For indeed over at that Village named of the Mudbaths, Saint-Amand des Boues, matters are still worse.  About four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, the 2d of April 1793, two Couriers come galloping as if for life:  Mon General!  Four National Representatives, War-Minister at their head, are posting hitherward, from Valenciennes:  are close at hand,—­with what intents one may guess!  While the Couriers are yet speaking, War-Minister and National Representatives, old Camus the Archivist for chief speaker of them, arrive.  Hardly has Mon General had time to order out the Huzzar Regiment de Berchigny; that it take rank and wait near by, in case of accident.  And so, enter War-Minister Beurnonville, with an embrace of friendship, for he is an old friend; enter Archivist Camus and the other three, following him.

They produce Papers, invite the General to the bar of the Convention:  merely to give an explanation or two.  The General finds it unsuitable, not to say impossible, and that “the service will suffer.”  Then comes reasoning; the voice of the old Archivist getting loud.  Vain to reason loud with this Dumouriez; he answers mere angry irreverences.  And so, amid plumed staff-officers, very gloomy-looking; in jeopardy and uncertainty, these poor National messengers debate and consult, retire and re-enter, for the space of some two hours:  without effect.  Whereupon Archivist Camus, getting quite loud, proclaims, in the name of the National Convention, for he has the power to do it, That General Dumouriez is arrested:  “Will you obey the National Mandate, General!” “Pas dans ce moment-ci, Not at this particular moment,” answers the General also aloud; then glancing the other way, utters certain unknown vocables, in a mandatory manner; seemingly a German word-of-command.  (Dumouriez, iv. 159, &c.) Hussars clutch the Four National Representatives, and Beurnonville the War-minister; pack them out of the apartment; out of the Village, over the lines to Cobourg, in two chaises that very night,—­as hostages, prisoners; to lie long in Maestricht and Austrian strongholds! (Their Narrative, written by Camus in Toulongeon, iii. app. 60-87.) Jacta est alea.

This night Dumouriez prints his ‘Proclamation;’ this night and the morrow the Dumouriez Army, in such darkness visible, and rage of semi-desperation as there is, shall meditate what the General is doing, what they themselves will do in it.  Judge whether this Wednesday was of halcyon nature, for any one!  But, on the Thursday morning, we discern Dumouriez with small escort, with Chartres Egalite and a few staff-officers, ambling along the Conde Highway:  perhaps they are for Conde, and trying to persuade the Garrison there; at all events, they are for an interview with Cobourg, who waits in the woods by appointment, in that quarter.  Nigh the Village of Doumet, three National Battalions, a set of men always full of Jacobinism, sweep past us; marching rather swiftly,—­seemingly in mistake, by