from the proper appointed Committee, on the Crimes of Louis. The
Galleries listen breathless; take comfort, ye Galleries: Deputy Valaze,
Reporter on this occasion, thinks Louis very criminal; and that, if
convenient, he should be tried;--poor Girondin Valaze, who may be
tried himself, one day! Comfortable so far. Nay here comes a second
Committee-reporter, Deputy Mailhe, with a Legal Argument, very prosy to
read now, very refreshing to hear then, That, by the Law of the Country,
Louis Capet was only called Inviolable by a figure of rhetoric; but at
bottom was perfectly violable, triable; that he can, and even should be
tried. This Question of Louis, emerging so often as an angry confused
possibility, and submerging again, has emerged now in an articulate
shape.

Patriotism growls indignant joy. The so-called reign of Equality is
not to be a mere name, then, but a thing! Try Louis Capet? scornfully
ejaculates Patriotism: Mean criminals go to the gallows for a purse cut;
and this chief criminal, guilty of a France cut; of a France slashed
asunder with Clotho-scissors and Civil war; with his victims 'twelve
hundred on the Tenth of August alone' lying low in the Catacombs,
fattening the passes of Argonne Wood, of Valmy and far Fields; he,
such chief criminal, shall not even come to the bar?--For, alas, O
Patriotism! add we, it was from of old said, The loser pays! It is
he who has to pay all scores, run up by whomsoever; on him must all
breakages and charges fall; and the twelve hundred on the Tenth of
August are not rebel traitors, but victims and martyrs: such is the law
of quarrel.

Patriotism, nothing doubting, watches over this Question of the Trial,
now happily emerged in an articulate shape; and will see it to maturity,
if the gods permit. With a keen solicitude Patriotism watches; getting
ever keener, at every new difficulty, as Girondins and false brothers
interpose delays; till it get a keenness as of fixed-idea, and will have
this Trial and no earthly thing instead of it,--if Equality be not a
name. Love of Equality; then scepticism of terror, rage of victory,
sublime spectacle of the universe: all these things are strong.

But indeed this Question of the Trial, is it not to all persons a most
grave one; filling with dubiety many a Legislative head! Regicide? asks
the Gironde Respectability: To kill a king, and become the horror of
respectable nations and persons? But then also, to save a king; to lose
one's