Consider therefore if, on this Wednesday morning, there is an affluence of Patriotism; if Paris stands a-tiptoe, and all Deputies are at their post!  Seven Hundred and Forty-nine honourable Deputies; only some twenty absent on mission, Duchatel and some seven others absent by sickness.  Meanwhile expectant Patriotism and Paris standing a-tiptoe, have need of patience.  For this Wednesday again passes in debate and effervescence; Girondins proposing that a ‘majority of three-fourths’ shall be required; Patriots fiercely resisting them.  Danton, who has just got back from mission in the Netherlands, does obtain ‘order of the day’ on this Girondin proposal; nay he obtains further that we decide sans desemparer, in Permanent-session, till we have done.

And so, finally, at eight in the evening this Third stupendous Voting, by roll-call or appel nominal, does begin.  What Punishment?  Girondins undecided, Patriots decided, men afraid of Royalty, men afraid of Anarchy, must answer here and now.  Infinite Patriotism, dusky in the lamp-light, floods all corridors, crowds all galleries, sternly waiting to hear.  Shrill-sounding Ushers summon you by Name and Department; you must rise to the Tribune and say.

Eye-witnesses have represented this scene of the Third Voting, and of the votings that grew out of it; a scene protracted, like to be endless, lasting, with few brief intervals, from Wednesday till Sunday morning,—­as one of the strangest seen in the Revolution.  Long night wears itself into day, morning’s paleness is spread over all faces; and again the wintry shadows sink, and the dim lamps are lit:  but through day and night and the vicissitude of hours, Member after Member is mounting continually those Tribune-steps; pausing aloft there, in the clearer upper light, to speak his Fate-word; then diving down into the dusk and throng again.  Like Phantoms in the hour of midnight; most spectral, pandemonial!  Never did President Vergniaud, or any terrestrial President, superintend the like.  A King’s Life, and so much else that depends thereon, hangs trembling in the balance.  Man after man mounts; the buzz hushes itself till he have spoken:  Death; Banishment:  Imprisonment till the Peace.  Many say, Death; with what cautious well-studied phrases and paragraphs they could devise, of explanation, of enforcement, of faint recommendation to mercy.  Many too say, Banishment; something short of Death.  The balance trembles, none can yet guess whitherward.  Whereat anxious Patriotism bellows; irrepressible by Ushers.

The poor Girondins, many of them, under such fierce bellowing of Patriotism, say Death; justifying, motivant, that most miserable word of theirs by some brief casuistry and jesuitry.  Vergniaud himself says, Death; justifying by jesuitry.  Rich Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau had been of the Noblesse, and then of the Patriot Left Side, in the Constituent; and had argued and reported, there and elsewhere, not a little, against