and enemies to their country, sent headless to the shades of tyrants. Vive la Republique!  But a grand idea strikes me.  You shall see Danton himself, the genius of liberty, the hero of human nature, the terror of kings.”  The thought was new, and a new thought is enough to turn the brain of the Gaul at any time.  He thrust his head out of the window, ordered a general halt; and, instead of taking me to the quarters of the National, resolved to have the merit of delivering up an “agent of Pitt and English guineas” to the master of the Republic alone. “A l’Abbaye!” was his cry.  But a new obstacle now arose in his troop; they had reckoned on a civic supper with their comrades of the guard; and the notion of bivouacking in front of the Abbaye, under the chilling wind and fierce showers which now swept down the dismal streets, was too much for their sense of discipline.  The dispute grew angry.  At length one of them, a huge and savage-looking fellow, who, by way of illustration, thrust his pike close to the little commandant’s shrinking visage, bellowed out—­

“The people are not to be insulted.  The people order, and all must obey!” Nothing could be more unanswerable, and no attempt was made to answer.  The captain dropped back into the chaise, the troop took their own way, and my next glance showed the street empty.  But the Frenchman finds comfort under all calamities.  After venting his wrath in no measured terms on “rabble insolence,” and declaring that laws were of no use when “gueux” like these could take them into their hands, he consoled himself by observing that, stripped as he was of his honours, the loss might be compensated by his profits; that the “vagabonds” might have expected to share the reward which the “grand Danton would infallibly be rejoiced to give for my capture, and that both the purse and the praise would be his own.” “A l’Abbaye!” was the cry once more.

We now were in motion again; and, after threading a labyrinth of streets, so dreary and so dilapidated as almost to give me the conception that I had never been in Paris before, we drove up to the grim entrance of the Abbaye.  My companion left me in charge of the sentinel, and rushed in.  “And is this,” thought I, as I looked round the narrow space of the four walls, “the spot where so many hundreds were butchered; this the scene of the first desperate triumph of massacre; this miserable court the last field of so many gallant lives; these stones the last resting-place of so many whose tread had been on cloth of gold; these old and crumbling walls giving the last echo to the voices of statesmen and nobles, the splendid courtiers, the brilliant orators, and the hoary ecclesiastics, of the most superb kingdom of Europe!” Even by the feeble lamp-light, that rather showed the darkness than the forms of the surrounding buildings, it seemed to me that I could discover the colour of the slaughter on the ground; and there were still heaps in corners, which looked to me like clay suddenly flung over the remnants of the murdered.