and indignation. An
august National Assembly sits, to appearance, menaced with death;
endeavouring to defy death. It has resolved 'that Necker carries with
him the regrets of the Nation.' It has sent solemn Deputation over to
the Chateau, with entreaty to have these troops withdrawn. In vain: his
Majesty, with a singular composure, invites us to be busy rather with
our own duty, making the Constitution! Foreign Pandours, and suchlike,
go pricking and prancing, with a swashbuckler air; with an eye too
probably to the Salle des Menus,--were it not for the 'grim-looking
countenances' that crowd all avenues there. (See Lameth; Ferrieres,
&c.) Be firm, ye National Senators; the cynosure of a firm, grim-looking
people!

The august National Senators determine that there shall, at least, be
Permanent Session till this thing end. Wherein, however, consider that
worthy Lafranc de Pompignan, our new President, whom we have named
Bailly's successor, is an old man, wearied with many things. He is
the Brother of that Pompignan who meditated lamentably on the Book of
Lamentations:

Saves-voux pourquoi Jeremie
Se lamentait toute sa vie?
C'est qu'il prevoyait
Que Pompignan le traduirait!

Poor Bishop Pompignan withdraws; having got Lafayette for helper or
substitute: this latter, as nocturnal Vice-President, with a thin house
in disconsolate humour, sits sleepless, with lights unsnuffed;--waiting
what the hours will bring.

So at Versailles. But at Paris, agitated Besenval, before retiring
for the night, has stept over to old M. de Sombreuil, of the Hotel des
Invalides hard by. M. de Sombreuil has, what is a great secret, some
eight-and-twenty thousand stand of muskets deposited in his cellars
there; but no trust in the temper of his Invalides. This day, for
example, he sent twenty of the fellows down to unscrew those muskets;
lest Sedition might snatch at them; but scarcely, in six hours, had the
twenty unscrewed twenty gun-locks, or dogsheads (chiens) of locks,--each
Invalide his dogshead! If ordered to fire, they would, he imagines, turn
their cannon against himself.

Unfortunate old military gentlemen, it is your hour, not of glory! Old
Marquis de Launay too, of the Bastille, has pulled up his drawbridges
long since, 'and retired into his interior;' with sentries walking
on his battlements, under the midnight sky, aloft over the glare of
illuminated Paris;--whom a National Patrol, passing that way, takes