emper; especially after these news from Argonne and the East. Not a
Sans-indispensables in Lille that would surrender for a King's ransom.
Redhot balls rain, day and night; 'six-thousand,' or so, and bombs
'filled internally with oil of turpentine which splashes up in
flame;'--mainly on the dwellings of the Sansculottes and Poor; the
streets of the Rich being spared. But the Sansculottes get water-pails;
form quenching-regulations, "The ball is in Peter's house!" "The ball
is in John's!" They divide their lodging and substance with each other;
shout Vive la Republique; and faint not in heart. A ball thunders
through the main chamber of the Hotel-de-Ville, while the Commune is
there assembled: "We are in permanence," says one, coldly, proceeding
with his business; and the ball remains permanent too, sticking in the
wall, probably to this day. (Bombardement de Lille in Hist. Parl. xx.
63-71.)

The Austrian Archduchess (Queen's Sister) will herself see red artillery
fired; in their over-haste to satisfy an Archduchess 'two mortars
explode and kill thirty persons.' It is in vain; Lille, often burning,
is always quenched again; Lille will not yield. The very boys deftly
wrench the matches out of fallen bombs: 'a man clutches a rolling ball
with his hat, which takes fire; when cool, they crown it with a bonnet
rouge.' Memorable also be that nimble Barber, who when the bomb burst
beside him, snatched up a shred of it, introduced soap and lather into
it, crying, "Voila mon plat a barbe, My new shaving-dish!" and shaved
'fourteen people' on the spot. Bravo, thou nimble Shaver; worthy to
shave old spectral Redcloak, and find treasures!--On the eighth day
of this desperate siege, the sixth day of October, Austria finding
it fruitless, draws off, with no pleasurable consciousness; rapidly,
Dumouriez tending thitherward; and Lille too, black with ashes and
smoulder, but jubilant skyhigh, flings its gates open. The Plat a
barbe became fashionable; 'no Patriot of an elegant turn,' says Mercier
several years afterwards, 'but shaves himself out of the splinter of a
Lille bomb.'

Quid multa, Why many words? The Invaders are in flight; Brunswick's
Host, the third part of it gone to death, staggers disastrous along the
deep highways of Champagne; spreading out also into 'the fields, of a
tough spongy red-coloured clay;--like Pharaoh through a Red Sea of
mud,' says Goethe; 'for he also lay broken chariots, and riders and
foot seemed sinki