THE GUILLOTINE. 367 



their own swords, and to feel that they, the poor and 

 hungry serfs, were the guardians of their native land. 

 They had learnt to kiss the tricolour ; to say Vive la 

 nation 1 to look forward to a day when their boys, 

 now growing up, might harangue from the Tribune, or 

 sit upon the Bench, or grasp the field-marshal's baton. 

 And should all this be undone ? Should they be made 

 to return to their boiled grass and their stinging nettle 

 soup ? Should the days of privilege and oppression be 

 restored 'i The nation arose and drove out the in- 

 vaders. But there had been a panic, and it bore 

 its fruits. What the Jacobins were to Pitt, the 

 aristocrats were to Danton and Robespierre. Hun- 

 dreds of royalists were guillotined, but then, thousands 

 had plotted the overthrow of the Republic, thousands 

 had intrigued that France might be a conquered land. 

 Such at least was the popular belief; the massacres of 

 September, the execution of the King and Queen, were 

 the result of Fear. After which, it must be owned, 

 there came a period when suspicion and slaughter had 

 become a habit ; when blood was shed to the sound of 

 laughter; when heads, greeted with roars of recogni- 

 tion, were popped out of the little national sash- 

 window, and tumbled into the sawdust, and then were 

 displayed to the gallery in the windows, and to the 

 pit upon the square. The mere brute energy which 

 lay at the bottom of. the social mass rose more and 

 more towards the top ; and at length the leaders of 

 the people were hideous beings in red woollen caps, 

 with scarcely an idea in their heads or a feeling in their 

 hearts ; ardent lovers of liberty, it is true, and zealots 

 for the fatherland, scarcely taking enough from the 

 treasury to fill their bellies and to clothe their backs 

 (Marat, when killed, had elevenpence halfpenny in his 



