Section
Mutius-Scaevola: and in brief, there is a world wholly jumbling itself,
to try what will swim!

Wherefore we will, at all events, call this Reign of Terror a very
strange one. Dominant Sansculottism makes, as it were, free arena; one
of the strangest temporary states Humanity was ever seen in. A nation of
men, full of wants and void of habits! The old habits are gone to wreck
because they were old: men, driven forward by Necessity and fierce
Pythian Madness, have, on the spur of the instant, to devise for the
want the way of satisfying it. The wonted tumbles down; by imitation,
by invention, the Unwonted hastily builds itself up. What the French
National head has in it comes out: if not a great result, surely one of
the strangest.

Neither shall the reader fancy that it was all blank, this Reign of
Terror: far from it. How many hammermen and squaremen, bakers and
brewers, washers and wringers, over this France, must ply their old
daily work, let the Government be one of Terror or one of Joy! In this
Paris there are Twenty-three Theatres nightly; some count as many
as Sixty Places of Dancing. (Mercier. ii. 124.) The Playwright
manufactures: pieces of a strictly Republican character. Ever fresh
Novelgarbage, as of old, fodders the Circulating Libraries. (Moniteur of
these months, passim.) The 'Cesspool of Agio,' now in the time of Paper
Money, works with a vivacity unexampled, unimagined; exhales from itself
'sudden fortunes,' like Alladin-Palaces: really a kind of miraculous
Fata-Morganas, since you can live in them, for a time. Terror is as a
sable ground, on which the most variegated of scenes paints itself.
In startling transitions, in colours all intensated, the sublime, the
ludicrous, the horrible succeed one another; or rather, in crowding
tumult, accompany one another.

Here, accordingly, if anywhere, the 'hundred tongues,' which the old
Poets often clamour for, were of supreme service! In defect of any such
organ on our part, let the Reader stir up his own imaginative organ: let
us snatch for him this or the other significant glimpse of things, in
the fittest sequence we can.

Chapter 3.5.II.

Death.

In the early days of November, there is one transient glimpse of things
that is to be noted: the last transit to his long home of Philippe
d'Orleans Egalite. Philippe was 'decreed accused,' along with the
Girondins, much to his and their surprise; but not tried along with
them. They are doomed a