of the North ceases not to merit well of the country.’—­To the admiration of men!  For lo, in some half hour, while the Convention yet debates, there arrives this new answer:  ’I inform thee, je t’annonce, Citizen President, that the decree of Convention, ordering change of the name Conde into North-Free; and the other declaring that the Army of the North ceases not to merit well of the country, are transmitted and acknowledged by Telegraph.  I have instructed my Officer at Lille to forward them to North-Free by express.  Signed, Chappe.’ (Choix des Rapports, xv. 378, 384.)

Or see, over Fleurus in the Netherlands, where General Jourdan, having now swept the soil of Liberty, and advanced thus far, is just about to fight, and sweep or be swept, things there not in the Heaven’s Vault, some Prodigy, seen by Austrian eyes and spyglasses:  in the similitude of an enormous Windbag, with netting and enormous Saucer depending from it?  A Jove’s Balance, O ye Austrian spyglasses?  One saucer-hole of a Jove’s Balance; your poor Austrian scale having kicked itself quite aloft, out of sight?  By Heaven, answer the spyglasses, it is a Montgolfier, a Balloon, and they are making signals!  Austrian cannon-battery barks at this Montgolfier; harmless as dog at the Moon:  the Montgolfier makes its signals; detects what Austrian ambuscade there may be, and descends at its ease. (26th June, 1794, see Rapport de Guyton-Morveau sur les aerostats, in Moniteur du 6 Vendemiaire, An 2.) What will not these devils incarnate contrive?

On the whole, is it not, O Reader, one of the strangest Flame-Pictures that ever painted itself; flaming off there, on its ground of Guillotine-black?  And the nightly Theatres are Twenty-three; and the Salons de danse are sixty:  full of mere Egalite, Fraternite and Carmagnole.  And Section Committee-rooms are Forty-eight; redolent of tobacco and brandy:  vigorous with twenty-pence a-day, coercing the suspect.  And the Houses of Arrest are Twelve for Paris alone; crowded and even crammed.  And at all turns, you need your ’Certificate of Civism;’ be it for going out, or for coming in; nay without it you cannot, for money, get your daily ounces of bread.  Dusky red-capped Baker’s-queues; wagging themselves; not in silence!  For we still live by Maximum, in all things; waited on by these two, Scarcity and Confusion.  The faces of men are darkened with suspicion; with suspecting, or being suspect.  The streets lie unswept; the ways unmended.  Law has shut her Books; speaks little, save impromptu, through the throat of Tinville.  Crimes go unpunished:  not crimes against the Revolution. (Mercier, v. 25; Deux Amis, xii. 142-199.) ‘The number of foundling children,’ as some compute, ‘is doubled.’