This, then, is what the Intendants were bid wait for at their posts:  this is what the Court sat hatching, as its accursed cockatrice-egg; and would not stir, though provoked, till the brood were out!  Hie with it, D’Espremenil, home to Paris; convoke instantaneous Sessions; let the Parlement, and the Earth, and the Heavens know it.

Chapter 1.3.VIII.

Lomenie’s Death-throes.

On the morrow, which is the 3rd of May, 1788, an astonished Parlement sits convoked; listens speechless to the speech of D’Espremenil, unfolding the infinite misdeed.  Deed of treachery; of unhallowed darkness, such as Despotism loves!  Denounce it, O Parlement of Paris; awaken France and the Universe; roll what thunder-barrels of forensic eloquence thou hast:  with thee too it is verily Now or never!

The Parlement is not wanting, at such juncture.  In the hour of his extreme jeopardy, the lion first incites himself by roaring, by lashing his sides.  So here the Parlement of Paris.  On the motion of D’Espremenil, a most patriotic Oath, of the One-and-all sort, is sworn, with united throat;—­an excellent new-idea, which, in these coming years, shall not remain unimitated.  Next comes indomitable Declaration, almost of the rights of man, at least of the rights of Parlement; Invocation to the friends of French Freedom, in this and in subsequent time.  All which, or the essence of all which, is brought to paper; in a tone wherein something of plaintiveness blends with, and tempers, heroic valour.  And thus, having sounded the storm-bell,—­which Paris hears, which all France will hear; and hurled such defiance in the teeth of Lomenie and Despotism, the Parlement retires as from a tolerable first day’s work.

But how Lomenie felt to see his cockatrice-egg (so essential to the salvation of France) broken in this premature manner, let readers fancy!  Indignant he clutches at his thunderbolts (de Cachet, of the Seal); and launches two of them:  a bolt for D’Espremenil; a bolt for that busy Goeslard, whose service in the Second Twentieth and ‘strict valuation’ is not forgotten.  Such bolts clutched promptly overnight, and launched with the early new morning, shall strike agitated Paris if not into requiescence, yet into wholesome astonishment.

Ministerial thunderbolts may be launched; but if they do not hit?  D’Espremenil and Goeslard, warned, both of them, as is thought, by the singing of some friendly bird, elude the Lomenie Tipstaves; escape disguised through skywindows, over roofs, to their own Palais de Justice:  the thunderbolts have missed.  Paris (for the buzz flies abroad) is struck into astonishment not wholesome.  The two martyrs of Liberty doff their disguises; don their long gowns; behold, in the space of an hour, by aid of ushers and swift runners, the Parlement, with its Counsellors, Presidents, even Peers, sits anew assembled.  The assembled Parlement declares that these its two martyrs cannot be given up, to any sublunary authority; moreover that the ‘session is permanent,’ admitting of no adjournment, till pursuit of them has been relinquished.