etire, foiled; discerning
that it is mutiny, that evil is nigh.

Mutiny is a thing of the fatallest nature in all enterprises whatsoever;
a thing so incalculable, swift-frightful; not to be dealt with in
fright. But mutiny in a Robespierre Convention, above all,--it is like
fire seen sputtering in the ship's powder-room! One death-defiant plunge
at it, this moment, and you may still tread it out: hesitate till next
moment,--ship and ship's captain, crew and cargo are shivered far; the
ship's voyage has suddenly ended between sea and sky. If Robespierre
can, to-night, produce his Henriot and Company, and get his work done by
them, he and Sansculottism may still subsist some time; if not, probably
not. Oliver Cromwell, when that Agitator Serjeant stept forth from
the ranks, with plea of grievances, and began gesticulating
and demonstrating, as the mouthpiece of Thousands expectant
there,--discerned, with those truculent eyes of his, how the matter
lay; plucked a pistol from his holsters; blew Agitator and Agitation
instantly out. Noll was a man fit for such things.

Robespierre, for his part, glides over at evening to his Jacobin House
of Lords; unfolds there, instead of some adequate resolution, his woes,
his uncommon virtues, incorruptibilities; then, secondly, his rejected
screech-owl Oration;--reads this latter over again; and declares that
he is ready to die at a moment's warning. Thou shalt not die! shouts
Jacobinism from its thousand throats. "Robespierre, I will drink the
hemlock with thee," cries Painter David, "Je boirai la cigue avec
toi;"--a thing not essential to do, but which, in the fire of the
moment, can be said.

Our Jacobin sounding-board, therefore, does act! Applauses heaven-high
cover the rejected Oration; fire-eyed fury lights all Jacobin features:
Insurrection a sacred duty; the Convention to be purged; Sovereign
People under Henriot and Municipality; we will make a new June-Second
of it: to your tents, O Israel! In this key pipes Jacobinism; in sheer
tumult of revolt. Let Tallien and all Opposition men make off. Collot
d'Herbois, though of the supreme Salut, and so lately near shot, is
elbowed, bullied; is glad to escape alive. Entering Committee-room of
Salut, all dishevelled, he finds sleek sombre Saint-Just there,
among the rest; who in his sleek way asks, "What is passing at the
Jacobins?"--"What is passing?" repeats Collot, in the unhistrionic
Cambyses' vein: "What is passing? Nothing but