onths of February and March, it is recorded, the terror,
especially of rural France, had risen even to the transcendental pitch:
not far from madness. In Town and Hamlet is rumour; of war, massacre:
that Austrians, Aristocrats, above all, that The Brigands are close by.
Men quit their houses and huts; rush fugitive, shrieking, with wife
and child, they know not whither. Such a terror, the eye-witnesses say,
never fell on a Nation; nor shall again fall, even in Reigns of Terror
expressly so-called. The Countries of the Loire, all the Central and
South-East regions, start up distracted, 'simultaneously as by an
electric shock;'--for indeed grain too gets scarcer and scarcer. 'The
people barricade the entrances of Towns, pile stones in the upper
stories, the women prepare boiling water; from moment to moment,
expecting the attack. In the Country, the alarm-bell rings incessant:
troops of peasants, gathered by it, scour the highways, seeking an
imaginary enemy. They are armed mostly with scythes stuck in wood;
and, arriving in wild troops at the barricaded Towns, are themselves
sometimes taken for Brigands.' (Newspapers, &c. in Hist. Parl. xiii.
325.)

So rushes old France: old France is rushing down. What the end will be
is known to no mortal; that the end is near all mortals may know.

Chapter 2.5.VII.

Constitution will not march.

To all which our poor Legislative, tied up by an unmarching
Constitution, can oppose nothing, by way of remedy, but mere bursts of
parliamentary eloquence! They go on, debating, denouncing, objurgating:
loud weltering Chaos, which devours itself.

But their two thousand and odd Decrees? Reader, these happily concern
not thee, nor me. Mere Occasional Decrees, foolish and not foolish;
sufficient for that day was its own evil! Of the whole two thousand
there are not, now half a score, and these mostly blighted in the bud
by royal Veto, that will profit or disprofit us. On the 17th of January,
the Legislative, for one thing, got its High Court, its Haute Cour,
set up at Orleans. The theory had been given by the Constituent, in
May last, but this is the reality: a Court for the trial of Political
Offences; a Court which cannot want work. To this it was decreed that
there needed no royal Acceptance, therefore that there could be no Veto.
Also Priests can now be married; ever since last October. A patriotic
adventurous Priest had made bold to marry himself then; and not thinking
this enough