such clause is
a manifest infraction; that it, Lepelletier, for one, will simply not
conform thereto; and invites all other free Sections to join it, 'in
central Committee,' in resistance to oppression. (Deux Amis, xiii.
375-406.) The Sections join it, nearly all; strong with their Forty
Thousand fighting men. The Convention therefore may look to itself!
Lepelletier, on this 12th day of Vendemiaire, 4th of October 1795, is
sitting in open contravention, in its Convent of Filles Saint-Thomas,
Rue Vivienne, with guns primed. The Convention has some Five Thousand
regular troops at hand; Generals in abundance; and a Fifteen Hundred
of miscellaneous persecuted Ultra-Jacobins, whom in this crisis it has
hastily got together and armed, under the title Patriots of Eighty-nine.
Strong in Law, it sends its General Menou to disarm Lepelletier.

General Menou marches accordingly, with due summons and demonstration;
with no result. General Menou, about eight in the evening, finds that
he is standing ranked in the Rue Vivienne, emitting vain summonses;
with primed guns pointed out of every window at him; and that he cannot
disarm Lepelletier. He has to return, with whole skin, but without
success; and be thrown into arrest as 'a traitor.' Whereupon the whole
Forty Thousand join this Lepelletier which cannot be vanquished: to what
hand shall a quaking Convention now turn? Our poor Convention, after
such voyaging, just entering harbour, so to speak, has struck on the
bar;--and labours there frightfully, with breakers roaring round it,
Forty thousand of them, like to wash it, and its Sieyes Cargo and the
whole future of France, into the deep! Yet one last time, it struggles,
ready to perish.

Some call for Barras to be made Commandant; he conquered in Thermidor.
Some, what is more to the purpose, bethink them of the Citizen
Buonaparte, unemployed Artillery Officer, who took Toulon. A man of
head, a man of action: Barras is named Commandant's-Cloak; this young
Artillery Officer is named Commandant. He was in the Gallery at the
moment, and heard it; he withdrew, some half hour, to consider with
himself: after a half hour of grim compressed considering, to be or not
to be, he answers Yea.

And now, a man of head being at the centre of it, the whole matter gets
vital. Swift, to Camp of Sablons; to secure the Artillery, there are
not twenty men guarding it! A swift Adjutant, Murat is the name of him,
gallops; gets thither some minutes wi