Justice has stretched a Tricolor Riband athwart, by way of boundary-line, respected with splenetic strictness by all Patriots.  It hangs there that Tricolor boundary-line; carries ‘satirical inscriptions on cards,’ generally in verse; and all beyond this is called Coblentz, and remains vacant; silent, as a fateful Golgotha; sunshine and umbrage alternating on it in vain.  Fateful Circuit; what hope can dwell in it?  Mysterious Tickets of Entry introduce themselves; speak of Insurrection very imminent.  Rivarol’s Staff of Genius had better purchase blunderbusses; Grenadier bonnets, red Swiss uniforms may be useful.  Insurrection will come; but likewise will it not be met?  Staved off, one may hope, till Brunswick arrive?

But consider withal if the Bourne-stones and Portable chairs remain silent; if the Herald’s College of Bill-Stickers sleep!  Louvet’s Sentinel warns gratis on all walls; Sulleau is busy:  People’s-Friend Marat and King’s-Friend Royou croak and counter-croak.  For the man Marat, though long hidden since that Champ-de-Mars Massacre, is still alive.  He has lain, who knows in what Cellars; perhaps in Legendre’s; fed by a steak of Legendre’s killing:  but, since April, the bull-frog voice of him sounds again; hoarsest of earthly cries.  For the present, black terror haunts him:  O brave Barbaroux wilt thou not smuggle me to Marseilles, ‘disguised as a jockey?’ (Barbaroux, p. 60.) In Palais-Royal and all public places, as we read, there is sharp activity; private individuals haranguing that Valour may enlist; haranguing that the Executive may be put in action.  Royalist journals ought to be solemnly burnt:  argument thereupon; debates which generally end in single-stick, coups de cannes. (Newspapers, Narratives and Documents Hist.  Parl. xv. 240; xvi. 399.) Or think of this; the hour midnight; place Salle de Manege; august Assembly just adjourning:  ’Citizens of both sexes enter in a rush exclaiming, Vengeance:  they are poisoning our Brothers;’—­baking brayed-glass among their bread at Soissons!  Vergniaud has to speak soothing words, How Commissioners are already sent to investigate this brayed-glass, and do what is needful therein:  till the rush of Citizens ‘makes profound silence:’  and goes home to its bed.

Such is Paris; the heart of a France like to it.  Preternatural suspicion, doubt, disquietude, nameless anticipation, from shore to shore:—­and those blackbrowed Marseillese, marching, dusty, unwearied, through the midst of it; not doubtful they.  Marching to the grim music of their hearts, they consume continually the long road, these three weeks and more; heralded by Terror and Rumour.  The Brest Federes arrive on the 26th; through hurrahing streets.  Determined men are these also, bearing or not bearing the Sacred Pikes of Chateau-Vieux; and on the whole decidedly disinclined for Soissons as yet.  Surely the Marseillese Brethren do draw nigher all days.

Chapter 2.6.V.