All which is well.  But now arises the question:  What is to be done for saltpetre?  Interrupted Commerce and the English Navy shut us out from saltpetre; and without saltpetre there is no gunpowder.  Republican Science again sits meditative; discovers that saltpetre exists here and there, though in attenuated quantity:  that old plaster of walls holds a sprinkling of it;—­that the earth of the Paris Cellars holds a sprinkling of it, diffused through the common rubbish; that were these dug up and washed, saltpetre might be had.  Whereupon swiftly, see! the Citoyens, with upshoved bonnet rouge, or with doffed bonnet, and hair toil-wetted; digging fiercely, each in his own cellar, for saltpetre.  The Earth-heap rises at every door; the Citoyennes with hod and bucket carrying it up; the Citoyens, pith in every muscle, shovelling and digging:  for life and saltpetre.  Dig my braves; and right well speed ye.  What of saltpetre is essential the Republic shall not want.

Consummation of Sansculottism has many aspects and tints:  but the brightest tint, really of a solar or stellar brightness, is this which the Armies give it.  That same fervour of Jacobinism which internally fills France with hatred, suspicions, scaffolds and Reason-worship, does, on the Frontiers, shew itself as a glorious Pro patria mori.  Ever since Dumouriez’s defection, three Convention Representatives attend every General.  Committee of Salut has sent them, often with this Laconic order only:  “Do thy duty, Fais ton devoir.”  It is strange, under what impediments the fire of Jacobinism, like other such fires, will burn.  These Soldiers have shoes of wood and pasteboard, or go booted in hayropes, in dead of winter; they skewer a bass mat round their shoulders, and are destitute of most things.  What then?  It is for Rights of Frenchhood, of Manhood, that they fight:  the unquenchable spirit, here as elsewhere, works miracles.  “With steel and bread,” says the Convention Representative, “one may get to China.”  The Generals go fast to the guillotine; justly and unjustly.  From which what inference?  This among others:  That ill-success is death; that in victory alone is life!  To conquer or die is no theatrical palabra, in these circumstances:  but a practical truth and necessity.  All Girondism, Halfness, Compromise is swept away.  Forward, ye Soldiers of the Republic, captain and man!  Dash with your Gaelic impetuosity, on Austria, England, Prussia, Spain, Sardinia; Pitt, Cobourg, York, and the Devil and the World!  Behind us is but the Guillotine; before us is Victory, Apotheosis and Millennium without end!