aks nothing except to his Jacobin House of
Lords, amid his bodyguard of Tappe-durs. These 'forty-days,' for we are
now far in July, he has not shewed face in Committee; could only work
there by his three shallow scoundrels, and the terror there was of him.
The Incorruptible himself sits apart; or is seen stalking in solitary
places in the fields, with an intensely meditative air; some say, 'with
eyes red-spotted,' (Deux Amis, xii. 347-73.) fruit of extreme bile: the
lamentablest seagreen Chimera that walks the Earth that July! O hapless
Chimera; for thou too hadst a life, and a heart of flesh,--what is this
the stern gods, seeming to smile all the way, have led and let thee to!
Art not thou he who, few years ago, was a young Advocate of promise; and
gave up the Arras Judgeship rather than sentence one man to die?--

What his thoughts might be? His plans for finishing the Terror? One
knows not. Dim vestiges there flit of Agrarian Law; a victorious
Sansculottism become Landed Proprietor; old Soldiers sitting in National
Mansions, in Hospital Palaces of Chambord and Chantilly; peace bought by
victory; breaches healed by Feast of Etre Supreme;--and so, through seas
of blood, to Equality, Frugality, worksome Blessedness, Fraternity,
and Republic of the virtues! Blessed shore, of such a sea of Aristocrat
blood: but how to land on it? Through one last wave: blood of corrupt
Sansculottists; traitorous or semi-traitorous Conventionals, rebellious
Talliens, Billauds, to whom with my Etre Supreme I have become a bore;
with my Apocalyptic Old Woman a laughing-stock!--So stalks he, this poor
Robespierre, like a seagreen ghost through the blooming July. Vestiges
of schemes flit dim. But what his schemes or his thoughts were will
never be known to man.

New Catacombs, some say, are digging for a huge simultaneous butchery.
Convention to be butchered, down to the right pitch, by General Henriot
and Company: Jacobin House of Lords made dominant; and Robespierre
Dictator. (Deux Amis, xii. 350-8.) There is actually, or else there is
not actually, a List made out; which the Hairdresser has got eye on, as
he frizzled the Incorruptible locks. Each man asks himself, Is it I?

Nay, as Tradition and rumour of Anecdote still convey it, there was a
remarkable bachelor's dinner one hot day at Barrere's. For doubt not, O
Reader, this Barrere and others of them gave dinners; had 'country-house
at Clichy,' with elegant enough sumptuosities, and plea