id at one time to 'embrace Liberty on a heap of
dead bodies,' begins to ask now, Whether among so many arresting and
punishing Committees there ought not to be a 'Committee of Mercy?'
Saint-Just, he observes, is an extremely solemn young Republican, who
'carries his head as if it were a Saint-Sacrement; adorable Hostie, or
divine Real-Presence! Sharply enough, this old Cordelier, Danton and
he were of the earliest primary Cordeliers,--shoots his glittering
war-shafts into your new Cordeliers, your Heberts, Momoros, with their
brawling brutalities and despicabilities: say, as the Sun-god (for poor
Camille is a Poet) shot into that Python Serpent sprung of mud.

Whereat, as was natural, the Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe
amazingly; and threaten 'sacred right of Insurrection;'--and, as we saw,
get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit, dexterity, and light
graceful poignancy, Camille, translating 'out of Tacitus, from the
Reign of Tiberius,' pricks into the Law of the Suspect itself; making it
odious! Twice, in the Decade, his wild Leaves issue; full of wit, nay
of humour, of harmonious ingenuity and insight,--one of the strangest
phenomenon of that dark time; and smite, in their wild-sparkling way, at
various monstrosities, Saint-Sacrament heads, and Juggernaut idols, in
a rather reckless manner. To the great joy of Josephine Beauharnais, and
the other Five Thousand and odd Suspect, who fill the Twelve Houses of
Arrest; on whom a ray of hope dawns! Robespierre, at first approbatory,
knew not at last what to think; then thought, with his Jacobins, that
Camille must be expelled. A man of true Revolutionary spirit, this
Camille; but with the unwisest sallies; whom Aristocrats and Moderates
have the art to corrupt! Jacobinism is in uttermost crisis and struggle:
enmeshed wholly in plots, corruptibilities, neck-gins and baited
falltraps of Pitt Ennemi du Genre Humain. Camille's First Number begins
with 'O Pitt!'--his last is dated 15 Pluviose Year 2, 3d February 1794;
and ends with these words of Montezuma's, 'Les dieux ont soif, The gods
are athirst.'

Be this as it may, the Hebertists lie in Prison only some nine days. On
the 24th of March, therefore, the Revolution Tumbrils carry through that
Life-tumult a new cargo: Hebert, Vincent, Momoro, Ronsin, Nineteen of
them in all; with whom, curious enough, sits Clootz Speaker of
Mankind. They have been massed swiftly into a lump, this miscellany of
Nondescripts; and