Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/167

 Lasource answered with some vague painful mumblement,—which, says Levasseur, one could not help tittering at. Patriot Sections, Volunteers not yet gone to the Frontiers, come demanding the 'purgation of traitors from your own bosom'; the expulsion, or even the trial and sentence, of a factious Twenty-two.

Nevertheless the Gironde has got its Commission of Twelve; a Commission specially appointed for investigating these troubles of the Legislative Sanctuary: let Sansculottism say what it will. Law shall triumph. Old-Constituent Rabaut Saint-Étienne presides over this Commission: 'it is the last plank whereon a wrecked Republic may perhaps still save herself.' Rabaut and they therefore sit, intent; examining witnesses; launching arrestments; looking out into a waste dim sea of troubles,—the womb of Formula, or perhaps her grave! Enter not that sea, O Reader! There are dim desolation and confusion; raging women and raging men. Sections come demanding Twenty-two; for the number first given by Section Bonconseil still holds, though the names should even vary. Other Sections, of the wealthier kind, come denouncing such demand; nay the same Section will demand today, and denounce the demand tomorrow, according as the wealthier sit, or the poorer. Wherefore, indeed, the Girondins decree that all Sections shall close 'at ten in the evening'; before the working people come: which Decree remains without effect. And nightly the Mother of Patriotism wails doleful; doleful, but her eye kindling! And Fournier l'Américain is busy, and the two banker Freys, and Varlet Apostle of Liberty; the bull-voice of Marquis St.-Huruge is heard. And shrill women vociferate from all Galleries, the Convention ones and downwards. Nay a 'Central Committee' of all the Forty-eight Sections looms forth huge and dubious; sitting dim in the Archevêché, sending Resolutions, receiving them: a Centre of the Sections; in dread deliberation as to a New Tenth of August!