The swifter fly the Sections, energetically demanding him back; demanding not arrestment of Popular Magistrates, but of a traitorous Twenty-two.  Section comes flying after Section;—­defiling energetic, with their Cambyses’ vein of oratory:  nay the Commune itself comes, with Mayor Pache at its head; and with question not of Hebert and the Twenty-two alone, but with this ominous old question made new, “Can you save the Republic, or must we do it?” To whom President Max Isnard makes fiery answer:  If by fatal chance, in any of those tumults which since the Tenth of March are ever returning, Paris were to lift a sacrilegious finger against the National Representation, France would rise as one man, in never-imagined vengeance, and shortly “the traveller would ask, on which side of the Seine Paris had stood!” (Moniteur, Seance du 25 Mai, 1793.) Whereat the Mountain bellows only louder, and every Gallery; Patriot Paris boiling round.

And Girondin Valaze has nightly conclaves at his house; sends billets; ‘Come punctually, and well armed, for there is to be business.’  And Megaera women perambulate the streets, with flags, with lamentable alleleu. (Meillan, Memoires, p. 195; Buzot, pp. 69, 84.) And the Convention-doors are obstructed by roaring multitudes:  find-spoken hommes d’etat are hustled, maltreated, as they pass; Marat will apostrophise you, in such death-peril, and say, Thou too art of them.  If Roland ask leave to quit Paris, there is order of the day.  What help?  Substitute Hebert, Apostle Varlet, must be given back; to be crowned with oak-garlands.  The Commission of Twelve, in a Convention overwhelmed with roaring Sections, is broken; then on the morrow, in a Convention of rallied Girondins, is reinstated.  Dim Chaos, or the sea of troubles, is struggling through all its elements; writhing and chafing towards some creation.

Chapter 3.3.IX.

Extinct.

Accordingly, on Friday, the Thirty-first of May 1793, there comes forth into the summer sunlight one of the strangest scenes.  Mayor Pache with Municipality arrives at the Tuileries Hall of Convention; sent for, Paris being in visible ferment; and gives the strangest news.

How, in the grey of this morning, while we sat Permanent in Townhall, watchful for the commonweal, there entered, precisely as on a Tenth of August, some Ninety-six extraneous persons; who declared themselves to be in a state of Insurrection; to be plenipotentiary Commissioners from the Forty-eight Sections, sections or members of the Sovereign People, all in a state of Insurrection; and further that we, in the name of said Sovereign in Insurrection, were dismissed from office.  How we thereupon laid off our sashes, and withdrew into the adjacent Saloon of Liberty.  How in a moment or two, we were called back; and reinstated; the Sovereign pleasing to think us still worthy of confidence.  Whereby, having taken new oath of office, we on a