here he arrives before noon, having thus
walked above twenty miles in the course of the morning.'

This Sublieutenant can remark that, in drawing-rooms, on streets, on
highways, at inns, every where men's minds are ready to kindle into a
flame. That a Patriot, if he appear in the drawing-room, or amid a
group of officers, is liable enough to be discouraged, so great is the
majority against him: but no sooner does he get into the street, or
among the soldiers, than he feels again as if the whole Nation were with
him. That after the famous Oath, To the King, to the Nation and Law,
there was a great change; that before this, if ordered to fire on the
people, he for one would have done it in the King's name; but that after
this, in the Nation's name, he would not have done it. Likewise that the
Patriot officers, more numerous too in the Artillery and Engineers than
elsewhere, were few in number; yet that having the soldiers on their
side, they ruled the regiment; and did often deliver the Aristocrat
brother officer out of peril and strait. One day, for example, 'a member
of our own mess roused the mob, by singing, from the windows of our
dining-room, O Richard, O my King; and I had to snatch him from their
fury.' (Norvins, Histoire de Napoleon, i. 47; Las Cases, Memoires
translated into Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon, i. 23-31.)

All which let the reader multiply by ten thousand; and spread it with
slight variations over all the camps and garrisons of France. The French
Army seems on the verge of universal mutiny.

Universal mutiny! There is in that what may well make Patriot
Constitutionalism and an august Assembly shudder. Something behoves to
be done; yet what to do no man can tell. Mirabeau proposes even that the
Soldiery, having come to such a pass, be forthwith disbanded, the whole
Two Hundred and Eighty Thousands of them; and organised anew. (Moniteur,
1790. No. 233.) Impossible this, in so sudden a manner! cry all men. And
yet literally, answer we, it is inevitable, in one manner or another.
Such an Army, with its four-generation Nobles, its Peculated Pay, and
men knotting forage cords to hang their quartermaster, cannot subsist
beside such a Revolution. Your alternative is a slow-pining chronic
dissolution and new organization; or a swift decisive one; the agonies
spread over years, or concentrated into an hour. With a Mirabeau for
Minister or Governor the latter had been the choice; with no Mirabeau
for Governor it