Or, again, where now are the Jacobins?  Childless, most decrepit, as we saw, sat the mighty Mother; gnashing not teeth, but empty gums, against a traitorous Thermidorian Convention and the current of things.  Twice were Billaud, Collot and Company accused in Convention, by a Lecointre, by a Legendre; and the second time, it was not voted calumnious.  Billaud from the Jacobin tribune says, “The lion is not dead, he is only sleeping.”  They ask him in Convention, What he means by the awakening of the lion?  And bickerings, of an extensive sort, arose in the Palais-Egalite between Tappe-durs and the Gilt Youthhood; cries of “Down with the Jacobins, the Jacoquins,” coquin meaning scoundrel!  The Tribune in mid-air gave battle-sound; answered only by silence and uncertain gasps.  Talk was, in Government Committees, of ‘suspending’ the Jacobin Sessions.  Hark, there!—­it is in Allhallow-time, or on the Hallow-eve itself, month ci-devant November, year once named of Grace 1794, sad eve for Jacobinism,—­volley of stones dashing through our windows, with jingle and execration!  The female Jacobins, famed Tricoteuses with knitting-needles, take flight; are met at the doors by a Gilt Youthhood and ‘mob of four thousand persons;’ are hooted, flouted, hustled; fustigated, in a scandalous manner, cotillons retrousses;—­and vanish in mere hysterics.  Sally out ye male Jacobins!  The male Jacobins sally out; but only to battle, disaster and confusion.  So that armed Authority has to intervene:  and again on the morrow to intervene; and suspend the Jacobin Sessions forever and a day. (Moniteur, Seances du 10-12 Novembre 1794:  Deux Amis, xiii. 43-49.) Gone are the Jacobins; into invisibility; in a storm of laughter and howls.  Their place is made a Normal School, the first of the kind seen; it then vanishes into a ’Market of Thermidor Ninth;’ into a Market of Saint-Honore, where is now peaceable chaffering for poultry and greens.  The solemn temples, the great globe itself; the baseless fabric!  Are not we such stuff, we and this world of ours, as Dreams are made of?

Maximum being abrogated, Trade was to take its own free course.  Alas, Trade, shackled, topsyturvied in the way we saw, and now suddenly let go again, can for the present take no course at all; but only reel and stagger.  There is, so to speak, no Trade whatever for the time being.  Assignats, long sinking, emitted in such quantities, sink now with an alacrity beyond parallel.  “Combien?” said one, to a Hackney-coachman, “What fare?” “Six thousand livres,” answered he:  some three hundred pounds sterling, in Paper-money. (Mercier, ii. 94. ’1st February, 1796:  at the Bourse of Paris, the gold louis,’ of 20 francs in silver, ’costs 5,300 francs in assignats.’  Montgaillard, iv. 419.) Pressure of Maximum withdrawn, the things it compressed likewise withdraw.  ’Two ounces of bread per day’ in the modicum allotted:  wide-waving, doleful are the Bakers’ Queues; Farmers’ houses are become pawnbrokers’ shops.