re and not further on, may have ordered it all
otherwise? In that case, Brunswick will not dine in Paris on the set
day; nor, indeed, one knows not when!--Verily, amid this wreckage, where
poor France seems grinding itself down to dust and bottomless ruin, who
knows what miraculous salient-point of Deliverance and New-life may have
already come into existence there; and be already working there, though
as yet human eye discern it not! On the night of that same twenty-eighth
of August, the unpromising Review-day in Sedan, Dumouriez assembles a
Council of War at his lodgings there. He spreads out the map of this
forlorn war-district: Prussians here, Austrians there; triumphant both,
with broad highway, and little hinderance, all the way to Paris;
we, scattered helpless, here and here: what to advise? The Generals,
strangers to Dumouriez, look blank enough; know not well what to
advise,--if it be not retreating, and retreating till our recruits
accumulate; till perhaps the chapter of chances turn up some leaf for
us; or Paris, at all events, be sacked at the latest day possible. The
Many-counselled, who 'has not closed an eye for three nights,' listens
with little speech to these long cheerless speeches; merely watching
the speaker that he may know him; then wishes them all good-night;--but
beckons a certain young Thouvenot, the fire of whose looks had pleased
him, to wait a moment. Thouvenot waits: Voila, says Polymetis, pointing
to the map! That is the Forest of Argonne, that long stripe of rocky
Mountain and wild Wood; forty miles long; with but five, or say even
three practicable Passes through it: this, for they have forgotten
it, might one not still seize, though Clairfait sits so nigh?
Once seized;--the Champagne called the Hungry (or worse, Champagne
Pouilleuse) on their side of it; the fat Three Bishoprics, and willing
France, on ours; and the Equinox-rains not far;--this Argonne 'might be
the Thermopylae of France!' (Dumouriez, ii. 391.)

O brisk Dumouriez Polymetis with thy teeming head, may the gods grant
it!--Polymetis, at any rate, folds his map together, and flings himself
on bed; resolved to try, on the morrow morning. With astucity, with
swiftness, with audacity! One had need to be a lion-fox, and have luck
on one's side.

Chapter 3.1.IV.

September in Paris.

At Paris, by lying Rumour which proved prophetic and veridical, the
fall of Verdun was known some hours before it happened. It is Sunday the