tic Cafes. And ever
as any black cockade may emerge, rises the many-voiced growl and bark: A
bas, Down! All black cockades are ruthlessly plucked off: one individual
picks his up again; kisses it, attempts to refix it; but a 'hundred
canes start into the air,' and he desists. Still worse went it with
another individual; doomed, by extempore Plebiscitum, to the Lanterne;
saved, with difficulty, by some active Corps-de-Garde.--Lafayette sees
signs of an effervescence; which he doubles his Patrols, doubles his
diligence, to prevent. So passes Sunday, the 4th of October 1789.

Sullen is the male heart, repressed by Patrollotism; vehement is the
female, irrepressible. The public-speaking woman at the Palais Royal
was not the only speaking one:--Men know not what the pantry is, when
it grows empty, only house-mothers know. O women, wives of men that
will only calculate and not act! Patrollotism is strong; but Death, by
starvation and military onfall, is stronger. Patrollotism represses male
Patriotism: but female Patriotism? Will Guards named National thrust
their bayonets into the bosoms of women? Such thought, or rather such
dim unshaped raw-material of a thought, ferments universally under
the female night-cap; and, by earliest daybreak, on slight hint, will
explode.

Chapter 1.7.IV.

The Menads.

If Voltaire once, in splenetic humour, asked his countrymen: "But you,
Gualches, what have you invented?" they can now answer: The Art of
Insurrection. It was an art needed in these last singular times: an art,
for which the French nature, so full of vehemence, so free from depth,
was perhaps of all others the fittest.

Accordingly, to what a height, one may well say of perfection, has
this branch of human industry been carried by France, within the last
half-century! Insurrection, which, Lafayette thought, might be 'the most
sacred of duties,' ranks now, for the French people, among the duties
which they can perform. Other mobs are dull masses; which roll
onwards with a dull fierce tenacity, a dull fierce heat, but emit no
light-flashes of genius as they go. The French mob, again, is among the
liveliest phenomena of our world. So rapid, audacious; so clear-sighted,
inventive, prompt to seize the moment; instinct with life to its
finger-ends! That talent, were there no other, of spontaneously standing
in queue, distinguishes, as we said, the French People from all Peoples,
ancient and modern.

Let the Reader confess t