hey may be guilty before Heaven, or
not; they are guilty, we suppose, before the Revolution. Then, does not
the Republic 'coin money' of them, with its great axe? Red Nightcaps
howl dire approval: the rest of Paris looks on; if with a sigh, that is
much; Fellow-creatures whom sighing cannot help; whom black Necessity
and Tinville have clutched.

One other thing, or rather two other things, we will still mention;
and no more: The Blond Perukes; the Tannery at Meudon. Great talk is
of these Perruques blondes: O Reader, they are made from the Heads of
Guillotined women! The locks of a Duchess, in this way, may come to
cover the scalp of a Cordwainer: her blond German Frankism his black
Gaelic poll, if it be bald. Or they may be worn affectionately, as
relics; rendering one suspect? (Mercier, ii. 134.) Citizens use them,
not without mockery; of a rather cannibal sort.

Still deeper into one's heart goes that Tannery at Meudon; not mentioned
among the other miracles of tanning! 'At Meudon,' says Montgaillard with
considerable calmness, 'there was a Tannery of Human Skins; such of
the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying: of which perfectly good
wash-leather was made:' for breeches, and other uses. The skin of the
men, he remarks, was superior in toughness (consistance) and quality
to shamoy; that of women was good for almost nothing, being so soft
in texture! (Montgaillard, iv. 290.)--History looking back over
Cannibalism, through Purchas's Pilgrims and all early and late Records,
will perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort on the whole so
detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeling, quietly elegant sort; a
sort perfide! Alas then, is man's civilisation only a wrappage, through
which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever? Nature
still makes him; and has an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial.

BOOK 3.VI.

THERMIDOR

Chapter 3.6.I.

The Gods are athirst.

What then is this Thing, called La Revolution, which, like an Angel of
Death, hangs over France, noyading, fusillading, fighting, gun-boring,
tanning human skins? La Revolution is but so many Alphabetic Letters; a
thing nowhere to be laid hands on, to be clapt under lock and key: where
is it? what is it? It is the Madness that dwells in the hearts of men.
In this man it is, and in that man; as a rage or as a terror, it is
in all men. Invisible, impalpable; and yet no black Azrael, with wings
spread over half a continent