Girondins, in the Legislative, cry aloud for the former defiant plan; Robespierre, in the Jacobins, pleads as loud for the latter dilatory one:  with responses, even with mutual reprimands; distracting the Mother of Patriotism.  Consider also what agitated Breakfasts there may be at Madame d’Udon’s in the Place Vendome!  The alarm of all men is great.  Help, ye Patriots; and O at least agree; for the hour presses.  Frost was not yet gone, when in that ’tolerably handsome apartment of the Castle of Niort,’ there arrived a Letter:  General Dumouriez must to Paris.  It is War-minister Narbonne that writes; the General shall give counsel about many things. (Dumouriez, ii. c. 6.) In the month of February 1792, Brissotin friends welcome their Dumouriez Polymetis,—­comparable really to an antique Ulysses in modern costume; quick, elastic, shifty, insuppressible, a ‘many-counselled man.’

Let the Reader fancy this fair France with a whole Cimmerian Europe girdling her, rolling in on her; black, to burst in red thunder of War; fair France herself hand-shackled and foot-shackled in the weltering complexities of this Social Clothing, or Constitution, which they have made for her; a France that, in such Constitution, cannot march!  And Hunger too; and plotting Aristocrats, and excommunicating Dissident Priests:  ‘The man Lebrun by name’ urging his black wiski, visible to the eye:  and, still more terrible in his invisibility, Engineer Goguelat, with Queen’s cipher, riding and running!

The excommunicatory Priests give new trouble in the Maine and Loire; La Vendee, nor Cathelineau the wool-dealer, has not ceased grumbling and rumbling.  Nay behold Jales itself once more:  how often does that real-imaginary Camp of the Fiend require to be extinguished!  For near two years now, it has waned faint and again waxed bright, in the bewildered soul of Patriotism:  actually, if Patriotism knew it, one of the most surprising products of Nature working with Art.  Royalist Seigneurs, under this or the other pretext, assemble the simple people of these Cevennes Mountains; men not unused to revolt, and with heart for fighting, could their poor heads be got persuaded.  The Royalist Seigneur harangues; harping mainly on the religious string:  “True Priests maltreated, false Priests intruded, Protestants (once dragooned) now triumphing, things sacred given to the dogs;” and so produces, from the pious Mountaineer throat, rough growlings.  “Shall we not testify, then, ye brave hearts of the Cevennes; march to the rescue?  Holy Religion; duty to God and King?” “Si fait, si fait, Just so, just so,” answer the brave hearts always:  “Mais il y a de bien bonnes choses dans la Revolution, But there are many good things in the Revolution too!”—­And so the matter, cajole as we may, will only turn on its axis, not stir from the spot, and remains theatrical merely. (Dampmartin, i. 201.)