panish wars, obtests vainly: threatens and resists vainly. Rebellious
Deputy of the Sovereign, if thou have fought, have not we too? We have
no bread, no Constitution! They wrench poor Feraud; they tumble him,
trample him, wrath waxing to see itself work: they drag him into the
corridor, dead or near it; sever his head, and fix it on a pike. Ah,
did an unexampled Convention want this variety of destiny too, then?
Feraud's bloody head goes on a pike. Such a game has begun; Paris and
the Earth may wait how it will end.

And so it billows free though all Corridors; within, and without, far
as the eye reaches, nothing but Bedlam, and the great Deep broken loose!
President Boissy d'Anglas sits like a rock: the rest of the Convention
is floated 'to the upper benches;' Sectioners and Gendarmes still
ranking there to form a kind of wall for them. And Insurrection rages;
rolls its drums; will read its Paper of Grievances, will have this
decreed, will have that. Covered sits President Boissy, unyielding; like
a rock in the beating of seas. They menace him, level muskets at him, he
yields not; they hold up Feraud's bloody head to him, with grave stern
air he bows to it, and yields not.

And the Paper of Grievances cannot get itself read for uproar; and the
drums roll, and the throats bawl; and Insurrection, like sphere-music,
is inaudible for very noise: Decree us this, Decree us that. One man we
discern bawling 'for the space of an hour at all intervals,' "Je
demande l'arrestation des coquins et des laches." Really one of the
most comprehensive Petitions ever put up: which indeed, to this hour,
includes all that you can reasonably ask Constitution of the Year One,
Rotten-Borough, Ballot-Box, or other miraculous Political Ark of the
Covenant to do for you to the end of the world! I also demand arrestment
of the Knaves and Dastards, and nothing more whatever. National
Representation, deluged with black Sansculottism glides out; for help
elsewhere, for safety elsewhere: here is no help.

About four in the afternoon, there remain hardly more than some
Sixty Members: mere friends, or even secret-leaders; a remnant of the
Mountain-crest, held in silence by Thermidorian thraldom. Now is the
time for them; now or never let them descend, and speak! They descend,
these Sixty, invited by Sansculottism: Romme of the New Calendar, Ruhl
of the Sacred Phial, Goujon, Duquesnoy, Soubrany, and the rest. Glad
Sansculottism forms a ring for them;