Romme takes the President's chair;
they begin resolving and decreeing. Fast enough now comes Decree after
Decree, in alternate brief strains, or strophe and antistrophe,--what
will cheapen bread, what will awaken the dormant lion. And at every new
Decree, Sansculottism shouts, Decreed, Decreed; and rolls its drums.

Fast enough; the work of months in hours,--when see, a Figure enters,
whom in the lamp-light we recognise to be Legendre; and utters words:
fit to be hissed out! And then see, Section Lepelletier or other
Muscadin Section enters, and Gilt Youth, with levelled bayonets,
countenances screwed to the sticking-place! Tramp, tramp, with bayonets
gleaming in the lamp-light: what can one do, worn down with long riot,
grown heartless, dark, hungry, but roll back, but rush back, and escape
who can? The very windows need to be thrown up, that Sansculottism may
escape fast enough. Money-changer Sections and Gilt Youth sweep them
forth, with steel besom, far into the depths of Saint-Antoine. Triumph
once more! The Decrees of that Sixty are not so much as rescinded;
they are declared null and non-extant. Romme, Ruhl, Goujon and
the ringleaders, some thirteen in all, are decreed Accused.
Permanent-session ends at three in the morning. (Deux Amis, xiii.
129-46.) Sansculottism, once more flung resupine, lies sprawling;
sprawling its last.

Such was the First of Prairial, 20th May, 1795. Second and Third of
Prairial, during which Sansculottism still sprawled, and unexpectedly
rang its tocsin, and assembled in arms, availed Sansculottism nothing.
What though with our Rommes and Ruhls, accused but not yet arrested, we
make a new 'True National Convention' of our own, over in the East; and
put the others Out of Law? What though we rank in arms and march? Armed
Force and Muscadin Sections, some thirty thousand men, environ that
old False Convention: we can but bully one another: bandying nicknames,
"Muscadins," against "Blooddrinkers, Buveurs de Sang." Feraud's
Assassin, taken with the red hand, and sentenced, and now near to
Guillotine and Place de Greve, is retaken; is carried back into
Saint-Antoine: to no purpose. Convention Sectionaries and Gilt Youth
come, according to Decree, to seek him; nay to disarm Saint-Antoine!
And they do disarm it: by rolling of cannon, by springing upon enemy's
cannon; by military audacity, and terror of the Law. Saint-Antoine
surrenders its arms; Santerre even advising it, anxious for life and