The grand question and hope, however, is:  Will not this Feast of the Tuileries Mumbo-Jumbo be a sign perhaps that the Guillotine is to abate?  Far enough from that!  Precisely on the second day after it, Couthon, one of the ‘three shallow scoundrels,’ gets himself lifted into the Tribune; produces a bundle of papers.  Couthon proposes that, as Plots still abound, the Law of the Suspect shall have extension, and Arrestment new vigour and facility.  Further that, as in such case business is like to be heavy, our Revolutionary Tribunal too shall have extension; be divided, say, into Four Tribunals, each with its President, each with its Fouquier or Substitute of Fouquier, all labouring at once, and any remnant of shackle or dilatory formality be struck off:  in this way it may perhaps still overtake the work.  Such is Couthon’s Decree of the Twenty-second Prairial, famed in those times.  At hearing of which Decree the very Mountain gasped, awestruck; and one Ruamps ventured to say that if it passed without adjournment and discussion, he, as one Representative, “would blow his brains out.”  Vain saying!  The Incorruptible knit his brows; spoke a prophetic fateful word or two:  the Law of Prairial is Law; Ruamps glad to leave his rash brains where they are.  Death, then, and always Death!  Even so.  Fouquier is enlarging his borders; making room for Batches of a Hundred and fifty at once;—­getting a Guillotine set up, of improved velocity, and to work under cover, in the apartment close by.  So that Salut itself has to intervene, and forbid him:  “Wilt thou demoralise the Guillotine,” asks Collot, reproachfully, “demoraliser le supplice!”

There is indeed danger of that; were not the Republican faith great, it were already done.  See, for example, on the 17th of June, what a Batch, Fifty-four at once!  Swart Amiral is here, he of the pistol that missed fire; young Cecile Renault, with her father, family, entire kith and kin; the widow of d’Espremenil; old M. de Sombreuil of the Invalides, with his Son,—­poor old Sombreuil, seventy-three years old, his Daughter saved him in September, and it was but for this.  Faction of the Stranger, fifty-four of them!  In red shirts and smocks, as Assassins and Faction of the Stranger, they flit along there; red baleful Phantasmagory, towards the land of Phantoms.

Meanwhile will not the people of the Place de la Revolution, the inhabitants along the Rue Saint-Honore, as these continual Tumbrils pass, begin to look gloomy?  Republicans too have bowels.  The Guillotine is shifted, then again shifted; finally set up at the remote extremity of the South-East:  (Montgaillard, iv. 237.) Suburbs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau it is to be hoped, if they have bowels, have very tough ones.

Chapter 3.6.V.

The Prisons.