During the waverings and vacillations of the majority--itself clinging to place and power--they more than once expected a triumph for themselves in a declaration of the Assembly's permanence, with the secret hope, _en arrière pensée_, of finding fair cause for that insurrection by which alone they would fully profit, if a _coup-de-main_ were to be attempted by the government, in obedience to the loudly-expressed clamour of popular opinion, to wreck that "holy ark" in which they had embarked their lesser hopes. When, however, they found that the crew were disposed to desert it, on feeling the storms of public manifestation blowing too hard against it--when they found that they themselves must in a few weeks, or at latest months, quit its tottering planks, their rage has known no bounds. Every manoeuvre that can be used to prolong life, by prolonging even the daily existence of the Assembly, is unscrupulously put into practice. They clamour, they interrupt discussion--they denounce--they produce those daily "_incidents_" of French parliamentary tradition which prevent the progress of parliamentary business--they invent fresh interpellations, to create further delays by long-protracted angry quarrel and acrimony. Part of all this system of denunciation, recrimination, and acrimonious accusation, belongs, it is true, to their assumed character as the _dramatis personæ_ of an imaginary Convention. They have their cherished models of old, to copy which is their task, and their glory; the dramatic traditions of the old Convention are ever in their winds, and are to be followed in manner, and even costume, as far as possible. And thus Ledru Rollin, another would-be Danton, tosses back his head, and raises his nose aloft, and pulls up his burly form, to thunder forth his angry Red-republican indignation; and Felix Pyat, the melodramatic dramatist, of the _boulevard du crime_--fully in his place where living dramas, almost as extravagant and ranting as those from his own pen, are to be performed--rolls his large round dark eyes, and swells his voice, and shouts, and throws about his arms, after the fashion of those melodrama actors for whose noisy declamation he has afforded such good stuff, and because of his picturesque appearance, fancies himself, it would seem, a new St Just. And Sarrans, _soi-disant_ "the young," acts after no less melodramatic a fashion, as if in rivalry for the parts of _jeune premier_ in the drama, but cannot get beyond the airs of a provincial groundling; and Lagrange, with his ferocious and haggard countenance, and his grizzled long hair and beard, yells from his seat, although in the tribune he affects a milder language now, as if to contradict and deny his past deeds. And Proudhon shouts too, although he puts on a benevolent _air patelin_, beneath the spectacles on his round face, when he proposes his schemes for the destruction of the whole fabric of society. And Pierre Leroux, the