Rigour grows, stiffens into horrid tyranny; Plot in the Prison getting ever riper.  This Plot in the Prison, as we said, is now the stereotype formula of Tinville:  against whomsoever he knows no crime, this is a ready-made crime.  His Judgment-bar has become unspeakable; a recognised mockery; known only as the wicket one passes through, towards Death.  His Indictments are drawn out in blank; you insert the Names after.  He has his moutons, detestable traitor jackalls, who report and bear witness; that they themselves may be allowed to live,—­for a time.  His Fournees, says the reproachful Collot, ‘shall in no case exceed three-score;’ that is his maximum.  Nightly come his Tumbrils to the Luxembourg, with the fatal Roll-call; list of the Fournee of to-morrow.  Men rush towards the Grate; listen, if their name be in it?  One deep-drawn breath, when the name is not in:  we live still one day!  And yet some score or scores of names were in.  Quick these; they clasp their loved ones to their heart, one last time; with brief adieu, wet-eyed or dry-eyed, they mount, and are away.  This night to the Conciergerie; through the Palais misnamed of Justice, to the Guillotine to-morrow.

Recklessness, defiant levity, the Stoicism if not of strength yet of weakness, has possessed all hearts.  Weak women and Ci-devants, their locks not yet made into blond perukes, their skins not yet tanned into breeches, are accustomed to ‘act the Guillotine’ by way of pastime.  In fantastic mummery, with towel-turbans, blanket-ermine, a mock Sanhedrim of Judges sits, a mock Tinville pleads; a culprit is doomed, is guillotined by the oversetting of two chairs.  Sometimes we carry it farther:  Tinville himself, in his turn, is doomed, and not to the Guillotine alone.  With blackened face, hirsute, horned, a shaggy Satan snatches him not unshrieking; shews him, with outstretched arm and voice, the fire that is not quenched, the worm that dies not; the monotony of Hell-pain, and the What hour? answered by, It is Eternity!  (Montgaillard, iv. 218; Riouffe, p. 273.)

And still the Prisons fill fuller, and still the Guillotine goes faster.  On all high roads march flights of Prisoners, wending towards Paris.  Not Ci-devants now; they, the noisy of them, are mown down; it is Republicans now.  Chained two and two they march; in exasperated moments, singing their Marseillaise.  A hundred and thirty-two men of Nantes for instance, march towards Paris, in these same days:  Republicans, or say even Jacobins to the marrow of the bone; but Jacobins who had not approved Noyading. (Voyage de Cent Trente-deux Nantais, Prisons, ii. 288-335.) Vive la Republique rises from them in all streets of towns:  they rest by night, in unutterable noisome dens, crowded to choking; one or two dead on the morrow.  They are wayworn, weary of heart; can only shout:  Live the Republic; we, as under horrid enchantment, dying in this way for it!