Riding-Ushers! Away then, away!

The seized cannon are yoked with seized cart-horses: brown-locked
Demoiselle Theroigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as gunneress,
'with haughty eye and serene fair countenance;' comparable, some think,
to the Maid of Orleans, or even recalling 'the idea of Pallas Athene.'
(Deux Amis, iii. 157.) Maillard (for his drum still rolls) is, by
heaven-rending acclamation, admitted General. Maillard hastens the
languid march. Maillard, beating rhythmic, with sharp ran-tan, all
along the Quais, leads forward, with difficulty his Menadic host. Such
a host--marched not in silence! The bargeman pauses on the River; all
wagoners and coachdrivers fly; men peer from windows,--not women,
lest they be pressed. Sight of sights: Bacchantes, in these ultimate
Formalized Ages! Bronze Henri looks on, from his Pont-Neuf; the
Monarchic Louvre, Medicean Tuileries see a day not theretofore seen.

And now Maillard has his Menads in the Champs Elysees (Fields Tartarean
rather); and the Hotel-de-Ville has suffered comparatively nothing.
Broken doors; an Abbe Lefevre, who shall never more distribute powder;
three sacks of money, most part of which (for Sansculottism, though
famishing, is not without honour) shall be returned: (Hist. Parl. iii.
310.) this is all the damage. Great Maillard! A small nucleus of Order
is round his drum; but his outskirts fluctuate like the mad Ocean: for
Rascality male and female is flowing in on him, from the four winds;
guidance there is none but in his single head and two drumsticks.

O Maillard, when, since War first was, had General of Force such a task
before him, as thou this day? Walter the Penniless still touches the
feeling heart: but then Walter had sanction; had space to turn in; and
also his Crusaders were of the male sex. Thou, this day, disowned of
Heaven and Earth, art General of Menads. Their inarticulate frenzy thou
must on the spur of the instant, render into articulate words, into
actions that are not frantic. Fail in it, this way or that! Pragmatical
Officiality, with its penalties and law-books, waits before thee; Menads
storm behind. If such hewed off the melodious head of Orpheus, and
hurled it into the Peneus waters, what may they not make of thee,--thee
rhythmic merely, with no music but a sheepskin drum!--Maillard did not
fail. Remarkable Maillard, if fame were not an accident, and History a
distillation of Rumour, how remarkable wert thou!

On the Elys