“To myself! Icy sage, there is no self in love! I go. Nay, alone: I want thee not. I want now no other guide but the human instincts of affection. No cave so dark, no solitude so vast, as to conceal her. Though mine art fail me; though the stars heed me not; though space, with its shining myriads, is again to me but the azure void,--I return but to love and youth and hope! When have they ever failed to triumph and to save!” BOOK VII. -- THE REIGN OF TERROR. Orrida maesta nei fero aspetto Terrore accresce, e piu superbo il rende; Rosseggian gli occhi, e di veneno infetto Come infausta cometa, il guardo splende, Gil involve il mento, e sull ‘irsuto petto Ispida efoita la gran barbe scende; E IN GUISA DE VORAGINE PROFONDA SAPRE LA BOCCA A’ATRO SANGUE IMMONDA. (Ger. Lib., Cant. iv. 7.) A horrible majesty in the fierce aspect increases it terror, and renders it more superb. Red glow the eyes, and the aspect infected, like a baleful comet, with envenomed influences, glares around. A vast beard covers the chin--and, rough and thick, descends over the shaggy breast.--And like a profound gulf expand the jaws, foul with black gore. CHAPTER 7.I. Qui suis-je, moi qu’on accuse? Un esclave de la Liberte, un martyr vivant de la Republique. --“Discours de Robespierre, 8 Thermidor.” (Who am I,--_I_ whom they accuse? A slave of Liberty,--a living martyr for the Republic.) It roars,--The River of Hell, whose first outbreak was chanted as the gush of a channel to Elysium. How burst into blossoming hopes fair hearts that had nourished themselves on the diamond dews of the rosy dawn, when Liberty came from the dark ocean, and the arms of decrepit Thraldom--Aurora from the bed of Tithon! Hopes! ye have ripened into fruit, and the fruit is gore and ashes! Beautiful Roland, eloquent Vergniaud, visionary Condorcet, high-hearted Malesherbes!--wits, philosophers, statesmen, patriots, dreamers! behold the millennium for which ye dared and laboured! I invoke the ghosts! Saturn hath devoured his children (“La Revolution est comme Saturne, elle devorera tous ses enfans.”--Vergniaud.), and lives alone,--I his true name of Moloch!