be murdered (for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike, if
they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of them desperate, him singly
desperate, struggling there; and bind him to their plank. Abbe
Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to
Heaven." The Axe clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday,
January 21, 1793. He was aged thirty-eight years four months and
twenty-eight days.

Executioner Samson shows the Head: fierce shout of "_Vive la
Republique_" rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats waving:
students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais;
fling it over Paris. D'Orleans drives off in his cabriolet: the
Town-hall Councillors rub their hands, saying, "It is done, It is done."
There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike-points in the blood. Headsman
Samson, though he afterward denied it, sells locks of the hair:
fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings.--And so, in
some half-hour it is done and the multitude has all departed.
Pastry-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian
cries: the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the
coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with
Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after,
according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was.

In the leafy months of June and July, several French Departments
germinate a set of rebellious _paper_-leaves, named Proclamations,
Resolutions, Journals, or Diurnals, "of the Union for Resistance to
Oppression." In particular, the Town of Caen, in Calvados, sees its
paper-leaf of _Bulletin de Caen_ suddenly bud, suddenly establish itself
as Newspaper there; under the Editorship of Girondin National
Representatives!

For among the proscribed Girondins are certain of a more desperate
humor. Some, as Vergniaud, Valaze, Gensonne, "arrested in their own
houses," will await with stoical resignation what the issue may be.
Some, as Brissot, Rabaut, will take to flight, to concealment; which, as
the Paris Barriers are opened again in a day or two, is not yet
difficult. But others there are who will rush, with Buzot, to Calvados;
or far over France, to Lyons, Toulon, Nantes and elsewhither, and then
rendezvous at Caen: to awaken as with war-trumpet the respectable
Departments; and strike down an anarchic "Mountain" Faction; at least
not yield without a stroke at it. Of this latter