Committee of Public Salvation, as supreme; of General Surety, as subaltern:  these like a Lesser and Greater Council, most harmonious hitherto, have become the centre of all things.  They ride this Whirlwind; they, raised by force of circumstances, insensibly, very strangely, thither to that dread height;—­and guide it, and seem to guide it.  Stranger set of Cloud-Compellers the Earth never saw.  A Robespierre, a Billaud, a Collot, Couthon, Saint-Just; not to mention still meaner Amars, Vadiers, in Surete Generale:  these are your Cloud-Compellers.  Small intellectual talent is necessary:  indeed where among them, except in the head of Carnot, busied organising victory, would you find any?  The talent is one of instinct rather.  It is that of divining aright what this great dumb Whirlwind wishes and wills; that of willing, with more frenzy than any one, what all the world wills.  To stand at no obstacles; to heed no considerations human or divine; to know well that, of divine or human, there is one thing needful, Triumph of the Republic, Destruction of the Enemies of the Republic!  With this one spiritual endowment, and so few others, it is strange to see how a dumb inarticulately storming Whirlwind of things puts, as it were, its reins into your hand, and invites and compels you to be leader of it.

Hard by, sits a Municipality of Paris; all in red nightcaps since the fourth of November last:  a set of men fully ’on a level with circumstances,’ or even beyond it.  Sleek Mayor Pache, studious to be safe in the middle; Chaumettes, Heberts, Varlets, and Henriot their great Commandant; not to speak of Vincent the War-clerk, of Momoros, Dobsents, and such like:  all intent to have Churches plundered, to have Reason adored, Suspects cut down, and the Revolution triumph.  Perhaps carrying the matter too far?  Danton was heard to grumble at the civic strophes; and to recommend prose and decency.  Robespierre also grumbles that in overturning Superstition we did not mean to make a religion of Atheism.  In fact, your Chaumette and Company constitute a kind of Hyper-Jacobinism, or rabid ‘Faction des Enrages;’ which has given orthodox Patriotism some umbrage, of late months.  To ’know a Suspect on the streets:’  what is this but bringing the Law of the Suspect itself into ill odour?  Men half-frantic, men zealous overmuch,—­they toil there, in their red nightcaps, restlessly, rapidly, accomplishing what of Life is allotted them.

And the Forty-four Thousand other Townships, each with revolutionary Committee, based on Jacobin Daughter Society; enlightened by the spirit of Jacobinism; quickened by the Forty Sous a-day!—­The French Constitution spurned always at any thing like Two Chambers; and yet behold, has it not verily got Two Chambers?  National Convention, elected for one; Mother of Patriotism, self-elected, for another!  Mother of Patriotism has her Debates reported in the Moniteur, as important state-procedures; which indisputably they are.