France as it goes; through town and hamlet, ruffles the smooth public mind into quivering agitation of death-terror; then lumbers on, as if nothing had happened! Along all highways; towards the utmost borders; till all France is ruffled,—roughened up (metaphorically speaking) into one enormous, desperate-minded, red guggling Turkey Cock!
For example, it is under cloud of night that the leathern Monster reaches Nantes; deep sunk in sleep. The word spoken rouses all Patriot men: General Dumouriez, enveloped in roquelaures, has to descend from his bedroom; finds the street covered with 'four or five thousand citizens in their shirts.'[1] Here and there a faint farthing rushlight, hastily kindled; and so many swart-featured haggard faces with nightcaps pushed back; and the more or less flowing drapery of nightshirts: open-mouthed till the General say his word! And overhead, as always, the Great Bear is turning so quiet round Boötes; steady, indifferent as the leathern Diligence itself. Take comfort, ye men of Nantes; Boötes and the steady Bear are turning; ancient Atlantic still sends his brine, loud-billowing, up your Loire stream; brandy shall be hot in the stomach: this is not the Last of the Days, but one before the Last.—The fools! If they knew what was doing, in these very instants, also by candle-light, in the far Northeast!
Perhaps, we may say, the most terrified man in Paris or France is—who thinks the reader?—seagreen Robespierre. Double paleness, with the shadow of gibbets and halters, overcasts the seagreen features: it is too clear to him that there is to be 'a Saint-Bartholomew of Patriots,' that in four-and-twenty hours he will not be in life. These horrid anticipations of the soul he is heard uttering at Pétion's: by a notable witness. By Madame Boland, namely; her whom we saw, last year, radiant at the Lyons Federation. These four months, the Rolands have been in Paris; arranging with Assembly Committees the Municipal affairs of Lyons, affairs all sunk in debt;—communing, the while, as was most natural, with the
- ↑ Dumouriez, Mémoires, ii. 109.
