blue coat and black breeches, frizzled and powdered
to perfection, bearing in his hand a bouquet of flowers and wheat-ears,
issues proudly from the Convention Hall; Convention following him, yet,
as is remarked, with an interval. Amphitheatre has been raised, or at
least Monticule or Elevation; hideous Statues of Atheism, Anarchy and
such like, thanks to Heaven and Painter David, strike abhorrence into
the heart. Unluckily however, our Monticule is too small. On the top of
it not half of us can stand; wherefore there arises indecent shoving,
nay treasonous irreverent growling. Peace, thou Bourdon de l'Oise;
peace, or it may be worse for thee!

The seagreen Pontiff takes a torch, Painter David handing it; mouths
some other froth-rant of vocables, which happily one cannot hear;
strides resolutely forward, in sight of expectant France; sets his torch
to Atheism and Company, which are but made of pasteboard steeped in
turpentine. They burn up rapidly; and, from within, there rises 'by
machinery' an incombustible Statue of Wisdom, which, by ill hap, gets
besmoked a little; but does stand there visible in as serene attitude as
it can.

And then? Why, then, there is other Processioning, scraggy Discoursing,
and--this is our Feast of the Etre Supreme; our new Religion, better or
worse, is come!--Look at it one moment, O Reader, not two. The Shabbiest
page of Human Annals: or is there, that thou wottest of, one shabbier?
Mumbo-Jumbo of the African woods to me seems venerable beside this new
Deity of Robespierre; for this is a conscious Mumbo-Jumbo, and knows
that he is machinery. O seagreen Prophet, unhappiest of windbags blown
nigh to bursting, what distracted Chimera among realities are thou
growing to! This then, this common pitch-link for artificial fireworks
of turpentine and pasteboard; this is the miraculous Aaron's Rod thou
wilt stretch over a hag-ridden hell-ridden France, and bid her plagues
cease? Vanish, thou and it!--"Avec ton Etre Supreme," said Billaud, "tu
commences m'embeter: With thy Etre Supreme thou beginnest to be a
bore to me." (See Vilate, Causes Secretes. Vilate's Narrative is very
curious; but is not to be taken as true, without sifting; being, at
bottom, in spite of its title, not a Narrative but a Pleading.)

Catherine Theot, on the other hand, 'an ancient serving-maid
seventy-nine years of age,' inured to Prophecy and the Bastille from of
old, sits, in an upper room in the Rue-de-Contrescarpe, porin