Meanwhile Robespierre, we still observe, goes little to Convention, not at all to Committee; speaks nothing except to his Jacobin House of Lords, amid his bodyguard of Tappe-durs.  These ‘forty-days,’ for we are now far in July, he has not shewed face in Committee; could only work there by his three shallow scoundrels, and the terror there was of him.  The Incorruptible himself sits apart; or is seen stalking in solitary places in the fields, with an intensely meditative air; some say, ’with eyes red-spotted,’ (Deux Amis, xii. 347-73.) fruit of extreme bile:  the lamentablest seagreen Chimera that walks the Earth that July!  O hapless Chimera; for thou too hadst a life, and a heart of flesh,—­what is this the stern gods, seeming to smile all the way, have led and let thee to!  Art not thou he who, few years ago, was a young Advocate of promise; and gave up the Arras Judgeship rather than sentence one man to die?—­

What his thoughts might be?  His plans for finishing the Terror?  One knows not.  Dim vestiges there flit of Agrarian Law; a victorious Sansculottism become Landed Proprietor; old Soldiers sitting in National Mansions, in Hospital Palaces of Chambord and Chantilly; peace bought by victory; breaches healed by Feast of Etre Supreme;—­and so, through seas of blood, to Equality, Frugality, worksome Blessedness, Fraternity, and Republic of the virtues!  Blessed shore, of such a sea of Aristocrat blood:  but how to land on it?  Through one last wave:  blood of corrupt Sansculottists; traitorous or semi-traitorous Conventionals, rebellious Talliens, Billauds, to whom with my Etre Supreme I have become a bore; with my Apocalyptic Old Woman a laughing-stock!—­So stalks he, this poor Robespierre, like a seagreen ghost through the blooming July.  Vestiges of schemes flit dim.  But what his schemes or his thoughts were will never be known to man.

New Catacombs, some say, are digging for a huge simultaneous butchery.  Convention to be butchered, down to the right pitch, by General Henriot and Company:  Jacobin House of Lords made dominant; and Robespierre Dictator. (Deux Amis, xii. 350-8.) There is actually, or else there is not actually, a List made out; which the Hairdresser has got eye on, as he frizzled the Incorruptible locks.  Each man asks himself, Is it I?

Nay, as Tradition and rumour of Anecdote still convey it, there was a remarkable bachelor’s dinner one hot day at Barrere’s.  For doubt not, O Reader, this Barrere and others of them gave dinners; had ’country-house at Clichy,’ with elegant enough sumptuosities, and pleasures high-rouged! (See Vilate.) But at this dinner we speak of, the day being so hot, it is said, the guests all stript their coats, and left them in the drawing-room:  whereupon Carnot glided out; groped in Robespierre’s pocket; found a list of Forty, his own name among them; and tarried not at the wine-cup that day!—­Ye must bestir yourselves, O Friends; ye dull Frogs of the Marsh, mute ever since Girondism sank under, even ye now must croak or die!  Councils are held, with word and beck; nocturnal, mysterious as death.  Does not a feline Maximilien stalk there; voiceless as yet; his green eyes red-spotted; back bent, and hair up?  Rash Tallien, with his rash temper and audacity of tongue; he shall bell the cat.  Fix a day; and be it soon, lest never!