Rumour, therefore, shall arise; in the Palais Royal, and in broad France.  Paleness sits on every face; confused tremor and fremescence; waxing into thunder-peals, of Fury stirred on by Fear.

But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Cafe de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol!  He springs to a table:  the Police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive.  This time he speaks without stammering:—­Friends, shall we die like hunted hares?  Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife?  The hour is come; the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance forever.  Let such hour be well-come!  Us, meseems, one cry only befits:  To Arms!  Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only:  To arms!—­“To arms!” yell responsive the innumerable voices:  like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air:  for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness.  In such, or fitter words, (Ibid.) does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this great moment.—­Friends, continues Camille, some rallying sign!  Cockades; green ones;—­the colour of hope!—­As with the flight of locusts, these green tree leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring shops; all green things are snatched, and made cockades of.  Camille descends from his table, ’stifled with embraces, wetted with tears;’ has a bit of green riband handed him; sticks it in his hat.  And now to Curtius’ Image-shop there; to the Boulevards; to the four winds; and rest not till France be on fire!  (Vieux Cordelier, par Camille Desmoulins, No. 5 (reprinted in Collection des Memoires, par Baudouin Freres, Paris, 1825), p. 81.)

France, so long shaken and wind-parched, is probably at the right inflammable point.—­As for poor Curtius, who, one grieves to think, might be but imperfectly paid,—­he cannot make two words about his Images.  The Wax-bust of Necker, the Wax-bust of D’Orleans, helpers of France:  these, covered with crape, as in funeral procession, or after the manner of suppliants appealing to Heaven, to Earth, and Tartarus itself, a mixed multitude bears off.  For a sign!  As indeed man, with his singular imaginative faculties, can do little or nothing without signs:  thus Turks look to their Prophet’s banner; also Osier Mannikins have been burnt, and Necker’s Portrait has erewhile figured, aloft on its perch.

In this manner march they, a mixed, continually increasing multitude; armed with axes, staves and miscellanea; grim, many-sounding, through the streets.  Be all Theatres shut; let all dancing, on planked floor, or on the natural greensward, cease!  Instead of a Christian Sabbath, and feast of guinguette tabernacles, it shall be a Sorcerer’s Sabbath; and Paris, gone rabid, dance,—­with the Fiend for piper!