Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/300

 near shot, is elbowed, bullied; is glad to escape alive. Entering Committee-room of Salut, all dishevelled, he finds sleek sombre Saint-Just there, among the rest; who in his sleek way asks, 'What is passing at the Jacobins?'—'What is passing?' repeats Collot, in the unhistrionic Cambyses vein: 'What is passing? Nothing but revolt and horrors are passing. Ye want our lives; ye shall not have them.' Saint-Just stutters at such Cambyses oratory; takes his hat to withdraw. That Report he had been speaking of, Report on Republican Things in General we may say, which is to be read in Convention on the morrow, he cannot show it them, at this moment: a friend has it; he, Saint-Just, will get it, and send it, were he once home. Once home, he sends not it, but an answer that he will not send it; that they will hear it from the Tribune tomorrow.

Let every man, therefore, according to a well-known good-advice, 'pray to Heaven, and keep his powder dry!' Paris on the morrow, will see a thing. Swift scouts fly dim or invisible, all night, from Sûreté and Salut; from conclave to conclave; from Mother Society to Townhall. Sleep, can it fall on the eyes of Talliens, Frérons, Collots? Puissant Henriot, Mayor Fleuriot, Judge Coffinhal, Procureur Payan, Robespierre and all the Jacobins are getting ready.

eyes beamed bright, on the morrow, Ninth of Thermidor, 'about nine o'clock,' to see that the Convention had actually met. Paris is in rumour: but at least we are met, in Legal Convention here; we have not been snatched seriatim; treated with a Pride's Purge at the door. 'Allons, brave men of the Plain,' late Frogs of the Marsh! cried Tallien with a squeeze of the hand, as he passed in; Saint