sures
high-rouged! (See Vilate.) But at this dinner we speak of, the day being
so hot, it is said, the guests all stript their coats, and left them in
the drawing-room: whereupon Carnot glided out; groped in Robespierre's
pocket; found a list of Forty, his own name among them; and tarried not
at the wine-cup that day!--Ye must bestir yourselves, O Friends; ye dull
Frogs of the Marsh, mute ever since Girondism sank under, even ye now
must croak or die! Councils are held, with word and beck; nocturnal,
mysterious as death. Does not a feline Maximilien stalk there; voiceless
as yet; his green eyes red-spotted; back bent, and hair up? Rash
Tallien, with his rash temper and audacity of tongue; he shall bell the
cat. Fix a day; and be it soon, lest never!

Lo, before the fixed day, on the day which they call Eighth of
Thermidor, 26th July 1794, Robespierre himself reappears in Convention;
mounts to the Tribune! The biliary face seems clouded with new gloom;
judge whether your Talliens, Bourdons listened with interest. It is
a voice bodeful of death or of life. Long-winded, unmelodious as the
screech-owl's, sounds that prophetic voice: Degenerate condition
of Republican spirit; corrupt moderatism; Surete, Salut Committees
themselves infected; back-sliding on this hand and on that; I,
Maximilien, alone left incorruptible, ready to die at a moment's
warning. For all which what remedy is there? The Guillotine; new vigour
to the all-healing Guillotine: death to traitors of every hue! So sings
the prophetic voice; into its Convention sounding-board. The old song
this: but to-day, O Heavens! has the sounding-board ceased to act? There
is not resonance in this Convention; there is, so to speak, a gasp of
silence; nay a certain grating of one knows not what!--Lecointre, our
old Draper of Versailles, in these questionable circumstances, sees
nothing he can do so safe as rise, 'insidiously' or not insidiously,
and move, according to established wont, that the Robespierre Speech
be 'printed and sent to the Departments.' Hark: gratings, even of
dissonance! Honourable Members hint dissonance; Committee-Members,
inculpated in the Speech, utter dissonance; demand 'delay in printing.'
Ever higher rises the note of dissonance; inquiry is even made by Editor
Freron: "What has become of the Liberty of Opinions in this Convention?"
The Order to print and transmit, which had got passed, is rescinded.
Robespierre, greener than ever before, has to r