reat Henri was rocked,
not to trample on Bearnese liberty; is informed, withal, that his
Majesty's cannon are all safe--in the keeping of his Majesty's faithful
Burghers of Pau, and do now lie pointed on the walls there; ready for
action! (Besenval, iii. 348.)

At this rate, your Grand Bailliages are like to have a stormy infancy.
As for the Plenary Court, it has literally expired in the birth. The
very Courtiers looked shy at it; old Marshal Broglie declined the honour
of sitting therein. Assaulted by a universal storm of mingled ridicule
and execration, (La Cour Pleniere, heroi-tragi-comedie en trois actes et
en prose; jouee le 14 Juillet 1788, par une societe d'amateurs dans un
Chateau aux environs de Versailles; par M. l'Abbe de Vermond, Lecteur de
la Reine: A Baville (Lamoignon's Country-house), et se trouve a Paris,
chez la Veuve Liberte, a l'enseigne de la Revolution, 1788.--La Passion,
la Mort et la Resurrection du Peuple: Imprime a Jerusalem, &c. &c.--See
Montgaillard, i. 407.) this poor Plenary Court met once, and never
any second time. Distracted country! Contention hisses up, with
forked hydra-tongues, wheresoever poor Lomenie sets his foot. 'Let a
Commandant, a Commissioner of the King,' says Weber, 'enter one of
these Parlements to have an Edict registered, the whole Tribunal will
disappear, and leave the Commandant alone with the Clerk and First
President. The Edict registered and the Commandant gone, the whole
Tribunal hastens back, to declare such registration null. The highways
are covered with Grand Deputations of Parlements, proceeding to
Versailles, to have their registers expunged by the King's hand; or
returning home, to cover a new page with a new resolution still more
audacious.' (Weber, i. 275.)

Such is the France of this year 1788. Not now a Golden or Paper Age of
Hope; with its horse-racings, balloon-flyings, and finer sensibilities
of the heart: ah, gone is that; its golden effulgence paled, bedarkened
in this singular manner,--brewing towards preternatural weather! For,
as in that wreck-storm of Paul et Virginie and Saint-Pierre,--'One huge
motionless cloud' (say, of Sorrow and Indignation) 'girdles our whole
horizon; streams up, hairy, copper-edged, over a sky of the colour of
lead.' Motionless itself; but 'small clouds' (as exiled Parlements and
suchlike), 'parting from it, fly over the zenith, with the velocity
of birds:'--till at last, with one loud howl, the whole Four Winds be
dash