Some Four Hundred Priests, of whom also there is record, ride at anchor, ‘in the roads of the Isle of Aix,’ long months; looking out on misery, vacuity, waste Sands of Oleron and the ever-moaning brine.  Ragged, sordid, hungry; wasted to shadows:  eating their unclean ration on deck, circularly, in parties of a dozen, with finger and thumb; beating their scandalous clothes between two stones; choked in horrible miasmata, closed under hatches, seventy of them in a berth, through night; so that the ’aged Priest is found lying dead in the morning, in the attitude of prayer!’ (Relation de ce qu’ont souffert pour la Religion les Pretres deportes en 1794, dans la rade de l’ile d’Aix, Prisons, ii. 387-485.)—­How long, O Lord!

Not forever; no.  All Anarchy, all Evil, Injustice, is, by the nature of it, dragon’s-teeth; suicidal, and cannot endure.

Chapter 3.6.VI.

To finish the Terror.

It is very remarkable, indeed, that since the Etre-Supreme Feast, and the sublime continued harangues on it, which Billaud feared would become a bore to him, Robespierre has gone little to Committee; but held himself apart, as if in a kind of pet.  Nay they have made a Report on that old Catherine Theot, and her Regenerative Man spoken of by the Prophets; not in the best spirit.  This Theot mystery they affect to regard as a Plot; but have evidently introduced a vein of satire, of irreverent banter, not against the Spinster alone, but obliquely against her Regenerative Man!  Barrere’s light pen was perhaps at the bottom of it:  read through the solemn snuffling organs of old Vadier of the Surete Generale, the Theot Report had its effect; wrinkling the general Republican visage into an iron grin.  Ought these things to be?

We note further that among the Prisoners in the Twelve Houses of Arrest, there is one whom we have seen before.  Senhora Fontenai, born Cabarus, the fair Proserpine whom Representative Tallien Pluto-like did gather at Bourdeaux, not without effect on himself!  Tallien is home, by recall, long since, from Bourdeaux; and in the most alarming position.  Vain that he sounded, louder even than ever, the note of Jacobinism, to hide past shortcomings:  the Jacobins purged him out; two times has Robespierre growled at him words of omen from the Convention Tribune.  And now his fair Cabarus, hit by denunciation, lies Arrested, Suspect, in spite of all he could do!—­Shut in horrid pinfold of death, the Senhora smuggles out to her red-gloomy Tallien the most pressing entreaties and conjurings:  Save me; save thyself.  Seest thou not that thy own head is doomed; thou with a too fiery audacity; a Dantonist withal; against whom lie grudges?  Are ye not all doomed, as in the Polyphemus Cavern; the fawningest slave of you will be but eaten last!—­Tallien feels with a shudder that it is true.  Tallien has had words of omen, Bourdon has had words, Freron is hated and Barras:  each man ’feels his head if it yet stick on his shoulders.’