Shrill are the plaints of Louvet; his thin existence all acidified into rage, and preternatural insight of suspicion.  Wroth is young Barbaroux; wroth and scornful.  Silent, like a Queen with the aspic on her bosom, sits the wife of Roland; Roland’s Accounts never yet got audited, his name become a byword.  Such is the fortune of war, especially of revolution.  The great gulf of Tophet, and Tenth of August, opened itself at the magic of your eloquent voice; and lo now, it will not close at your voice!  It is a dangerous thing such magic.  The Magician’s Famulus got hold of the forbidden Book, and summoned a goblin:  Plait-il, What is your will? said the Goblin.  The Famulus, somewhat struck, bade him fetch water:  the swift goblin fetched it, pail in each hand; but lo, would not cease fetching it!  Desperate, the Famulus shrieks at him, smites at him, cuts him in two; lo, two goblin water-carriers ply; and the house will be swum away in Deucalion Deluges.

Chapter 3.3.IV.

Fatherland in Danger.

Or rather we will say, this Senatorial war might have lasted long; and Party tugging and throttling with Party might have suppressed and smothered one another, in the ordinary bloodless Parliamentary way; on one condition:  that France had been at least able to exist, all the while.  But this Sovereign People has a digestive faculty, and cannot do without bread.  Also we are at war, and must have victory; at war with Europe, with Fate and Famine:  and behold, in the spring of the year, all victory deserts us.

Dumouriez had his outposts stretched as far as Aix-la-Chapelle, and the beautifullest plan for pouncing on Holland, by stratagem, flat-bottomed boats and rapid intrepidity; wherein too he had prospered so far; but unhappily could prosper no further.  Aix-la-Chapelle is lost; Maestricht will not surrender to mere smoke and noise:  the flat-bottomed boats must launch themselves again, and return the way they came.  Steady now, ye rapidly intrepid men; retreat with firmness, Parthian-like!  Alas, were it General Miranda’s fault; were it the War-minister’s fault; or were it Dumouriez’s own fault and that of Fortune:  enough, there is nothing for it but retreat,—­well if it be not even flight; for already terror-stricken cohorts and stragglers pour off, not waiting for order; flow disastrous, as many as ten thousand of them, without halt till they see France again. (Dumouriez, iv. 16-73.) Nay worse:  Dumouriez himself is perhaps secretly turning traitor?  Very sharp is the tone in which he writes to our Committees.  Commissioners and Jacobin Pillagers have done such incalculable mischief; Hassenfratz sends neither cartridges nor clothing; shoes we have, deceptively ‘soled with wood and pasteboard.’  Nothing in short is right.  Danton and Lacroix, when it was they that were Commissioners, would needs join Belgium to France;—­of which Dumouriez might have made the prettiest little Duchy