'the great and terrible things that are in the air...'

'on people's faces and in their attitudes one could read the effect of the great and terrible things that are in the air...

shouts of 'the commune forever'!' went up all over the square, and fresh batallions were rushing off down the rue de rivoli, followed by screaming, gesticulating rif-raf... 

poor france to have fallen under the control of those stupid bayonets...

civil war, with starvation and bombardments, is that what tomorrow holds in store for us?'  - edmond de goncourt, the goncourt journals, 31st october 1870

the paris commune nearly starts then and there (the hotel de ville was briefly occupied) but it is soon supressed (this time).

edmond de goncourt  (reactionary and noble though he is) knows how significant this is - he was a national guardsman that helped supress the earlier commune of may 1848, and yet; 

'is it not an established fact that ideas are more formidable when they are watered with the blood of their martyrs.' - edmond de goncourt quoted in richard b. grant's edmond de goncourt and the paris commune, the massachusetts review vol. 12, no. 3 (summer, 1971).

horsemouth is pleased to be able to unite halloween with the paris commune (truly a spectre is haunting europe—the spectre of communism).

and so it's halloween (all hallow's eve/ samhain). and tomorrow all saints (toussaint). horsemouth will have to check if there's any bell ringing. 

he watched a discussion on the wheel of the year.