e. From this junction of
vulgar ideas with the ambitious expressions of the tribune sprung that
strange language in which the fragments of thought are mingled with the
tinsel of words, and thus the popular eloquence of the period resembles
the ill-combined display at an extravagant _parvenu_. The populace was
proud at robbing the aristocracy of its language, even to turn it
against them; but whilst it filched, it soiled it. "Representatives,"
said Legendre, "bid the eagle of victory and fame to soar over your
heads and ours; say to the ministers, We love the people,--let your
punishment begin: the tyrants must die!"

XIX.

Camille Desmoulins, the Aristophanes of the Revolution, then borrowed
the sonorous voice of the Abbe Fauchet, in order to make himself heard.
Camille Desmoulins was the Voltaire of the streets; he struck on the
chord of passion by his sarcasms. "Representatives," said he, "the
applauses of the people are its civil list: the inviolability of the
king is a thing most infinitely just, for he ought, by nature, to be
always in opposition to the general will and our interest. One does not
voluntarily fall from so great a height. Let us take example from God,
whose _commandments are never impossible_; let us not require from the
_ci-devant_ sovereign an _impossible love_ of the national sovereignty;
is it not very natural that he should give his _veto_ to the best
decrees? But let the magistrates of the people--let the Directory of
Paris--let the same men, who, four months since, in the Champ-de-Mars,
fired upon the citizens who were signing a petition against one decree,
inundate the empire with a petition, which is evidently but the first
page of a vast register of counter-revolution, a subscription to civil
war, sent by them for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all
the slaves, all the robbers of the eighty-three departments, at the head
of which are the exemplary names of the members of the Directory of
Paris--fathers of their country! There is in this such a complication of
ingratitude and fraud, prevarication and perverseness, philosophical
hypocrisy and perfidious moderation, that on the instant we rally round
the decrees and around yourselves. Continue faithful, mandatories, and
if they obstinately persist in not permitting you to save the nation,
well, then, we will save it ourselves! For at last the power of the
royal _veto_ will have a term, and the taking of the Bastille is not
p