the streets. Shoulder-high is the injured
People's-friend, crowned with an oak-garland; amid the wavy sea of red
nightcaps, carmagnole jackets, grenadier bonnets and female mob-caps;
far-sounding like a sea! The injured People's-friend has here reached
his culminating-point; he too strikes the stars with his sublime head.

But the Reader can judge with what face President Lasource, he of the
'painful probabilities,' who presides in this Convention Hall, might
welcome such jubilee-tide, when it got thither, and the Decreed of
Accusation floating on the top of it! A National Sapper, spokesman on
the occasion, says, the People know their Friend, and love his life as
their own; "whosoever wants Marat's head must get the Sapper's first."
(Seance in Moniteur, No. 116, du 26 Avril, An 1er.) Lasource answered
with some vague painful mumblement,--which, says Levasseur, one could
not help tittering at. (Levasseur, Memoires, i. c. 6.) Patriot Sections,
Volunteers not yet gone to the Frontiers, come demanding the "purgation
of traitors from your own bosom;" the expulsion, or even the trial and
sentence, of a factious Twenty-two.

Nevertheless the Gironde has got its Commission of Twelve; a Commission
specially appointed for investigating these troubles of the Legislative
Sanctuary: let Sansculottism say what it will, Law shall triumph.
Old-Constituent Rabaut Saint-Etienne presides over this Commission:
"it is the last plank whereon a wrecked Republic may perhaps still save
herself." Rabaut and they therefore sit, intent; examining
witnesses; launching arrestments; looking out into a waste dim sea of
troubles.--the womb of Formula, or perhaps her grave! Enter not that
sea, O Reader! There are dim desolation and confusion; raging women and
raging men. Sections come demanding Twenty-two; for the number first
given by Section Bonconseil still holds, though the names should even
vary. Other Sections, of the wealthier kind, come denouncing such
demand; nay the same Section will demand to-day, and denounce the demand
to-morrow, according as the wealthier sit, or the poorer. Wherefore,
indeed, the Girondins decree that all Sections shall close 'at ten
in the evening;' before the working people come: which Decree remains
without effect. And nightly the Mother of Patriotism wails doleful;
doleful, but her eye kindling! And Fournier l'Americain is busy, and
the two Banker Freys, and Varlet Apostle of Liberty; the bull-voice
of Marquis Saint