and dash it on Royal-Allemand, with your
old skinny arms: your shrill curses along with it will not be
wanting!--Patrols of the newborn National Guard, bearing torches, scour
the streets, all that night; which otherwise are vacant, yet illuminated
in every window by order. Strange-looking; like some naphtha-lighted
City of the Dead, with here and there a flight of perturbed Ghosts.

O poor mortals, how ye make this Earth bitter for each other; this
fearful and wonderful Life fearful and horrible; and Satan has his place
in all hearts! Such agonies and ragings and wailings ye have, and have
had, in all times:--to be buried all, in so deep silence; and the salt
sea is not swoln with your tears.

Great meanwhile is the moment, when tidings of Freedom reach us; when
the long-enthralled soul, from amid its chains and squalid stagnancy,
arises, were it still only in blindness and bewilderment, and swears by
Him that made it, that it will be free! Free? Understand that well, it
is the deep commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be
free. Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all
man's struggles, toilings and sufferings, in this Earth. Yes, supreme is
such a moment (if thou have known it): first vision as of a flame-girt
Sinai, in this our waste Pilgrimage,--which thenceforth wants not its
pillar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night! Something it
is even,--nay, something considerable, when the chains have grown
corrosive, poisonous, to be free 'from oppression by our fellow-man.'
Forward, ye maddened sons of France; be it towards this destiny or
towards that! Around you is but starvation, falsehood, corruption and
the clam of death. Where ye are is no abiding.

Imagination may, imperfectly, figure how Commandant Besenval, in the
Champ-de-Mars, has worn out these sorrowful hours Insurrection all
round; his men melting away! From Versailles, to the most pressing
messages, comes no answer; or once only some vague word of answer which
is worse than none. A Council of Officers can decide merely that there
is no decision: Colonels inform him, 'weeping,' that they do not think
their men will fight. Cruel uncertainty is here: war-god Broglie sits
yonder, inaccessible in his Olympus; does not descend terror-clad, does
not produce his whiff of grapeshot; sends no orders.

Truly, in the Chateau of Versailles all seems mystery: in the Town of
Versailles, were we there, all is rumour, alarm