ut barrels, lay felled
trees; scouts dart off to all the four winds,--the tocsin begins
clanging, 'the Village illuminates itself.' Very singular: how these
little Villages do manage, so adroit are they, when startled in midnight
alarm of war. Like little adroit municipal rattle-snakes, suddenly
awakened: for their stormbell rattles and rings; their eyes glisten
luminous (with tallow-light), as in rattle-snake ire; and the Village
will sting! Old-Dragoon Drouet is our engineer and generalissimo;
valiant as a Ruy Diaz:--Now or never, ye Patriots, for the Soldiery is
coming; massacre by Austrians, by Aristocrats, wars more than civil,
it all depends on you and the hour!--National Guards rank themselves,
half-buttoned: mortals, we say, still only in breeches, in
under-petticoat, tumble out barrels and lumber, lay felled trees for
barricades: the Village will sting. Rabid Democracy, it would seem, is
not confined to Paris, then? Ah no, whatsoever Courtiers might talk; too
clearly no. This of dying for one's King is grown into a dying for one's
self, against the King, if need be.

And so our riding and running Avalanche and Hurlyburly has reached the
Abyss, Korff Berline foremost; and may pour itself thither, and jumble:
endless! For the next six hours, need we ask if there was a clattering
far and wide? Clattering and tocsining and hot tumult, over all the
Clermontais, spreading through the Three Bishopricks: Dragoon and Hussar
Troops galloping on roads and no-roads; National Guards arming and
starting in the dead of night; tocsin after tocsin transmitting the
alarm. In some forty minutes, Goguelat and Choiseul, with their wearied
Hussars, reach Varennes. Ah, it is no fire then; or a fire difficult to
quench! They leap the tree-barricades, in spite of National serjeant;
they enter the village, Choiseul instructing his Troopers how the matter
really is; who respond interjectionally, in their guttural dialect,
"Der Konig; die Koniginn!" and seem stanch. These now, in their stanch
humour, will, for one thing, beset Procureur Sausse's house. Most
beneficial: had not Drouet stormfully ordered otherwise; and even
bellowed, in his extremity, "Cannoneers to your guns!"--two old
honey-combed Field-pieces, empty of all but cobwebs; the rattle whereof,
as the Cannoneers with assured countenance trundled them up, did
nevertheless abate the Hussar ardour, and produce a respectfuller
ranking further back. Jugs of wine, handed over the ra