with low vehemence, and rage compressed
by fear, still more passionately answer. Nay Barnave and the two
Lameths, and what will follow them, do likewise answer so. Answer, with
their whole might: terror-struck at the unknown Abysses on the verge
of which, driven thither by themselves mainly, all now reels, ready to
plunge.

By mighty effort and combination this latter course, of reestablish it,
is the course fixed on; and it shall by the strong arm, if not by
the clearest logic, be made good. With the sacrifice of all their
hard-earned popularity, this notable Triumvirate, says Toulongeon, 'set
the Throne up again, which they had so toiled to overturn: as one might
set up an overturned pyramid, on its vertex; to stand so long as it is
held.'

Unhappy France; unhappy in King, Queen, and Constitution; one knows
not in which unhappiest! Was the meaning of our so glorious French
Revolution this, and no other, That when Shams and Delusions, long
soul-killing, had become body-killing, and got the length of Bankruptcy
and Inanition, a great People rose and, with one voice, said, in the
Name of the Highest: Shams shall be no more? So many sorrows and bloody
horrors, endured, and to be yet endured through dismal coming centuries,
were they not the heavy price paid and payable for this same: Total
Destruction of Shams from among men? And now, O Barnave Triumvirate! is
it in such double-distilled Delusion, and Sham even of a Sham, that
an Effort of this kind will rest acquiescent? Messieurs of the popular
Triumvirate: Never! But, after all, what can poor popular Triumvirates
and fallible august Senators do? They can, when the Truth is all
too-horrible, stick their heads ostrich-like into what sheltering
Fallacy is nearest: and wait there, a posteriori!

Readers who saw the Clermontais and Three-Bishopricks gallop, in the
Night of Spurs; Diligences ruffling up all France into one terrific
terrified Cock of India; and the Town of Nantes in its shirt,--may fancy
what an affair to settle this was. Robespierre, on the extreme Left,
with perhaps Petion and lean old Goupil, for the very Triumvirate has
defalcated, are shrieking hoarse; drowned in Constitutional clamour.
But the debate and arguing of a whole Nation; the bellowings through
all Journals, for and against; the reverberant voice of Danton;
the Hyperion-shafts of Camille; the porcupine-quills of implacable
Marat:--conceive all this.

Constitutionalists in a body, as we of