languid! Their Bond, if at all signed, must be signed without his
privity.--Unhappy King, he has but one resolution: not to have a civil
war. For the rest, he still hunts, having ceased lockmaking; he still
dozes, and digests; is clay in the hands of the potter. Ill will it fare
with him, in a world where all is helping itself; where, as has been
written, 'whosoever is not hammer must be stithy;' and 'the very hyssop
on the wall grows there, in that chink, because the whole Universe could
not prevent its growing!'

But as for the coming up of this Regiment de Flandre, may it not be
urged that there were Saint-Huruge Petitions, and continual meal-mobs?
Undebauched Soldiers, be there plot, or only dim elements of a plot, are
always good. Did not the Versailles Municipality (an old Monarchic one,
not yet refounded into a Democratic) instantly second the proposal? Nay
the very Versailles National Guard, wearied with continual duty at
the Chateau, did not object; only Draper Lecointre, who is now Major
Lecointre, shook his head.--Yes, Friends, surely it was natural this
Regiment de Flandre should be sent for, since it could be got. It was
natural that, at sight of military bandoleers, the heart of the rallied
Oeil-de-Boeuf should revive; and Maids of Honour, and gentlemen of
honour, speak comfortable words to epauletted defenders, and to one
another. Natural also, and mere common civility, that the Bodyguards, a
Regiment of Gentlemen, should invite their Flandre brethren to a Dinner
of welcome!--Such invitation, in the last days of September, is given
and accepted.

Dinners are defined as 'the ultimate act of communion;' men that can
have communion in nothing else, can sympathetically eat together, can
still rise into some glow of brotherhood over food and wine. The dinner
is fixed on, for Thursday the First of October; and ought to have a fine