need sharpening, the killers
refresh themselves from wine jugs. Onward and onward goes the butchery;
the loud yells wearying down into bass growls. A sombre-faced, shifting
multitude looks on; in dull approval, or dull disapproval; in dull
recognition that it is Necessity. 'An Anglais in drab greatcoat'
was seen, or seemed to be seen, serving liquor from his own
dram-bottle;--for what purpose, 'if not set on by Pitt,' Satan and
himself know best! Witty Dr. Moore grew sick on approaching, and turned
into another street. (Moore's Journal, i. 185-195.)--Quick enough
goes this Jury-Court; and rigorous. The brave are not spared, nor the
beautiful, nor the weak. Old M. de Montmorin, the Minister's Brother,
was acquitted by the Tribunal of the Seventeenth; and conducted back,
elbowed by howling galleries; but is not acquitted here. Princess de
Lamballe has lain down on bed: "Madame, you are to be removed to the
Abbaye." "I do not wish to remove; I am well enough here." There is a
need-be for removing. She will arrange her dress a little, then;
rude voices answer, "You have not far to go." She too is led to the
hell-gate; a manifest Queen's-Friend. She shivers back, at the sight of
bloody sabres; but there is no return: Onwards! That fair hindhead
is cleft with the axe; the neck is severed. That fair body is cut
in fragments; with indignities, and obscene horrors of moustachio
grands-levres, which human nature would fain find incredible,--which
shall be read in the original language only. She was beautiful, she
was good, she had known no happiness. Young hearts, generation after
generation, will think with themselves: O worthy of worship, thou
king-descended, god-descended and poor sister-woman! why was not I
there; and some Sword Balmung, or Thor's Hammer in my hand? Her head is
fixed on a pike; paraded under the windows of the Temple; that a still
more hated, a Marie-Antoinette, may see. One Municipal, in the Temple
with the Royal Prisoners at the moment, said, "Look out." Another
eagerly whispered, "Do not look." The circuit of the Temple is guarded,
in these hours, by a long stretched tricolor riband: terror enters, and
the clangour of infinite tumult: hitherto not regicide, though that too
may come.

But it is more edifying to note what thrillings of affection, what
fragments of wild virtues turn up, in this shaking asunder of man's
existence, for of these too there is a proportion. Note old Marquis
Cazotte: he is doomed