And Dumouriez is in Paris; lauded and feasted; paraded in glittering saloons, floods of beautifullest blond-dresses and broadcloth-coats flowing past him, endless, in admiring joy.  One night, nevertheless, in the splendour of one such scene, he sees himself suddenly apostrophised by a squalid unjoyful Figure, who has come in uninvited, nay despite of all lackeys; an unjoyful Figure!  The Figure is come “in express mission from the Jacobins,” to inquire sharply, better then than later, touching certain things:  “Shaven eyebrows of Volunteer Patriots, for instance?” Also “your threats of shivering in pieces?” Also, “why you have not chased Brunswick hotly enough?” Thus, with sharp croak, inquires the Figure.—­“Ah, c’est vous qu’on appelle Marat, You are he they call Marat!” answers the General, and turns coldly on his heel. (Dumouriez, iii. 115.—­Marat’s account, In the Debats des Jacobins and Journal de la Republique (Hist.  Parl. xix. 317-21), agrees to the turning on the heel, but strives to interpret it differently.)—­“Marat!” The blonde-gowns quiver like aspens; the dress-coats gather round; Actor Talma (for it is his house), and almost the very chandelier-lights, are blue:  till this obscene Spectrum, or visual Appearance, vanish back into native Night.

General Dumouriez, in few brief days, is gone again, towards the Netherlands; will attack the Netherlands, winter though it be.  And General Montesquiou, on the South-East, has driven in the Sardinian Majesty; nay, almost without a shot fired, has taken Savoy from him, which longs to become a piece of the Republic.  And General Custine, on the North-East, has dashed forth on Spires and its Arsenal; and then on Electoral Mentz, not uninvited, wherein are German Democrats and no shadow of an Elector now:—­so that in the last days of October, Frau Forster, a daughter of Heyne’s, somewhat democratic, walking out of the Gate of Mentz with her Husband, finds French Soldiers playing at bowls with cannon-balls there.  Forster trips cheerfully over one iron bomb, with “Live the Republic!” A black-bearded National Guard answers:  “Elle vivra bien sans vous, It will probably live independently of you!” (Johann Georg Forster’s Briefwechsel (Leipzig, 1829), i. 88.)

BOOK 3.II.

REGICIDE

Chapter 3.2.I.

The Deliberative.

France therefore has done two things very completely:  she has hurled back her Cimmerian Invaders far over the marches; and likewise she has shattered her own internal Social Constitution, even to the minutest fibre of it, into wreck and dissolution.  Utterly it is all altered:  from King down to Parish Constable, all Authorities, Magistrates, Judges, persons that bore rule, have had, on the sudden, to alter themselves, so far as needful; or else, on the sudden, and not without violence, to be altered:  a Patriot ‘Executive Council of Ministers,’ with a Patriot Danton in it, and then a whole Nation and National Convention, have taken care of that.  Not a Parish Constable, in the furthest hamlet, who has said De Par le Roi, and shewn loyalty, but must retire, making way for a new improved Parish Constable who can say De par la Republique.