they too ‘must sneeze into the sack,’ eternuer dans le sac; as they have done to others so is it done to them.  Sainte-Guillotine, meseems, is worse than the old Saints of Superstition; a man-devouring Saint?  Clootz, still with an air of polished sarcasm, endeavours to jest, to offer cheering ’arguments of Materialism;’ he requested to be executed last, ’in order to establish certain principles,’—­which Philosophy has not retained.  General Ronsin too, he still looks forth with some air of defiance, eye of command:  the rest are sunk in a stony paleness of despair.  Momoro, poor Bibliopolist, no Agrarian Law yet realised,—­they might as well have hanged thee at Evreux, twenty months ago, when Girondin Buzot hindered them.  Hebert Pere Duchene shall never in this world rise in sacred right of insurrection; he sits there low enough, head sunk on breast; Red Nightcaps shouting round him, in frightful parody of his Newspaper Articles, “Grand choler of the Pere Duchene!” Thus perish they; the sack receives all their heads.  Through some section of History, Nineteen spectre-chimeras shall flit, speaking and gibbering; till Oblivion swallow them.

In the course of a week, the Revolutionary Army itself is disbanded; the General having become spectral.  This Faction of Rabids, therefore, is also purged from the Republican soil; here also the baited falltraps of that Pitt have been wrenched up harmless; and anew there is joy over a Plot Discovered.  The Revolution then is verily devouring its own children.  All Anarchy, by the nature of it, is not only destructive but self-destructive.

Chapter 3.6.II.

Danton, No weakness.

Danton, meanwhile, has been pressingly sent for from Arcis:  he must return instantly, cried Camille, cried Phelippeaux and Friends, who scented danger in the wind.  Danger enough!  A Danton, a Robespierre, chief-products of a victorious Revolution, are now arrived in immediate front of one another; must ascertain how they will live together, rule together.  One conceives easily the deep mutual incompatibility that divided these two:  with what terror of feminine hatred the poor seagreen Formula looked at the monstrous colossal Reality, and grew greener to behold him;—­the Reality, again, struggling to think no ill of a chief-product of the Revolution; yet feeling at bottom that such chief-product was little other than a chief wind-bag, blown large by Popular air; not a man with the heart of a man, but a poor spasmodic incorruptible pedant, with a logic-formula instead of heart; of Jesuit or Methodist-Parson nature; full of sincere-cant, incorruptibility, of virulence, poltroonery; barren as the east-wind!  Two such chief-products are too much for one Revolution.