to battle, disaster and confusion. So that armed Authority
has to intervene: and again on the morrow to intervene; and suspend the
Jacobin Sessions forever and a day. (Moniteur, Seances du 10-12 Novembre
1794: Deux Amis, xiii. 43-49.) Gone are the Jacobins; into invisibility;
in a storm of laughter and howls. Their place is made a Normal School,
the first of the kind seen; it then vanishes into a 'Market of Thermidor
Ninth;' into a Market of Saint-Honore, where is now peaceable chaffering
for poultry and greens. The solemn temples, the great globe itself; the
baseless fabric! Are not we such stuff, we and this world of ours, as
Dreams are made of?

Maximum being abrogated, Trade was to take its own free course. Alas,
Trade, shackled, topsyturvied in the way we saw, and now suddenly let
go again, can for the present take no course at all; but only reel and
stagger. There is, so to speak, no Trade whatever for the time being.
Assignats, long sinking, emitted in such quantities, sink now with an
alacrity beyond parallel. "Combien?" said one, to a Hackney-coachman,
"What fare?" "Six thousand livres," answered he: some three hundred
pounds sterling, in Paper-money. (Mercier, ii. 94. '1st February, 1796:
at the Bourse of Paris, the gold louis,' of 20 francs in silver, 'costs
5,300 francs in assignats.' Montgaillard, iv. 419.) Pressure of Maximum
withdrawn, the things it compressed likewise withdraw. 'Two ounces of
bread per day' in the modicum allotted: wide-waving, doleful are the
Bakers' Queues; Farmers' houses are become pawnbrokers' shops.

One can imagine, in these circumstances, with what humour Sansculottism
growled in its throat, "La Cabarus;" beheld Ci-devants return dancing,
the Thermidor effulgence of recivilisation, and Balls in flesh-coloured
drawers. Greek tunics and sandals; hosts of Muscadins parading, with
their clubs loaded with lead;--and we here, cast out, abhorred, 'picking
offals from the street;' (Fantin Desodoards, Histoire de la Revolution,
vii. c. 4.) agitating in Baker's Queue for our two ounces of bread! Will
the Jacobin lion, which they say is meeting secretly 'at the Acheveche,
in bonnet rouge with loaded pistols,' not awaken? Seemingly not. Our
Collot, our Billaud, Barrere, Vadier, in these last days of March 1795,
are found worthy of Deportation, of Banishment beyond seas; and shall,
for the present, be trundled off to the Castle of Ham. The lion is
dead;--or writhing in death-throes!

Behold