How busy are the Revolutionary Committees; Sections with their Forty Halfpence a-day!  Arrestment on arrestment falls quick, continual; followed by death.  Ex-Minister Claviere has killed himself in Prison.  Ex-Minister Lebrun, seized in a hayloft, under the disguise of a working man, is instantly conducted to death. (Moniteur, 11 Decembre, 30 Decembre, 1793; Louvet, p. 287.) Nay, withal, is it not what Barrere calls ‘coining money on the Place de la Revolution?’ For always the ‘property of the guilty, if property he have,’ is confiscated.  To avoid accidents, we even make a Law that suicide shall not defraud us; that a criminal who kills himself does not the less incur forfeiture of goods.  Let the guilty tremble, therefore, and the suspect, and the rich, and in a word all manner of culottic men!  Luxembourg Palace, once Monsieur’s, has become a huge loathsome Prison; Chantilly Palace too, once Conde’s:—­and their Landlords are at Blankenberg, on the wrong side of the Rhine.  In Paris are now some Twelve Prisons; in France some Forty-four Thousand:  thitherward, thick as brown leaves in Autumn, rustle and travel the suspect; shaken down by Revolutionary Committees, they are swept thitherward, as into their storehouse,—­to be consumed by Samson and Tinville.  ‘The Guillotine goes not ill, ne va pas mal.’

Chapter 3.5.III.

Destruction.

The suspect may well tremble; but how much more the open rebels;—­the Girondin Cities of the South!  Revolutionary Army is gone forth, under Ronsin the Playwright; six thousand strong; in ’red nightcap, in tricolor waistcoat, in black-shag trousers, black-shag spencer, with enormous moustachioes, enormous sabre,—­in carmagnole complete;’ (See Louvet, p. 301.) and has portable guillotines.  Representative Carrier has got to Nantes, by the edge of blazing La Vendee, which Rossignol has literally set on fire:  Carrier will try what captives you make, what accomplices they have, Royalist or Girondin:  his guillotine goes always, va toujours; and his wool-capped ‘Company of Marat.’  Little children are guillotined, and aged men.  Swift as the machine is, it will not serve; the Headsman and all his valets sink, worn down with work; declare that the human muscles can no more. (Deux Amis, xii. 249-51.) Whereupon you must try fusillading; to which perhaps still frightfuller methods may succeed.

In Brest, to like purpose, rules Jean-Bon Saint-Andre; with an Army of Red Nightcaps.  In Bourdeaux rules Tallien, with his Isabeau and henchmen:  Guadets, Cussys, Salleses, may fall; the bloody Pike and Nightcap bearing supreme sway; the Guillotine coining money.  Bristly fox-haired Tallien, once Able Editor, still young in years, is now become most gloomy, potent; a Pluto on Earth, and has the keys of Tartarus.  One remarks, however, that a certain Senhorina Cabarus, or call her rather Senhora and wedded not yet widowed Dame de Fontenai, brown beautiful woman, daughter of Cabarus the Spanish merchant,—­has softened the red bristly countenance; pleading for herself and friends; and prevailing.  The keys of Tartarus, or any kind of power, are something to a woman; gloomy Pluto himself is not insensible to love.  Like a new Proserpine, she, by this red gloomy Dis, is gathered; and, they say, softens his stone heart a little.