But, for the rest, let no man ask History to explain by cause-and-effect how the business proceeded henceforth.  This battle of Mountain and Gironde, and what follows, is the battle of Fanaticisms and Miracles; unsuitable for cause-and-effect.  The sound of it, to the mind, is as a hubbub of voices in distraction; little of articulate is to be gathered by long listening and studying; only battle-tumult, shouts of triumph, shrieks of despair.  The Mountain has left no Memoirs; the Girondins have left Memoirs, which are too often little other than long-drawn Interjections, of Woe is me and Cursed be ye.  So soon as History can philosophically delineate the conflagration of a kindled Fireship, she may try this other task.  Here lay the bitumen-stratum, there the brimstone one; so ran the vein of gunpowder, of nitre, terebinth and foul grease:  this, were she inquisitive enough, History might partly know.  But how they acted and reacted below decks, one fire-stratum playing into the other, by its nature and the art of man, now when all hands ran raging, and the flames lashed high over shrouds and topmast:  this let not History attempt.

The Fireship is old France, the old French Form of Life; her creed a Generation of men.  Wild are their cries and their ragings there, like spirits tormented in that flame.  But, on the whole, are they not gone, O Reader?  Their Fireship and they, frightening the world, have sailed away; its flames and its thunders quite away, into the Deep of Time.  One thing therefore History will do:  pity them all; for it went hard with them all.  Not even the seagreen Incorruptible but shall have some pity, some human love, though it takes an effort.  And now, so much once thoroughly attained, the rest will become easier.  To the eye of equal brotherly pity, innumerable perversions dissipate themselves; exaggerations and execrations fall off, of their own accord.  Standing wistfully on the safe shore, we will look, and see, what is of interest to us, what is adapted to us.

Chapter 3.3.II.

Culottic and Sansculottic.

Gironde and Mountain are now in full quarrel; their mutual rage, says Toulongeon, is growing a ‘pale’ rage.  Curious, lamentable:  all these men have the word Republic on their lips; in the heart of every one of them is a passionate wish for something which he calls Republic:  yet see their death-quarrel!  So, however, are men made.  Creatures who live in confusion; who, once thrown together, can readily fall into that confusion of confusions which quarrel is, simply because their confusions differ from one another; still more because they seem to differ!  Men’s words are a poor exponent of their thought; nay their thought itself is a poor exponent of the inward unnamed Mystery, wherefrom both thought and action have their birth.  No man can explain himself, can get himself explained; men see not one another but distorted phantasms which they call one another; which they hate and go to battle with:  for all battle is well said to be misunderstanding.