weight, makes a furious lunge; but deft Castries
whisks aside: Lameth skewers only the air,--and slits deep and far,
on Castries' sword's-point, his own extended left arm! Whereupon
with bleeding, pallor, surgeon's-lint, and formalities, the Duel is
considered satisfactorily done.

But will there be no end, then? Beloved Lameth lies deep-slit, not out
of danger. Black traitorous Aristocrats kill the People's defenders, cut
up not with arguments, but with rapier-slits. And the Twelve Spadassins
out of Switzerland, and the considerable number of Assassins exercising
at the pistol-target? So meditates and ejaculates hurt Patriotism, with
ever-deepening ever-widening fervour, for the space of six and thirty
hours.

The thirty-six hours past, on Saturday the 13th, one beholds a
new spectacle: The Rue de Varennes, and neighbouring Boulevard des
Invalides, covered with a mixed flowing multitude: the Castries Hotel
gone distracted, devil-ridden, belching from every window, 'beds with
clothes and curtains,' plate of silver and gold with filigree, mirrors,
pictures, images, commodes, chiffoniers, and endless crockery and
jingle: amid steady popular cheers, absolutely without theft; for
there goes a cry, "He shall be hanged that steals a nail!" It is a
Plebiscitum, or informal iconoclastic Decree of the Common People,
in the course of being executed!--The Municipality sit tremulous;
deliberating whether they will hang out the Drapeau Rouge and Martial
Law: National Assembly, part in loud wail, part in hardly suppressed
applause: Abbe Maury unable to decide whether the iconoclastic Plebs
amount to forty thousand or to two hundred thousand.

Deputations, swift messengers, for it is at a distance over the River,
come and go. Lafayette and National Guardes, though without Drapeau
Rouge, get under way; apparently in no hot haste. Nay, arrived on
the scene, Lafayette salutes with doffed hat, before ordering to fix
bayonets. What avails it? The Plebeian "Court of Cassation," as Camille
might punningly name it, has done its work; steps forth, with unbuttoned
vest, with pockets turned inside out: sack, and just ravage,
not plunder! With inexhaustible patience, the Hero of two Worlds
remonstrates; persuasively, with a kind of sweet constraint, though also
with fixed bayonets, dissipates, hushes down: on the morrow it is once
more all as usual.

Considering which things, however, Duke Castries may justly 'write to
the President,' justly