exasperate our
only General: in the shrill tumult Danton's strong voice reverberates,
for union and pacification. Meetings there are; dinings with the
Girondins: it is so pressingly essential that there be union. But the
Girondins are haughty and respectable; this Titan Danton is not a man of
Formulas, and there rests on him a shadow of September. "Your Girondins
have no confidence in me:" this is the answer a conciliatory Meillan
gets from him; to all the arguments and pleadings this conciliatory
Meillan can bring, the repeated answer is, "Ils n'ont point de
confiance." (Memoires de Meillan, Representant du Peuple (Paris, 1823),
p. 51.)--The tumult will get ever shriller; rage is growing pale.

In fact, what a pang is it to the heart of a Girondin, this first
withering probability that the despicable unphilosophic anarchic
Mountain, after all, may triumph! Brutal Septemberers, a fifth-floor
Tallien, 'a Robespierre without an idea in his head,' as Condorcet says,
'or a feeling in his heart:' and yet we, the flower of France, cannot
stand against them; behold the sceptre departs from us; from us and goes
to them! Eloquence, Philosophism, Respectability avail not: 'against
Stupidity the very gods fight to no purpose,

'Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens!'

Shrill are the plaints of Louvet; his thin existence all acidified into
rage, and preternatural insight of suspicion. Wroth is young Barbaroux;
wroth and scornful. Silent, like a Queen with the aspic on her bosom,
sits the wife of Roland; Roland's Accounts never yet got audited,
his name become a byword. Such is the fortune of war, especially of
revolution. The great gulf of Tophet, and Tenth of August, opened itself
at the magic of your eloquent voice; and lo now, it will not close at
your voice! It is a dangerous thing such magic. The Magician's Famulus
got hold of the forbidden Book, and summoned a goblin: Plait-il, What is
your will? said the Goblin. The Famulus, somewhat struck, bade him fetch
water: the swift goblin fetched it, pail in each hand; but lo, would not
cease fetching it! Desperate, the Famulus shrieks at him, smites at him,
cuts him in two; lo, two goblin water-carriers ply; and the house will
be swum away in Deucalion Deluges.

Chapter 3.3.IV.

Fatherland in Danger.

Or rather we will say, this Senatorial war might have lasted long;
and Party tugging and throttling with Party might have suppressed and
smothered one another, in