f
Prussians setting in through the open North-East?' Lucky, if fortified
Lines of Weissembourg, and impassibilities of Vosges Mountains, confine
it to French Alsace, keep it from submerging the very heart of the
country!

Furthermore, precisely in the same days, Valenciennes Siege is finished,
in the North-West:--fallen, under the red hail of York! Conde fell some
fortnight since. Cimmerian Coalition presses on. What seems very notable
too, on all these captured French Towns there flies not the Royalist
fleur-de-lys, in the name of a new Louis the Pretender; but the Austrian
flag flies; as if Austria meant to keep them for herself! Perhaps
General Custines, still in Paris, can give some explanation of the fall
of these strong-places? Mother Society, from tribune and gallery, growls
loud that he ought to do it;--remarks, however, in a splenetic manner
that 'the Monsieurs of the Palais Royal' are calling, Long-life to this
General.

The Mother Society, purged now, by successive 'scrutinies or
epurations,' from all taint of Girondism, has become a great Authority:
what we can call shield-bearer, or bottle-holder, nay call it fugleman,
to the purged National Convention itself. The Jacobins Debates are
reported in the Moniteur, like Parliamentary ones.

Chapter 3.4.IV.

O Nature.

But looking more specially into Paris City, what is this that History,
on the 10th of August, Year One of Liberty, 'by old-style, year 1793,'
discerns there? Praised be the Heavens, a new Feast of Pikes!

For Chaumette's 'Deputation every day' has worked out its result:
a Constitution. It was one of the rapidest Constitutions ever put
together; made, some say in eight days, by Herault Sechelles and others:
probably a workmanlike, roadworthy Constitution enough;--on which point,
however, we are, for some reasons, little called to form a judgment.
Workmanlike or not, the Forty-four Thousand Communes of France,
by overwhelming majorities, did hasten to accept it; glad of any
Constitution whatsoever. Nay Departmental Deputies have come, the
venerablest Republicans of each Department, with solemn message of
Acceptance; and now what remains but that our new Final Constitution be
proclaimed, and sworn to, in Feast of Pikes? The Departmental Deputies,
we say, are come some time ago;--Chaumette very anxious about them, lest
Girondin Monsieurs, Agio-jobbers, or were it even Filles de joie of a
Girondin temper, corrupt their morals. (Deux Amis, xi