me now to palter? Alsatian Westermann clutches
him by the throat with drawn sabre: whereupon the Timber-headed
believes. In this manner wanes the slow night; amid fret, uncertainty
and tocsin; all men's humour rising to the hysterical pitch; and nothing
done.

However, Mandat, on the third summons does come;--come, unguarded;
astonished to find the Municipality new. They question him straitly on
that Mayor's-Order to resist force by force; on that strategic scheme of
cutting Saint-Antoine in two halves: he answers what he can: they think
it were right to send this strategic National Commandant to the Abbaye
Prison, and let a Court of Law decide on him. Alas, a Court of Law, not
Book-Law but primeval Club-Law, crowds and jostles out of doors; all
fretted to the hysterical pitch; cruel as Fear, blind as the Night: such
Court of Law, and no other, clutches poor Mandat from his constables;
beats him down, massacres him, on the steps of the Townhall. Look to it,
ye new Municipals; ye People, in a state of Insurrection! Blood is shed,
blood must be answered for;--alas, in such hysterical humour, more blood
will flow: for it is as with the Tiger in that; he has only to begin.

Seventeen Individuals have been seized in the Champs Elysees, by
exploratory Patriotism; they flitting dim-visible, by it flitting
dim-visible. Ye have pistols, rapiers, ye Seventeen? One of those
accursed 'false Patrols;' that go marauding, with Anti-National intent;
seeking what they can spy, what they can spill! The Seventeen are
carried to the nearest Guard-house; eleven of them escape by back
passages. "How is this?" Demoiselle Theroigne appears at the front
entrance, with sabre, pistols, and a train; denounces treasonous
connivance; demands, seizes, the remaining six, that the justice of the
People be not trifled with. Of which six two more escape in the whirl
and debate of the Club-Law Court; the last unhappy Four are massacred,
as Mandat was: Two Ex-Bodyguards; one dissipated Abbe; one Royalist
Pamphleteer, Sulleau, known to us by name, Able Editor, and wit of all
work. Poor Sulleau: his Acts of the Apostles, and brisk Placard-Journals
(for he was an able man) come to Finis, in this manner; and questionable
jesting issues suddenly in horrid earnest! Such doings usher in the dawn
of the Tenth of August, 1792.

Or think what a night the poor National Assembly has had: sitting there,
'in great paucity,' attempting to debate;--quivering and shiveri