Another thing we will not again specify, yet again beseech the Reader to imagine:  the reign of Fraternity and Perfection.  Imagine, we say, O Reader, that the Millennium were struggling on the threshold, and yet not so much as groceries could be had,—­owing to traitors.  With what impetus would a man strike traitors, in that case?  Ah, thou canst not imagine it:  thou hast thy groceries safe in the shops, and little or no hope of a Millennium ever coming!—­But, indeed, as to the temper there was in men and women, does not this one fact say enough:  the height suspicion had risen to?  Preternatural we often called it; seemingly in the language of exaggeration:  but listen to the cold deposition of witnesses.  Not a musical Patriot can blow himself a snatch of melody from the French Horn, sitting mildly pensive on the housetop, but Mercier will recognise it to be a signal which one Plotting Committee is making to another.  Distraction has possessed Harmony herself; lurks in the sound of Marseillese and ca-ira. (Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 63.) Louvet, who can see as deep into a millstone as the most, discerns that we shall be invited back to our old Hall of the Manege, by a Deputation; and then the Anarchists will massacre Twenty-two of us, as we walk over.  It is Pitt and Cobourg; the gold of Pitt.—­Poor Pitt!  They little know what work he has with his own Friends of the People; getting them bespied, beheaded, their habeas-corpuses suspended, and his own Social Order and strong-boxes kept tight,—­to fancy him raising mobs among his neighbours!

But the strangest fact connected with French or indeed with human Suspicion, is perhaps this of Camille Desmoulins.  Camille’s head, one of the clearest in France, has got itself so saturated through every fibre with Preternaturalism of Suspicion, that looking back on that Twelfth of July 1789, when the thousands rose round him, yelling responsive at his word in the Palais Royal Garden, and took cockades, he finds it explicable only on this hypothesis, That they were all hired to do it, and set on by the Foreign and other Plotters.  ‘It was not for nothing,’ says Camille with insight, ’that this multitude burst up round me when I spoke!’ No, not for nothing.  Behind, around, before, it is one huge Preternatural Puppet-play of Plots; Pitt pulling the wires.  (See Histoire des Brissotins, par Camille Desmoulins, a Pamphlet of Camille’s, Paris, 1793.) Almost I conjecture that I Camille myself am a Plot, and wooden with wires.—­The force of insight could no further go.

Be this as it will, History remarks that the Commission of Twelve, now clear enough as to the Plots; and luckily having ’got the threads of them all by the end,’ as they say,—­are launching Mandates of Arrest rapidly in these May days; and carrying matters with a high hand; resolute that the sea of troubles shall be restrained.  What chief Patriot, Section-President even, is safe?  They can arrest him; tear him from his warm bed, because he has made irregular Section Arrestments!  They arrest Varlet Apostle of Liberty.  They arrest Procureur-Substitute Hebert, Pere Duchesne; a Magistrate of the People, sitting in Townhall; who, with high solemnity of martyrdom, takes leave of his colleagues; prompt he, to obey the Law; and solemnly acquiescent, disappears into prison.