d and sixty heaped
carcasses on the Pont au Change' itself;--among which, Robespierre
pleading afterwards will 'nearly weep' to reflect that there was said
to be one slain innocent. (Moniteur of 6th November, Debate of 5th
November, 1793.) One; not two, O thou seagreen Incorruptible? If
so, Themis Sansculotte must be lucky; for she was brief!--In the dim
Registers of the Townhall, which are preserved to this day, men read,
with a certain sickness of heart, items and entries not usual in Town
Books: 'To workers employed in preserving the salubrity of the air in
the Prisons, and persons 'who presided over these dangerous operations,'
so much,--in various items, nearly seven hundred pounds sterling. To
carters employed to 'the Burying-grounds of Clamart, Montrouge, and
Vaugirard,' at so much a journey, per cart; this also is an entry. Then
so many francs and odd sous 'for the necessary quantity of quick-lime!'
(Etat des sommes payees par la Commune de Paris, Hist. Parl. xviii.
231.) Carts go along the streets; full of stript human corpses, thrown
pellmell; limbs sticking up:--seest thou that cold Hand sticking up,
through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness,
in its cold rigour; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb
prayer, in expostulation de profundis, Take pity on the Sons of
Men!--Mercier saw it, as he walked down 'the Rue Saint-Jacques from
Montrouge, on the morrow of the Massacres:' but not a Hand; it was a
Foot,--which he reckons still more significant, one understands not well
why. Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven? Rushing, like a wild
diver, in disgust and despair, towards the depths of Annihilation? Even
there shall His hand find thee, and His right-hand hold thee,--surely
for right not for wrong, for good not evil! 'I saw that Foot,' says
Mercier; 'I shall know it again at the great Day of Judgment, when
the Eternal, throned on his thunders, shall judge both Kings and
Septemberers.' (Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 21.)

That a shriek of inarticulate horror rose over this thing, not only from
French Aristocrats and Moderates, but from all Europe, and has prolonged
itself to the present day, was most natural and right. The thing lay
done, irrevocable; a thing to be counted besides some other things,
which lie very black in our Earth's Annals, yet which will not erase
therefrom. For man, as was remarked, has transcendentalisms in him;
standing, as he does, poor creature, ev