Committee-rooms, and got
possession of them. The hour is come, to die at our post!" "Oui," answer
one and all: "We swear it!" It is no rhodomontade, this time, but a sad
fact and necessity; unless we do at our posts, we must verily die! Swift
therefore, Robespierre, Henriot, the Municipality, are declared Rebels;
put Hors la Loi, Out of Law. Better still, we appoint Barras Commandant
of what Armed-Force is to be had; send Missionary Representatives to
all Sections and quarters, to preach, and raise force; will die at least
with harness on our back.

What a distracted City; men riding and running, reporting and
hearsaying; the Hour clearly in travail,--child not to be named till
born! The poor Prisoners in the Luxembourg hear the rumour; tremble for
a new September. They see men making signals to them, on skylights and
roofs, apparently signals of hope; cannot in the least make out what
it is. (Memoires sur les Prisons, ii. 277.) We observe however, in the
eventide, as usual, the Death-tumbrils faring South-eastward, through
Saint-Antoine, towards their Barrier du Trone. Saint-Antoine's tough
bowels melt; Saint-Antoine surrounds the Tumbrils; says, It shall
not be. O Heavens, why should it! Henriot and Gendarmes, scouring the
streets that way, bellow, with waved sabres, that it must. Quit hope, ye
poor Doomed! The Tumbrils move on.

But in this set of Tumbrils there are two other things notable: one
notable person; and one want of a notable person. The notable person
is Lieutenant-General Loiserolles, a nobleman by birth, and by nature;
laying down his life here for his son. In the Prison of Saint-Lazare,
the night before last, hurrying to the Grate to hear the Death-list
read, he caught the name of his son. The son was asleep at the moment.
"I am Loiserolles," cried the old man: at Tinville's bar, an error in
the Christian name is little; small objection was made. The want of the
notable person, again, is that of Deputy Paine! Paine has sat in the
Luxembourg since January; and seemed forgotten; but Fouquier had pricked
him at last. The Turnkey, List in hand, is marking with chalk the outer
doors of to-morrow's Fournee. Paine's outer door happened to be open,
turned back on the wall; the Turnkey marked it on the side next him,
and hurried on: another Turnkey came, and shut it; no chalk-mark now
visible, the Fournee went without Paine. Paine's life lay not there.--

Our fifth-act, of this natural Greek Drama, with its n