So pass the sultry dog-days, in the most electric manner; and the whole month of July.  And still, in the Sanctuary of Justice, sounds nothing but Harmodius-Aristogiton eloquence, environed with the hum of crowding Paris; and no registering accomplished, and no ‘states’ furnished.  “States?” said a lively Parlementeer:  “Messieurs, the states that should be furnished us, in my opinion are the states-general.”  On which timely joke there follow cachinnatory buzzes of approval.  What a word to be spoken in the Palais de Justice!  Old D’Ormesson (the Ex-Controller’s uncle) shakes his judicious head; far enough from laughing.  But the outer courts, and Paris and France, catch the glad sound, and repeat it; shall repeat it, and re-echo and reverberate it, till it grow a deafening peal.  Clearly enough here is no registering to be thought of.

The pious Proverb says, ‘There are remedies for all things but death.’  When a Parlement refuses registering, the remedy, by long practice, has become familiar to the simplest:  a Bed of Justice.  One complete month this Parlement has spent in mere idle jargoning, and sound and fury; the Timbre Edict not registered, or like to be; the Subvention not yet so much as spoken of.  On the 6th of August let the whole refractory Body roll out, in wheeled vehicles, as far as the King’s Chateau of Versailles; there shall the King, holding his Bed of Justice, order them, by his own royal lips, to register.  They may remonstrate, in an under tone; but they must obey, lest a worse unknown thing befall them.

It is done:  the Parlement has rolled out, on royal summons; has heard the express royal order to register.  Whereupon it has rolled back again, amid the hushed expectancy of men.  And now, behold, on the morrow, this Parlement, seated once more in its own Palais, with ’crowds inundating the outer courts,’ not only does not register, but (O portent!) declares all that was done on the prior day to be null, and the Bed of Justice as good as a futility!  In the history of France here verily is a new feature.  Nay better still, our heroic Parlement, getting suddenly enlightened on several things, declares that, for its part, it is incompetent to register Tax-edicts at all,—­having done it by mistake, during these late centuries; that for such act one authority only is competent:  the assembled Three Estates of the Realm!

To such length can the universal spirit of a Nation penetrate the most isolated Body-corporate:  say rather, with such weapons, homicidal and suicidal, in exasperated political duel, will Bodies-corporate fight!  But, in any case, is not this the real death-grapple of war and internecine duel, Greek meeting Greek; whereon men, had they even no interest in it, might look with interest unspeakable?  Crowds, as was said, inundate the outer courts:  inundation of young eleutheromaniac Noblemen in English costume, uttering audacious speeches; of Procureurs, Basoche-Clerks,