Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/150

 grains? Can the human stomach satisfy itself with lectures on Free-trade; and are we to fight the Austrians in a moderate manner, or in an immoderate? This Convention must be purged.

'Set up a swift Tribunal for Traitors, a Maximum for Grains': thus speak with energy the Patriot Volunteers, as they defile through the Convention Hall, just on the wing to the Frontiers;—perorating in that heroical Cambyses' vein of theirs: beshouted by the Galleries and Mountain; bemurmured by the Right-side and Plain. Nor are prodigies wanting: lo, while a Captain of the Section Poissonnière perorates with vehemence about Dumouriez, Maximum and Crypto-Royalist Traitors, and his troop beat chorus with him, waving their Banner overhead, the eye of a Deputy discerns, in this same Banner, that the cravates or streamers of it have Royal fleurs-de-lys! The Section-Captain shrieks; his troop shriek, horror-struck, and 'trample the Banner under foot': seemingly the work of some Crypto-Royalist Plotter? Most probable: —or perhaps at bottom, only the old Banner of the Section, manufactured prior to the Tenth of August, when such streamers were according to rule!

History, looking over the Girondin Memoirs, anxious to disentangle the truth of them from the hysterics, finds these days of March, especially this Sunday the Tenth of March, play a great part. Plots, plots; a plot for murdering the Girondin Deputies; Anarchists and Secret-Royalists plotting, in hellish concert, for that end! The far greater part of which is hysterics. What we do find indisputable is, that Louvet and certain Girondins were apprehensive they might be murdered on Saturday, and did not go to the evening sitting; but held council with one another, each inciting his fellow to do something resolute, and end these Anarchists: to which, however, Pétion, opening the window, and finding the night very wet, answered only, 'Ils ne feront rien,' and