the space of
an hour, by aid of ushers and swift runners, the Parlement, with its
Counsellors, Presidents, even Peers, sits anew assembled. The assembled
Parlement declares that these its two martyrs cannot be given up, to any
sublunary authority; moreover that the 'session is permanent,' admitting
of no adjournment, till pursuit of them has been relinquished.

And so, with forensic eloquence, denunciation and protest, with couriers
going and returning, the Parlement, in this state of continual explosion
that shall cease neither night nor day, waits the issue. Awakened Paris
once more inundates those outer courts; boils, in floods wilder than
ever, through all avenues. Dissonant hubbub there is; jargon as of
Babel, in the hour when they were first smitten (as here) with mutual
unintelligibilty, and the people had not yet dispersed!

Paris City goes through its diurnal epochs, of working and slumbering;
and now, for the second time, most European and African mortals are
asleep. But here, in this Whirlpool of Words, sleep falls not; the Night
spreads her coverlid of Darkness over it in vain. Within is the sound of
mere martyr invincibility; tempered with the due tone of plaintiveness.
Without is the infinite expectant hum,--growing drowsier a little. So
has it lasted for six-and-thirty hours.

But hark, through the dead of midnight, what tramp is this? Tramp as of
armed men, foot and horse; Gardes Francaises, Gardes Suisses: marching
hither; in silent regularity; in the flare of torchlight! There are
Sappers, too, with axes and crowbars: apparently, if the doors open not,
they will be forced!--It is Captain D'Agoust, missioned from Versailles.
D'Agoust, a man of known firmness;--who once forced Prince Conde
himself, by mere incessant looking at him, to give satisfaction and
fight; (Weber, i. 283.) he now, with axes and torches is advancing on
the very sanctuary of Justice. Sacrilegious; yet what help? The man is
a soldier; looks merely at his orders; impassive, moves forward like an
inanimate engine.

The doors open on summons, there need no axes; door after door. And now
the innermost door opens; discloses the long-gowned Senators of France:
a hundred and sixty-seven by tale, seventeen of them Peers; sitting
there, majestic, 'in permanent session.' Were not the men military, and
of cast-iron, this sight, this silence reechoing the clank of his own
boots, might stagger him! For the hundred and sixty-seven receive him i