it skills not! His course likewise is to the
Luxembourg. We appoint one Fleuriot-Lescot Interim-Mayor in his stead:
an 'architect from Belgium,' they say, this Fleuriot; he is a man one
can depend on. Our new Agent-National is Payan, lately Juryman; whose
cynosure also is Robespierre.

Thus then, we perceive, this confusedly electric Erebus-cloud of
Revolutionary Government has altered its shape somewhat. Two masses, or
wings, belonging to it; an over-electric mass of Cordelier Rabids, and
an under-electric of Dantonist Moderates and Clemency-men,--these two
masses, shooting bolts at one another, so to speak, have annihilated
one another. For the Erebus-cloud, as we often remark, is of suicidal
nature; and, in jagged irregularity, darts its lightning withal into
itself. But now these two discrepant masses being mutually annihilated,
it is as if the Erebus-cloud had got to internal composure; and did only
pour its hellfire lightning on the World that lay under it. In plain
words, Terror of the Guillotine was never terrible till now. Systole,
diastole, swift and ever swifter goes the Axe of Samson. Indictments
cease by degrees to have so much as plausibility: Fouquier chooses from
the Twelve houses of Arrest what he calls Batches, 'Fournees,' a
score or more at a time; his Jurymen are charged to make feu de file,
fire-filing till the ground be clear. Citizen Laflotte's report of Plot
in the Luxembourg is verily bearing fruit! If no speakable charge exist
against a man, or Batch of men, Fouquier has always this: a Plot in the
Prison. Swift and ever swifter goes Samson; up, finally, to three score
and more at a Batch! It is the highday of Death: none but the Dead
return not.

O dusky d'Espremenil, what a day is this, the 22d of April, thy last
day! The Palais Hall here is the same stone Hall, where thou, five years
ago, stoodest perorating, amid endless pathos of rebellious Parlement,
in the grey of the morning; bound to march with d'Agoust to the Isles
of Hieres. The stones are the same stones: but the rest, Men, Rebellion,
Pathos, Peroration, see! it has all fled, like a gibbering troop of
ghosts, like the phantasms of a dying brain! With d'Espremenil, in the
same line of Tumbrils, goes the mournfullest medley. Chapelier goes,
ci-devant popular President of the Constituent; whom the Menads and
Maillard met in his carriage, on the Versailles Road. Thouret likewise,
ci-devant President, father of Constitutional Law-acts;