soon after brought the kings themselves to answer at their bar. At this
last ceremony the ambassadors had not Clootz for their Cotterel. Pity
that Clootz had not had a reprieve from the guillotine till he had
completed his work! But that engine fell before the curtain had fallen
upon all the dignity of the earth.

On this their gaudy day the new Regicide Directory sent for that
diplomatic rabble, as bad as themselves in principle, but infinitely
worse in degradation. They called them out by a sort of roll of their
nations, one after another, much in the manner in which they called
wretches out of their prison to the guillotine. When these ambassadors
of infamy appeared before them, the chief Director, in the name of the
rest, treated each of them with a short, affected, pedantic, insolent,
theatric laconium,--a sort of epigram of contempt. When they had thus
insulted them in a style and language which never before was heard, and
which no sovereign would for a moment endure from another, supposing any
of them frantic enough to use it, to finish their outrage, they drummed
and trumpeted the wretches out of their hall of audience.

Among the objects of this insolent buffoonery was a person supposed to
represent the King of Prussia. To this worthy representative they did
not so much as condescend to mention his master; they did not seem to
know that he had one; they addressed themselves solely to Prussia in the
abstract, notwithstanding the infinite obligation they owed to their
early protector for their first recognition and alliance, and for the
part of his territory he gave into their hands for the first-fruits of
his homage. None but dead monarchs are so much as mentioned by them, and
those only to insult the living by an invidious comparison. They told
the Prussians they ought to learn, after the example of Frederick the
Great, a love for France. What a pity it is, that he, who loved France