aid of all the
macers, persuaded the rest to wait out of doors. National Assembly shall
now, therefore, look its august task directly in the face: regenerative
Constitutionalism has an unregenerate Sansculottism bodily in front of
it; crying, "Bread! Bread!"

Shifty Maillard, translating frenzy into articulation; repressive with
the one hand, expostulative with the other, does his best; and really,
though not bred to public speaking, manages rather well:--In the present
dreadful rarity of grains, a Deputation of Female Citizens has, as the
august Assembly can discern, come out from Paris to petition. Plots of
Aristocrats are too evident in the matter; for example, one miller has
been bribed 'by a banknote of 200 livres' not to grind,--name unknown to
the Usher, but fact provable, at least indubitable. Further, it
seems, the National Cockade has been trampled on; also there are
Black Cockades, or were. All which things will not an august
National Assembly, the hope of France, take into its wise immediate
consideration?

And Menadic Hunger, impressible, crying "Black Cockades," crying "Bread,
Bread," adds, after such fashion: "Will it not?--Yes, Messieurs, if a
Deputation to his Majesty, for the 'Acceptance pure and simple,' seemed
proper,--how much more now, for 'the afflicting situation of Paris;'
for the calming of this effervescence!" President Mounier, with a speedy
Deputation, among whom we notice the respectable figure of Doctor
Guillotin, gets himself forthwith on march. Vice-President shall
continue the order of the day; Usher Maillard shall stay by him to
repress the women. It is four o'clock, of the miserablest afternoon,
when Mounier steps out.

O experienced Mounier, what an afternoon; the last of thy political
existence! Better had it been to 'fall suddenly unwell,' while it was
yet time. For, behold, the Esplanade, over all its spacious expanse,
is covered with groups of squalid dripping Women; of lankhaired male
Rascality, armed with axes, rusty pikes, old muskets, ironshod clubs
(baton ferres, which end in knives or sword-blades, a kind of extempore
billhook);--looking nothing but hungry revolt. The rain pours:
Gardes-du-Corps go caracoling through the groups 'amid hisses;'
irritating and agitating what is but dispersed here to reunite there.

Innumerable squalid women beleaguer the President and Deputation; insist
on going with him: has not his Majesty himself, looking from the window,
sent out to a