and the rage of
Mestre-de-Camp. So that, on the whole, the next sight we have is that
of M. de Malseigne, on the Monday afternoon, faring bull-hearted through
the streets of Nanci; in open carriage, a soldier standing over him with
drawn sword; amid the 'furies of the women,' hedges of National Guards,
and confusion of Babel: to the Prison beside Commandant Denoue! That
finally is the lodging of Inspector Malseigne. (Deux Amis, v. 206-251;
Newspapers and Documents in Hist. Parl. vii. 59-162.)

Surely it is time Bouille were drawing near. The Country all round,
alarmed with watchfires, illuminated towns, and marching and rout, has
been sleepless these several nights. Nanci, with its uncertain National
Guards, with its distributed fusils, mutinous soldiers, black panic and
redhot ire, is not a City but a Bedlam.

Chapter 2.2.VI.

Bouille at Nanci.

Haste with help, thou brave Bouille: if swift help come not, all is now
verily 'burning;' and may burn,--to what lengths and breadths! Much,
in these hours, depends on Bouille; as it shall now fare with him, the
whole Future may be this way or be that. If, for example, he were to
loiter dubitating, and not come: if he were to come, and fail: the whole
Soldiery of France to blaze into mutiny, National Guards going some this
way, some that; and Royalism to draw its rapier, and Sansculottism to
snatch its pike; and the Spirit if Jacobinism, as yet young, girt with
sun-rays, to grow instantaneously mature, girt with hell-fire,--as
mortals, in one night of deadly crisis, have had their heads turned
gray!

Brave Bouille is advancing fast, with the old inflexibility; gathering
himself, unhappily 'in small affluences,' from East, from West and
North; and now on Tuesday morning, the last day of the month, he stands
all concentred, unhappily still in small force, at the village of
Frouarde, within some few miles. Son of Adam with a more dubious
task before him is not in the world this Tuesday morning. A weltering
inflammable sea of doubt and peril, and Bouille sure of simply one
thing, his own determination. Which one thing, indeed, may be worth
many. He puts a most firm face on the matter: 'Submission, or unsparing
battle and destruction; twenty-four hours to make your choice:' this was
the tenor of his Proclamation; thirty copies of which he sent yesterday
to Nanci:--all which, we find, were intercepted and not posted. (Compare
Bouille, Memoires, i. 153-176; Deux Amis, v. 2