But indeed men are all rabid; as the Time is.  Representative Lebon, at Arras, dashes his sword into the blood flowing from the Guillotine; exclaims, “How I like it!” Mothers, they say, by his order, have to stand by while the Guillotine devours their children:  a band of music is stationed near; and, at the fall of every head, strikes up its ca-ira.  (Les Horreures des Prisons d’Arras, Paris, 1823.) In the Burgh of Bedouin, in the Orange region, the Liberty-tree has been cut down over night.  Representative Maignet, at Orange, hears of it; burns Bedouin Burgh to the last dog-hutch; guillotines the inhabitants, or drives them into the caves and hills. (Montgaillard, iv. 200.) Republic One and Indivisible!  She is the newest Birth of Nature’s waste inorganic Deep, which men name Orcus, Chaos, primeval Night; and knows one law, that of self-preservation.  Tigresse Nationale:  meddle not with a whisker of her!  Swift-crushing is her stroke; look what a paw she spreads;—­pity has not entered her heart.

Prudhomme, the dull-blustering Printer and Able Editor, as yet a Jacobin Editor, will become a renegade one, and publish large volumes on these matters, Crimes of the Revolution; adding innumerable lies withal, as if the truth were not sufficient.  We, for our part, find it more edifying to know, one good time, that this Republic and National Tigress is a New Birth; a Fact of Nature among Formulas, in an Age of Formulas; and to look, oftenest in silence, how the so genuine Nature-Fact will demean itself among these.  For the Formulas are partly genuine, partly delusive, supposititious:  we call them, in the language of metaphor, regulated modelled shapes; some of which have bodies and life still in them; most of which, according to a German Writer, have only emptiness, ’glass-eyes glaring on you with a ghastly affectation of life, and in their interior unclean accumulation of beetles and spiders!’ But the Fact, let all men observe, is a genuine and sincere one; the sincerest of Facts:  terrible in its sincerity, as very Death.  Whatsoever is equally sincere may front it, and beard it; but whatsoever is not?—­

Chapter 3.5.IV.

Carmagnole complete.

Simultaneously with this Tophet-black aspect, there unfolds itself another aspect, which one may call a Tophet-red aspect:  the Destruction of the Catholic Religion; and indeed, for the time being of Religion itself.  We saw Romme’s New Calendar establish its Tenth Day of Rest; and asked, what would become of the Christian Sabbath?  The Calendar is hardly a month old, till all this is set at rest.  Very singular, as Mercier observes:  last Corpus-Christi Day 1792, the whole world, and Sovereign Authority itself, walked in religious gala, with a quite devout air;—­Butcher Legendre, supposed to be irreverent, was like to be massacred in his Gig, as the thing went by.  A Gallican Hierarchy, and Church, and Church Formulas seemed to flourish, a little brown-leaved