uch righteous horror, as grief that one's own power was departing?
Unhappy Girondins!

In the Jacobin Society, therefore, the decided Patriot complains that
here are men who with their private ambitions and animosities, will ruin
Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood, all three: they check the spirit of
Patriotism, throw stumbling-blocks in its way; and instead of pushing
on, all shoulders at the wheel, will stand idle there, spitefully
clamouring what foul ruts there are, what rude jolts we give! To which
the Jacobin Society answers with angry roar;--with angry shriek,
for there are Citoyennes too, thick crowded in the galleries here.
Citoyennes who bring their seam with them, or their knitting-needles;
and shriek or knit as the case needs; famed Tricoteuses, Patriot
Knitters;--Mere Duchesse, or the like Deborah and Mother of the
Faubourgs, giving the keynote. It is a changed Jacobin Society; and a
still changing. Where Mother Duchess now sits, authentic Duchesses have
sat. High-rouged dames went once in jewels and spangles; now, instead of
jewels, you may take the knitting-needles and leave the rouge: the
rouge will gradually give place to natural brown, clean washed or even
unwashed; and Demoiselle Theroigne herself get scandalously fustigated.
Strange enough: it is the same tribune raised in mid-air, where a high
Mirabeau, a high Barnave and Aristocrat Lameths once thundered: whom
gradually your Brissots, Guadets, Vergniauds, a hotter style of Patriots
in bonnet rouge, did displace; red heat, as one may say, superseding
light. And now your Brissots in turn, and Brissotins, Rolandins,
Girondins, are becoming supernumerary; must desert the sittings, or
be expelled: the light of the Mighty Mother is burning not red but
blue!--Provincial Daughter-Societies loudly disapprove these things;
loudly demand the swift reinstatement of such eloquent Girondins, the
swift 'erasure of Marat, radiation de Marat.' The Mother Society, so far
as natural reason can predict, seems ruining herself. Nevertheless she
has, at all crises, seemed so; she has a preternatural life in her, and
will not ruin.

But, in a fortnight more, this great Question of the Trial, while the
fit Committee is assiduously but silently working on it, receives
an unexpected stimulus. Our readers remember poor Louis's turn
for smithwork: how, in old happier days, a certain Sieur Gamain
of Versailles was wont to come over, and instruct him in
lock-making;--often sco