Brutus, as we call it.  Whereat we all bellow, and brandish, impetuous acclaim.  “Tyranny; Dictatorship!  Triumvirat!” And the Salut Committee-men accuse, and all men accuse, and uproar, and impetuously acclaim.  And Saint-Just is standing motionless, pale of face; Couthon ejaculating, “Triumvir?” with a look at his paralytic legs.  And Robespierre is struggling to speak, but President Thuriot is jingling the bell against him, but the Hall is sounding against him like an Aeolus-Hall:  and Robespierre is mounting the Tribune-steps and descending again; going and coming, like to choke with rage, terror, desperation:—­and mutiny is the order of the day!  (Moniteur, Nos. 311, 312; Debats, iv. 421-42; Deux Amis, xii. 390-411.)

O President Thuriot, thou that wert Elector Thuriot, and from the Bastille battlements sawest Saint-Antoine rising like the Ocean-tide, and hast seen much since, sawest thou ever the like of this?  Jingle of bell, which thou jinglest against Robespierre, is hardly audible amid the Bedlam-storm; and men rage for life.  “President of Assassins,” shrieks Robespierre, “I demand speech of thee for the last time!” It cannot be had.  “To you, O virtuous men of the Plain,” cries he, finding audience one moment, “I appeal to you!” The virtuous men of the Plain sit silent as stones.  And Thuriot’s bell jingles, and the Hall sounds like Aeolus’s Hall.  Robespierre’s frothing lips are grown ‘blue;’ his tongue dry, cleaving to the roof of his mouth.  “The blood of Danton chokes him,” cry they.  “Accusation!  Decree of Accusation!” Thuriot swiftly puts that question.  Accusation passes; the incorruptible Maximilien is decreed Accused.

“I demand to share my Brother’s fate, as I have striven to share his virtues,” cries Augustin, the Younger Robespierre:  Augustin also is decreed.  And Couthon, and Saint-Just, and Lebas, they are all decreed; and packed forth,—­not without difficulty, the Ushers almost trembling to obey.  Triumvirat and Company are packed forth, into Salut Committee-room; their tongue cleaving to the roof of their mouth.  You have but to summon the Municipality; to cashier Commandant Henriot, and launch Arrest at him; to regular formalities; hand Tinville his victims.  It is noon:  the Aeolus-Hall has delivered itself; blows now victorious, harmonious, as one irresistible wind.

And so the work is finished?  One thinks so; and yet it is not so.  Alas, there is yet but the first-act finished; three or four other acts still to come; and an uncertain catastrophe!  A huge City holds in it so many confusions:  seven hundred thousand human heads; not one of which knows what its neighbour is doing, nay not what itself is doing.—­See, accordingly, about three in the afternoon, Commandant Henriot, how instead of sitting cashiered, arrested, he gallops along the Quais, followed by Municipal Gendarmes, ‘trampling down several persons!’ For the Townhall sits deliberating, openly insurgent:  Barriers to be shut; no Gaoler to admit any Prisoner