lowed by Municipal Gendarmes, 'trampling down several persons!' For
the Townhall sits deliberating, openly insurgent: Barriers to be shut;
no Gaoler to admit any Prisoner this day;--and Henriot is galloping
towards the Tuileries, to deliver Robespierre. On the Quai de la
Ferraillerie, a young Citoyen, walking with his wife, says aloud:
"Gendarmes, that man is not your Commandant; he is under arrest." The
Gendarmes strike down the young Citoyen with the flat of their swords.
(Precis des evenemens du Neuf Thermidor, par C.A. Meda, ancien Gendarme,
Paris, 1825.)

Representatives themselves (as Merlin the Thionviller) who accost him,
this puissant Henriot flings into guardhouses. He bursts towards the
Tuileries Committee-room, "to speak with Robespierre:" with difficulty,
the Ushers and Tuileries Gendarmes, earnestly pleading and drawing
sabre, seize this Henriot; get the Henriot Gendarmes persuaded not to
fight; get Robespierre and Company packed into hackney-coaches, sent off
under escort, to the Luxembourg and other Prisons. This then is the end?
May not an exhausted Convention adjourn now, for a little repose and
sustenance, 'at five o'clock?'

An exhausted Convention did it; and repented it. The end was not come;
only the end of the second-act. Hark, while exhausted Representatives
sit at victuals,--tocsin bursting from all steeples, drums rolling, in
the summer evening: Judge Coffinhal is galloping with new Gendarmes to
deliver Henriot from Tuileries Committee-room; and does deliver him!
Puissant Henriot vaults on horseback; sets to haranguing the Tuileries
Gendarmes; corrupts the Tuileries Gendarmes too; trots off with them to
Townhall. Alas, and Robespierre is not in Prison: the Gaoler shewed his
Municipal order, durst not on pain of his life, admit any Prisoner; the
Robespierre Hackney-coaches, in confused jangle and whirl of uncertain
Gendarmes, have floated safe--into the Townhall! There sit Robespierre
and Company, embraced by Municipals and Jacobins, in sacred right of
Insurrection; redacting Proclamations; sounding tocsins; corresponding
with Sections and Mother Society. Is not here a pretty enough third-act
of a natural Greek Drama; catastrophe more uncertain than ever?

The hasty Convention rushes together again, in the ominous nightfall:
President Collot, for the chair is his, enters with long strides,
paleness on his face; claps on his hat; says with solemn tone:
"Citoyens, armed Villains have beset the