ue la France soit libre, Let my name
be blighted; let France be free! It is necessary now again that France
rise, in swift vengeance, with her million right-hands, with her heart
as of one man. Instantaneous recruitment in Paris; let every Section
of Paris furnish its thousands; every section of France! Ninety-six
Commissioners of us, two for each Section of the Forty-eight, they must
go forthwith, and tell Paris what the Country needs of her. Let Eighty
more of us be sent, post-haste, over France; to spread the fire-cross,
to call forth the might of men. Let the Eighty also be on the road,
before this sitting rise. Let them go, and think what their errand is.
Speedy Camp of Fifty thousand between Paris and the North Frontier; for
Paris will pour forth her volunteers! Shoulder to shoulder; one strong
universal death-defiant rising and rushing; we shall hurl back these
Sons of Night yet again; and France, in spite of the world, be free!
(Moniteur in Hist. Parl. xxv. 6.)--So sounds the Titan's voice: into
all Section-houses; into all French hearts. Sections sit in Permanence,
for recruitment, enrolment, that very night. Convention Commissioners,
on swift wheels, are carrying the fire-cross from Town to Town, till all
France blaze.

And so there is Flag of Fatherland in Danger waving from the Townhall,
Black Flag from the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral; there is Proclamation,
hot eloquence; Paris rushing out once again to strike its enemies
down. That, in such circumstances, Paris was in no mild humour can be
conjectured. Agitated streets; still more agitated round the Salle de
Manege! Feuillans-Terrace crowds itself with angry Citizens, angrier
Citizenesses; Varlet perambulates with portable-chair: ejaculations of
no measured kind, as to perfidious fine-spoken Hommes d'etat, friends of
Dumouriez, secret-friends of Pitt and Cobourg, burst from the hearts
and lips of men. To fight the enemy? Yes, and even to "freeze him with
terror, glacer d'effroi;" but first to have domestic Traitors punished!
Who are they that, carping and quarrelling, in their jesuitic most
moderate way, seek to shackle the Patriotic movement? That divide France
against Paris, and poison public opinion in the Departments? That when
we ask for bread, and a Maximum fixed-price, treat us with lectures on
Free-trade in grains? Can the human stomach satisfy itself with lectures
on Free-trade; and are we to fight the Austrians in a moderate manner,
or in an immo