Such was the First of Prairial, 20th May, 1795.  Second and Third of Prairial, during which Sansculottism still sprawled, and unexpectedly rang its tocsin, and assembled in arms, availed Sansculottism nothing.  What though with our Rommes and Ruhls, accused but not yet arrested, we make a new ‘True National Convention’ of our own, over in the East; and put the others Out of Law?  What though we rank in arms and march?  Armed Force and Muscadin Sections, some thirty thousand men, environ that old False Convention:  we can but bully one another:  bandying nicknames, “Muscadins,” against “Blooddrinkers, Buveurs de Sang.”  Feraud’s Assassin, taken with the red hand, and sentenced, and now near to Guillotine and Place de Greve, is retaken; is carried back into Saint-Antoine:  to no purpose.  Convention Sectionaries and Gilt Youth come, according to Decree, to seek him; nay to disarm Saint-Antoine!  And they do disarm it:  by rolling of cannon, by springing upon enemy’s cannon; by military audacity, and terror of the Law.  Saint-Antoine surrenders its arms; Santerre even advising it, anxious for life and brewhouse.  Feraud’s Assassin flings himself from a high roof:  and all is lost. (Toulongeon, v. 297; Moniteur, Nos. 244, 5, 6.)

Discerning which things, old Ruhl shot a pistol through his old white head; dashed his life in pieces, as he had done the Sacred Phial of Rheims.  Romme, Goujon and the others stand ranked before a swiftly-appointed, swift Military Tribunal.  Hearing the sentence, Goujon drew a knife, struck it into his breast, passed it to his neighbour Romme; and fell dead.  Romme did the like; and another all but did it; Roman-death rushing on there, as in electric-chain, before your Bailiffs could intervene!  The Guillotine had the rest.

They were the Ultimi Romanorum.  Billaud, Collot and Company are now ordered to be tried for life; but are found to be already off, shipped for Sinamarri, and the hot mud of Surinam.  There let Billaud surround himself with flocks of tame parrots; Collot take the yellow fever, and drinking a whole bottle of brandy, burn up his entrails. (Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans, paras Billaud, Collot.) Sansculottism spraws no more.  The dormant lion has become a dead one; and now, as we see, any hoof may smite him.

Chapter 3.7.VI.

Grilled Herrings.

So dies Sansculottism, the body of Sansculottism, or is changed.  Its ragged Pythian Carmagnole-dance has transformed itself into a Pyrrhic, into a dance of Cabarus Balls.  Sansculottism is dead; extinguished by new isms of that kind, which were its own natural progeny; and is buried, we may say, with such deafening jubilation and disharmony of funeral-knell on their part, that only after some half century or so does one begin to learn clearly why it ever was alive.