llion
windpipes of a Nation all in Committee of Mercy: which how shall any
detached body of individuals withstand?

Chapter 3.7.II.

La Cabarus.

How, above all, shall a poor National Convention, withstand it? In
this poor National Convention, broken, bewildered by long terror,
perturbations, and guillotinement, there is no Pilot, there is not now
even a Danton, who could undertake to steer you anywhither, in such
press of weather. The utmost a bewildered Convention can do, is to veer,
and trim, and try to keep itself steady: and rush, undrowned, before the
wind. Needless to struggle; to fling helm a-lee, and make 'bout ship! A
bewildered Convention sails not in the teeth of the wind; but is rapidly
blown round again. So strong is the wind, we say; and so changed;
blowing fresher and fresher, as from the sweet South-West; your
devastating North-Easters, and wild tornado-gusts of Terror, blown
utterly out! All Sansculottic things are passing away; all things are
becoming Culottic.

Do but look at the cut of clothes; that light visible Result,
significant of a thousand things which are not so visible. In winter
1793, men went in red nightcaps; Municipals themselves in sabots: the
very Citoyennes had to petition against such headgear. But now in this
winter 1794, where is the red nightcap? With the thing beyond the Flood.
Your monied Citoyen ponders in what elegantest style he shall dress
himself: whether he shall not even dress himself as the Free Peoples of
Antiquity. The more adventurous Citoyenne has already done it. Behold
her, that beautiful adventurous Citoyenne: in costume of the Ancient
Greeks, such Greek as Painter David could teach; her sweeping tresses
snooded by glittering antique fillet; bright-eyed tunic of the Greek
women; her little feet naked, as in Antique Statues, with mere sandals,
and winding-strings of riband,--defying the frost!

There is such an effervescence of Luxury. For your Emigrant Ci-devants
carried not their mansions and furnitures out of the country with them;
but left them standing here: and in the swift changes of property,
what with money coined on the Place de la Revolution, what with
Army-furnishings, sales of Emigrant Domain and Church Lands and
King's Lands, and then with the Aladdin's-lamp of Agio in a time of
Paper-money, such mansions have found new occupants. Old wine, drawn
from Ci-devant bottles, descends new throats. Paris has swept herself,
relighted herself; Salo