Pigs, idiots!" Oftentimes he
croaks harsh sarcasm, having really a rough rasping tongue, and a very
deep fund of contempt for fine outsides; and once or twice, he even
laughs, nay 'explodes into laughter, rit aux eclats,' at the gentilities
and superfine airs of these Girondin "men of statesmanship," with their
pedantries, plausibilities, pusillanimities: "these two years," says he,
"you have been whining about attacks, and plots, and danger from Paris;
and you have not a scratch to shew for yourselves." (Moniteur, Seance du
20 Mai 1793.)--Danton gruffly rebukes him, from time to time: a Maximum
of Patriotism, whom one can neither own nor disown!

But the second sore-place of the Mountain is this anomalous Monseigneur
Equality Prince d'Orleans. Behold these men, says the Gironde; with a
whilom Bourbon Prince among them: they are creatures of the d'Orleans
Faction; they will have Philippe made King; one King no sooner
guillotined than another made in his stead! Girondins have moved, Buzot
moved long ago, from principle and also from jesuitism, that the whole
race of Bourbons should be marched forth from the soil of France; this
Prince Egalite to bring up the rear. Motions which might produce some
effect on the public;--which the Mountain, ill at ease, knows not what
to do with.

And poor Orleans Egalite himself, for one begins to pity even him, what
does he do with them? The disowned of all parties, the rejected and
foolishly be-drifted hither and hither, to what corner of Nature can he
now drift with advantage? Feasible hope remains not for him: unfeasible
hope, in pallid doubtful glimmers, there may still come, bewildering,
not cheering or illuminating,--from the Dumouriez quarter; and how,
if not the timewasted Orleans Egalite, then perhaps the young unworn
Chartres Egalite might rise to be a kind of King? Sheltered, if shelter
it be, in the clefts of the Mountain, poor Egalite will wait: one refuge
in Jacobinism, one in Dumouriez and Counter-Revolution, are there
not two chances? However, the look of him, Dame Genlis says, is grown
gloomy; sad to see. Sillery also, the Genlis's Husband, who hovers
about the Mountain, not on it, is in a bad way. Dame Genlis has come
to Raincy, out of England and Bury St. Edmunds, in these days; being
summoned by Egalite, with her young charge, Mademoiselle Egalite, that
so Mademoiselle might not be counted among Emigrants and hardly dealt
with. But it proves a ravelled business: Genl