f the Country:
old-clothesmen, Jew or Heathen, drive the briskest trade. Chalier's
Ass Procession, at Lyons, was but a type of what went on, in those
same days, in all Towns. In all Towns and Townships as quick as the
guillotine may go, so quick goes the axe and the wrench: sacristies,
lutrins, altar-rails are pulled down; the Mass Books torn into cartridge
papers: men dance the Carmagnole all night about the bonfire. All
highways jingle with metallic Priest-tackle, beaten broad; sent to the
Convention, to the poverty-stricken Mint. Good Sainte Genevieve's Chasse
is let down: alas, to be burst open, this time, and burnt on the Place
de Greve. Saint Louis's shirt is burnt;--might not a Defender of the
Country have had it? At Saint-Denis Town, no longer Saint-Denis but
Franciade, Patriotism has been down among the Tombs, rummaging; the
Revolutionary Army has taken spoil. This, accordingly, is what the
streets of Paris saw:

'Most of these persons were still drunk, with the brandy they had
swallowed out of chalices;--eating mackerel on the patenas! Mounted on
Asses, which were housed with Priests' cloaks, they reined them with
Priests' stoles: they held clutched with the same hand communion-cup
and sacred wafer. They stopped at the doors of Dramshops; held out
ciboriums: and the landlord, stoop in hand, had to fill them thrice.
Next came Mules high-laden with crosses, chandeliers, censers,
holy-water vessels, hyssops;--recalling to mind the Priests of Cybele,
whose panniers, filled with the instruments of their worship, served
at once as storehouse, sacristy and temple. In such equipage did these
profaners advance towards the Convention. They enter there, in an
immense train, ranged in two rows; all masked like mummers in
fantastic sacerdotal vestments; bearing on hand-barrows their heaped
plunder,--ciboriums, suns, candelabras, plates of gold and silver.'
(Mercier, iv. 134. See Moniteur, Seance du 10 Novembre.)

The Address we do not give; for indeed it was in strophes, sung viva
voce, with all the parts;--Danton glooming considerably, in his place;
and demanding that there be prose and decency in future. (See also
Moniteur, Seance du 26 Novembre.) Nevertheless the captors of such
spolia opima crave, not untouched with liquor, permission to dance the
Carmagnole also on the spot: whereto an exhilarated Convention cannot
but accede. Nay, 'several Members,' continues the exaggerative Mercier,
who was not there to witness,