the Pont au Change’ itself;—­among which, Robespierre pleading afterwards will ‘nearly weep’ to reflect that there was said to be one slain innocent. (Moniteur of 6th November, Debate of 5th November, 1793.) One; not two, O thou seagreen Incorruptible?  If so, Themis Sansculotte must be lucky; for she was brief!—­In the dim Registers of the Townhall, which are preserved to this day, men read, with a certain sickness of heart, items and entries not usual in Town Books:  ’To workers employed in preserving the salubrity of the air in the Prisons, and persons ‘who presided over these dangerous operations,’ so much,—­in various items, nearly seven hundred pounds sterling.  To carters employed to ’the Burying-grounds of Clamart, Montrouge, and Vaugirard,’ at so much a journey, per cart; this also is an entry.  Then so many francs and odd sous ‘for the necessary quantity of quick-lime!’ (Etat des sommes payees par la Commune de Paris, Hist.  Parl. xviii. 231.) Carts go along the streets; full of stript human corpses, thrown pellmell; limbs sticking up:—­seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold rigour; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de profundis, Take pity on the Sons of Men!—­Mercier saw it, as he walked down ’the Rue Saint-Jacques from Montrouge, on the morrow of the Massacres:’  but not a Hand; it was a Foot,—­which he reckons still more significant, one understands not well why.  Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven?  Rushing, like a wild diver, in disgust and despair, towards the depths of Annihilation?  Even there shall His hand find thee, and His right-hand hold thee,—­surely for right not for wrong, for good not evil!  ‘I saw that Foot,’ says Mercier; ’I shall know it again at the great Day of Judgment, when the Eternal, throned on his thunders, shall judge both Kings and Septemberers.’ (Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 21.)

That a shriek of inarticulate horror rose over this thing, not only from French Aristocrats and Moderates, but from all Europe, and has prolonged itself to the present day, was most natural and right.  The thing lay done, irrevocable; a thing to be counted besides some other things, which lie very black in our Earth’s Annals, yet which will not erase therefrom.  For man, as was remarked, has transcendentalisms in him; standing, as he does, poor creature, every way ’in