What boots it, august Senators?  All avenues are closed with fixed bayonets.  Your Courier gallops to Versailles, through the dewy Night; but also gallops back again, with tidings that the order is authentic, that it is irrevocable.  The outer courts simmer with idle population; but D’Agoust’s grenadier-ranks stand there as immovable floodgates:  there will be no revolting to deliver you.  “Messieurs!” thus spoke D’Espremenil, “when the victorious Gauls entered Rome, which they had carried by assault, the Roman Senators, clothed in their purple, sat there, in their curule chairs, with a proud and tranquil countenance, awaiting slavery or death.  Such too is the lofty spectacle, which you, in this hour, offer to the universe (a l’univers), after having generously”—­with much more of the like, as can still be read.  (Toulongeon, i.  App. 20.)

In vain, O D’Espremenil!  Here is this cast-iron Captain D’Agoust, with his cast-iron military air, come back.  Despotism, constraint, destruction sit waving in his plumes.  D’Espremenil must fall silent; heroically give himself up, lest worst befall.  Him Goeslard heroically imitates.  With spoken and speechless emotion, they fling themselves into the arms of their Parlementary brethren, for a last embrace:  and so amid plaudits and plaints, from a hundred and sixty-five throats; amid wavings, sobbings, a whole forest-sigh of Parlementary pathos,—­they are led through winding passages, to the rear-gate; where, in the gray of the morning, two Coaches with Exempts stand waiting.  There must the victims mount; bayonets menacing behind.  D’Espremenil’s stern question to the populace, ‘Whether they have courage?’ is answered by silence.  They mount, and roll; and neither the rising of the May sun (it is the 6th morning), nor its setting shall lighten their heart:  but they fare forward continually; D’Espremenil towards the utmost Isles of Sainte Marguerite, or Hieres (supposed by some, if that is any comfort, to be Calypso’s Island); Goeslard towards the land-fortress of Pierre-en-Cize, extant then, near the City of Lyons.

Captain D’Agoust may now therefore look forward to Majorship, to Commandantship of the Tuilleries; (Montgaillard, i. 404.)—­and withal vanish from History; where nevertheless he has been fated to do a notable thing.  For not only are D’Espremenil and Goeslard safe whirling southward, but the Parlement itself has straightway to march out:  to that also his inexorable order reaches.  Gathering up their long skirts, they file out, the whole Hundred and Sixty-five of them, through two rows of unsympathetic grenadiers:  a spectacle to gods and men.  The people revolt not; they only wonder and grumble:  also, we remark, these unsympathetic grenadiers are Gardes Francaises,—­who, one day, will sympathise!  In a word, the Palais de Justice is swept clear, the doors of it are locked; and D’Agoust returns to Versailles with the key in his pocket,—­having, as was said, merited preferment.