ndividuals sit plentiful, as Moderates, in the
middle. Still less is a Cote Gauche wanting: extreme Left; sitting on
the topmost benches, as if aloft on its speculatory Height or Mountain,
which will become a practical fulminatory Height, and make the name of
Mountain famous-infamous to all times and lands.

Honour waits not on this Mountain; nor as yet even loud dishonour. Gifts
it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; solely this one
gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and
the Heavens. Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from
Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin,
skilful in agio. Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single
epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon,
little dreaming what he is;--whom a sad chance has paralysed in the
lower extremities. For, it seems, he sat once a whole night, not warm in
his true love's bower (who indeed was by law another's), but sunken to
the middle in a cold peat-bog, being hunted out; quaking for his life,
in the cold quaking morass; (Dumouriez, ii. 370.) and goes now on
crutches to the end. Cambon likewise, in whom slumbers undeveloped such
a finance-talent for printing of Assignats; Father of Paper-money; who,
in the hour of menace, shall utter this stern sentence, 'War to the
Manorhouse, peace to the Hut, Guerre aux Chateaux, paix aux Chaumieres!'
(Choix de Rapports, xi. 25.) Lecointre, the intrepid Draper of
Versailles, is welcome here; known since the Opera-Repast and
Insurrection of Women. Thuriot too; Elector Thuriot, who stood in the
embrasures of the Bastille, and saw Saint-Antoine rising in mass; who
has many other things to see. Last and grimmest of all note old Ruhl,
with his brown dusky face and long white hair; of Alsatian Lutheran
breed; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught; who, haranguing
the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred Ampulla (Heaven-sent,
wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere worthless
oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pavement there; who,
alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own wild head, by
pistol-shot, and so end it.

Such lava welters redhot in the bowels of this Mountain; unknown to the
world and to itself! A mere commonplace Mountain hitherto; distinguished
from the Plain chiefly by its superior barrenness, its baldness of look:
at the utmost it may, to the most observan