the first of the Feasts of Reason; first
communion-service of the New Religion of Chaumette.

'The corresponding Festival in the Church of Saint-Eustache,' says
Mercier, 'offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the
choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of
trees. Round the choir stood tables over-loaded with bottles, with
sausages, pork-puddings, pastries and other meats. The guests flowed in
and out through all doors: whosoever presented himself took part of
the good things: children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to
plate, in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their
prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft,
in a serene manner; Cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes.
And out of doors,' continues the exaggerative man, 'were mad multitudes
dancing round the bonfire of Chapel-balustrades, of Priests' and Canons'
stalls; and the dancers, I exaggerate nothing, the dancers nigh bare
of breeches, neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling
and spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and
Destruction.' (Mercier, iv. 127-146.) At Saint-Gervais Church again
there was a terrible 'smell of herrings;' Section or Municipality having
provided no food, no condiment, but left it to chance. Other mysteries,
seemingly of a Cabiric or even Paphian character, we heave under the
Veil, which appropriately stretches itself 'along the pillars of the
aisles,'--not to be lifted aside by the hand of History.

But there is one thing we should like almost better to understand
than any other: what Reason herself thought of it, all the while. What
articulate words poor Mrs. Momoro, for example, uttered; when she had
become ungoddessed again, and the Bibliopolist and she sat quiet at
home, at supper? For he was an earnest man, Bookseller Momoro; and had
notions of Agrarian Law. Mrs. Momoro, it is admitted, made one of the
best Goddesses of Reason; though her teeth were a little defective. And
now if the reader will represent to himself that such visible Adoration
of Reason went on 'all over the Republic,' through these November and
December weeks, till the Church woodwork was burnt out, and the business
otherwise completed, he will feel sufficiently what an adoring Republic
it was, and without reluctance quit this part of the subject.

Such gifts of Church-spoil are chiefly the work of the Armee
Revolutionnair