And so, with forensic eloquence, denunciation and protest, with couriers going and returning, the Parlement, in this state of continual explosion that shall cease neither night nor day, waits the issue.  Awakened Paris once more inundates those outer courts; boils, in floods wilder than ever, through all avenues.  Dissonant hubbub there is; jargon as of Babel, in the hour when they were first smitten (as here) with mutual unintelligibilty, and the people had not yet dispersed!

Paris City goes through its diurnal epochs, of working and slumbering; and now, for the second time, most European and African mortals are asleep.  But here, in this Whirlpool of Words, sleep falls not; the Night spreads her coverlid of Darkness over it in vain.  Within is the sound of mere martyr invincibility; tempered with the due tone of plaintiveness.  Without is the infinite expectant hum,—­growing drowsier a little.  So has it lasted for six-and-thirty hours.

But hark, through the dead of midnight, what tramp is this?  Tramp as of armed men, foot and horse; Gardes Francaises, Gardes Suisses:  marching hither; in silent regularity; in the flare of torchlight!  There are Sappers, too, with axes and crowbars:  apparently, if the doors open not, they will be forced!—­It is Captain D’Agoust, missioned from Versailles.  D’Agoust, a man of known firmness;—­who once forced Prince Conde himself, by mere incessant looking at him, to give satisfaction and fight; (Weber, i. 283.) he now, with axes and torches is advancing on the very sanctuary of Justice.  Sacrilegious; yet what help?  The man is a soldier; looks merely at his orders; impassive, moves forward like an inanimate engine.

The doors open on summons, there need no axes; door after door.  And now the innermost door opens; discloses the long-gowned Senators of France:  a hundred and sixty-seven by tale, seventeen of them Peers; sitting there, majestic, ‘in permanent session.’  Were not the men military, and of cast-iron, this sight, this silence reechoing the clank of his own boots, might stagger him!  For the hundred and sixty-seven receive him in perfect silence; which some liken to that of the Roman Senate overfallen by Brennus; some to that of a nest of coiners surprised by officers of the Police. (Besenval, iii. 355.) Messieurs, said D’Agoust, De par le Roi!  Express order has charged D’Agoust with the sad duty of arresting two individuals:  M. Duval d’Espremenil and M. Goeslard de Monsabert.  Which respectable individuals, as he has not the honour of knowing them, are hereby invited, in the King’s name, to surrender themselves.—­Profound silence!  Buzz, which grows a murmur:  “We are all D’Espremenils!” ventures a voice; which other voices repeat.  The President inquires, Whether he will employ violence?  Captain D’Agoust, honoured with his Majesty’s commission, has to execute his Majesty’s order; would so gladly do it without violence, will in any case do it; grants an august Senate space to deliberate which method they prefer.  And thereupon D’Agoust, with grave military courtesy, has withdrawn for the moment.