der
to imagine: the reign of Fraternity and Perfection. Imagine, we say, O
Reader, that the Millennium were struggling on the threshold, and yet
not so much as groceries could be had,--owing to traitors. With what
impetus would a man strike traitors, in that case? Ah, thou canst not
imagine it: thou hast thy groceries safe in the shops, and little or no
hope of a Millennium ever coming!--But, indeed, as to the temper there
was in men and women, does not this one fact say enough: the height
SUSPICION had risen to? Preternatural we often called it; seemingly
in the language of exaggeration: but listen to the cold deposition of
witnesses. Not a musical Patriot can blow himself a snatch of melody
from the French Horn, sitting mildly pensive on the housetop, but
Mercier will recognise it to be a signal which one Plotting Committee is
making to another. Distraction has possessed Harmony herself; lurks in
the sound of Marseillese and ca-ira. (Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 63.)
Louvet, who can see as deep into a millstone as the most, discerns that
we shall be invited back to our old Hall of the Manege, by a Deputation;
and then the Anarchists will massacre Twenty-two of us, as we walk over.
It is Pitt and Cobourg; the gold of Pitt.--Poor Pitt! They little
know what work he has with his own Friends of the People; getting them
bespied, beheaded, their habeas-corpuses suspended, and his own Social
Order and strong-boxes kept tight,--to fancy him raising mobs among his
neighbours!

But the strangest fact connected with French or indeed with human
Suspicion, is perhaps this of Camille Desmoulins. Camille's head, one of
the clearest in France, has got itself so saturated through every fibre
with Preternaturalism of Suspicion, that looking back on that Twelfth of
July 1789, when the thousands rose round him, yelling responsive at
his word in the Palais Royal Garden, and took cockades, he finds it
explicable only on this hypothesis, That they were all hired to do it,
and set on by the Foreign and other Plotters. 'It was not for nothing,'
says Camille with insight, 'that this multitude burst up round me when
I spoke!' No, not for nothing. Behind, around, before, it is one
huge Preternatural Puppet-play of Plots; Pitt pulling the wires.
(See Histoire des Brissotins, par Camille Desmoulins, a Pamphlet of
Camille's, Paris, 1793.) Almost I conjecture that I Camille myself am a
Plot, and wooden with wires.--The force of insight could no furth