Above all things there come Patriotic Gifts, of Church-furniture.  The remnant of bells, except for tocsin, descend from their belfries, into the National meltingpot, to make cannon.  Censers and all sacred vessels are beaten broad; of silver, they are fit for the poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become bullets to shoot the ’enemies of du genre humain.’  Dalmatics of plush make breeches for him who has none; linen stoles will clip into shirts for the Defenders of the Country:  old-clothesmen, Jew or Heathen, drive the briskest trade.  Chalier’s Ass Procession, at Lyons, was but a type of what went on, in those same days, in all Towns.  In all Towns and Townships as quick as the guillotine may go, so quick goes the axe and the wrench:  sacristies, lutrins, altar-rails are pulled down; the Mass Books torn into cartridge papers:  men dance the Carmagnole all night about the bonfire.  All highways jingle with metallic Priest-tackle, beaten broad; sent to the Convention, to the poverty-stricken Mint.  Good Sainte Genevieve’s Chasse is let down:  alas, to be burst open, this time, and burnt on the Place de Greve.  Saint Louis’s shirt is burnt;—­might not a Defender of the Country have had it?  At Saint-Denis Town, no longer Saint-Denis but Franciade, Patriotism has been down among the Tombs, rummaging; the Revolutionary Army has taken spoil.  This, accordingly, is what the streets of Paris saw: 

’Most of these persons were still drunk, with the brandy they had swallowed out of chalices;—­eating mackerel on the patenas!  Mounted on Asses, which were housed with Priests’ cloaks, they reined them with Priests’ stoles:  they held clutched with the same hand communion-cup and sacred wafer.  They stopped at the doors of Dramshops; held out ciboriums:  and the landlord, stoop in hand, had to fill them thrice.  Next came Mules high-laden with crosses, chandeliers, censers, holy-water vessels, hyssops;—­recalling to mind the Priests of Cybele, whose panniers, filled with the instruments of their worship, served at once as storehouse, sacristy and temple.  In such equipage did these profaners advance towards the Convention.  They enter there, in an immense train, ranged in two rows; all masked like mummers in fantastic sacerdotal vestments; bearing on hand-barrows their heaped plunder,—­ciboriums, suns, candelabras, plates of gold and silver.’  (Mercier, iv. 134.  See Moniteur, Seance du 10 Novembre.)

The Address we do not give; for indeed it was in strophes, sung viva voce, with all the parts;—­Danton glooming considerably, in his place; and demanding that there be prose and decency in future. (See also Moniteur, Seance du 26 Novembre.) Nevertheless the captors of such spolia opima crave, not untouched with liquor, permission to dance the Carmagnole also on the spot:  whereto an exhilarated Convention cannot but accede.  Nay, ‘several Members,’ continues the exaggerative Mercier, who was not there to witness, being in Limbo now, as one of Duperret’s Seventy-three, ’several Members, quitting their curule chairs, took the hand of girls flaunting in Priest’s vestures, and danced the Carmagnole along with them.’  Such Old-Hallow-tide have they, in this year, once named of Grace, 1793.