This is the second Fusillade, and happily the last:  it is found too hideous; even inconvenient.  They were Two hundred and nine marched out; one escaped at the end of the Bridge:  yet behold, when you count the corpses, they are Two hundred and ten.  Rede us this riddle, O Collot?  After long guessing, it is called to mind that two individuals, here in the Brotteaux ground, did attempt to leave the rank, protesting with agony that they were not condemned men, that they were Police Commissaries:  which two we repulsed, and disbelieved, and shot with the rest! (Deux Amis, xii. 251-62.) Such is the vengeance of an enraged Republic.  Surely this, according to Barrere’s phrase, is Justice ’under rough forms, sous des formes acerbes.’  But the Republic, as Fouche says, must “march to Liberty over corpses.”  Or again as Barrere has it:  “None but the dead do not come back, Il n’y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas.”  Terror hovers far and wide:  ‘The Guillotine goes not ill.’

But before quitting those Southern regions, over which History can cast only glances from aloft, she will alight for a moment, and look fixedly at one point:  the Siege of Toulon.  Much battering and bombarding, heating of balls in furnaces or farm-houses, serving of artillery well and ill, attacking of Ollioules Passes, Forts Malbosquet, there has been:  as yet to small purpose.  We have had General Cartaux here, a whilom Painter elevated in the troubles of Marseilles; General Doppet, a whilom Medical man elevated in the troubles of Piemont, who, under Crance, took Lyons, but cannot take Toulon.  Finally we have General Dugommier, a pupil of Washington.  Convention Representans also we have had; Barrases, Salicettis, Robespierres the Younger:—­also an Artillery Chef de brigade, of extreme diligence, who often takes his nap of sleep among the guns; a short taciturn, olive-complexioned young man, not unknown to us, by name Buonaparte:  one of the best Artillery-officers yet met with.  And still Toulon is not taken.  It is the fourth month now; December, in slave-style; Frostarious or Frimaire, in new-style:  and still their cursed Red-Blue Flag flies there.  They are provisioned from the Sea; they have seized all heights, felling wood, and fortifying themselves; like the coney, they have built their nest in the rocks.

Meanwhile, Frostarious is not yet become Snowous or Nivose, when a Council of War is called; Instructions have just arrived from Government and Salut Public.  Carnot, in Salut Public, has sent us a plan of siege:  on which plan General Dugommier has this criticism to make, Commissioner Salicetti has that; and criticisms and plans are very various; when that young Artillery Officer ventures to speak; the same whom we saw snatching sleep among the guns, who has emerged several times in this History,—­the name of him Napoleon Buonaparte.  It is his humble opinion, for he has been gliding about with spy-glasses, with thoughts, That a certain Fort l’Eguillette can be clutched,