In the last days of August, fell a notabler head:  General Custine’s.  Custine was accused of harshness, of unskilfulness, perfidiousness; accused of many things:  found guilty, we may say, of one thing, unsuccessfulness.  Hearing his unexpected Sentence, ’Custine fell down before the Crucifix,’ silent for the space of two hours:  he fared, with moist eyes and a book of prayer, towards the Place de la Revolution; glanced upwards at the clear suspended axe; then mounted swiftly aloft, (Deux Amis, xi. 148-188.) swiftly was struck away from the lists of the Living.  He had fought in America; he was a proud, brave man; and his fortune led him hither.

On the 2nd of this same month, at three in the morning, a vehicle rolled off, with closed blinds, from the Temple to the Conciergerie.  Within it were two Municipals; and Marie-Antoinette, once Queen of France!  There in that Conciergerie, in ignominious dreary cell, she, cut off from children, kindred, friend and hope, sits long weeks; expecting when the end will be. (See Memoires particuliers de la Captivite a la Tour du Temple, by the Duchesse d’Angouleme, Paris, 21 Janvier 1817.)

The Guillotine, we find, gets always a quicker motion, as other things are quickening.  The Guillotine, by its speed of going, will give index of the general velocity of the Republic.  The clanking of its huge axe, rising and falling there, in horrid systole-diastole, is portion of the whole enormous Life-movement and pulsation of the Sansculottic System!—­’Orleans Conspirators’ and Assaulters had to die, in spite of much weeping and entreating; so sacred is the person of a Deputy.  Yet the sacred can become desecrated:  your very Deputy is not greater than the Guillotine.  Poor Deputy Journalist Gorsas:  we saw him hide at Rennes, when the Calvados War burnt priming.  He stole afterwards, in August, to Paris; lurked several weeks about the Palais ci-devant Royal; was seen there, one day; was clutched, identified, and without ceremony, being already ‘out of the Law,’ was sent to the Place de la Revolution.  He died, recommending his wife and children to the pity of the Republic.  It is the ninth day of October 1793.  Gorsas is the first Deputy that dies on the scaffold; he will not be the last.

Ex-Mayor Bailly is in prison; Ex-Procureur Manuel.  Brissot and our poor Arrested Girondins have become Incarcerated Indicted Girondins; universal Jacobinism clamouring for their punishment.  Duperret’s Seals are broken!  Those Seventy-three Secret Protesters, suddenly one day, are reported upon, are decreed accused; the Convention-doors being ‘previously shut,’ that none implicated might escape.  They were marched, in a very rough manner, to Prison that evening.  Happy those of them who chanced to be absent!  Condorcet has vanished into darkness; perhaps, like Rabaut, sits between two walls, in the house of a friend.

Chapter 3.4.VII.