THE UNIVERSITY " * OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. A charge is made on all overdue ^°°^%niversity of Illinois Library ijob MAY 16 1j39 "m M32 LIBRARY OP r tie. UNIVERSlTyaflLUNOIS. THOMAS CARLYLE. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. ^ History. By Thomas Carlyle. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. \ NEW YORK : THE F. M. iuPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, CONTENTS OF VOL 1. BOOK 1. Death of Louis XV. EHAP. PAGE I. Louis the Well-beloved ii IL Realised Ideals 14 IIL Viaticum , . 21 IV. Louis the Unforgotten • • 23 BOOK IL The Paper Age. *L AsTRiEA Redux 29 IL Petition in Hieroglyphs 33 IIL Questionable 35 IV. Maurepas 38 V. AsTRiEA Redux without Cash 40 VL Windbags 43 VIL CoNTRAT Social 46 VIIL Printed Paper 48 BOOK IIL The Parlement of Paris. I. Dishonoured Bills . IL Contkoller Calonne IIL The I^otables . e's Edicts e's Thunderbolts s Plots ink Death -THROES IV. Lome; V. LoM VL LoM VIL In 7^ VIII. Lc IX. Bij r 53 56 59 65 68 72 75 79 86 ) 6 CONTENTS, \ . — BOOK IV. States-GeneraC. Page I. The Notables again . . , <, c ^ , - o II. The Election „ , , • 94' HI. Grown Electric . » . p * o o • 98 IV. The Procession . . » 0,0 « • .101 BOOK V. The Third Estate. I. Inertia o • , 114 II. Mercury de Breze . 120 III. Broglie the War-God 125 IV. To Arms ! , . . . . 1 29 V. Give us Arms .133 \ Yl^ Storm and Victory 137 VlL Not a Revolt 114 VIIl. Conquering y^our King 147 IX. The Lanterne . . . • » , . . . 149 BOOK VL Consolidation. T. Make the Constitution II. The Constituent Assembly III. The General Overturn IV. In Queue V. The Fourth Estate BOOK VII. The Insurrection of Women. I. Patrollotism . II. O Richard, O my I III. Black Cockades IV. The Men ads V. Usher Pv'I ail lard VI. To Versailles . VII. At Versailles . VIII. The Equal Diet IX. Lafayette X. The Gkand P2n tries XI. From ^/'-k'-v tm.ks i 179 157 X96' 199 203 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Vol. I.— The BASTiLLEa BOOK FIRST. DEATH OF LOUIS XV. CHAPTER I. LOUIS THE WELL-BELOVED, President Henault, remarking on royal Surnames ot Honour how difficult it often is to ascertain not only why, but ever^ when, they were conferred, takes occasion in his sleek official way, to make a philosophical reflection. ' The Surname of Bien-ainie * (Well-beloved),' says he, ' which Louis XV. bears, will not leave * posterity in the same doubt. This Prince, in the year 1744, ' while hastening from one end of his kingdom to the other, and ' suspending his conquests in Flanders that he might fly to the •^assistance of Alsace, was arrested at M^tz by a malady which * threatened to cut short his days. At the news of this, Paris, ail * in terror, seemed a city taken by storm : the churches resounded ' with supplications and groans ; the prayers of priests and ' peof)le were every momei t interrupted by their sobs : and it was ' from an interest so dear and tender that this Surname of Bie7t- ' dime fashioned itself, a title higher still than all the rest which * this great Prince has earned.'^ So stands it written ; in lasting memorial of that year 1744. Thirty other years have come and gone ; and ' this great Prince ' again lies sick ; but in how altered circumstances now ! Churches rfesound not with excessive groanings ; Paris ib stoically calm i * iibr^^d Chronoiogique d live by the saddle,' but maintain a gallows to prevent it. Ever since that period of the Fronde, the Noble has changed his fighting sword into a court * Mdmoires sur la Vie privde de Mat'ic Antoinette, par Madame Campan (Paris, 1826), i. 12. REALISED IDEALS. 19 rapier ; and now loyally attends his king as ministering satellite ; divides the spoil, not now by violence and murder, but by solicit- ing and finesse. These men call themselves supports of the throne, singular gilt-pasteboard caryatides in that singular edifice ! For the rest, their privileges every way are now much curtailed. That law authorizing a Seigneur, as he returned from hunting, to kill not more than two Serfs, and refresh his feet in their warm blood and bowels, has fallen into perfect desuetude, — and even into incredibihty ; for if Deputy Lapoule can believe in it, and call for the abrogation of it, so cannot we ."^ No Charolois, for these last fifty years, though never so fond of shooting, has been in use to bring down slaters and plumbers, and see them roll from their roofs ;t but contents himself with partridges and grouse. Close- viewed, their industry and function is that of dressing gracefully and eating sumptuously. As for their debauchery and depravity, it is perhaps unexampled since the era of Tiberius and Commodus. Nevertheless, one has still partly a feeling with the lady Mare- chale : " Depend upon it. Sir, God thinks twice before damning a man of that quality. ''J These people, of old, surely had virtues, uses ; or they could not have been there. Nay, one virtue they are still required to have (for mortal man cannot live without a conscience) : the virtue of perfect readiness to fight duel s^ ., — Such are the shepherds of the people -y^nh nDw h'Ow fares it with the flock 1 With the flock, as is inevitable, it fares ill, and ever worse. They are not tended, they are only regularly shorn. They are sent for, to do statute-labour, to pay statute-taxes ; to fatten battle-fields (named ' Bed of honour ') with their bodies, in quarrels which are not theirs ; their hand and toil is in every possession of man ; but for themselves they have little or no possession. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed ; to pine dully in thick obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction : this is the lot of the millions ; peiiple taillable et corveable a merci et iniseri- corde^ In Brittany they once rose in revolt at the first introduction ■'""^f-iTxridulum Clocks ; thinking it had something to do with the Gabelle, Paris requires to be cleared out periodically by the Police ; and the horde of hunger-stricken vagabonds to be sent wandering again over space — for a time. ' During one such ^periodical clearance,' says Lacretelle, 'in May, 1750, the Police ' had presumed withal to carry off some reputable people's chil- *dren, in the hope of extorting ransoms for them. The mothers * fill the public places with cries of despair ; crowds gather, get * excited : so many women in destraction run about exaggerating * the alarm : an absurd and horrid fable arises among the people ; ^ it is said that the doctors have ordered a Great Person to take ' baths of young human blood for the restoration of his own, all 'spoiled by debaucheries. Some of the rioters,' adds Lacretelle, quite coolly, * were hanged on the following days : ' the Pohce * Histoire de la Revolution Franqaise, par Deux Amis de la Liberte (Paris, 1793), ii. 212. t Lacretelle, Histoire de France pendant le \Zvie Siccle (Paris, 1819), 1. 271* X Dulaure, vii, 261. ^ _ DEATH OF LOUIS XV. went on."^ O ye poor naked wretches! and this, then, is your inarticulate cry to Heaven, as of a dumb tortured animal, crying from uttermost depths of pain and debasement^ Do these azure skies, like a dead crystalline vault, only reverberate the echo Q^" it on you? Respond to it only by 'hanging on the fohowing days ? —Not so : not forever ! Ye are heard in Heaven. And the answer too will come, — in a horror of great darkness, and shakings of the world, and a cup of trembling which all the nations shall drink. Remark, meanwhile, how from amid the wrecks and dust of this universal Decay new Powers are fashioning themselves, adapted to the new time and its destinies. Besides the old Noblesse, originally of Fighters, there is a new recognised Noblesse of Lawyers ; whose gala-day and proud battle-day even now is. An unrecognised Noblesse of Commerce ; powerful enough, with money in its pocket. Lastly, powerfulest of all, least recognised of all, a Noblesse of Literature ; without steel on their thigh, without gold in their purse, but with the 'grand thaumaturgic faculty of Thought' in their head. French Philosophism has arisen ; in which little word how much do we include ! Here, indeed, lies properly the cardinal symptom of the whole wide- spread malady. Faith is gone out ; Scepticism is come in. Evil abounds and accumulates : no man has Faith to withstand it, to amend it, to begin by amending himself ; it must even go on accumulating. While hollow languor and vacuity is the lot of the Upper, and want and stagnation of the Lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing is certain 1 That a Lie cannot be beheved ! Philosophism knows only this : her other feehef is mainly that, in spiritual supersensual matters no Behef is possible. Unhappy ! Nay, as yet the Contradiction of a Lie is some kind of Belief ; but the Lie with its Contradiction once sv/ept away, what will remain The five unsatiated Senses will remain, the sixth insatiable Sense (of vanity) ; the whole dcBmonic nature of man will remain, — hurled forth to rage blindly without rule or rein ; savage itself, yet with all the tools and weapons of civilisation ; a spectacle new in History. In such a France, as in a Powder-tower, where fire unquenched and now unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all round, has Louis XV. lain down to die. With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his Fleur-de-lis has been shamefully struck down in all lands and on all seas /Poverty invades even the Royal Exchequer, and Tax- farming can squeeze out no more ; there is a quarrel of twenty-five years' standing with the Parlement ; everywhere Want, Dishonesty, Unbelief, and hotbrained Sciolists for state-physicians : it is ay portentous hour. " / Such things can the eye of History see in this sick-room of King Louis, v/hich were invisible to the Courtiers there. It is twenty years, gone Christmas-day, since Lord Chesterfield, summing up what he had noted of this same France, wrote, and * Lacretelle, iii. 175. REALISED WEALS. 21 sent off by post, the following words, that have become memorable : * In short, all the symptoms which I have ever met with in History, < previous to great Changes and Revolutions in government, now •exist and daily increase in France.'^* CHAPTER III. VIATICUM. For the present, however, the grand question with the Governois of France is : Shall extreme unction, or other ghostly viaticum (to Louis, not to France), be administered? It is a deep question. For, if administered, if so much as spoken of, must not, on the very threshold of the business. Witch Dubarry vanish ; hardly to return should Louis even recover ? With her vanishes Duke d'Aiguillon and Company, afid all their Armida- Palace, as was said ; Chaos swallows the whole again, and there is left nothing but a smell of brimstone. But then, on the other hand, what will the Dauphinists and ChoiseuUsts say? Nay what may the royal martyr himself say, should he happen to get deadly worse, without getting delirious ? For the present, he still kisses the Dubarry hand ; so we, from the ante-room, can note : but afterwards ? Doctors' bulletins may run as they are ordered, but it is * confluent small-pox,' — of which, as is whispered too, the Gatekeeper's once so buxom Daughter lies ill : and Louis XV. is not a man to be trifled with in his viaticum. Was he not wont to catechise his very girls in the Farc-aux-cer/s, and pray with iand for them, that they might preserve their — orthodoxy ?t A strange fact, not an unexampled one ; for there is no animal so strange as man. For the moment, indeed, it were all well, could Archbishop Beaumont but be prevailed upon — to wink with one eye ! Alas, Beaumont would himself so fain do it : for, singular to tell, the Church too, and whole posthumous hope of Jesuitism, now hangs by the apron of this same unmentionable woman. But then ' the force of public opinion ' ? Rigorous Christophe de Beaumont, who has spent his life in persecuting hysterical Jansenists and incredulous Non-confessors ; cr even their dead bodies, if no better might be, — how shall he now open Heaven's gate, and give Absolution with the corpus delicti still under his nose? Our Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, for his part, will not higgle with a royal sinner about turning of the key : but there are other Churchmen ; there is a King's Confessor, foolish Abbd Moudon ; and Fanaticism and Decency are not yet extinct. On the whole^ * Chesterfield's Letters : December 25th, 1753. jf Dulaurfi^ viii* (217)1 Besenval, &c 22 DEATH OF LOUIS XV. what is to be done ? The doors can be well watched ; the Medical Bulletni adjusted ; and much, as usual, be hoped for from time and chance. The doors are .well watched, no improper figure can enter. Indeed, few wish to enter ; for the putrid infection reaches even to the CEil-de-Boeufj so that 'more than fifty fall sick, and ten ' die.' Mesdames the Princesses alone wait at the Joathsome sick- bed ; impelled by filial piety. The three Princesses, Graille^ Chiffe, Coche (Rag, Snip^ Pig, as he was wont to name them), are assiduous there ; when all have fled. The fourth Princess Loque ( Dud), as we guess, is already in the Nunnery, and can only give her orisons. Poor Graille and Sisterhood, they have never known a Father : such is the hard bargain Grandeur must make. Scarcely at the Debotter (when Royalty took off its boots) could they snatch up their ' enormous hoops, gird the long train round their w^aists^ huddle on their black cloaks of taffeta up to the very chin ; ' and so, m fit appearance of full dress, ' every evening at six,' walk majestically m : receive their royal kiss on the brow; and then walk majestically out again, to embroidery, small-scandal, prayers, and vacancy. If Majesty came some morning, with coffee of its own making, and swallowed it with them hastily while the dogs were uncoupling for the hunt, it was received as a grace of Heaven. =^ Poor withered ancient women ! in the wild tossings that vet await your fragile existence, before it be crushed and broken ; as ye fly through hostile countries, over tempestuous seas, are almost taken by the Turks ; and wholly, in the Sansculottic Earthquake, know not your right hand from your left, be this alwavs an assured place in your remembrance : for the act was good and loving ! To us also it is a little sunny spot, in that dismal howling waste, where we hardly find another. Meanwhile, what shall an impartial prudent Courtier do ? In these delicate circumstances, while not only death or hfe, but even sacrament or no sacrament, is a question, the skilfulest may falter. Few are so happy as the Duke d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde ; who can themselves, with volatile salts, attend the King's ante- chamber ; and, at the same time, send their brave sons (Duke de Chartres, Egalite that is to be ; Duke de Bourbon, one day Conde too, and famous among Dotards) to wait upon the Dauphin. With another fe^^, it is a resolution taken ; jacta est aim. Old Riche- lieu,~when Beaumont, driven by public opinion, is at last for entering the sick-room,— will twitch him by the rochet, into a re- cess ; and there, with liis old dissipated mtistiff-face, and the oiliest vehemence, be seen pleading (and even, as we judge by Beaumont's change of colour, prevailing) ' that the King be not killed by a proposition in Divinity.' Duke de Fronsac, son of Richelieu, can follow his father : when the Cure of Versailles whimpers somctlrin- a])oiit sacraments, he will threaten to 'throw *him out of the window if he inention siicli a thing.' Happy thcso, we in iy s;)\' ; but to the rest that hover between two opinions, is ii not ti ) iiig ? He who would understand to what * Campan, i. 11-36. VIA TICUM. 23 a pass Catholicism, and much else, had nov. v t ae symbols of the Holiest have become gambling-dicc oi tiic i.asest, —must read the narrative of those things by Besenval, and Sou- lavie, and the other Court Newsmen of the tune. He will see the Versailles Galaxy all scattered asunder, grouped mto new ever- shiftino- Constellations. There are nods and sagacious glances ; go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for this constellation, sighs for that : there is tremor, of hope or desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale grmnmg Shadow of Death, ceremoniously ushered along by another grinning Shadow, of Etiquette : at intervals the growl of Chapel Organs,, like prayer by machinery ; proclaiming, as in a kind of horrid diabolic horse-laughter, Vanity of vanities, all is Vamt^ / CHAPTER IV, LOUIS THE UNFORGOTTEN. Poor Louis ! With these it is a hollow phantasmagory, where like mimes they mope and mowl, and utter false sounds for hire ; but with thee it is frightful earnest. Frightful to all men is Death ; from of old named King ot Terrors. Our little compact home of an Existence, where we dwelt complaining, vet as in a home, is passing, in dark agonies, into an Unknov/n ^f Sepai'ation, Foreignness, unconditioned Possibility. The Heathen Emperor asks of his soul : Into wxiat places art thou now departing? The Catholic King must answer : To the Judgment-bar of the Most High God ! Yes, it is a sum- mino--up of Life ; a final setding, and giving-m the ' account ot the deeds done in the body : ' they are done now ; and he there unalterable, and do bear their fruits, long as Eternity shall last. Louis XV. had always the kinghest abhorrence of Death. Unlike that praying Duke of Orleans, Egalite's grandfather,— for indeed several of them had a touch of madness,— who honestly believed that there was no Death 1 He, if the Court Newsmen can be believed, started up once on a time, glowing with sulphur- ous contempt and indignation on his poor Secretary, who had stumbled on the words, feu rot d'Espagne (the late King 01 Spain) : ''Feu roi, Mcmsieurf"—" Mo?iseig7icur;' hastdy answered the trembling but adroit man of business, " c'est une litre qihls pren7ient ('tis a title they take)."* Louis, we say, was not so happy ; but he did what he could. He v/ould not suffer Death to be spoken of ; avoided the sight of churchyards, funereal monu- ments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is the resource * Besenval, i. 199. 24 DEATH OF LOUIS XV. of the Ostrich ; who, hard hunted, sticks his foohsh head in the ground, and would fain forget that his fooHsh unseeing body is not unseen too. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism signihcant of the same thing, and of more, he zvould go ; or stoppmg his- court carriages, would send into churchyards and ask ' how many new graves there were to-day,' though it gave his poor Pompadour the disagreeablest qualms. We can fio-ure the thought of Louis that day, when, all royally caparisoned for huntmg, he met, at some sudden turning in the Wood of Senart a ragged Peasant with a coffin : " For whom 1 ''—It was for a poor brother slave, whom Majesty had sometimes noticed slaving in those quarters. "What did he die of.^^''— "Of hunger • "-—the Kmg gave his steed the spur.^ But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strmgs ; unlooked for, inexorable ! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out • but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it.' Thou whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show at length becomest a reality : sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder like a dream, into void Immensity ; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul : the pale Kingdoms yawn open ; there must thou enter naked, all unking d, and await what is appointed thee ! Unhappy man^ there as thou turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness what a thought is thine ! Purgatory and Hell-fire, now ail-too possible, m the prospect ; in the retrospect,— alas, what thing aidst thou do that were not better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help ; what sorrow hadst thou mercv on ^ Do the ' five hundred thousand ' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an epigram,— crowd round thee in this hour.? Thy foul Harem; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters 1 Miserable man ! thou ' hast done evil as thou couldst : ' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature ; the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, devoicring the works of men ; daily dragging virgins to thy cave ;— clad also in scales that no spear would pierce : no spear but Death's ? A Griffin not fabulous but real ! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee. —We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed. And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul Louis was a Ruler ; but art not thou also one 1 His wide Franca look at It from the Fixed Stars (themselves not vet Infinitude) is no wider than thy narrow brickfield, where thou too didst faithfullv or didst unfaithfully. Man, ' Symbol of Eternitv imprisoned into lime! It is not thy works, which are all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least, but only the Spirit thou workeet m, that can have worth or continuance. * CarajBan, iii. 35, LOUIS THE UNFORGOTTEN, But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis, when he rose as Bien-Aiiiie from that Metz sick-bed, really was ! What son of Adam could have swayed such inco- herences into coherence? Could he? Blindest Fortune alone has cast him on the top of it : he swims there ; can as little sway it as the drift-log sways the wind-tossed moon-stirred Atlantic. " What have I done to be so loved ?" he said then. He may say now : What have I done to be so hated ? Thou hast done nothing, poor Louis ! Thy fault is properly even this, that thou didst 7iothing. What could poor Louis do ? Abdicate, and wash his hands of it, — in favour of the first that would accept ! Other clear wisdom there was none for him. As it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal extant (a very Solecism Incarnate), into the absurdest confused world ; — wherein at lost nothing seemed so certain as that he, the incarnate Solecism, had five senses ; that were Flying Tables {Tables Volantes^ which vanish through the floor, to come back reloaded', and a Parc-aux-cerfs. Whereby at least we have again this historical curiosity : a human being in an original position ; swimming passively, as on some boundless ' Mother of Dead Dogs/ towards issues which he partly saw. For Louis had withal a kind of insight in him. So, when a new Minister of Marine, or what else it might be, came announcing his new era, the Scarlet-woman would hear from the lips of Majesty at supper : He laid out his ware like another ; promised the beautifulest things in the world ; not a thing of which will come : he does not know this region ; he will see." Or again : " Tis the twentieth time I hear all that ; France will never get a Navy, I believe." How touching also was this : " If / were Lieutenant of Pohce, I would prohibit those Paris cab- riolets." Doomed mortal ; — for is it not a doom to be Solecism in- carnate ! A new Roi Faijteant^ King Donothing ; but with the strangest new Mayor of the Palace : no bow-legged Pepin now^^ but that same cloud-capt, fire-breathing Spectre of Democracy ; incalculable, which is enveloping the world ! -Was Louis no wickeder than this or the other private Donothing and Eatall ; such as we often enough see, under the name of Man, and even Man of Pleasure, cumbering God's dihgent Creation, for a time ? Say, wretcheder ! His Life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole scandalised world ; him endless Oblivion cannot engulf, and swal- low to endless depths, — not yet for a generation or two. However, be this as it will, we remark, not without interest, that *on the evening of the 4th,' Dame Dubarry issues from the sick- room, with perceptible ' trouble in her visage.' It is the fourth evening of May, year of Grace 1774. Such a whispering in the CEil-de-Bceu^" ! Is he dying, then? What can be said is, that Dubarry seems making up her packages ; she sails weeping through her gilt boudoirs, as if taking leave. D'Aiguilon and Cojapaajr a;'e ♦ yotimal de Madame de Hausset^ p. 293, &a 26 DEATH OF LOUIS XV. near their last card ; nevertheless they will not yet throw up the game. But as for the sacramental controversy, it is as good as settled without being mentioned ; Louis can send for his Abbe Moudon in the course of next night, be confessed by him, some say for the space of ' seventeen minutes/ and demand the sacra- ments of his own accord. Nay already, in the afternoon, behold is not this your Sorceress Dubarry with the handerchief at her eyes, mounting D'Aiguillon's chariot ; rolhng off in his Duchess's consolatory arms ? She is gone ; and her place knows her no more. Vanish, false Sorceress ; into Space ! Needless to hover at neighbouring Ruel ; for thy day is done. Shut are the royal palace-gates for evermore ; hardly in coming years shalt thou, under cloud of night, descend once, in black domino, like a black night-bird, and disturb the fair Antoinette's music-party in the Park : all Birds of Paradise flying from thee, and musical windpipes growing mute.^ Thou unclean, yet unmalignant, not unpitiable thing ! What a course was thine : from that first trucklebed (in Joan of Arc's country) where thy mother bore thee, with tears, to an unnamed father : forward, through lowest subterranean depths, and over highest sunlit heights, of Harlotdom and Rascaldom — to the guillotine-axe, which shears away thy vainly whimpering head ! Rest there uncursed ; only buried and abolished : what else befitted thee ? Louis, meanwhile, is in considerable impatience for his sacra- ments ; sends more than once to the window, to see whether they are not coming. Be of comfort, Louis, what comfort thou canst : they are under way, those sacraments. Towards six in the morn- ing, they arrive. Cardinal Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon is here, in pontificals, with his pyxes and his tools ; he approaches the royal pillow ; elevates his wafer ; mufters or seems to mutter somewhat ; — and so (as the Abbe Georgel, in words that stick to one, expresses it) has Louis ' made the ajnende honorable to God ; ' so^does your Jesuit construe it. — " Wa^ Wa,'' as the wild Clotaire groaned out, when life was departing, " what great God is this that pulls down the strength of the strongest kings ! "t The amende honorable^ what ' legal apology ' you will, to God : — but not, if DAiguillon can help it, to man. Dubarry still hovers in his mansion at Ruel ; and while there is life, there is hope. Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, accordingly (far he sterns to be in the secret), has no sooner seen his pyxes and gear re- packed, then he is stepping majestically forth again, as if the work were done ! But King's Confessor Abbe Moudon starts forward ; with anxious acidulent face, twitches him by the sleeve ; whispers in his ear. Whereupon the poor Cardinal must turn round ; and declare audibly, That his Majesty repents of any subjects of scandal he may have given {a pu do7i7ier) ; and pur- poses, by the strength of Heaven assisting him, to avoid the like — for the future !" Words listened to by Richelieu with mastiff- face, growing blacker; answered t(^ nloud, 'with an epithet,' ■ — which Besenval will not repeat. Old Richeheu, conqueror of * Campan, i. 197. f Grcgorius Turoncnsis, Histor, lib. iv. cap. 21. LOUIS THE UNFORGOTTEN. 27 Minorca, companion of Flying-Table orgies, perforator of bed- room walls,* is thy day also done ? Alas, the Chapel organs may keep going ; the Shrine of Sainte Genevieve be let down, and pulled up again,— without effect. In the evening the whole Court, with Dauphin and Dau- phiness, assist at the Chapel : priests are hoarse with chanting their * Prayers of Forty Hours;' and the heaving bellows blow. Almost frightful ! For the very heaven blackens ; battering rain- torrents dash, with thunder ; almost drowning the organ's voice : and electric fire-flashes make the very flambeaux on the altar pale. So that the most, as we are told, retired, when it was over, with hurried steps, ^ in a state of meditation (recueillement)^^ and said httle or nothing.f So it has lasted for the better half of a fortnight ; the Dubarry gone almost a week. Besenval says, all the world was getting impatient que cela finit ; that poor Louis would have done with it. It is now the loth of May 1774. He will soon have done now. This tenth May day falls into the loathsome sick-bed ; but dull, unnoticed there : for they that look out of the windows are quite darkened ; the cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis ; Life, hke a spent steed, is panting towards the goal. In their remote apartments. Dauphin and Dauphiness stand road-ready ; all groouis and equerries booted and spurred : waiting for some signal to escape the house of pestilence + And, hark 1 across the CEil-de-Boetif, what sound is that : sound ' terrible and absolutely like thunder'? It is the rush of the whole Court, rushing as in wager, to salute the new Sovereigns : Hail to your Majesties ! The Dauphin and Dauphiness are King and Queen ! Over- powered with many emotions, they two fall on their knees together, and, with streaming tears, exclaim, " O God, guide us, protect us ; we are too young to reign ! " — i 00 young indeed. Z' Thus, in any case, ^ with a sound absolutely like thunder,' has the Horologe of Time struck, ana an old Era passed away.^ The Louis that was, lies forsaken, a niass ot abhorred clay ; abandoned 'to some poor persons, and priests of the Chapelle Ardente^ — who make haste to put him 'in two lead coffins, pouring in abundant spirits of wine.' The new Louis with his Court is rolling towards Choisy, through the summer afternoon : the royal tears still flow ; but a word mispronounced by Monseigneur d'Artois sets them all laughing, and they weep no more. Light mortals, how ye walk your light life-minuet, over bottomless abysses, divided from you by a- film ! * Besenval, i. 159-172. Genlis ; Due dc Levis, &c. f Weber, Manoires concernant Marie- Antoinette (London, 1809), i 22. J On& grudges to interfere with the beautiful theatrical 'candle,' which Madame Campan (i. 79) has ht on this occasion, and blown out at the moment of death. What candles might be lit or blown out, in so large an Establish- ment as that of Versailles, no man at such distance would like to affirm : at the same time, as it was two o'clock in a May Afternoon, and these royal Stables must have been some five or six hundred yards from the royal sick- toom, the 'candle' does threaten to go out in spite of us. It remains burning indeed*~in her fantasy ; throwing light on much in those M4moires of hers. 28 DEATH OF LOUIS XV. For the rest, the proper authorities felt that no Funeral could be too unceremonious. Besenval himself thinks it was uncere- monious enough. Two carriages containing two noblemen of the usher species, and a Versailles clerical person ; some score of mounted pages, some fifty palfreniers ; th^se, with torches but not so much as m black, start from Versailles on the second even- ing with their leaden bier. At a high trot they start ; and keep up that pace. For the jibes {brocards) of those Parisians, who stand planted in two rows, all the way to St. Denis, and ' give vent to their pleasantry, the characteristic of the nation,' do not tempt one to slacken. Towards midnight the vaults of St. Denis receive their ovyn ; unwept by any eye of all these ; if not by poor Loque his neglected Daughter's, whose Nunnery is hard by. Him they crush down, and huddle under-ground, in this im- patient way ; him and his era of sin and tyranny and shame • for behold a New Era is come ; the future all the brighter that the past was base. BOOK SECOND. THE PAPER AGE, CHAPTER 1. ASTR^A REDUX. A PARADOXICAL philosopher, carrying to the uttermost length that aphorism of Montesquieu's, ^ Happy the people whose annals 2ire tiresome/ has said, ' Happy the people whose annals are vacant.' In which saying, mad as it looks, may there not §till be found some grain of reason ? For truly, as it has been written, ' Silence is divine,' and of Heaven ; so in all earthly things too there is a silence which is better than any speech. Consider it well, the Event, the thing which can be spoken of and recorded, is it not, in all cases, some disruption, some solution of continuity 1 Were it even a glad Event, it involves change, in- volves loss (of active Force) ; and so far, either in the past or in the present, is an irregularity, a disease. Stillest perseverance were our blessedness ; not dislocation and alteration, — could they be avoided. The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years ; only in the thousandth year, Vv^hen the woodman arrives with his axe, is there heard an echoing through the s'olituder ; and the oak announces itself when, with a far-sounding crash, it falls. How silent too was the' planting of the acorn ; scattered from the lap of some wandering wind ! Nay, waen our oak flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad Events), what choutof proclamation could there be ? Hardly from the most observant a word of recognition. These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an hour, but through the flight of days : what was to be said of it ? This hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be. It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was done, but of what was misdone or undone ; and foolish His- tory (ever, more or less, the written epitomised synopsis of Ru- mour) knovvs so little that were not as well unknov/n. Attila In- vasions, VValter-the-Penniless Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thirty- Years Wars : mere sin and misery ; not work, but hindrance of 3P THE PAPER AGE. work ! For the Earth, all this while, was yearly green and yellow with her kind harvests; the hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker rested not : and so, after all, and in spite of all, we have this so glorious high-domed blossoming World ; concerning which, poor History may well ask, with wonder, Whence //came ? She knows so little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it, what would have rendered it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or foolish choice, is her rule and practice ; whereby that paradox, * Happy the people whose annals are vacant,' is not with- out its true side. And yet, what seems more pertinent to note here, there is a stillness, not of unobstructed growth, but of passive inertness, the symptom of imminent downfall. As victory is silent, so is defeat. Of the opposing forces the weaker has resigned itself; the stronger marches on, noiseless now, but rapid, inevitable : the fall and overturn will not be noiseless. How all grows, and has its period, even as the herbs of the fields, be it annual, centennial, millennial ! All grows and dies, each by its own wondrous laws, in wondrous fashion of its own ; spiritual things most wondrously of all. Inscrutable, to the wisest, are these latter ; not to be pro- phesied of, or understood. If when the oak stands proudliest flourishing to the eye, you know that its heart is sound, it is not so with the man ; how much less with the Society, with the Nation of men ! Of such it may be affirmed even that the superficial aspect, that the inward feeling of full health, is generally ominous. F or indeed it is of apoplexy, so to speak, and a plethoric lazy habit of body, that Churches, Kingships, Social Institutions, oftenest die. Sad, when such Institution plethorically says to it- self, Take thy ease, thou hast goods laid up ;~like the fool of the Gospel, to whom it was answered, Fool, this night thy life shall be required of thee i Is it the healthy peace, or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on France, for these next Ten Years ? Over which the Historian can pass lightly, without call to linger : for as yet events are not, much less performances. Time of sunniest stillness ;— shall we call it, what all men thought it, the new Age of Gold 1 Call it at least, of Paper ; which in many ways is the succedaneum of Gold. Bank-paper, wherewith you can still buv when there is no gold left ; Book-paper, splendent with Theories, Philosophies, Sensibi- lities,—-beautiful art, not only of revealing Thought, but also of so beautifully hiding from us the want of Thought ! Paper is made from the ra<^s of things that did once exist ; there are endless ex- cellences in Paper.— Wliat wisest Philosophe, in this halcyon un- eventful period, could prophesy that there was approaching, big with darkness and confusion, the event of events.^ Hope ushers in a Revolution, — as earthquakes are preceded hy bright weather. On the P^ifth of May, fifteen years hence, old Louis \vill not be sending for the Sacraments ; but a new Louis, his grandson, vvitli the whole pomp of astonished intoxicated France, will be openins^ the States- General. ASTRJEA REDUX, 31 Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone forever. There is a young, still docile, well-intentioned King; a young, beautiful and bountiful, well-intentioned Queen ; and with them all France, as it were, become young. Maupeou and his I'arlement have to vanish into thick night ; respectable Magistrates, not indifferent to the Nation, were it only for having been opponents of the Court, can descend unchained from their ^ steep rocks at Croe in Com- brailles' and elsev/here, and return singing praises : the old Par- lement of Paris resumes its functions. Instead of a profligate bankrupt Abbe Terray, we have now, for Controller-General, a virtuous philosophic Turgot, with a whole Reformed France in his head. By whom whatsoever is wrong, in Finance or otherwise, will be righted,— as far as possible. Is it not as if Wisdom her- self were henceforth to have seat and voice in the Council of Kings? Turgot has taken office with the noblest plainness of speech to that effect ; beer, listened to with the noblest royal trust- fulness."^ It is true, as King Louis objects, They say he never goes to mass but liberal France hkes him little worse for that ; liberal France answers, " The Abbe Terray always went " Philo- sophism sees, for the first time, a Philosophe (or even a Philoso- pher) in office : she i^i all things will applausively second him; neither will light old Maurep-3 obstruct, if he can easily help it. Then how ' sweet' arc tho manners ; vice ' losing all its deform- ity;' becoming decent (as cstabhshcd things, making regulations for themselves, do) ; becoming almost a kind of ' sweet ' virtue ! Intelligence so abounds ; irradiated by wit and the art of conver- sation. Philosophism sits joyful in her glittering saloons, the dinner-guest of Opulence grown ingenuous, the very nobles proud to sit by her ; and preaches, lifted up over rJl Bastilles, a coming millennium. From far Ferney, Patriarch A^oltaire gives sign : veterans Diderot, D'Alembert have hved to see this day ; these with their younger Marmontels, Morellets, Chamforts, Raynals, make glad the spicy board of rich ministering Dowager, of philo- sophic Farmer-General. O nights and suppers of the gods ! Of a truth, the long-demonstrated will now be done : ' the Age of Revolutions approaches ' (as Jean Jacques wrote), but then of happy blessed ones. Man awakens from his long somnambulism ; chases the Phantasms that beleaguered and bewitched him. Behold the new morning glittering down the eastern steeps ; fly, false Phantasms, from its shafts of light ; let the Absurd fly utterly forsaking this lower Earth for ever. It is Truth and Astrcea Redux that (in the shapQ of Philosophism) henceforth reign. For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be ' happy ' ? By victorous Analysis, and Progress of the Species, happiness enough now awaits him. Kings can become philosophers ; or else philosophers Kings. Let but Society be once rightly constituted, — by victorious Analysis. The stomach that is empty shall be filled ; the throat that is dry shall be wetted with wine. Labour itself shall be all one as rest ; not grievous, but joyous. Wheat- * Turgot's Letter : Condorcet, Vie de Turgot {CEuvres de Co/idorceif U v.), p. 67. The date is 24th August, 1774. 32 THE PAPER AGE. fields, one would think, cannot come to grov/ untilled ; no man made clayey, or made weary thereby ;— unless indeed machinery win do it ? Gratuitous Tailors and Restaurateurs may start up, at fit intervals, one as yet sees not how. But if each will, according to rule of Benevolence, have a care for all, then surely— no one will be uncared for Nay, who knows but, by sufficiently victorious Analysis, ' human life may be indefinitely lengthened/ and men get rid of Death, as they have already done of the Devil ? We shall then be happy in spite of Death and the Devil.— So preaches magniloquent Philosophism her Redeunt Saturnia regna. The prophetic song of Paris and its Philosophes is audible enough in the Versailles CEil-de-Boeuf ; and the CEil-de-B'ceuf, intent chiefly on nearer blessedness, can answer, at worst, with a polite "Why not?'' Good old cheery Maurepas is too joyful a Prime Minister to dash the world's joy. Sufficient for the day be its own evil. Cheery old man, he cuts his jokes, and hovers care- less along ; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he may please all persons. The simple young King, whom a Maurepas cannot think of troubling with business, has retired into the interior apartments ; taciturn, irresolute ; though with a sharpness of temper at times : he, at length, determines on a little smith-' work ; and so, in apprenticeship with a Sieur Gamain (whom one day he shall have little cause to bless), is learning to make locks."^ It appears further, he understood Geography ; and could read English. Unhappy young King, his childhke trust in that foolish old Maurepas deserved another return. But friend and foe, destiny and himself have combined to do him hurt. Meanwhile the fair young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like a goddess of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes ; as yet mingles not with affairs ; heeds not the future ; least of all, dreads it. Weber and Campanf have pictured her, there within the royal tapestries, in bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand and Little Toilette ; with a whole brilhant world waiting obsequious on her glance : fair young daughter of Time, what things has Time in store for thee ! Like Earth's brightest Appearance, she moves gracefully, environed with the grandeur of Earth : a reality, and yet a magic vision ; for, behold, shall not utter Darkness swallow it ! The soft young heart adopts orphans, portions meritorious maids, delights to succour the poor, — such poor as come pic- turesquely in her w?y ; and sets the fashion of doing it ; for as was said, Benevolence nas now begun reigning. In her Duchess de Polignac, in her Princess de Lamballe, she enjoys something almost like friendship ; now too, after seven long years, she has a child, and soon even a Dauphin, of her own ; can reckon herself, as Queens go, happy in a husband. Eyents The Grand events are but charitable Feasts of Morals {^Fetes des uioeurs)^ with their Prizes and Speeches ; Poissarde Processions to the Dauphin's cradle ; above all. Flirtations, their rise, progress, decline and fall. There are Snovv-statucs raised by the poor in hard winter to a Queen who has given them fuel. There * Campan, i. 125. t lb. i. 100-151. Weber, i. 11-50. 33 are masquerades, theatricals ; beautifyings of little Trianon, pur- chase and repair of St. Cloud ; journeyings from the summer Court-Eiysium to the winter one. There are poutings and grudg- ings from the Sardinian Sisters-in-law (for the Princes too are wedded) ; little jealousies, which Court-Etiquette can moderate. Wholly the lightest-hearted frivolous foam of Existence ; yet an artfully refined foam ; pleasant were it not so costly, like that which mantles on the wine of Champagne ! Monsieur, the King's elder Brother, has set up for a kind of wit ; and leans towards the Philosophe side. Monseigneur d'Artois pulls the mask from a fair impertinent ; fights a duel in consequence, — almost drawing blood.* He has breeches of a kind new in this world a fabulous kind ; ^ four tall lackeys,' says Mercier, as if he had seen it, ' hold him up in the air, that he may fail into the 'garment without vestige of wrinkle ; from which rigorous encase- * ment the same four, in the same way, and with more effort, must Meliver him at night 't This last is he who now, as a gray time- worn man, sits desolate at Gratz having winded up his destiny with the Three Days. In such sort are poor mortals swept and shovelled to and fro. CHAPTER II. PETITION IN HIEROGLYPHS. With the working people, again, it is not so well. Unlucky ! For there are twenty to twenty-five millions of them. Whom, how- ever, we lump together into a kind of dim compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the canaille; or, more hunianely, as *- tJie masses.^ Masses, indeed : and yet, singular to say, if, v/ith an effort of imagination, thou follow them, over broad France, into their clay hovels, into their garrets and hutches, the masses con- sist all of units. Every unit of whom has his own heart and sorrows ; stands covered there with his own skin, and if you prick him he will bleed. O purple Sovereignty, Holiness, Reverence ; thou, for example, Cardinal Grand-Almoner, with thy plush covering of honour, who hast thy hands strengthened with dignities and moneys, and art set on thy world watch-tower solemnly, in sight of God, for such ends,— what a thought : that every unit of these masses is a miraculous Man, even as thyself art ; struggling, with vision, or with blindness, for his infinite Kingdom (this life which he has got, once only, in the middle of Eternities) ; with a spark of the Divinity, what thou callest an immortal soul, in him ! Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remoteness ; ♦ Besenval, ii. 282-330. Mercier, Nouveau Paris^ iii. 147. J A.D. 1834* 34 THE PAPER AGE. *— _ ^ their hearth cheerless, their diet thin. For them, in this world, rises no Era of Hope ; hardly now in the other, -if it be not hope in the gloomy rest of Death, for their faith too is failing. Untaught uncomforted, unfed ! A dumb generation ; their voice only an inarticulate cry : spokesman, in the King's Council, in the world's torum, they have none that finds credence. At rare intervals (as now, m 1775), they will fling down their hoes and hammers ; and to the astonishment of thinking mankind,* flock hither and thither dangerous, aimless ; get the length even of Versailles. Turo-ot is altering the Corn-trade, abrogating the absurdest Corn-laws ;1here IS dearth, real, or were it even ' factitious ; ' an indubitable scarcity ot bread. And so, on the second day of May 1775, these waste multitudes do here, at Versailles Chateau, in wide-spread wretched- ness, in sallow faces, squalor, winged raggedness, present, as in legible hieroglyphic writing, their Petition of Grievances. The Chateau gates have to be shut ; but the King will appear on the balcony, and speak to them. They have seen the King's face ; their Petition of Grievances has been, if not read, looked at. For answer, two of them are hanged,"' on a new gallows forty feet high and the rest driven back to their dens,— for a time. ' Clearly a difficult ' point ' for Government, that of dealing with these masses ;— if indeed it be not rather the sole point and problem of Government, and all other points mere accidental crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind ! For let Charter-Chests, Use and Wont, Law common and special say what they will, the masses count to so many millions of units • made, to all appearance, by God,— whose Earth this is declared to-be. Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have smews and indignation. Do but look what holiday old Marquis Mirabeau, the crabbed old Friend of Men, looked on, in these same years, from his lodging, at the Baths of Mont d'Or : ' The ' savages descending in torrents from the mountains ; our people I ordered not to go out. The Curate in surplice and stole ; Justice ' in Its peruke ; Marechausee sabre in hand, guarding the place, ' till the bagpipes can begin. The dance interrupted, in a quarter ^ of an hour, by battle ; the cries, the squcalings of children, of I infirm persons, and other assistants, tarring them on, as the rabble ^ does when dogs fight : frightful men, or rather frightful wild animals, clad m jupes of coarse woollen, with large girdles of • leather studded with copper nails ; of gigantic stature, heightened ^ by high wooden-clogs {sabots) ; rising on tiptoe to see the fight ; ^ tramping time to it ; rubbing their sides with their elbows : their faces haggard {figures haves), and covered with their long greasy ^hair ; the upper part of the visage waxing pale, the lower distort- ^ ing Itself into the attempt at a cruel laugh and a sort of ferocious impatience. And these people pay the taille I And you want ^ further to take their salt from them ! And you know not what it ' is you are stripping barer, or as you call it, governing ; what by ''the spurt of your pen, in its cold dastard indifference, you will * Lacretelle, Fra?ice pendant le i3me SzicU, iu 455. Biographu Uniutr* § Turcot (by Durozoir). PETITION IN HIEROGLYPHS. 35 * fancy you can starve always with impunity ; always till the catas- * trophe come !~Ah Madame, such Government by Blindman's- ' buff, stumbling along too far, will end in the General Overturn * (culbitte generale). Undoubtediy a dark feature this in an Age of Gold,— -Age, at least, of Paper and Hope ! Meanwhile, trouble us not with thy prophecies, O croaking Friend of Men : 'tis long that we have heard such ; and still the old world keeps wagging, in its old way. CHAPTER III. QUESTIONABLE. Or is this same Age of Hope itself but a simulacrum ; as Hope too often is ? Cloud-vapour with rainbows painted on it, beautiful to see, to sail towards,— which hovers over Niagara Falls ? In that case, victorious Analysis will have enough to do. Alas, yes ! a whole world to remake, if she could see it ; work for another than she ! For all is wrong, and gone out of joint ; the inward spiritual, and the outward economical ; head or heart, there is no soundness in it. As indeed, evils of all sorts are more or less of kin, and do usually go together : especially it is an old truth, that wherever huge physical evil is, there, as the parent and origin of it, has moral evil to a proportionate extent been. I>efore those five-and-twenty labouring Millions, for instance, could get that haggardness of face, which old Mirabeau now looks on, in a Nation calling itself Christian, and calling man the brother of man,— what unspeakable, nigh infinite Dishonesty (of seeming and not being) in all manner of Rulers, and appointed Watchers, spiritual and temporal, must there not, through long ages, have gone on accumulating ! It will accumulate : moreover, it will reach a head ; for the first of all Gospels is this, that a Lie cannot endure for ever. In fact, if we pierce through that rosepink vapour of Senti- ; mentalism. Philanthropy, and Feasts of Morals, there lies behind " it one of the sorriest spectacles. You might ask, What bonds that '■ ever held a human society happily together, or held it together at > all, are in force here ? It is an unbeheving people ; which has ^ suppositions, hypotheses, and froth-systems of victorious Analysis ; and for belief mainly, that Pleasure is pleasant. Hunger they have for all sweet things ; and the law of Hunger ; but what other law ? Within them, or over them, properly none ! • Their King has become a King Popinjay ; with his Maurepas " Government, gyrating as the weather-cock does, blown about I * M^moires de Mirabeau, ecrits par Lui-meme, par son P^re, son Onclo, et I son Fils Adopt if (Puris, 1834-5). ii- i8^- 36 THE PAPER AGE. by every wind. Above them they see no God ; or they even do not look above, except with astronomical glasses. The Church indeedl still is ; but in the most submissive state ; quite tamed by Philo- sophism ; in a singularly short time ; for the hour was come. 5Dome twenty years ago, your Archbishop Beaumont would not even let the poor Jansenists get buried : your Lomenie Brienne (a rising man, whom we shall meet with yet) could, in the name of the Clergy, insist on having the Anti-protestant Laws, which condemn to death for preaching, ' put in execution.'"^ And alas, now not so much as Baron Holbach's Atheism can be burnt,— except as pipe-matches by the private speculative individual. Our Church stands haltered, dumb, like a dumb ox ; lowing only for provender (of tithes) ; content if it can have that ; or, dumbly, dully expecting its further doom. And the Twenty Millions of ' haggard faces ; ' and, as finger-post and guidance to them in their dark struggle, ' a gallows forty feet high ' ! Certainly a singular Golden Age ; with its Feasts of Morals, its ' sweet ^ nmnners,' its sweet institutions {institutions douces) ; betokening nothing but peace among men ! — Peace O Philosophe-Senti- mentalism, what hast thou to do with peac ~. when thy mothers name is Jezebel 1 Foul Product of still fouler Corruption, thou ! with the corruption art doomed ! Meanwhile it is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly. For whole generations it continues standing, ' with a ghastly affectation of life,' after all life and truth has fled out of it ; so loth are men to quit their old ways ; and, conquering indolence and inertia, venture on new. j Great truly is the Actual ; is the Thing that has rescued itself from bottomless deeps of theory and possibility, and stands there as a definite indisputable Fact, whereby men do work and live, or I once did so. Wisely shall men cleave to that, while it will endure ; and quit it with regret, when it gives way under them. Rash : enthusiast of Change, beware ! Hast thou well considered all ihat Habit does in this life of ours ; how all Knowledge and all I'ractice hang w^ondrous over infinite abysses of the Unknown, impracticable ; and our whole being is an infinite abyss, over- arched by Habit, as by a thin Earth-rind, laboriously built tOL; ether ? i hit if ^ every man,' as it has been written, 'holds confined 'within him a mad-m2iXi^ what must every Society do ;~-Soc'ety, whicli in its commonest state is called ' the standing miracie oi this world' ! 'Without such Plarth-rind of Habit/ continues our authoi^ ' call it System of Habits, in a v^c^xd.^ fixed ways of acting ' and iH believing, — Society would not exist at all. With such it ' ' ists, better or worse. Herein too, in this its System of Habits, squired, retained how you will, lies the true Law-Code and ^ onstitution of a Society ; the only Code, though an unwritten ^Hi^ v/hich it can in nowise <'//>obey. The tiling we call written ^Code;^ Constitution, Form of Government, and the like, QUESTIONABLE. 37 ^what is it but some miniature image, and solemnly expressed ^summ.aryof this unwritten Code? Is^ — ox rather alas, is not; *bat only should be, and always tends to be ! In which latter * discrepancy lies struggle without end/ And now, we add in the same dialect, let but, by ill chance, in such ever-enduring struggle, — your ^thin Earth-rind' be once broken I The fountains of the great deep boil forth ; fire-fountains, enveloping, engulfing. Your ' Earth-rind ' is shattered, swallowed up ; instead of a green flowery world, there is a waste wild-weltering chaos : — which has again, with tumult and struggle, to make itself into a world. On the other hand, be this conceded: Where thou findest a Lie that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extinguished ; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well, meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it : not with hatred, with headlong selfish violence ; but in clearness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity. Thou wouldst not replace such extinct Lie by a new Lie, which a new Injustice of thy own were ; the parent of still other Lies ? Whereby the latter end of that business were w^orse than the beginning. So, however, in this world of ours, which has both an indestruc- tible hope in the Future, and an indestructible tendency to persevere as in the Past, must Innovation and Conservation wage their perpetual conflict, as they may and can. Wherein the * daemonic element,' that lurks in all human things, 7nay doubt- less, some once in the thousand years— get vent 1 But indeed may we not regret that such conflict, — which, after all, is but like that classical one of ^ hate-filled Amazons with heroic Youths/ and will end in embraces^ — should usually be so spasmodic ? For Conservation, strengthened by that mightiest quality in us, our indolence, sits for long ages, not victorious only, v>7hich she should be ; but tyrannical, incommunicative. She holds her adversary as if annihilated ; such adversary lying, all the while, like some buried Enceladus ; w^ho, to gain the smallest freedom, must stir a whole Trinacria with it ^.tnas. Wherefore, on the whole, we will honour a Paper Age too ; an Era of hope ! For in this same frightful process of Enceladus Revolt ; when the task, on which no mortal would willingly enter, has become imperative, inevitable, — is it not even a kindness of Nature that she lures us forward by cheerful promises, fallacious or not ; and a whole generation plunges into the Erebus Black- [ ness, lighted on by an Era of Hope ? It has been well said : ^ Man is based on Hope ; he has properly no other poosessior but * Hope ; this habitation of his is named the Place of Hope.' 38 THE PAPER AGE. CHAPTER IV. MAUREPAS. But now, among French hopes, is not that of old M. de Maurepas one of the best-grounded ; who hopes that he, by dex- terity, shall contrive to continue Minister ? Nimble old man, who for all emergencies has his light jest; and ever in the worst confusion will emerge, cork-like, unsunk ! Small care to him is Perfectibility, Progress of the Species, and Astrcea Redux : good only, that a man of light wit, verging towards fourscore, can in the seat of authority feel himself important amomg men. Sliall we call him, as haughty Chateauroux was wont of old, ' M. Faquinei (Diminutive of Scoundrel)'? In courtier dialect, he is now named ^the Nestor of France ;' such governing Nestor as France has. At bottom, nevertheless, it might puzzle one to say where the Government of France, in these days, specially is. In that Chateau of Versailles, we have Nestor, King, Queen, ministers and clerks, with paper-bundles tied in tape : iDut the Government ? P'or Government is a thing that governs, that guides ; and if need be, compels. Visible in France there is not such a tking. Invisible, inorganic, on the other hand, there is : in Philosophe saloons, in CEil-de-Boeuf galleries ; in the tongue of the babbler, in the pen of the pamphleteer. Her Majesty appearing at the Opera is applauded ; she returns all radiant with joy. Anon the appla?uses wax fainter, or threaten to cease ; she is heavy of heart, tlie light of her face has fled. Is Sovereignty some poor Montgolfier ; which, blown into by the popular wind, grows great and mounts ; or sinks flaccid, if the wind be withdrawn? France was long a ' Despotism tempered by Epigrams ;' and now, it would seem, the Epigrams have got the upper hand. Happy were a young ^ Louis the Desired ' to make France happy ; if it did not prove too troublesome, and he only knew the way. But there is endless discrepancy round him ; so many claims and clamours ; a mere confusion of tongues. Not recon- cilable by man ; not manageable, suppressive, save by some strongest and wisest men ;— which only a lightly-jesting lightly- gyrating M. de Maurepas can so much as subsist amidst. Philoso- phism claims her new Era, meaning thereby innumerable things. And claims it in no faint voic c ; for France at large, hitherto mute, is now beginning to speak also ; and speaks in that same sense. A huge, many-toned sound ; distant, yet not unimpressive. On the other hand, the CEil-de-Ba:uf, which, as nearest, one can licar ])cst, chiims with shrill vehemence that the Monarchy be as, heielnfore:! Horn of Plenty; whercfrom loyal courtiers may draw, — to the just support of the throne. Let Liberahsm and a New Era^ if such is the wish, be introduced ; only no curtailment of MAUREPAS. 39 the royal moneys] Which latter condition, alas, is precisely the impossible one. Philosophism, as we saw, has got her Turgot made Controller- General ; and there shall be endless reformation. Unhappily this Turgot could continue only twenty months. With a miracu- lous Fortunatus' Purse in his Treasury, it might have lasted longer ; with such Purse indeed, every French Controller- General, that would prosper in these days, ought first to provide himself. But here again may we not remark the bounty of Nature in regard to Hope ? Man after man advances confident to the Augean Stable, as if he could clean it ; expends his little fraction of an ability on it, with such cheerfulness ; does, in so far as he was honest, accomplish something. Turgot has faculties ; honesty, insight, heroic volition ; but the Fortunatus' Purse he has not. Sanguine Controller- General ! a whole pacific French Revolution may stand schemed in the head of the thinker ; but who shall pay the unspeakable ^ indemnities ^ that will be needed ? Alas, far from that : on the very threshold of the business, he proposes that the Clergy, the Noblesse, the very Parlements be subjected to taxes ! One shriek of indignation and astonishment reverberates through all the Chateau galleries ; M. de Maurepas has to gyrate : the poor King, who had written fe^v weeks ago, ' 11 ny a que vous et moi qui aimions le peitple (There is none but you and I that ^ has the people's interest at heart),' must write now a dismissal and let the French Revolution accomplish itself, pacifically or not, as it can. Hope, then, is deferred 1 Deferred ; not destroyed, or abated. Is not this, for example, our Patriarch Voltaire, after long years of absence, revisiting Paris 1 With face shrivelled to nothing ; with ' huge peruke a la Louis Quatorse, which leaves only two eyes * visible' glittering like carbuncles,' the old man is here.f What an outburst ! Sneering Paris has suddenly grown reverent ; devotional with Hero-worship. Nobles have disguised themselves as tavern-waiters to obtain sight of him : the loveliest of France would lay their hair beneath his feet. ' His chariot is the nucleus * of a comet ; whose train fills whole streets : ' they crown *him in the theatre, with immortal vivats ; ^ finally stifle him under roses/ — for old Richelieu recommended opium in such state of the nerves, and the excessive Patriarch took too much. Her Majesty herself had some thought of sending for him ; but was dissuaded. Let Majesty consider it, nevertheless. The purport of this man's existence has been to wither up and annihilate all whereon Majesty and Worship for the present rests : and is it so that the world recognises him ? With Apotheosis ; as its Prophet and Speaker, who has spoken wisely the thing it longed to say ? Add only, that the body of this same rose-stifled, beatified-Patriarch cannot get buried except by stealth. It is wholly a notable business ; and France, without doubt, is (what the Germans call ^ Of good Hope ') : we shall wish her a happy birth-hour, and blessed fruit. * In May, 1776.. f Februaiy, 1778. C 2 *> THE PAPER AGE. Beaumarchais too has now winded-up his Law-Pleadings &T'^ ' """"i ^^thout result, to himself and to the world W h..n^K"'^^'''^^'l Beaumarchais, for he got ennobled) had been born poor but aspirm- esurient ; with talents, audacity, adroitness ; above all, with the talent for intrigue : a lean, but also a tough, indomitable man. Fortune and dexterity brought him to ..H ^'P.'''^^'^ of Mesdames, our good Princesses Loque, Grailh and Sisterhood. Still better, Paris Duvernier, the Court-Banker, honoured him with some confidence ; to the length even of transact tionsm cash. Which confidence, however, Duvernier's Heir, a person of quality, would not continue. Quite otherwise : there springs a Lawsuit from it : wherein tough Beaumarchais, losing both i^oney and repute is, in the opinion of Judge-Reporter Goez- man of the Parlement Maupeou, of a whole indifferent acquiescing world, miserably beaten. In all men^s opinions, only not in his own t Inspired by the mdignation, which makes, if not verses, satirical law-papers, the withered Music-master, with a desperate heroism, takes up his lost cause in spite of the world ; fights for it, against Reporters, Parlements and Principalities, with light banter! with clear logic ; adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness and resource, like the skilfullest fencer; on whom, so skilful is he, the whole world now looks. Three long years it lasts ; with wavering for- tune. In hne, after labours comparable to the Twelve of Hercules our unconquerable Caron triumphs ; regains his Lawsuit and Law- suits ; strips Reporter Goezman of the judicial ermine; coverino- him with a perpetual garment of obloquy instead :— and in re-^ard to the Parlement Maupeou (which he has helped to extinguish) to Parlements of all kinds, and to French Justice generally, oiVes rise to endless reflections in the minds of men. Thus has Beau- marchais, like a lean French Hercules, ventured down, driven by destiny, into the Nether Kingdoms ; and victoriously tamed hell- dogs there. He also is henceforth among the notabilities of his generation. CHAPTER V. ASTR^A REDUX WITHOUT CASH. Observe, however, beyond the Atlantic, has not the new day verily dawned ! Democracy, as we said, is born ; storm-girt, is struggling for life and victory. A sympathetic France rejoices over the Rights of Man ; in all saloons, it is said, What a spectacle ! Now too behold our Deane, our Franklin, American Plenipoten- tiaries, here in person soliciting ;* the sons of the Saxon Puritans, * 1773-6. See CEuvrcs de Beaumarchau ; where they, and the history of tliem, are given. t »777 ; Deane somewhat earlier : Franklin remained till 1785, ASTRJEA REDUX WITHOUT CASH. 41 with their Old-Saxon temper, Old- Hebrew culture, sleek Silas, sleek Benjamin, here on such errand, among the light children of Heathenism, Monarchy, Sentimentalism, and the Scarlet-woman. A spectacle indeed ; over which saloons may cackle joyous ; though Kaiser Joseph, questioned on it, gave this answer, most unexpected from a Philosophe : " Madame, the trade I live bj is that of royalist {^Mon metier a moi c'est d^etie royaliste)P So thinks light Maurepas too ; but the wind of Philosophism and force of public opinion will blow him round. Best wishes, meanwhile, are sent ; clandestine privateers armed. Paul Jones shall equip his Boa Homme Richard : weapons, military stores can be smuggled over (if the English do not seize them) ; wherein, once more Beaumarchais, dimly as the Giant Smuggjler becomes visible, — filling his own lank pocket withal. But surely, in any case, France should have a Navy. For which great object were not now the time : now when that proud Termagant of the Seas has her hands full It is true, an impoverished Treasury cannot build ships ; but the hint once given (which Beaumarchais says he gave), this and the other loyal Seaport, Chamber of Commerce, will build and offer them. Goodly vessels bound into the waters ; a Ville de Paris, Leviathan of ships. And now when gratuitous three-deckers dance there at anchor, with streamers flying ; and eleutheromaniac Philosophedom grows ever more clamorous, what can a Maurepas do — but gyrate ? Squadrons cross the ocean : Gages, Lees, rough Yankee Generals, * with woollen night-caps under their hats,' present arms to the far- glancing Chivalry of France ; and new-born Democracy sees, not without amazement, ^ Despotism tempered by Epigrams fight at her side. So, however, it is. King's forces and heroic volunteers ; Rochambeaus, Bouilles, Lameths, Lafayettes, have drawn their swords in this sacred quarrel of mankind ; — shall draw them again elsewhere, in the strangest way. Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course of which did our young Prince, Duke de Chartres, ' hide in the hold or did he materially, by active heroism, contribute to the victory ? Alas, by a second edition, we learn that there was no victory ; or that English Keppel had it."^ Our poor young Prince gets his Opera plaudits changed into mocking tehees ; and cannot become Grand- Admiral, — the source to him of woes which one may call endless. Woe also for Ville de Paris, the Leviathan of ships ! English Rodney has clutched it, and led it home, with the rest ; so suc- cessful was his new ' manoeuvre of breaking the enemy's line.' fit seems as if, according to Louis XV., ' France were never to '^ave a Navy.' Brave Suffren must return from Hyder Ally and the Indian Waters ; with small result ; yet with great glory for ' six non- defeats ; — which indeed, with such seconding as he had, one may reckon heroic. Let the old sea-hero rest now, honoured of France, in his native Cevennes mountains ; send smoke, not of gunpowder,, * 27th July, 1778. t 9th and 12th April, 178a* THE PAPER AGE. but mere culinary smoke, through the old chimneys of the Castle of Jales,— which one day, in other hands, shall have other fame. Brave Laperouse shall 'by and by lift anchor, on philanthropic Voyage of Discovery ; for the King knows Geography."^ But, alas, this also will not prosper : the brave Navigator goes, and returns not ; the Seekers search far seas for him in vain. He has vanished trackless into blue Immensity ; and only some mournful mysterious shadow of him hovers long in all heads and hearts. Neither, while the War yet lasts, will Gibraltar surrender. Not though Crillon, Nassau-Siegen, with the ablest projectors extant, are there ; and Prince Conde and Prince d'Artois have hastened to help. Wondrous leather-roofed Floating-batteries, set afloat by French- Spanish PacHe de Fainille, give gallant summons : to which, nevertheless, Gibraltar answers Plutonically, with mere torrents of redhot iron^— as if stone Calpe had become a throat of the Pit ; and utters such a DoonVs-blast of a No, as all men must credit.f And so, with this loud explosion, the noise of War has ceased ; an Age of Benevolence may hope, for ever. Our noble volunteers of Freedom have returned, to be her missionaries. Lafayette, as the matchless of his time, glitters in the Versailles CEil-de-Boeuf ; has his Bust set up in the Paris Hotel-de-Ville. Democracy stands inexpugnable, immeasurable, in her New World ; has even a foot lifted towards the Old ;— and our French Finances, little strengthened by such work, are in no healthy way. What to do with the Finance? This indeed is the great ques- tion : a small but most black weather-symptom, which no radiance of universal hope can cover. We saw Turgot cast forth from the Controllership, with shrieks,— for want of a Fortunatus' Purse. As little coukl M. de Clugny manage the duty ; or indeed do any- thing, but consume his wages ; attain ' a place in History,' where as an ineffectual shadow thou beholdest him still lingering ;— and let the duty manage itself Did Genevese Necker possess such a Purse, then? He possessed banker's skill, banker's honesty; credit of all kinds, for he had written Academic Prize Essays, struggled for India Companies, given dinners to Philosophes, and *reaUsed a f^^rtune in twenty years.' He possessed, further, a taci- turnity and solemnity ; of depth, or else of dulness. How singular for Celadon Gibbon, false swain as he had proved ; whose father, keeping most probably his own gig, ' would not hear of such a union,'— to find now his forsaken Demoiselle Curchod sitting in the high places of the world, as Minister's Madame, and ' Necker not jealous ! 'J , r -. ^v/r j A new young Demoiselle, one day to be famed as a Madame and De Stacl, was romping about the knees of the Decline and Fall : the lady Necker founds Hospitals ; gives solemn Philosophe dinner-parties, to cheer her exhausted Controller-General. Strange * August ist, 178^. ' ^,^..1-0 A7i7iual Re^isier (Dodsloy's). xxv. 258-267. SepUmber, October, 1782. I Gibbon's Letters: date, i6th Iutip ?.777, &c. ASTRAL A REIHJX WITHOUT CASH. 43 things have happened : b\ chimour of Philosophism,. management of Marquis de Pezav, and' Poverty constraining even Kings. And so Necker, Atlas-like, sustains the burden of the Finances, for five years long ?* Without wages, for he refused such ; cheered only by Public Opinion, and the ministering of his noble Wife. With manv thoughts m him, it is hoped ;— which, however, he is shy of uttering. His Compte Rendu, pubhshed by the royal permission, fresh sign of a New Era, shows wonders ;— which what but the genius of some Atlas-Necker can prevent from becoming portents ? In Necker's head too there is a whole pacific French Revolution, of its kind ; and in that taciturn dull depth, or deep dulness, ambition enough. Meanwhile, alas, his Fortunatus' Purse turns out to be httle other than the old ' vectigal of Parsimony.' Nay, he too has to produce his scheme of taxing : Clergy, Noblesse to be taxed ; Provincial Assemblies, and the rest,— like a mere Turgot ! The expiring M. de Maurepas must gyrate one other time. Let Necker also depart ; not unlamented. Great in a private station, Necker looks on from the distance ; abiding his time. ' Eighty thousand copies ' of his new Book, which he calls Administration des Finances^ will be sold in few days. He is gone ; but shall return, and that more than once, borne by a whole shouting Nation. Singular Controller- General of the Finances ; once Clerk in Thelusson's Bank ! CHAPTER VL WINDBAGS. So marches the world, in this its Paper Age, or Era of Hope. Not without obstructions, war-explosions ; which, however, heard from such distance, are little other that a cheerful marching-music. If indeed that dark living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger, five- and-twenty million strong, under your feet, — were to begin playing ! For the present, however, consider Longchamp ; now when Lent is ending, and the glory of Paris and France has gone forth, as in annual wont. Not to assist at Teiiebris Masses, but to sun itself and show itself, and salute the Young Spring.f Manifold, bright-tinted, glittering with gold ; all through the Bois de Boulogne, in longdrawn variegated rows ; — like longdrawn living flower-borders, tuhps, dahlias, lilies of the valley ; all in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages) : pleasure of the eye, and pride of life ! So rolls and dances the Procession : steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the foundation^ * Till May, 1781. t Mercier^ Tableau dc Paris^ ii. 51. Louvet, Roman de Fauhlas^ &c. 44 THE PAPER AGE, of the world ; not on mere heraldic parchment,-~under which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones : ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from of old, written : The wages of sin is death ? But at Longchamp, as elsewhere, we remark for one thinR, that dame and cavalier are waited on each by a kind of human familiar, n^m^^^ jokei Little elf, or imp ; though young, already withered ; with Its withered air of premature vice, of knowingness, of com- pleted elf-hood : useful in various emergencies. The name jokei (jockey) comes from the English ; as the thing also fancies that It does. Our Anglomania, in fact, is grown considerable ; pro- phetic of much. If France is to be free, why shall she not, now when mad war is hushed, love neighbouring Freedom ? Cultivated men your Dukes de Liancouft, de la Rochefoucault admire the English Constitution, the English National Character: would import what of it they can. Of what is lighter, especially if it be light as wind, how much easier the freightage ! Non- Admiral Duke de Chartres (not yet d'Orleans or Egahte) flies to and fro across the Strait ; importing English 1^ ashions ; this he, as hand-and-glove with an English Prince of Wales, IS surely qualified to do. Carriages and saddles ; top- boots and redingotes, as we call riding-coats. Nay the very mode of riding : for now no man on a level with his age but will trot a PAnglaise, rising in the stirrups ; scornful of the old sitfast method, m which, according to Shakspeare, ' butter and eggs ' go to market. Also, he can urge the fervid wheels, this brave Chartres of ours ; no whip in Paris is rasher and surer than the unprofessional one of Monseigneur. YAiJokeis, we have seen ; but see now real Yorkshire jockeys, and what they ride on, and train : English racers for French Races. These likewise we ov/e first (under the Providence of the Devil) to Monseigneur. Prince d'Artois also has his stud of racers. Prince d'Artois has withal the strangest horseleech : a moonstruck, much-enduring individual, of Neuchatel in Switzer- land,— named /^^;»^ Paul Marat A problematic Chevalier d'Eon, now in petticoats, now in breeches, is no less problematic in London thnn in Paris ; and causes bets and lawsuits. Beautiful days of international communion ! Swindlery and Blackguardism have stretched hands across the Channel, and saluted mutually : on the racecourse of Vincennes or Sablons, behold in English curricle-and-four, wafted glorious among the principalities and rascalities, an English Dr. Dodd,*— for whom also the too early gallows gapes. Duke de Chartres was a young Prince of great promise, as young Prmces often are ; which promise unfortunately has behed Itself With the huge Orleans Property, with Duke de Penthi^vre (and now the young Brother-in law Lamballe killed by excesses),— he will one day be the richest man in France. * Adelung, Gcschichte dcr Menschlicheii Narrheit, § Dodd. WINDBAGS. 45 Meanwhile, ' his hair is all falling out, his blood is quite spoiled/ — by early transcendentalism of debauchery. Carbuncles stud his face ; dark studs on a ground of burnished copper. A most signal failure, this young Prince! The stuff prematurely burnt out of him : httle left but foul smoke and ashes of expiring sensualities : what might have been Thought, Insight, and even Conduct, gone now, or fast going, — to confused darkness, broken by bev/ildering dazzlements ; to obstreperous crotchets ; to activities which you may call semi-delirious, or even semi-galvanic ! Paris affects to laugh at his charioteering ; but he heeds not such laughter. On the other hand, what a day^ not of laughter, was that, when he threatened, for lucre's sake, to lay sacrilegious hand on the Palais-Royal Garden !^ The flower-parterres shall be riven up ; the Chestnut Avenues shall fall : time-honoured boscages, under which the Opera Hamadryads were wont to wander, not inexorable to men. Paris moans aloud. Philidor, from his Cafe de la Regence, shall no longer look on greenness ; the loungers and losels of the world, where now shall they haunt? In vain is moaning. The axe glitters ; the sacred groves fall crashing,— for indeed Monseigneur was short of money : the Opera Hamadryads fly with shrieks. Shriek not, ye Opera Hamadryads ; or not as those that have no comfort. He will surround your Garden with new edifices and piazzas : though narrowed, it shall be replanted ; dizened with hydraulic jets, cannon which the sun fires at noon ; things bodily, things spiritual, such as man has not imagined ;— and in the Palais-Royal shall again, and more than ever, be the Sorcerer's Sabbath and Satan-at-Home of our Planet. What will not mortals attempt ? From remote Annonay in the Vivarais, the Brothers Montgolfier send up their paper-dome, filled with the smoke of burnt wool.f The Vivarais Provincial Assembly is to be prorogued this same day : Vivarais Assembly- rnembers applaud, and the shouts of congregated men. Will victorious Analysis scale the very Heavens, then ? Paris hears with eager wonder ; Paris shall ere long see. From Rdveilion's Paper-warehouse there, in the Rue St. Antoine (a noted Warehouse),— the new Mongolfier air-ship launches itself. Ducks and poultry are borne skyward : but now shall men be borne.J: Nay, Chemist Charles thinks of hydrogen and glazed silk. Chemist Charles will himself ascend, from the Tuileries Garden ; Montgolfier solemnly cutting the cord. By Heaven, he also mounts, he and another? Ten times ten thousand hearts go palpitating ; all tongues are mute with wonder and fear ; till a shout, like the voice of seas, rolls after him, on his wild way. He soars, he dwindles upwards ; has become a mere gleaming circlet, —like some Turgotine snuff-box, what we call ' Turootine Platitude ; ' like some new daylight Moon ! Finally he descends ; welcomed by the universe. Duchess Polignac, with a party, is in the Bois de Boulogne, waiting ; though it is drizzly winter, the isk * 1781-82. (Dulaure, viii. 423.) t 5th June, 1783. % October and November, 1783. 46 THE PAPER AGE. of Decsmber 1783, The whole chivalry of France, Duke de Chartres foremost, gallops to receive him.* Beautiful invention ; mounting heavenward, so beautifully, — so unguidably ! Emblem of much, and of our Age of Hope itself ; which shall mount, specifically-light, majestically in this same manner ; and hover, — tumbling whither Fate will. Well if it do not. Pilatre-like, explode ; and <^mc SUclc, iii. 258. t August, 1784. CONTRA T SOCIAL. 47 Through all time, if we read aright, sin was/ is, will be, the parent of misery. This land calls itself most Christian, and has crosses and cathedrals ; but its High-priest is some Roche- Aymon, some Necklace-Cardinal Louis de Rohan. The voice of the poor, through long years, ascends inarticulate, in Jacqtieries^mt^l'mobs,; low-whimpering of infinite moan : unheeded of the Earth ; not unheeded of Heaven. Always moreover where the Millions are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy ; only the Units can flourish ; or say rather, be ruined the last. Industry, all noosed and haltered, as if it too were some beast of chase for the mighty hunters of this world to bait, and cut slices from, — cries passionately to these its well-paid guides and watchers, not, Guide inej but, Laissez /aire, Leave me alone of yotcr guidance ! What market has Industry in this France ? For two things there may be market and demand : for the coarser kind of field-fruits, since the MilHons will live : for the fine kinds of luxury and spicery, — of multiform taste, from opera-melodies down to racers and courtesans ; since the Units will be amused. It is at bottom but a mad state of things. To mend and remake all which we have, indeed, victorious Analysis. Honour to victorious Analysis ; nevertheless, out of the Workshop and Laboratory, what thing was victorious Analysis yet known to make^? Detection of incoherences, mainly ; destruction of the incoherent. From of old, Doubt was but half a magiqian ; she evokes the spectres which she cannot quell. We shall have * endless vortices of froth-logic ; ' whereon first words, and then things, are whirled and swallowed. Rem^ark, accordingly, as acknowledged grounds of Hope, at bottom mere precursors of Despair, this perpetual theorising about Man, the Mind of Man, Philosophy of Government, Progress of the Species and such-like; the main thinking furniture of every head. Time, and so m.any Montesquieus, Mablys, spokesmen of Time, have discovered in- numerable things : and now has not Jean Jacques promulgated his new Evangel of a Contrat Social; explaining the whole mystery of Government, and how it is contracted and bargained for, — to universal satisfaction ? Theories of Government ! Such have been, and will be ; in ages of decadence. Acknowledge them in their degree ; as processes of Nature, who does nothing in vain ; as steps in her great process. Meanwhile, what theory is so certain as this, That all theories, were they never so earnest, painfully elaborated, are, and, by the very conditions of them, must be incomplete, questionable, and even false ? Thou 'shalt know that this Universe is, what it professes to be, an infinite one. Attempt not to swallow 2/, for thy logical digestion ; be thankful, if skilfully planting down this and the other fixed pillar in the chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee. That a new young gener- ation has exchanged the Sceptic Creed, What shall I believe ? for passionate Faith in this Gospel according to Jean Jacques is a further step in the business ; and betokens much. Blessed also is Hope ; and always from the beginning there was some Millennium prophesied ; Millennium of Holiness ; but (what THE PAPER AGE, is notable) never till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease and plentiful Supply. In such prophesied Lubberland, of Happi- ness, Benevolence, and Vice cured of its deformity, trust not, my '\ friends ! Man is not what one calls a happy animal ; his appetite j for sweet victual is so enormous. How, in this wild Universe, \ which storms in on him, infinite, vague-menacing, shall poor man find, say not happiness, but existence, and footing to stand on, if \ it be not by girding himself together for continual endeavour and \ endurance ? Woe, if in his heart there dwelt no devout Faith ; if the word Duty had lost its meaning for him ! For as to this of ' Sentimentalism, so useful for weeping with over romances and on pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily will avail nothing ; nay less. The healthy heart that said to itself, ' How healthy am I was already fallen into the fatalest sort of disease. Is not Sentimental- ism twin-sister to Cant, if not one and the same with it? Is not Cant the materia prima of the Devil ; from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations body themselves ; from which no true thing can come ? For Cant is itself properly a double-distilled Lie ; the second-power of a Lie. And now if a whole Nation fall into that? In such case, I answer, infallibly they will return out of it ! For life is no cun- ningly-devised deception or self-deception : it is a great truth that thou art alive, that thou hast desires, necessities; neither can these subsist and satisfy themselves on delusions, but on fact. To fact, depend on it, we shall come back : to such fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom for. The lowest, least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals have ever based them- selves, seems to be the primitive one of Cannibalism : That /can devour Thee. What if such Primitive Fact were precisely the one we had (with our improved methods) to revert to, and begin anew from ! CHAPTER VIIL PRINTED PAPER. In such a practical France, let the theory of Perfectibility say what it will, discontents cannot be wanting : your promised Re- formation is so indespensable ; yet it comes not ; who will begin it — with himself? Discontent with what is around us, still more with what is above us, goes on increasing ; seeking ever new vents. Of Street Ballads, of Epigrams that from of old tempered Des- !)otism, we need not speak. Nor of Manuscript Newspapers, Nenvelles d la main) do we speak. Bachaumont and his jpur-[ neymen and followers may close those ' thirty volumes oi scur- ^ *riIous eaves-dropping,' and quit that trade ; tor at length if npt ^ PRINTED PAPER. 49 liberty of the Press, there is Hcense. Pamphlets can be surrepti- titiously vended and read in Paris, did they even bear to be * Printed at Pekin.' We have a Coiirrier cie V Europe in those years, regularly published at London ; by a De Morande, whom the guillotine has not yet devoured. There too an unruly Linguet, still unguillotined, when his own country has become too hot for him, and his brother Advocates have cast him out, can emit his hoarse wailings, and Bastille Devoilee (Bastille unveiled). Loqua- cious Abbe Raynal, at length, has his wish ; sees the Histoire Philosophique^ with its ' lubricity/ unveracity, loose loud eleuthero- maniac rant (contributed, they say, by Philosophedom at large, though in the Abbe's name, and to his glory), burnt by the com- mon hangman ; — and sets out on his travels as a martyr. It was the edition of 1781 ; perhaps the last notable book that had such fire- beatitude, — the hangman discovering now that it did not serve. Again, in Courts of Law, with their money-quarrels, divorce- cases, wheresoever a glimpse into the household existence can be had, what indications ! The Parlements of Besangon and Aix ring, audible to all France, with the amours and destinies of a young Mirabeau. He, under the nurture of a ^ Friend of Men,' has, in State Prisons, in marching Regiments, Dutch Authors'- garrets, and quite other scenes, ' been for twenty years learning to resist * despotism :' despotism of men, and alas also of gods. How, beneath this rose-coloured veil of Universal Benevolence and Astrcea Rediix^ is the sanctuary of Home so often a dreary void, or a dark contentious Hell-on-Earth ! The old Friend of Men has his own divorce case too ; and at times, ' his Avhole family 'but one' under lock and key : he writes much about reforming and enfranchising the world ; and for his own private behoof he has needed sixty Lettres-de-Cachet. A man of insight too ; with resolution, even with manful principle : but in such an element, • inward and outward ; which he could not rule, but only madden. Edacity, rapacity ; — quite contrary to the finer sensibilities of the ' heart ! Fools, that expect your verdant Millennium, and nothing but Love and Abundance, brooks running wine, winds whispering music, — with the whole ground and basis of your existence champed into a mud of Sensuality ; which, daily growing deeper, will soon have no bottom but the Abyss ! Or consider that unutterable business of the Diamond Neck- lace. Red-hatted Cardinal Louis de Rohan ; Sicilian jail-bird Balsamo Cagliostro ; milliner Dame de Lamotte, * with a face of . , * some piquancy the highest Church Dignitaries waltzing, in Waipurgis Dance, with quack-prophets, pickpurses and public women ; — a whole Satan's Invisible World displayed ; working there continually under the daylight visible one ; the smoke of its torment going up for ever ! The Throne has been brought into scandalous collision v/ith the Treadmill. Astonished Europe rings with the mystery for ten months ; sees only lie unfold itself fr< iTi lie ; corruption among the lofty and the low, gulosity, credulity, imbecility, strength nowhere but in the hunger. Weep, fair Queen, thy first tears of unmixed wretchedness 1 Thy fair name THE PAPER AGE, has been tarnished by foul breath ; irremediably while life lasts- No more shalt thou be loved and pitied by living hearts, till a new generation has been born, and thy own heart lies cold, cured of all its sorrows. — The Epigrams henceforth become, not sharp and bitter: but cruel, atrocious, unmentionable. On that 31st of May, 1786, a miserable Cardinal Grand- Almoner Rohan, on issuing from his Bastille, is escorted by hurrahing crowds : unloved he, and worthy of no love ; but important since the Court and Queen are his enemies.^ How is our bright Era of Hope dimmed ; and the whole sky growing bleak with signs of hurricane and earthquake ! It is a doomed world : gone all ' obedience that made men free ; ^ fast going the obedience that made men slaves, — at least to one another. Slaves only of their own lusts they now are, and will be. Slaves of sin ; inevitably also of sorrow. Behold the m^ouldering mass of Sensuality and Falsehood ; round which plays foolishly, itself a corrupt phosphorescence, some glimmer of Sentimentalism; — and over all, rising, as Ark of their Covenant, the grim Pati- bulary Fork ' forty feet high ; ' which also is now nigh rotted. Add only that the French Nation distinguishes itself among Nations by the characteristic of ExcitabiUty ; with the gpod, but also with the perilous evil, which belongs to that. RebeUion, explosion, of unknown extent is to be calculated on. There are, as Chesterfield wrote, 'all the symptoms I have ever met with in History Shall we say, then : Wo to Philosophism, that it destroyed Religion, what it called ' extinguishing the abomination {ecrascr ' riTifdme) ' ? Wo rather to those that made the Holy an abomina- tion, and extinguishable ; wo to all men that live in such a time of world-abomination and world-destruction ! Nay, answer the Courtiers, it was Turgot, it was Necker, with their mad innovating; it was the Queen's want of etiquette ; it w^as he, it was she, it was that. Friends ! it was every scoundrel that had lived, and quack- like pretended to be doing, and been only eating and ;;//^doing, in all provinces of life, as Shoeblack or as Sovereign Lord, each in his degree, from the time of Charlemagne and earlier. All this (for be sure no falsehood perishes, but is as seed sown out to grow) has been storing itself for thousands of years ; and now the account-day has come. And rude will the settlement be : of wrath laid up against the day of wrath. O my Brother, be not thou a Quack ! Die rather, if thou wilt take counsel ; 'tis but dying once, and thou art quit of it for ever. Cursed is that trade ; and bears curses, thou knowest not how, long ages after thou art departed, and the wages thou hadst are all consumed ; nay, as the ancient wise have written, — through Eternity itself, and is verily marked in the Doom-Book of a God ! Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as wc said, Hope is but deferred ; not abolished, not a])olishable. It is very /lotablc, and touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the French Nation through all its wild destinies. For we shall Fils Adoptif, Ahimoircs dc Mirabcaiit iv. 325. PRINTED PAPER. 51 #till find Hope shining, be it for fond invitation, be it for anger and menace ; as a mild heavenly light it shone ; as a red conflagration it shines : burning sulphurous blue, through darkest regions of Terror, it still shines ; and goes not out at all, since Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era still to be named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,— when there is nothing left but Hope. But if any one would know summarily what a Pandora's Box lies there for the opening, he may see it in what by its nature is the symptom of all symptoms, the surviving Literature of the Period. Abbe Raynal, with his lubricity and loud loose rant, has spoken his word ; and already the fast-hastening generation responds to another. Glance at Beaumarchais' Mariage de E'igaro ; which now (in 1784), after difficulty enough, has issued on the stage ; and ' runs its hundred nights,' to the admiration of all men. By what virtue or internal vigour it so ran, the reader of our day will rather wonder : — and indeed will know so much the better that it flattered some pruriency of the time ; that it spoke what all were feeling, and longing to speak. Small substance in that Figaro : thin wire- drawn intrigues, thin wiredrawn sentiments and sarcasms ; a thing leai}, barren; yet which winds and whisks itself, as through a VvhoUy mad universe, adroitly, with a high-sniffing air : wherein each, as was hinted, which is the grand secret, may see some image of himself, and of his own state and ways. So it runs its hundred nights, and all France runs with it ; laughing applause. If the soliloquising Barber ask: ''What has your Lordship done to earn all this ? and can only answer : " You took the trouble to be born {Vous voiis etes domte la peine de naitre)" all men must laugh : and a gay horse-racing Anglomaniac Noblesse loudest of all. For how can small books have a great danger in them ? asks the Sieur Caron ; and fancies his thin epigram may be a kind of reason. Conqueror of a golden fleece, by giant smuggling ; tamer of hell-dogs, in the Parlement Maupeou ; and finally crowned Orpheus in the Theatre Francais, Beaumarchais has now cul- minated, and unites the attributes of several demigods. We shall meet him once again, in the course of his decline. Still more significant are two Books produced on the eve of tlie ever-memorable Explosion itself, and read eagerly by all the world : Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie, and Louvet's Chevalier de Faublas. Noteworthy Books ; which may be considered as the last speech of old Feudal France. In the first there rises melodi- ously, as it were, the wail of a moribund world : everywhere wholesome Nature in unequal conflict with diseased perfidious Art ; cannot escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest island of the sea. Ruin and death must strike down the loved one : and, what is most significant of all, death even here not by necessity, but by etiquette. What a world of prurient corruption lies visible in that super-sublime of modesty ? Yet, on the whole, our good Saint-Pierre is musical, poetical though most morbid s we will call his Book the swan-song of old dying France. S2 THE PAPER AGE, Louvets, again, let no man account musical. Truly if this wretched i^^z^^/^i- is a death-speech, it is one under the Wllows and by a felon that does not repent. Wretched cloaca of a Book ' without depth even as a cloaca! What ' picture of French society' IS here ? Picture properly of nothing, if not of the mind that gave It out as some sort of picture. Yet symptom of much: above aU, of the world that could nourish itself tUrcon. 53 BOOK THIRD. THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS. CHAPTER I. DISHONOURED BILLS. Whil^ the unspeakable confusion is every where weltering within, and through so many cracks in the surface sulphur-smoke is issuing, the question arises : Through what crevice will the main Explosion carry itself? Through which of the old craters or chimneys ; or must it, at once, form a new crater for itself? In every Society are such chimneys, are Institutions serving as such : even Constantinople is not without its safety-valves ; there too Discontent can vent itself, — in material fire ; by the number of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the Reigning Power can read the signs of the times, and change course accord- ing to these. We may say that this French Explosion will doubtless first try all the old Institutions oF escape ; for by each of these there is, or at least there used to be, some communication with the interior deep ; they are national Institutions in virtue of that. Had they even become personal Institutions, and what we can call choked up from their original uses, there nevertheless must the impedi- ment be weaker than elsewhere. Through which of them then ? An observer might have guessed : Through the Law Parlements ; above all, through the Parlement of Paris. Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not inacces- sible to the influences of their time ; especially men whose life is business ; who at all turns, were it even from behind judgment- seats, have come in contact with the actual workings of the world. The Counsellor of Parlement, the President himself, who has bought his place with hard money that he might be looked up to by his fellow-creatures, how shall he, in all Philosophe-soirees, and saloons of elegant culture, become notable as a Friend of Darkness ? Among the Paris Long -robes there may be more than one patriotic Malesherbes, whose rule is conscience and the public good ; there are clearly more than one hotheaded D'Espremenilj 54 THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS, to whose confused thought any loud reputation of the Brutus sort may seem glorious. The Lepelletiers, Lamoignons have titles and wealth ; yet, at Court, are only styled ' Noblesse of the Robe.' There are Duports of deep scheme ; Freteaus, Sabatiers, of in- contment tongue : all nursed more or less on the milk of the Contrat Social. Nay, for the whole Body, is not this patriotic opposition also a fighting for oneself? Awake, Parlement of Paris^ renew thy long warfare ! Was not the Parlement Maupeou abolished with ignominy ? Not now hast thou to dread a Louis XIV., with the crack of his whip, and his Olympian looks ; not now a Richelieu and Bastilles : no, the whole Nation is behind thee. Thou too (O heavens !) mayest become a Pohtical Power ; and with the shakings of thy horse-hair wig shake principalities and dynasties, like a very Jove with his ambrosial curls ! Light old M. de Maurepas, since the end of 1781, has been fixed in the frost of death : " Never more,'' said the good Louis. " shall I hear his step overhead ; " his light jestings and gyratings are at an end. No more can the importunate reality be hidden by pleasant wit, and today's evil be deftly rolled over upon tomorrow. The morrow itself has arrived ; and now nothmg but a solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull matter of fact, iiks some dull punctual Clerk (which he originally was) ; admits what cannot be denied, let the remedy come whence it will. In him is no remedy ; only clerklike ' despatch of business ' according to routine. The poor King, grown older yet hardly more experienced, must himself, with such no-faculty as he has, begin governing ; wherein also his Queen will give help. Bright Queen, with her quick clear glances and impulses ; clear, and even noble ; but all too superficial, vehement-shallow, for that work ! To govern France were such a problem ; and now it has grown well-nigh too hard to govern even the CEil-de-Boeuf. For if a distressed People has its cry, so likewise, and more audibly, has a bereaved Court. To the CEil-de-Boeuf it remains inconceivable how, in a France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry : did it not use to flow ? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of parsimony, has ' suppressed above six hundred places,' before the Courtiers could oust him ; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was. Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian manoeuvres ; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected military men ; the Mous- quetaires, with much else are suppressed : for he too was one of your suppressors ; and unsettling and oversetting, did mere mischief— to the OEil-de-Bocuf. Complaints abound ; scarcity, anxiety : it is a changed CEil-de-Boeuf. Besenval says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy (such a iristcsse) about Court, compared with former days, as made it quite dispirit- ing to look upon. No wonder that the CEil-de-Bceuf feels melancholy, when you are suppressing its places ! Not a place can be suppressed, but some purse is the lighter for it ; and more than one heart the heavier; DISHONOURED BILLS. 55 For did it not employ the working-clafeses too, — manufacturers, male and female, of laces, essences ; of Pleasure generally, who- soever could manufacture Pleasure ? Miserable economies ; never felt over Twenty-five MilHons ! So, however, it goes on : and is not yet ended. Few years more and the Wolf-hounds shall fall suppressed, the Bear-hounds, the Falconry ; places shall fall, thick as autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac demonstrates, to the complete silencing of ministerial logic, that his place cannot be abolished ; then gallantly, turning to the Queen, surrenders it, since her Majesty so wishes. Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny, and yet not luckier : " We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I," said King Louis ; but if he had even struck me, I could not have blamed him."^ In regard to such matters there can be but one opinion. Baron Besenval, with that frankness of speech which stamps the independent man, plainly assures her Majesty that it is frightful {affreiix) ; " you go to bed, and are not sure but you shall rise impoverished on the morrow : one might as well be in Turkey." It is indeed a dog's life. How singular this perpetual distress of the royal treasury \ And yet it is a thing not more incredible than undeniable. A thing mournfully true : the stumbling-block on which all Ministers successively stumble, and fall. Be it ' want of fiscal genius,' or some far other want, there is the palpablest discrepancy between Revenue and Expenditure ; a Deficit of the Revenue : you niust ^ choke {combler) the Deficit/ or else it will swallow you ! This is the stern problem ; hopeless seemingly as squaring of the circle. Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do no- thing with it ; nothing but propose loans, which were tardily filled up ; impose new taxes, unproductive of money, productive of clamour and discontent. As little could Controller d'Ormesson do, or even less ; for if Joly maintained himself beyond year and day, d'Ormesson reckons only by months : till ' the King purchased Rambouillet without consulting him,' which he took as a hint to withdraw. And so, towards the end of 1783, matters threaten to come to still-stand. Vain seems human ingenuity. In vain has our newly-devised ' Council of Finances' struggled, our Intendants of Finance, Controller-General of Finances : there are unhappily no Finances to control. Fatal paralysis invades the social move- ment ; clouds, of bhndness or of blackness, envelop us : are we breaking down, then, into the black horrors of National Bank- ruptcy ? Great is Bankruptcy : the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing ; whither, from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment, — with the answer. No effects. Pity only that it often had so long a circula- tion : that the original forger were so seldom he who bore the final smart of it ! * Lies, and the burden of evil they bring, are passed * Besenval, iii. 255-58, 56 THE PAR LEMENT OF PARIS. on ; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank • and land ultmiately on the dumb lowest rank, who wkh spade and ^h real,;" T^'' ^^''^ ^"""^ '^^^2% witn reality, and can pass the cheat no further. Observe nevertheless how, by a just compensating taw if the he with Its burden (in this confused whirlpool of See W) sinks and IS shifted ever downwards, then in return the distress of k rises ever upwards and upwards. Whereby, after the long pinTng and demi-starvat.on of those Twenty Millions a Duke de Co gnv and f.t *?^^^'\t'°"'" *° ^^^^ their 'rekl quarrel.' Sufh lslhe onTvtv^ RLk^'"f ' long intervals, and wer; k only by Bankruptcy, matters round again to the mark But with a f ortunatus' Purse in his pocket, through what length of time might not almost any Falsehood last ! Your Society your Household, practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue Sst offensive to the eye of God and man. NcN ertheless its hearth k warm, its larder well replenished: the innuSe SwTss o ?v nlmAhlp. ^^"""^ °^ ^'^y^''^' gather round it ; will prove by pamphleteering, musketeenng, that it is a truth ; or if not an atTrZi.T""'''^'^'""P?^""^) T™*' '^'^ better, a wLlesomel^ Q^Z^^i^l'i^V"''^''' lamb), and works welL Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow empty ' "glll^^^ .^^l^^Z^^^r^t so true, so accordant to Nature's ways! then how, m the name of wonder, has Nature, with her infinite wome^a'.T'n'°H- r^ it. famishing there.? To all men, to all women and a 1 children, it is now indutiable that your Arrangement \ Bankruptcy ; ever right'^ous on thi grea scale, though m detail it is so cruel ! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mming. No Falsehood, did i t rise heaven- high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it, '^^^^11. CHAPTER 11. CONTROLLER CALONNE. Under such circumstances of tristesse, obstruction and sick Jangour, when to an exasperated Court it seems as if fiscal genius ftad departed from among men, what apparition could be welcome! than that of M. de Calonne? Calonne, a mA of indisputable genius ; even fiscal gennis, more or less; of experience both in managing Finance and Parlements, for he has been Intendant at Metz, at Lille ; King's Procureur at Douai. A man of weight connected with the moneyed classes : of unstained name -if it ^^!a^ ""n peccadillo (of showing a Client's Letter) in that old U Aigiullon-Lachalotais business, as good as forgotten now, He CONTROLLER CALONNE. 57 has kinsmen of heavy purse, felt on the Stock Exchange. Our Foulons, Berthiers intrigue for him : — old Foulon, who has now nothing to do but intrigue ; who is known and even seen to be what they call a scoundrel ; but of unmeasured wealth ; who, from Commissariat-clerk which he once was, may hope, some think, if the game go right, to be Minister himself one day. Such propping and backing has M. de Calonne ; and then intrinsically such quahties ! Hope radiates from his face ; persuasion hangs on his tongue. For all straits he has present | remedy, and will make the world roll on wheels before him. On the 3d of November 1783, the CEil-de-Boeuf rejoices in its new Controller-General. Calonne also shall have trial ; Calonne also, in his way, as Turgot and Neckerhad done in theirs, shall forward the consummation ; suffuse, with one other flush of brilliancy, our now too leaden-coloured Era of Hope, and wind it up— into fulfil- ment. Great, in any case, is the felicity of the CEil-de-Boeuf Stingi- ness has fled from these royal abodes : suppression ceases ; your Besenval may go peaceably to sleep, sure that he shall awake iinplundered. Smiling Plenty, as if conjured by some enchanter, has returned ; scatters contentment from her new-flowing horn. And mark what suavity of manners 1 A bland smile distinguishes our Controller : to all men he listens with an air of interest, nay of anticipation ; makes their own wish clear to themselves, and grants it ; or at least, grants .conditional promise of it." " I fear this is a matter of difficulty,'' said her Majesty.—" Madame," answered the Controller, 'Sf it is but difficult, it is done ; if it is impossible, it shall be done {se /era):' A man of such 'facility' withal. To observe him in the pleasure-vortex of society, which none partakes of with more gusto, you might ask. When does he work ? And yet his work, as we see, is never behindhand ; above all, the fruit of his work : ready-money. Truly a man of incredible facility ; facile action, facile elocution, facile thought : how, in mild suasion, philosophic depth sparkles up from him, as mere wit and lambent sprightliness ; and in her Majesty's Soirees, with the weight of a world lying on him, he is the delight of men and women ! By what magic does he accomphsh miracles? By the - only true magic, that of genius. Men name him ' the Minister ; ' as indeed, when was there another such Crooked things are j become straight by him, rough places plain ; and over the (Eil- ; de-Boeuf there rests an unspeakable sunshine. Nay, in seriousness, let no man say that Calonne had not genius : genius for Persuading ; before all things, for Borrowing. With the skilfulest judicious appliances of underhand money, he keeps the Stock-Exchanges flourishing ; so that Loan after Loan is filled up as soon as opened. ' Calculators likely to know'* have * calculated that he spent, in extraordinaries, ' at the rate of one ' million daily ; ' which indeed is some fifty thousand pounds Sterling ; but did he not procure something with it ; namely peace * Besenval, iii. 216. 5B THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS, asid prosperity, for the time being ? Philosophedom grumbles and croaks ; buys, as we said, 80,000 copies of Necker's new Book : but Nonpareil Calonne, in her Majesty's Apartment, with the glittering retinue of Dukes, Duchesses, and mere happy admiring faces, can let Necker and Philosophedom croak. The misery is, such a time cannot last ! Squandering, and Payment by Loan is no way to choke a Deficit. Neither is oil the substance for quenching conflagrations ; — but, only for assuaging them, not permanently ! To the Nonpareil himself, ivlio wanted not insight, it is clear at intervals, and dimly certain at all times, that his trade is by nature temporary, growing daily more difficult ; that changes incalculable lie at no great distance. Apart from financial Deficit, the world is wholly in such a new- fangled humour ; all things working loose from their old fastenings, towards new issues and combinations. There is not a dwarf jokei^ a cropt Brutus'-head, or Anglomaniac horseman rising on his stirrups, that does not betoken change. But what then ? The day, in any case, passes pleasantly ; for the morrow, if the morrow come, there shall be counsel too. Once mounted (by munfficence, suasion, magic of genius) high enough in favour with the CEil-de-Bceuf, with the King, Queen, Stock-Exchange, and so far as possible with all men, a Nonpareil Controller may hope to go careering through the Inevitable, in some unimagined way, as handsomely as another. At all events, for these three miraculous years, it has been expedient heaped on expedient ; till now, with such cumulation and height, the pile topples perilous. And here has this world's- wonder of a Diamond Necklace brought it at last to the clear verge of tumbhng. Genius in that direction can no more ; mounted high enough, or not mounted, we must fare forth. Hardly is poor Rohan, the Necklace-Cardinal, safely bestowed in the Auvergne Mountains, Dame de Lamotte (unsafely) in the Salpetriere, and that mournful business hushed up, when our sanguine Controller once more astonishes the world. An expe- dient, unheard of for these hundred and sixty years, has been propounded ; and, by dint of suasion (for his light audacity, his hope and eloquence are matchless) has been got adopted,— Convocation of the Notables. Let notable persons, the actual or virtual rulers of their districts, be summoned from all sides of France : let a true tale, of his Majesty's patriotic purposes and wretched pecuniary impossibili- ties, be suasively told them ; and then the question put : What are we to do ? \Surely to adopt healing measures ; such as the magic of genius will unfold ; such as, once san -^tioned by Notables, all Parlements and all men must, with more or less reluctance^ submit to. THE NOTABLES. 59 CHAPTER III. THE NOTABLES. Here, then, is verily a sign and wonder ; visible to the whole world ; bodeful of much. The CEil-de-Boeuf dolorously grumbles ; were we not well as we stood —quenching conflagrations by oil? Constitutional Philosophedom starts with joyful surprise ; stares eao-erly what the result will be. The public creditor, the public debtor, the whole thinking and thoughtless public have their several surprises, joyful or sorrowful. Count Mirabeau, who has got his matrimonial and other Lawsuits huddled up, better or worse ; and works now in the dimmest element at Berlin ; com- pihng ^Prussian MonarcJiies, Pamphlets On Cagliostro; writing, with pay, but not with honourable recognition, innumerable Despatches for his Government,— scents or descries richer quarry from afar. He, like an eagle or vulture, or mixture of both, preens his wings for flight homewards.* M. de Calonne has stretched out an Aaron's Rod over France ; miraculous ; and is summoning quite unexpected things. Auda- city and hope alternate in him with misgivings ; though the sanguine-valiant side carries it. Anon he writes to an mtimate friend, " Je me fais pitie a moi-mhne (I am an object of pity to myself) ; " anon, invites some dedicating Poet or Poetaster to sing ' this Assembly of the Notables and the Revolution that is 'preparing.'t Preparing indeed ; and a matter to be sung,— only not till we have seen it, and what the issue of it is. In deep obscure unrest, all things have so long gone rocking and swaying : will M. de Calonne, with this his alchemy of the Notables, fasten aU together again, and get new revenues ? Or wrench all asunder ; so that it go^no longer rocking and swaying, but clashing and colliding? ^ , , u c Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold men of weight and influence threading the great vortex of French Loco- motion, each on his several line, from all sides of France towards the Chateau of Versailles : summoned thither de par le rot. There, on the 22d day of February 1787, they have met, and got installed : Notables to the number of a Hundred and Thirty-seven, as we count them name by name :J add Seven Princes of the Blood, it makes the round Gross of Notables. Men of the sword, men of the robe ; Peers, dignified Clergy, Parlementary Presidents : divided into Seven Boards {Bureaux) ; under our Seven Prmces of the Blood, Monsieur, D Artois, Penthievre, and the rest ; among whom let not our new Duke d'Orleans (for, since 1785, he is Chartres no longer) be forgotten. Never yet made Admiral, and * Fils Adoptif, Memoires de Mirabeau, t. iv. livv. 4 et $. t Biographie Universelle, § C\^lonne {by Guizot). X Lacretelle, iii. 286. ^ Montgaillard, i. 347. 6o THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS. now turning the corner of his fortieth year, with spoiled blood and prospects ; half-weary of a world which is more than half-weary of him, Monseigneur's future is most questionable. Not in illumina- tion and insight, not even in conflagration ; but, as was said, ' in ' dull smoke and ashes of outburnt sensualities,' does he live and digest. Sumptuosity and sordidness ; revenge, life-weariness, ambition, darkness, putrescence ; and, say, in sterling money, three hundred thousand a year,- were this poor Prince once to burst loose from his Court-moorings, to what regions, with what phenomena, might he not sail and drift ! Happily as yet he * affects to hunt daily ; ' sits there, since he must sit, presiding i that Bureau of his, with dull moon-visage, dull glassy eyes, as if ' it were a mere tedium to him. We observe finally, that Count Mirabeau has actually arrived. He descends from Berlin, on the scene of action ; glares into it with flashing sun-glance ; discerns that it will do nothing for him. He had hoped these Notables might need a Secretary. They do need one ; but have fixed on Dupont de Nemours ; a man of smaller fame, but then of better ;— who indeed, as his friends often hear, labours under this complaint, surely not a universal one, of having ' five kings to correspond with.'* The pen of a Mirabeau cannot become an official one ; nevertheless it remains a pen. In defect of Secretaryship, he sets to denouncing Stock-brokerage {Denonciation de V Agiotage) ; testifying, as his wont is, by loud bruit, that he is present and busy ;— till, warned by friend Talley- rand, and even by Calonne himself underhand, that ' a seventeenth Lettre-de-Cachet m?iyh& launched against him,' he tirnefully flits over the marches. And now, in stately royal apartments, as Pictures of that time still represent them, our hundred and forty-four Notables sit organised; ready to hear and consider. Controller Calonne is dreadfully behindhand with his speeches, his preparatives ; how- ever, the man's ' facility of work ' is known to us. For freshness of style, lucidity, ingenuity, largeness of view, that opening Harangue of his was unsurpassable :— had not the subject-matter been .so appalling. A Deficit, concerning which accounts vary, and the Controller's own account is not unquestioned ; but which all accounts agree in representing as ' enormous.' This is the epitome of our Controller's difficulties : and then his means } Mere Tur- ^ gotism ; for thither, it seems, we must come at last : Provincial Assemblies ; new Taxation ; nay, strangest of all, new Land-tax, what he calls Subventlo7t Terrztoriale, from which neither Privi- ledged nor Unprivileged, Noblemen, Clergy, nor Parlementeers, shall be exempt ! Foolish enough ! These Privileged Classes have been used to tax ; levying toll, tribute and custom, at all hands, while a penny- was left : but to Ido themselves taxed Of such Privileged persons, meanwhile, do these Notables, all but the merest fraction, consist Headlong Calonne had given no heed to the ' composition,' or judicious packing of them ; but chosen such Notables as were * Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau (Pans, 1832), p. 20, THE NOTABLES. 6i really notable ; trusting for the issue to off-hand ingenuity, good fortune, and eloquence that never yet failed. Headlong Controller- General ! Eloquence can do much, but not all. Orpheus, with eloquence grown rhythmic, musical (what we call Poetry), drew iron tears from the cheek of Pluto : but by what witchery of rhyme or prose wilt thou from the pocket of Plutus draw gold 1 Accordingly, the storm that now rose and began to whistle round Calonne, first in these Seven Bureaus, and then on the outside of them, awakened by them, spreading wider and wider over all France, threatens to become unappeasable. A Deficit so enormous ! Mismanagement, profusion is too clear. Peculation itself is hinted at ; nay, Lafayette and others go so far as to speak it out, with attempts at proof. The blame of his Deficit our brave Calonne, as was natural, had endeavoured to shift from himself on his prede- cessors ; not excepting even Necker. But now Necker vehemently denies ; whereupon an ^ angry Correspondence,' which also finds its way into print. ^ In the GEil-de-Boeuf, and her Majesty's private Apartments, an eloquent Controller, with his " Madame, if it is but difficult," had been persuasive : but, alas, the cause is now carried elsewhither. Behold him, one of these sad days, in Monsieur's Bureau ; to which all the other Bureaus have sent deputies. He is standing at bay : alone ; exposed to an incessant fire of questions, interpellations, objurgations, from those ' hundred and thirty-seven ' pieces of logic-ordnance, — what we may well call douches a feu, fire-mouths literally ! Never, according to Besenval, or hardly ever, had such display of intellect, dexterity, coolness, suasive eloquence, been made by man. To the raging play of so many fire-mouths he opposes nothing angrier than light-beams, self-possession and fatherly smiles. With the imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps answering the incessant volley of fiery cap- tious questions, reproachful interpellations ; in words prompt as lightning, quiet as light. Nay, the cross-fire too : such side questions and incidental interpellations as, in the heat of the main- battle, he (having only one tongue) could not get answered ; these also he takes up at the first slake ; answers even these.* Could blandest suasive eloquence have saved France, she were saved. Heavy-laden Controller ! In the Seven Bureaus seems nothing but hindrance : in Monsieur's Bureau, a Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, with an eye himself to the Controller- ship, stirs up the Clergy; there are meetings, underground intrigues. Neither from without anywhere comes sign of help or hope. For the Nation (where Mirabeau is now, with stentor-lungs, ' denouncing Agio') the Controller has hitherto done nothing, or less. For Philosophedom he has done as good as nothing,— sent out some scientific Laperouse, or the like : and is he not in ' angry correspondence' with its Necker? The very (Eil-de-Boeuf looks questionable ; a falling Controller has no friends. Solid M. de Vergennes, who with his phlegmatic judicious punctuality might kave kept down many things, died the very week before these * Besenval, iii. 196. 62 sorrowful Notables met. And now a Seal-keeper, Garcic-dcs- Sceaux Mironienii is thought to be playing the traitor : spinning plots for Lomenie-Brienne ! Queen's- Reader Abbe de Vermond, unloved individual, was Brienne's creature, the work of his hands from the first : it may be feared the backstairs passage is open, the ground getting mined under our feet. Treacherous Garde-des- Sceaux Miromenil, at least, should be dismissed ; Lamoignon, the eloquent Notable, a stanch man, with connections, and even ideas, Parlement-President yet intent on reforming Parlements^ were not he the right Keeper ? So, for one, thinks busy Besenval ; and, at dinner-table, rounds the same into the Controller's ear, — who always, in the intervals of landlord-duties, listens to him aa with charmed look, but answers nothing positive."^ Alas, what to answer ? The force of private intrigue, and then also the force of public opinion, grows so dangerous, confused 1 Philosophedom sneers aloud, as if its Ne^^-er already triumphed. The gaping populace gapes over Wood-cuts or Copper-cuts ; where, for example, a Rustic is represented convoking the Poultry of his barnyard, with this opening address : " Dear animals, 1 " have assembled you to advise me what sauce I shall dress you "with; ''to which a Cock responding, ''We don't want to be " eaten," is checked by '' You wander from the point ( Vous vous " ecartez de la qucstioii)r\ Laughter and logic ; ballad-singer, pamphleteer ; epigram and caricature : what wind of public opinion is this,— as if the Cave of the Winds were bursting loose ! At nightfall. President Lamoignon steals over to the Controller's ; finds him ' walking with large strides in his chamber, like one out ' of himself. 'J With rapid confused speech the Controller begs M. de Lamoignon to give him ' an advice.' Lamoignon candidly answers that, except in regard to his own anticipated Keepership, unless that would prove remedial, he really cannot take upon him to advise. [ On the Monday after Easter,' the 9th of April 1787, a date one rejoices to verify, tor nothing can excel the indolent falsehood of these Histoircs and Me moires^ — ' On the Monday after Easter, as ' I, Besenval, was riding towards Romainville to'the Marechal de ' Segur's, I met a friend on the Boulevards, who told me that M. ' de Calonne was out A little further on came M. tlie Duke ' d'Orleans, dashing towards me, head to the wind' (trotting d VAnglaise)^ ' and confirmed the news.'§ It is true news. Treacher- ous Garde-des-Sceaux Miromenil is gone, and Lamoignon is appointed in his room : 1)';! appointed for his own profit only, not for the Controller's: 'next dny' the Controller also has had to move. A little longer he may linger near ; be seen among the money changers, and even 'working in the Controller's office,' where much lies unfinished : l)ut neither will that hold. Too strong blows and beats tliis tempest of public opinion, of private intrigue, as from the Cave of all the Winds ; and blows him * Besenval, iii. 203. t Republished in the Musde dc la Caricature (Paris, 1834). j Besenval, iii. 209. § lb. iii. 2n. THE NOTABLES. €3 (higher Authority giving sign) out of Paris and France, — over the horizon, into Invisibihty, or uuter Darkness. Such destiny the magic of genius could not forever avert. Ungrateful CEil-de-Boeuf 1 did he not miraculously rain gold manna on you ; so that, as a Courtier said, " All the world held out its hand, and I held out my hat," — for a time ? Himself is poor ; penniless, had not a ' Financier's widow in Lorraine' offered him, though he was turned of fifty, her hand and the rich purse it held. Dim henceforth shall be his activity, though unwearied : Letters to the King, Appeals, Prognostications ; Pamphlets (from London), written with the old suasive facility ; which however do not persuade. Luckily his widow's purse fails not. Once, in a year or two, some shadow of him shall be seen hovering on the Northern Border, seeking* election as National Deputy ; but be sternly beckoned away. Dimmer then, far-borne over utmost European lands, in uncertain twilight of diplomacy, he shall hover, intriguing for ^ Exiled Princes,' and have adventures ; be overset into the Rhine stream and half-drowned, nevertheless save his papers dry. Unwearied, but in vain ! In France he works miracles no more ; shall hardly return thither to find a grave. Farewell, thou facile sanguine Controller-General, with thy light rash hand, thy suasive mouth of gold : worse men there have been, and better ; but to thee also was allotted a task, — of raising the wind, and the winds ; and thou hast done it. But now, while Ex- Controller Calonne flies storm-driven over the horizon, in this singular way, what has become of the Con- trollership It hangs vacant, one may say ; extinct, like the Moon in her vacant interlunar cave. Two prehminary shadows, poor M. Fourqueux, poor M. Villedeuil, do hold in quick succession some simulacrum of it,*— as the new Moon will sometimes shine out with a dim preliminary old one in her arms. Be patient, ye Notables ! An actual new Controller is certain, and even ready ; were the indispensable manoeuvres but gone through. Long- headed Lamoignon, with Home Secretary Breteuil, and Foreign Secretary Montmorin have exchanged looks ; let these three once meet and speak. Who is it that is strong in the Queen's favour, and the Abbe de Vermond's ? That is a man of great capacity 1 Or at least that has struggled, these fifty years, to have it thought great ; now, in the Clergy's name, demanding to have Protestant death-penalties ^ put in execution ; ' no flaunting it in the OEil-de- Boeuf, as the gayest man-pleaser and woman-pleaser ; gleaning even a good word from Philosophedom and your Voltaires and D'Alemberts ? With a party ready-made for him in the Notables — Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse ! answer all the three, with the clearest instantaneous concord ; and rush off to propose him to the King ; * in such haste,' says Besenval, ' that M. de Lamoignon bad to borrow a simarre; seemingly some kind «f cloth apparatus necessary for that.f Lomdnie-Brienne, who had all his hfe ' felt a kind of predestin- * Besenval, iii. 225. f lb. iii. 224, 64 THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS, ' ation for the highest offices,' has now therefore obtained them. He presides over the Finances ; he shall have the title of Prime Minister itself, and the effort of his long life be reahsed. Un- happy only that it took such talent and industry to gain the place ; that to qualify for it hardly any talent or industry was left disposable ! Looking now into his inner man, what qualification he may have, Lomenie beholds, not without astonishment, next to nothing but vacuity and possibihty. ^ Principles or methods, acquirement outward or inward (for his very body is wasted, by- hard tear and wear) he finds none ; not so much as a plan, even an unwise one. Lucky,in these circumstances, that Calonne has had a plan ! Calonne's plan was gathered from Turgofs and Necker's by compilation ; shall become Lomenie's by adoption. Not in vain has Lomenie studied the working of the British Con- stitution ; for he professes to have some Anglomania, of a sort. Why, in that free country, does one Minister, driven out by Parliament, vanish from his King's presence, and another enter, borne in by Parliament ?^ Surely not for mere change (which is ever wasteful) ; but that all men may have share of what is going ; and so the strife of Freedom indefinitely prolong itself, and no harm be done. The Notables, mollified by Easter festivities, by the sacrifice of Calonne, are not in the worst humour. Already his Maje^y, while the ' interlunar shadows ' were in office, had held session pt Notables ; and from his throne delivered promissory concihatory eloquence : ' the Queen stood waiting at a window, till his carriage ' came back ; and Monsieur from afar clapped hands to her,' in sign that all was well.f It has had the best effect ; if such do but last. Leading Notables meanwhile can be ' caressed ;' Brienne's new gloss, Lamoignon's long head will profit somewhat ; con- ciliatory eloquence shall not be wanting. On the whole, however, is it not undeniable that this of ousting Calonne and adopting the plans of Calonne, is a measure which, to produce its best effect, should be looked at from a certain distance^ cursorily ; not dwelt on with minute near scrutiny. In a word, that no service the Notables could now do were so obliging as, in some handsome manner, to— take themselves away ! Theit ' Six Propositions ' about Provisional Assemblies, suppression of Corvees and suchlike, can be accepted without criticism. The Subvention on Land-tax, and much else, one must glide hastily over ; safe nowhere but in flourishes of conciliatory elo- quence. Till at length, on this 25th of May, year 1787, in solemn final session, there bursts forth what we can call an explosion of eloquence ; King, Lomenie, Lamoignon and retinue taking up the successrve strain ; in harranguesto the number of ten, besides his Majesty's, which last the livelong day --whereby, as in a kind of choral anthem, or bravura peal, of thanks, praises, promises, the Notables are, so to speak, organed out, and dismissed to their respective places of abode. They had sat, and talked, $ome nme ♦ Montgaillard, Histoire de France, i. 4io-i7, \ Jesenval, iii. 220. THE NOTABLES. 65 weeks : they were the first Notables since Richeheu's, in the year 1626. ^ By some Historians, sitting much at their ease, in the safe dis- tanca, Lomenie has been blamed for this dismissal of his Notables : nevertheless it was clearly time. There are things, as we said, which should not be dwelt on with minute close scrutiny : over hot coals you cannot glide too fast. In these Seven Bureaus, where no w^ork could be done, unless talk were work, the questionablest matters were coming up. Lafayette, for example, in Monseigneur d'Artois' Bureau, took upon him to set forth more than one depre- catory oration about Lettres-de-Cachet, Liberty of the Subject, Agio, and suchlike ; w^hich Monseigneur endeavouring to repress, was answered that a Notable being summoned to speak his opinion must speak it.*^ Thus too his Grace the Archbishop of Aix perorating once, with a plamtive pulpit, tone, in these words ? " Tithe, that free-will offer- mg of the piety of Christians " Tithe," interrupted Duke la P.ochefoucault, with the cold business-manner he has learned from the English, " that free-will offering of the piety of Christians ; on which there are now forty-thousand lawsuits in this realm." f Nay, Lafayette, bound to speak his opinion, went the length, one day, of proposing to convoke a ' National Assembly.' You de- mand States-General?" asked Monseigneur with an air of mina- tory surprise.—" Yes, Monseigneur ; and even better than that.'' — Write it," said Monsiegneur to the Clerks.J— Written accord- ingly it is ; and what is more, will be acted by and by. CHAPTER IV. lomenie's edicts. Thus, then, have the Notables returned home ; carrying to all quarters of France, such notions of deficit, decrepitude, distraction; and that States-General will cure it, or will not cure it but kill it. Each Notable, we may fancy, is as a funeral torch ; disclosing hideous abysses, better left hid ! The unquietest humour pos- sesses all men ; ferments, seeks issue, in pamphleteering, carica- turing, projecting, declaiming ; vain jangling of thought, word and deed. It is Spiritual Bankruptcy, long tolerated ; verging now towards Economical Bankruptcy, and become intolerable. For from the * Montgaillard, i. 360. t Dumont, Souve7iirs sur Mirabeau, p. 21. t Toulongeon, Histoire de France depuis la Revolution de 1780 (Paris 1803), 1. app. 4. J ^ \ ^ 66 THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS. lowest dumb rank, the inevitable misery, as was predicted, has spread upwards. In every man is some obscure feeiing that his position, oppressive or else oppressed, is a false one : all men, in one or the other acrid dialect, as assaulters or as defenders, must give vent to the unrest that is in them. Of such stuff national well-being, and the glory of rulers, is not made. O Lomenie, what a wild-heaving, waste-looking, hungry and angry world hast thou, after lifelong effort, got promoted to take charge of ! Lomenie's first Edicts are mere soothing ones : creation of Pro- vincial Assemblies, ^ for apportioning the imposts,' when we get any ; suppression of Corvees or statute-labour ; alleviation of Gabelle. Soothing measures, recommended by the Notables ; long clamoured for by all liberal men. Oil cast on the waters has been known to produce a good effect. Before venturing with great essential measures, Lomenie will see this singular ' swell of the public mind ' abate somewhat. Most proper, surely. But what if it were not a swell of the abating kind ? There are swells that come of upper tempest and wind-gust. But again there are swells that come of subterranean pent wind, some say ; and even of inward decomposion, of decay that has become self-combustion : — as when, according to Neptuno- Plutonic Geology, the World is all decayed down into due attritus of this sort ; and shall now be exploded, and new-made ! These latter abate not by oil. — The fool says in his heart, How shall not tomorrov/ be as yesterday ; as all days, — which were once to- morrows The wise man, looking on this France, moral, intel- lectual, economical, sees, ' in short, ail the symptoms he has ever met with in history,' — 2^;^abatable by soothing Edicts. . Meanwhile, abate or not, cash must be had ; and for that quite another sort of Edicts, namely ' bursal' or fiscal ones. How easy were fiscal Edicts, did you know for certain that the Parlement of Paris would what they call ^ register ' them ! Such right of register- ing, properly of mere writing down, the Parlement has got by old wont ; and, though but a Law- Court, can remonstrate, and higgle considerably about the same. Hence many quarrels ; desperate Maupeou devices, and victory and defeat ;— a quarrel now near forty years long. Hence fiscal Edicts, which otherwise were easy enough, become such problems. For example, is there not Calonne's Stibvejttion Territoriale, universal, unexempting Land- tax ; the sheet-anchor of Finance? Or, to show, so far as possible, that one is not without original finance talent, Lomenie himself can devise an Edit du Ti7?tbre or Stamp-tax, — borrowed also, it is true; but then from America : may it prove luckier in France than there ! France has her resources : nevertheless, it cannot be denied, the aspect of that Parlement is questionable. ^ Already among the Notables, in that final symphony of dismissal, the Paris .President had an ominous tone. Adrien Duport, quitting magnetic sleep, in this agitation of the world, threatens to rouse himself into ipreter- LOMENIE'S EDICTS, 67 natural wakefulness. Shallower but also louder, there is inagnelic D'Espremenil, with his tropical heat (he was born at Madras); with his dusky confused violence ; holding of Illumination, Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt, Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent things : of whom can come no good. The very Peerage is infected with the leaven. Our Peers have, in too many cases, laid aside their frogs, laces, bagvv'igs ; and go about in English costume, or ride rising in their stirrups, — in the most headlong manner ; nothing but insubordina- tion, eleutheromania, confused unhmited opposition in their heads. Questionable : not to be ventured upon, if we had a Fortunatus' Purse ! But Lomenie has waited all June, casting on the waters what oil he had ; and now, betide as it may, the two Finance Edicts must out. On the 6th of July, he forwards his proposed Stamp-tax and Land-tax to the Parlement of Paris ; and, as if put- ting his own leg foremost, not his borrowed Calonne's-leg, places the Stamp- tax first in order. Alas, the Parlement will not register : the Parlement demands instead a ' state of the expenditure,' a ' state of the contemplated reductions ;' ^states' enough ; which his Majesty must dechne to furnish ! Discussions arise ; patriotic eloquence : the Peers are summoned. Does the Nemean Lion begin to bristle 1 Here surely is a duel, which France and the Universe may look upon : with prayers ; at lowest, with curiosity and bets. Paris stirs with new animation. The outer courts of the Palais de Justice roll with unusual crowds, coming and going ; their huge outer hum mingles with the clang of patriotic eloquence within, and gives vigour to it. Poor Lomenie gazes from the distance, little comforted ; has his invisible emissaries flying to and fro, assiduous, without result. So pass the sultry dog-days, in the most electric manner ; and the whole month of July. And still, in the Sanctuary of Justice, sounds nothmg but Harmodius-Aristogiton eloquence, environed with the hum of crowding Paris ; and no registering accomplished, and no ' states ' furnished. " States ? said a lively Parlementeer : " Messieurs, the states that should be furnished us, in my opinion are the States-General." On which timely joke there follow cachmnatory buzzes of approval. What a word to be spoken in the Palais de Justice ! Old D'Ormesson (the Ex-Controller's uncle) shakes his judicious head ; far enough from laughing. But the outer courts, ^nd Paris and France, catch the glad sound, and repeat it ; shall repeat it, and re-echo and reverberate it, till it grow a deafening peal. Clearly enough here is no registering to be thought of. The pious Proverb says, ' There are remedies for all things but death.' When a Parlement refuses registering, the remedy, by long practice, has become familiar to the simplest : a Bed of Justice. One complete month this Parlement has spent in mere idle jargoning, and sound and fury ; the 7"/;;^^;-^ Edict not regis- tered, or like to be ; the Subvention not yet so much as spoken of. On the 6th of August let the whole refractory Body roll ou^ 68 7 HE PARLEMENT Ot PARIS, ' ; — — -. , I .. -h b in wheeled vehicles, as far as the King's Chateau of Versailles ; there shall the King, holding his Bed of Justice, order them, by his own royal lips, to register. They may remonstrate, in an under tone ; but they must obey, lest a worse unknown thing befall them. It is done : the Parlement has rolled out, on royal summons ; has heard the express royal order to register. Whereupon it has rolled back again, amid the hushed expectancy of men. And now, behold, on the morrow, this Parlement, seated once more in its own Palais, with ' crowds inundating the outer courts/ not only does not register, but (O portent !) declares all that was done on the prior day to be mill, and the Bed of Justice as good as a futility! In the 1 .^tory of France here verily is a new feature. Nay better still, our heroic Parlement, getting suddenly en- lightened on several things, declares that, for its part, it is incom- petent to register Tax-edicts at all, — having done it by mistake^ during these late centuries ; that for such act one authority only is competent : the assembled Three Estates of the Realm ! ' To such length can the universal spirit of a Nation penetrate the most isolated Body-corporate : say rather, with such weapons, homicidal and suicidal, in exasperated political duel, will Bodies- corporate fight ! But, in any case, is not this the real death' grapple of wm and internecine duel, Greek meeting Greek ; whereon men, had they even no interest in it, might look with interest unspeakable ? Crowds, as was said, inundate the outei courts : inundation of young eleutheromaniac Noblemen in English costume, uttering audacious speeches ; of Procureurs, Basoche- Clerks, who are idle in these days ; of Loungers, Newsmongers and other nondescript classes, — rolls tumultuous there. ' From three to four thousand persons,' w^aiting eagerly to hear the Arretes (Resolutions) you arrive at within ; applauding with bravos, with the clapping of from six to eight thousand hands \ Sweet also is the meed of patriotic eloquence, when your D'Es- premenil, your Frdteau, or Sabatier, issuing from his Demosthenic Olympus, the thunder being hushed for the day, is welcomed, in the outer courts, with a shout from four thousand throats ; is borne home shoulder-high ^with benedictions,' and strikes the stars with his sublime head. CHAPTER V. LOMENIE'S THUNDERBOLTS. Arise, Lom^nie-Brienne : here is no case for 'Letters of Jussion for faltering or compromise. Thou seest the whole loose fluent population of Paris (whatsoever is not solid, and fixed to work) inundating these outer courts, like a loud destructive LOMENIE'S TH UNDERBOLTS, 69 ^cluge ; the very Basoche of Lawyers' Clerks talks sedition. The lower classes, in this duel of Authority with Authority, Greek throttling Greek, have ceased to respect the City- Watch Pohce- satelhtes are marked on the back with chalk (the M signifies mouchard, spy) ; they are hustled, hunted like feres natures Sub- ordmate rural Tribunals send messengers of congratulation, of adherence. Their Fountain of Justice is becoming a Fountain of Revolt The Provincial Parlements look on, with intent eye, with breathless wishes, while their elder sister of Paris does battle • the whole Twelve are of one blood and temper : the victory of one is that of all. ^ Ever worse it grows : on the loth of August, there is ' Plainte' emitted touching the ^prodigalities of Calonne,' and permission to proceed against him. No registering, but instead of it de- nouncing : of dilapidation, peculation ; and ever the burden of tl^ll^l .t!^^^'"^??^'^].' ^^^^ ^^y^^ armories no thunder- bolt, that thou couldst, O Lomenie, with red right-hand, launch it among these Demosthenic theatrical thunder-barrels, mere resin and noise for most part ;— and shatter, and smite them silent? On the night of the 14th of August, Lomenie launches his thun- derbolt, or handful of them. Letters named of the Seal {de Cachet) as JTiany as needful, some sixscore and odd, are delivered over- night. And so next day betimes, the whole Parlement, once more set on wheels, is rolling incessantly towards Troyes in Champagne; ' escorted,' says History, ' with the blessings of all people ; the v6ry innkeepers and postillions looking gratuitously reverent.^ This is the 15th of August 1787. ^ tuirousiy What will not people bless ; in their extreme need } Seldom had the Parlement of Paris deserved much blessing, or received f'vr .c'^^i^^olated Body- corporate, which, out of old confusions 1 while the Sceptre of the Sword was confusedly stru^Hine to become a Sceptre of the Pen), had got itself together, bitter and worse, as BDdies-corporate do, to satisfy some dim desire of the world, and many clear desires of individuals ; and so had grown in the course of centuries, on concession, on acquirement and usurpation to be what we see it: a prosperous social Anomaly, deciding Lawsuits, sanctioning or rejec'ting Laws ; and withal disposing of Its places and offices by sale for ready money,-which method sleek President Renault, after meditation, will demonstrate to be the mdifterent-best.f ^Jm^'^'^^u ^"""^y' existing by purchase for ready-money, there could not be excess of public spirit ; there might well be excess d vfdfrrf to divide the public spoil. Men in helmets have divided that, Willi swords ; men in wigs, with quill and inkhorn, .hK T"" 1'' '''^'^ ""^^'^ hatefully these latter, if more peace- aoiy ; tor the wig-method is at once ifresistibler and baser. By long experience, says Besenval, it has been found useless to sue a Parlementeer at law ; no Officer of Justice will serve a writ or + ^"/^J^T^^^' ^^'^^^'^^ I'AssembUe Co7istituante (Int. 70). T AOrdgd Chronologi(2ne, p. 97^ ^ VOL. I. ^ yo THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS. one ; his wig and gown are his Vulcan's-panoply, his enchanted cloak-of-darkness. The Parlement of Paris may count itself an unloved body \ mean, not magnanimous, on the political side. Were the King weak, always (as now) has his Parlement barked, cur-like at his heels ; with what popular cry there might be. Were he strong, it barked before his face ; hunting for him as his alert beagle. An unjust Body ; where foul influences have m.ore than once worked shameful perversion of judgment. Does not, in these very days, the blood of murdered Lally cry aloud for vengeance ? Baited, circumvented, driven mad like the snared lion, Valour had to sink extinguished under vindictive Chicane. Behold him, that hapless Lally, his wild dark soul looking through his wild dark face ; trailed on the ignominious death hurdle ; the voice of his despair choked by a wooden gag ! The wild fire-soul that has known only peril and toil ; and, for threescore years, has buffeted against Fate's obstruction and men's perfidy, like genius and courage amid poltroonery, dishonesty and commonplace ; faith- fully enduring and endeavouring, — O Parlement of Paris, dost thou reward it v/ith a gibbet and a gag The dying Lally be- queathed his memory to his boy ; a young Lally has arisen, demanding redress in the name of God and man. The Parlement of Paris does its utmost to defend the indefensible, abominable ; nay, what is singular, dusky-glowing Aristogiton d'Espremenii is the man chosen to be its spokesman in that. Such Social Anomaly is it that France now blesses. An unclean Social Anomaly ; but in duel against another worse ! The exiled ParlemxCnt is felt to have ' covered itself with glory.' There are quarrels in which even Satan, bringing help, were not unwelcome ; even Satan, fighting stiffly, might cover himself with glory, — of a temporary sort. But what a stir in the outer courts of the Palais, when- Paris finds its 'Parlement trundled off to Troyes in Champagne ; and nothing left but a few mute Keepers of Records ; the Demos- thenic thunder become extinct, the martyrs of liberty clean gone ! Confused wail and menace rises from the four thousand throats o" Procureurs, Basoche- Clerks, Nondescripts, and Anglomaniac Noblesse ; ever new idlers crowd to see and hear ; Rascality, with increasing numbers and vigour, hunts 7nouchards. Loud whirlpool rolls through these spaces ; the rest of the City, fixed to its work, cannot yet go rolling. Audacious placards ar^ legible, in and about the Palais, the speeches are as good as seditious. Surely. the temper of Paris is much changed. On the third day of this business (i8th of August), Monsieur and Monseigneur d'Artois, coming in stiite-carriages, according to use and wont, to have these late obnoxious Arrcft's and protests ^expunged' from the Records, are received in tlie most marked mnnnen Monsieur, who is thouglU to be in opposition, is met with vivats and strewed llowcrs ; Monseigneur, on the otlier hand, with * gtli May, 17OO : JJio^raplUc ljulvcncilc, § Lally. LOMENIE'S THUNDERBOLTS. 71 silence ; with murmurs, which rise to hisses and groans ; nay, ar? irreverent Rascahty presses towards hmi in floods, with such hiss^ ing vehemence, that the Captain of the Guards has to give order, " Haiti les arm-s (Handle arms) ! " — at which thunder-word, indeed, and the flash of the clear iron, the Rascal-flood recoils, through all avenues, fast enough."'^* New features these. Indeed,, as good M. de Malesherbes pertinently remarks, it is a quite new kind of contest this with the Parlement : " no transitory sputter, as from collision of hard bodies ; but more like " the first sparks of what, if not quenched, may become a great conflagra- tion/^t This good Malesherbes sees himself now again in the King's Council, after an absence of ten years : Lomenie would profit if not by the faculties of the man, yet by the name he has. As for the man's opinion, it is not listened to ; — wherefore he will soon withdraw, a second time ,; back to his books and his trees. In such King's Council what can a good man profit Turgot tries it not a second time : Turgot has quitted France and this Earth, some years ago ; and now cares for none of these things. Singu- lar enough : Turgot, this same Lomenie, and the Abbe Morellet were once a trio of young friends ; fellow-scholars in the Sor- bonne. Forty new years have carried them severally thus far. Meanwhile the Parlement sits daily at Troyes, calling cases ; and daily adjourns, no Procureur making his appearance to plead. Troyes is as hospitable as could be looked for : nevertheless one has comparatively a dull life. No crowds now to carry you, shoulder-high, to the imm^ortal gods ; scarcely a Patriot or two wiirdrive out so far, and bid you be of firm courage. You are in furnished lodgings, far from home and domestic comfort : little to do, but wander over the unlovely Champagne fields ; seeing the grapes ripen ; taking counsel about the thousand-times con- sulted : a prey to tedium ; in danger even that Paris may forget you. Messengers come and go : pacific Lomenie is not slack in negotiating, promising ; D'Ormesson and the prudent elder Mem- bers see no good in strife. After a dull month, the Parlement, yielding and retaining, makes truce, as all Parlements must. The Stamp-tax is with- drawn : the Siibventioji Land-tax is also withdrawn ; but, in its stead, there is granted, what they call a ' Prorogation of the Second Twentieth,' — itself a kind of Land-tax, but not so oppressive tc the Influential classes ; which lies mainly on the Dumb class. Moreover, secret promises exist (on the part of the Elders), that finances may be raised by Loan. Of the ugly word States-Gene- ral there shall be no mention. And so, on the 20th of September, our exiled Parlement returns : D'Espremenil said, ' it went out covered with glory, but had come back covered with mud {dc bou.e)J Not so, Aristogiton ; or if so, thou surely art the man to clean it. * Montgaillard, i. 369. Beseiival, &c. t Montgaillard, i. 373. 72 THE PARLE ME NT OF PARIS. CHAPTER VI. lomenie's plots. Was ever unfortunate Chief Minister so bested as Lomenie- Brienne ? The reins of the State fairly in his hand these six months ; and not the smallest motive-power (of Finance) to stir from the spot with, this way or that ! He flourishes his whip, but advances not. Instead of ready-money, there is nothing but reberiious debating and recalcitrating. , ^ . Far is the public mind from having calmed ; it goes ciiahng and fuming ever worse : and in the royal coffers, with such yearly Deficit running on, there is hardly the colour of coin. Ominous prognostics 1 Malesherbes, seeing an exhaiisted, exasperated France grow hotter and hotter, talks of ' conflagration : ' Mira- b^au without talk, has, as we perceive, descended on Paris again, close on the rear of the Parlement,^— not to quit his native soil ^^Over^he Frontiers, behold Holland invaded by Prussia ;+ the French party oppressed, England and the Stadtholder triumph- ing • to the sorrow of War-Secretary Montmorin and all men. But without money, sinews of war, as of work, and of existence itself what can a Chief Minister do ? Taxes profit httle : this of the Second Twentieth falls not due till next year ; and will then with its ' strict valuation/ produce more controversy than cash Taxes un the Privileged Clas.ses cannot be got regis- tered • are intolerable to our supporters themselves : taxes on the Unprivileged yield nothing,— as from a thing drained dry more cannot be drawn. Hope is nowhere, if not m the old refuge ^^To^Tomenie, aided by the long head of Lamoignon deeply pondering this sea of troubles, the thought suggested itself : Why not have a Successive Loan {Enipnmt S?icccsstf), or Loan that went on lending, year after year, as much as needful ; say, till I7Q^ ^ The trouble of registering such L6an were the same : we had then breathing time ; money to wor.. with, at least to subsist on Edict of a Successive Loan, must be proposed. To concili- ate the Philosophes, let a liberal Edict w^dk in front o. it, for emancipation of Protestants ; let a liberal Promise guard the rear of it, that when our Loan ends, in that final 1792, the States- General shall be convoked. . . , . , . Such liberal Edict of Protestant Emancipation, the time having come for it, shall cost a Lomenie as little as the ' Death-penalties to be put in execution ' did. As for the liberal Promise, of States- (;eneral, it can be fulfilled or not : the fulfilment is five good years uff; in five years much intervenes. But the registering? Ah, * Fils Adoptif, Mirahcau, iv. 1. 5. ' ... t October, 1787. Montgaillard, i. 374. Beseaval, m. 283. LOMENIES PLOTS. 7fs truly, there is the difficulty ! — However^ we have that promise of the Elders, given secretly at Troyes. Judicious gratuities, cajol- eries, underground intrigues, with old Foulon, named 'Ante damnee, Familiar-demon, of the Parlement,' may perhaps do the rest. At worst and lowest, the Royal Authority has resources, — which ought it not to put forth ? If it cannot realise money, the Royal Authority is as good as dead ; dead of that surest and miserablest death, inanition. Risk and win ; without risk all is already lost ! For the rest, as in enterprises of pith, a touch of stratagem often proves furthersome, his Majesty announces a Royal Hunt, for the iQth of November next ; and all whom it concerns are joyfully getting their gear ready. Royal Hunt indeed ; but of tv/o-legged unfeathered game ! At eleven in the morning of that Royal-Hunt day, 19th of November 1787, unexpected blare of trumpctting, tumult oi charioteering and cavalcading disturbs the Seat of Justice : his Majesty is come, with Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon, and Peers and retinue, to hold Royal Session and have Edicts registered. What a change, since Louis XIV. entered here, in boots ; and, whip in hand, ordered his registering to be done,— with an Olympian look, which none durst gainsay ; and did, without stratagem, in such uncere- monious fashion, hunt as well as register ! ^' For Louis XVI., on this day, the Registering will be enough ; if indeed he and the day suffice for it. Meanwhile, with fit ceremonial words, the purpose of the j ^yal breast is signified :-— Two Edicts^ for Protestant Emancipation, for Successive Loan : of both which Edicts our trusty Garde-des- Sceaux Lamoignon will explain the purport ; on both which a trusty Parlement is requested to deliver its opinion, each member having free privilege of speech. And so, Lamoignon too having perorated not amiss, and wound up with that Promise of States- General,— the Sphere-music of Parlementary eloquence begins. Explosive, responsive, sphere answering sphere, it waxes louder and louder. The Peers sit attentive ; of diverse sentiment: un- friendly to States- General ; unfriendly to Despotism, which cannot reward merit, and is suppressing places. But what agitates his Highness d'Orleans ? The rubicund moon-head goes wagging ; darker beams the copper visage, like unscoured copper ; in the glazed eye is disquietude ; he roils uneasy m his seat, as if he meant something. Amid unutterable satiety, has sudden new appetite, for new forbidden fruit, been vouchsafed him ? Disgust and edacity; laziness that cannot rest; futile ambition, revenee, non-admiralship :— O, within that carbuncled skin what a confusion of confusions sits bottled ! 'Eight Couriers,' in the course of the day, gallop from Ver- sailles, v/here Lomenie waits palpitating ; and gallop back again, not with the best news. In the outer Courts of the Palais, huge buzz of expectation reigns ; it is whispered the Chief Minister has lost six votes overnight. And from within, resounds nothing but forensic eloqutn^^, pathetic and even indignant ; heartrending * Dulaure, vi. 306. 74 THE PARLEMENT OF PARTS, appeals to the royal clemency, that his Majesty would please to summon States-General forthwith, and be the Saviour of France wherein dusky-glowing D'Espremenil, but still more Sabatier de Cabre, and Freteau, since named Co7ii7iic7'e Freteau (Goody Freteau), are among the loudest. For six mortal hours it lasts, in this manner ; the infinite hubbub unslackened. And so now, wlien brown dusk is falling through the windows, and no end visible, his Majesty, on hint of Garde-des-Sceaux, Lamoignon, opens his royal lips once more to say, in brief That he must have his Loan-Edict registered. — Momentary deep pause ! — See ! Monseigneur d'Orleans rises ; with moon-visage turned towards the royal platform, he asks, with a delicate graciosity of manner covering unutterable things : ^' Whether it is a Bed of Justice, then ; or a Royal Session ? " Fire flashes on him from the throne and neighbourhood : surly answer that " it is a Session." In that case, Monseigneur will crave leave to remark that Edicts cannot be registered by order in a Session ; and indeed to enter, against such registry, his individual humble Protest. " Vo7is etes Men le Diaitre (You will do your pleasure)," answers the King ; and .thereupon, in high state, marches out, escorted by his Court-retinue ; D'Orleans himself, as in duty bound, escorting him, but only to the gate. Which duty done, D'Orleans returns in from the gate ; redacts his Protest, in the face of an applauding Parlement, an applauding France ; and so — has cut his Court-moorings, shall we say And will now sail and drift, fast enough, towards Chaos ? Thou foolish D'Orleans ; Equality that art to be ! Is Royalty grown a mere wooden Scarecrow ; whereon thou, pert scald- headed crow, mayest alight at pleasure, and peck? Not yet wholly. Next day, a Lettre-de- Cachet sends D'Orleans to bethink him- self in his Chateau of Villers-Cotterets, where, alas, is no Paris with its joyous necessaries of hfe ; no fascinating indispensable Madame de Buffon, — light wife of a great Naturalist much too old for her. M onseigneur, it is said, does nothing but walk distractedly, at Villers-Cotterets ; cursing his stars. Versailles itself shall hear penitent wail from him, so hard is his doom. By a second, simul- taneous Lettre-de-Cachet, Goody Freteau is hurled into the Strong- hold of Ham, amid the Norman marshes ; by a third, Sabatier de Cabre into Mont St. Michel, amid the Norman quicksands. As for the Parlement, it must, on summons, travel out to Versailles, v/ith its Register-Book under its arm, to have the Protest biffe (expunged) ; not without admonition, and even rebuke. A stroke of authority which, one might have hoped, would quiet matters. Unhappily, no : it is a mere taste of the whip to rearing coursers, which makes them rear worse ! When a team of Twenty-five Millions begins rearmg, what is Lomenie's whip? The Pnrlement will nowise acquiesce meekly ; and set to register the Protestant ICdict, and do its other work, in salutary fear ol these three Lettrcs-dc-G\' et la Rcsarrcction du Peuple : Imprime a Jerusalem. eux Amis de la Liberti, i. 141. 98 STA TES-GENERAL. may chirp mournfully together, and misery look in the eyes of misery ; if famishing men (what famishing fieldfares cannot do) should discover, once congregated, that they need not die while food is in the land, since they are many, and with empty wallets have right hands : in all this, what need were there of Preter- natural Machinery ? To most people none ; but not to French people, in a time of Revolution. These Brigands (as Turgot's also were, fourteen years ago) have all been set on ; enlisted, though without tuck of drum,~by Aristocrats, by Democrats, by D'Oiieans, D^Artois, and enemies of ihe public weal. Nav His- torians, to this day, will prove ij by one argument : these Brigands pretending to have no victual, nevertheless contrive to drink, nay, have been seen drunk."^ An unexampled fact ! But on the whole, may we not predict that a people, with such a width of Credulity and of Incredulity (the proper union of which makes Suspicion, and indeed unreason generally), will see Shapes enough of Immortals fighting in its battle-ranks, and never want for Epical Machinery ? Be this as it may, the Brigands are clearly got to Paris, in con- siderable multitudes :i with sallow faces, lank hair (the true en- thusiast complexion), with sooty rags ; and also with large clubs, which they smite angrily against the pavement ! These mingle in the Election tumult ; would fain sign Guillotines Cahier, or any Cahzer or Petition whatsoever, could they but write. Their en- thusiast complexion, the smiting of their sticks bodes little good to any one ; least of all to rich master-manufacturers of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, with whose workmen they consort. CHAPTER III. GROWN ELECTRIC. But now also National Deputies from all ends of France are in Paris, with their commissions, what they call pottvoirs, or powers, in their pockets ; inquiring, consulting ; looking out for lodgings at Versailles. The States-General shall open there, if not on the First, then surely on the Fourth of May ; in grand procession ancj gala. The Sal/c des Menus is all new-carpentered, bedizened for them ; their very costume has been fixed ; a grand controversy which there was, as to ^ slouch-hats or slouched-hats,' for the Com- mons Deputies, has got as j^ood as adjusted. Ever new strangers arrive ; loungers, miscellaneous persons, ofiicers on furlough, — as the worthy Captain Dampmartin, whom we hope to be acquainted with : these also, from all regions, have repaired hither, to see what is toward. Our Paris Committees, of the Sixty Districts, are busier than ever ; it is now too clear, the Paris Elections will be late. * Lacretclle, i^me Si hie, ii. 155, t Besenval, iii. 385, &C. GROWN ELECTRIC, 99 On Monday, the 27th of April, Astronomer Bailly notices that the Sieur Re'veillon is not at his post. The Sieur Reveillon, 'extensive Paper Manufacturer of the Rue St. Antoine ; ' he, commonly so punctual, is absent from Electoral Committee ; — and even will never reappear there. In those ' immense Magazines ' of velvet paper ' has aught befallen ? Alas, yes ! Alas, it is no Montgolfier rising there to-day ; but Drudgery, Rascality and the Suburb that is rising ! Was the Sieur Reveillon, himself once a journeyman, heard to say that ' a journeyman might live hand- 'somely on fifteen sous a-day'.^ Some sevenpence halfpenny : 'tis a slender sum ! Or was he only thought, and believed, to b© heard saying it.^ By this long chafing and friction it would appear the National temper has got electric. Down in those dark dens, in those dark heads and hungry hearts, who knows in what strange figure the new Political Evangel may have shaped itself ; what miraculous ' Communion of ' Drudges' may be getting formed ! Enough : grim individuals, soon waxing to grim multitudes, and other multitudes crowding to see, beset that Paper- Warehouse ; demonstrate, in loud ungrammatical language (addressed to the passions too), the insufficiency oi sevenpence halfpenny a-day. The City-watch cannot dissipate them; broils arise and bellowings ; Reveillon, at his wits' end, entreats the Populace, entreats the authorities. Besenval, now in active command, Commandant of Paris, does, towards evening, to Reveillon's earnest prayer, send some thirty Gardes Frangaises. These clear the street, happily without firing ; and take post there for the night in hope that it may be all over."^ Not so : on the morrow it is far worse. Saint-Antoine has arisen anew, grimmer than ever ;— reinforced by the unknown Tatterdemalion Figures, with their enthusiast complexion and large sticks. The City, through all streets, is flowing thitherward co see : ' two cartloads of paving-stones, that happened to pass that way" have been seized as a visible godsend. Another detachment of Gardes Frangaises must be sent ; Besenval and the Colonel taking earnest counsel. Then still another ; they hardly, with bayonets and menace of bullets, penetrate to the spot. What a sight ! A street choked up, with lumber, tumult and the endless press of men. A Paper- Warehouse eviscerated by axe and fire : mad din of Revolt ; musket- volleys responded to by yells, by miscellaneous missiles, by tiles raining from roof and window,— tiles, execrations and slain men ! ' The Gardes Francaises like it not, but have to persevere. All day It continues, slackening and rallying ; the sun is sinking, and Samt-Antome has not yielded. The City flies hither and thither : alas, the sound of that musket-volleying booms into the far dining- rooms of the Chaussee d'Antin ; alters the tone of the dinner-gossip there. Captain Dampmartin leaves his wine ; goes out with a iriend or two, to see the fighting. Unwashed men growl on him, with murmurs ot ''A has les Aristocrntes (Down with the Aristo- CFats) ; " and insult the cross of St. Louis 1 They elbow him, and * Besenval, iii, 385-8, too STATES-GENERAL. hustle him ; but do not pick his pocket ; — as indeed at Reveillon's too there was not the shghtest stealing.^ At fall of night, as the thing will not end, Besenval takes his resolution : orders out the Gardes Stiisses with two pieces of artil- lery. The Swiss Guards shall proceed thither ; summon that rabble to depart, in the King's name. If disobeyed, they shall load their artillery with grape-shot, visibly to the general eye ; shall again summon ; if again disoboyed, hre, — and keep firing * till the last man' be in this manner blasted off, and the street clear. With which spirited resolution, as might have- been hoped, the business is got ended. At sight of the lit matches, of the foreign red-coated Sw^tzers, Saint- Antpine dissipates ; hastily, in the shades of dusk. • ^kpiie i§Jft3^,QJ3ipihered street ; there are ^from four to fiv^e mfeSed ''(J^SmSt. Unfortunate Reveillon has found shelter in the Bastille ; doewhereft'om, safe behind stone bulwarks, issue, plaint, protestation,\pkplanation, for the next month. Bold Besenval has thanks from all the respectable Parisian classes ; but finds no special notice taken of him at Versailes, — a thing the m^fn of true worth is used to.f But how it originated, this fierce electric sputter and explosion ? From D'(3rleans ! cries the Court-party : he, with his gold, enhsted these Brigands,— surely in some surprising manner, with- out sound of drum •. he raked them in hither, from all corners ; to ferment and take fire ; evil is his good. From the Court ! cries enlightened Patriotism : it is the cursed gold and wiles of Aristo- crats that enlisted then: ; set them upon ruining an innocent Sieur Reveillon ; to frighten the faint, and disgust men with the career of Freedom. Besenval, with reluctance, concludes that it came from 'the ' English, our natural enemies,' Or, alas, might not one rather attribute it to Diana in the shape of Hunger ? To some twin Diosairi^ Oppression and Revenge ; so often seen in the battles of men 1 Poor Lackalls, all betoiled, besoiled, encrusted into dim defacement ; into whom nevertheless the breath of the Almighty has breathed a living soul ! To them it is clear only that eleutheromaniac Philosophism has yet baked no • bread ; that Patrioti Committee-men A/ill level down to their own level, and no lower. Brigands, or whatever they might Idc, it was bitter earnest with them. They bury their dead with the title of Defen- seurs de la Patrie, Martyrs of the good Cause. Or shall we say : Insurrection has now served iX.'s, Apprenticeship ; and this was its proof-stroke, and no inconclusive one Its next will be a master-stroke ; announcing indisputable Mastership to a whole astonished world. Let that rock-fortress, Tyranny's stronghold, which they name Bastille ^ox Building, as if there were no other building,— look to its guns 1 * Evhiemens qui sc sent /ya^^sds sm/s mcs ycu\ pendant la Ri'vol tition tnm* %aise, par A. H. DninpiM.-uiiii (Berlin, 1799), i. 2=^-27. t Besenval, iii. 389. THE PROCESSION, loi But, in such wise, with primary and secondary Assemblies, and Cahiers of Grievances ; with motions, congregations of all kinds ; with much thunder of froth-eloquence, and at last with thunder of platoon-musquetry,~do^s agitated France accomplish its Elec- tions. With confused winnowing and sifting, in this rather tumultous manner, it has now (all except some remnants of Paris) sifted out the true wheat-grains of National Deputies, Twelve Hundred and Fourteen in number ; and will forthwith open its States- General. * CHAPTER IV. THE PROCESSION. On the first Saturday of May, it is gala at Versailles ; and Monday, fourth of the month, is to be a still greater day. The Deputies have mostly got thither, and sought out lodgings ; and are now successively, in long well-ushered hies, kissing the hand of Majesty in the Chateau. Supreme Usher de Breze does not give the highest satisfaction : we cannot but observe that in ushering Noblesse or Clergy into the anointed Presence, he liberally opens both his folding-doors ; and on the other hand, for members of the Third Estate opens only one ! However, there is room to enter ; Majesty has smiles for all. The good Louis welcomes his Honourable Members, with smiles of hope. He has prepared for them the Hall of Me7ms, the largest near him ; and often surveyed the workmen as they went on. A spacious Hall : with raised platform for Throne, Court and Blood- royal ; space for six hundred Commons Deputies in front ; for half as many Clergy on this hand, and half as many Noblesse on that. It has lofty galleries ; wherefrom dames of honour, splendent m craze d'or; foreign Diplomacies, and other gilt-edged white- frilled individuals, to the number of two thousand,— may sit and look. Broad passages flow through it ; and, outside the inner wall, all round it. There are committee-rooms, guard-rooms, robing- fooms : really a noble Hall ; where upholstery, aided by the subject \ine-arts, has done its best ; and crimson tasseled cloths, and em- blematic fleurs-de-lys are not wanting. I'he Hall is ready : the very costume, as we said, has been settled ; and the Commons arc 7iot to wear that hated slouch-hat {chapeau clabaud), but onp rot quite so slouched {chapeau rabattii). As for their manner of working, when all dressed : for their ' voting by head or by order' and the rest,~this, which it were perhaps still time to settle, and in few hours will be no longer time, remains unsettled ; hangs dubious in the breast of Twelve Hundred men. But now finally the Sun, on Monday the jth of May, has risen ; -unconcerned, as if it were no special day. ^et> as his first VCZ. I, ' ^ 102 STA TES-GENERAL. rays could strike music from the Memnon's Statue on the Nile, what tones were these, so thrilling, tremulous of preparation and foreboding, which he awoke in every bosom, at Versailles ! Huge Paris, in all conceivable and inconceivable vehicles, is pouring itself forth ; from each Town and Village come subsidiary rills ; Versailles is a very sea of men. But above all, from the Church of St. Louis to the Church of Notre- Dame : one vast suspended- billow of Life, — v/ith spray scattered even to the chimney-pots ! F or on chimney-tops too, as over the roofs, and up thitherv/ards on every lamp-iron, sign-post, breakneck coign of vantage, sits patriotic Courage ; and every window bursts with patriotic Beauty : for the Deputies are gathering at St. Louis Church ; to march in procession to Notre-Dame, and hear sermon. Yes, friends, ye may sit and look : boldly or in thought, all France, and all Europe, may sit and look ; for it is a day hke few others. Oh, one might weep like Xerxes : — So many serried rows sit perched there ; like winged creatures, alighted out of Heaven : all these, and so many more that follow them, shall have wholly fled aloft again, vanishing into the bluo Deep; and the memory of this day still be fresh. It is the baptism-day of Democracy ; sick Time has given it birth, the numbered months being run. The extreme- unction day of Feudahsm ! A super- annuated System of Society, decrepit with toils (for has it not done much ; produced yon^ and what ye have and know !) — and with thefts and brawls, named glorious-victories ; and v/ith profligacies, sensualities, and on the whole with dotage and senility,- — is now to die : and so, with death-throes and birth-throes, a new one is to be born. What a work, O Earth and Heavens, what a worl ! Battles and bloodshed, September Massa'cres, Bridges of Lodi, retreats of Moscow, Waterloos, Peterloos, Tenpound Franchises, Tarbarrels and Guillotines; and from this present date, if one might prophesy, some two centuries of it still to fight ! Two centuries ; hardly less ; before Democracy go through." its due, most baleful, stages of g^^'^^^ocracy ; and a pestilential World be burnt up, and have begun to grow green and young again. Rejoice nevertheless, ye Versailles multitudes ; to you, from whom all this is hid, the glorious end of it is visible. This day, sentence of death is pronounced on Shams ; judgment of resus- citation, W'cre it but far off, is pronounced on Realities. This day it is declared aloud, as with a Doom-trumpet, that a Lie is im- believahle. I)clieve that, stand by that, if more there be not ; and let what thing or things soever will follow it follow. ^ Ye can no other ; God be your help ! ^ So spake a greater than any of you ; opening his Chapter of World-History. Behold, however ! The doors of St. Louis Church flung wide ; and the Procession of Processions advancing towards Notre- Dame ! Shouts rend the air ; one shout, at which Grecian birds might drop dead. It is indeed a stately, solemn sight. The Elected of France, and then the Court of France ; they are marshalled and march there, all in prescribed place and THE PROCESSION. 103 costume. Our Commons ' in plain black mantle and white cravat ; ' Noblesse, in gold-worked, bright-dyed cloaks of velvet, resplenden^t, rustling with laces, waving with plumes ; the Clergy in rochet, alb, or other best p07itificalibiis : lastly comes the King himself, and King's Household, also in their brightest blaze of pomp, — their brightest and final one. Some Fourteen Hundred Men blown together from all winds, on the deepest errand. Yes, in that silent marching mass their lies Futurity enough. No symbolic Ark, like the old Hebrews, do these men bear : yet with them too is a Covenant ; they too preside at a new Era in the History of Men. The whole Future is there, and Destiny dim-brooding over it ; in the hearts and unshaped thoughts of these men, it lies illegible, inevitable. Singular to think : they have it in them ; yet not they, not mortal, only the Eye above can read it, — as it shall unfold itself, in fire and thunder, of siege, and field-artillery ; in the rustling of battle-banners, the tramp of hosts, in the glow of burning cities, the shriek of strangled nations ! Such things he hidden, safe-wrapt in this Fourth day of May ; — say rather, had lain in some other unknown day, of which this latter is the public, fruit and outcome. As indeed what wonders lie in every Day, — had we the sight, as happily we have not, to decipher it : for is not every meanest Day ' the conflux of two Eternities ! ' Meanwhile, suppose we too, good Reader, should, as now without miracle Muse Clio enables us, — take station also on some coign vantage ; and glance momentarily over this Procession, and this Life-sea ; with far other eyes than the rest do, namely with prophetic ? We can mount, and stand there, without fear of falling. As for the Life»sea, or onlooking unnumbered Multitude, it is unfortunately all-to dim. Yet as we gaze hxedly, do not nameless Figures not a few, which shall not always be nameless, disclose themselves ; visible or presumable there ! Young Baroness de Stael — she evidently looks from a window ; among older honour- able women.- Her father is Minister, and one of the gala person- ages ; to his own eyes the chief one. Young spiritual Amazon, thy rest is not there ; nor thy loved Father's : ' as Malebranche saw 'all things in God, so M. Necker sees all things in Necker,— a theorem that will not hold. But where is the brown-locked, light-behaved, fire-hearted Demoiselle Theroigne ? Brown eloquent Beauty ; who, with thy winged words and glances, shalt thrill rough bosoms, whole steel battalions, and persuade an Austrian Kaiser,— pike and helm lie provided for thee in due season ; and, alas, also strait-waistcoat and long lodging in the Salpetriere ! Better hadst thou staid in native Luxemburg, and been the~ mother of some brave man's children : but it was not thy task, it was not thy lot. Of the rougher sex how, without tongue, or hundred tongues, of * Madame de Stael, Conudcraiions stir la lUvolution Francaise (London. %8i^, 1, 1x4-191. ^ E Z I04 S:rA TES- GENERAL. iron, enumerate the notabilities ! Has not Marquis Valadi hastily quitted his quaker broadbrim ; his Pythagorean Greek in Wap- ping, and the city of Glasgow ? * De Morande from his Cotirrier de r Europe ; Linguet from \ivE> Anfiales ^ they looked eager through the London fog, and became Ex-Editors, — that they might fee^S the guillotine, and have their due. Does Louvet (of ^FaziUaS) stand a-tiptoe ? And Brissot, hight De Warville, friend of the Blacks ? He, with Marquis Condorcet, and Claviere the Genevese ' have created the Moniteur Newspaper/ or are about creating it. Able Editors must give account of such a day. Or seest thou with any distinctness, low down probably, not in places of honour, a Stanislas Maillard, riding-tipstaff [hiiissier a cheval) of the Chatelet ; one of the shiftiest of men ? A Cap- tain Hulin of Geneva, Captain Elie of the Queen's Regiment; both with an air of half-pay ? Jourdan, with ^ile-coloured whis- • kers, not yet with tile-beard ; an unjust dealer in mules ? He shall be, in a few months, Jourdan the Headsman, and have other work. Surely also, in some place not of honour, stands or sprawls up querulous, that he too, though short, may see, — one squalidest bleared mortal, redolent of soot and horse-drugs : Jean Paul Marat of Neucliatel ! O Marat, Renovator of Human Science, Lecturer on Optics ; O thou remarkablest Horseleech, once in D'Artois' Stables, — as thy bleared soul looks forth, through thy bleared, dull-acrid, wo-stricken face, what sees it in ail this I Any faintest light of hope ; like dayspring after Nova-Zenibla night? Or is it but blue sulphur-light, and spectres ; woe, suspicion, re- venge without end ? Of Draper Lecointre, how he shut his cloth-shop hard by, and stepped forth, one need hardly speak. Nor of Santerre, the sonorous Brewer from the Faubourg St. AnfMne. Two other Figures, and only two, we signalise there. The huge, brawny, Figure ; through whose black brows, and rude flattened face {figure ec?'asee)^ ih^xQ looks a waste energy as of Hercules not yet furibund, — he is an esurient, unprovided Advocate ;. Danton by name : him mark. Then that other, his slight-built comrade and craft-brother ; he with the long curling lo.cks ; with the face of dingy blackguardism, wondrously irradiated. -with genius, as if a naphtha-lamp burnt vnthin it : that Figure is CajSiHolDes^ mou ljn|l> A fellow of infmite sbrcwdness, wit, nay humour ; one 'omn^sprightliest clearest souls in all these miillions. Thou poor Camille, say of thee what they may, it were but falsehood to pretend one did not almost love thee, thou headlong lightly- sparkling man ! But the brawny, not yet furibund .Figure, we say, is Jacques Danton ; a name that shall be * tolernAjly known ' in the Revolution.' He is President of the elector/il Cordeliers District at Paris, or about to be it ; and shall opefi liis Iiings of brass. ' We dwell no longer on the mixed shouting MultitcK.'c : for now;, behold, the Commons Deputies are at hand ! * Founders 0/ Ihc French Republic (London, 1798), § Valadi. THE PROCESSION. Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their >^/>/^ For a king or leader they, as ail bodies of men, must have : be their work what it may, there is one man there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it ; that man, as future not yet elected king, walks there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be ? With the hure^ as himself calls it, or black boar's-kead, fit to be ' shaken ' as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewn, seanied, carbuncled f^ice, there look natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,--and burning fire of genius ; like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions ? It is Gabriel Honor e Riquetti de Afzrabea7(, the world -compeller ; man-ruling Deputy of Aix'! / r o.^'" ' •■ roness Stac^, -he steps proudly along, tl :>kaixce liere ; and shakes his black chevelzire, or lion s jii.u. , as if prophetic of great deeds. Yes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch ; as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acqui- sitions, in his virtues, in his vices ; perhaps more French than any other man ;--ar r! " r^u'h a mars raaaiuicj too. Mark him well. Tlu i , -^embty were all different v/ithout that one; nay, he miglit say with the old Despot: ''The National Assembly ? I am that." Of a southern chmate, of wild southern blood : for the Riquettis. or Arighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long cen-^ turie^ ago, and settled in Provence ; where from generation to generation they have ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred: irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they wore ; of an intensity and activity that sometimes verged towards mad- ness, yet did not reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfilment of a mad vow;, chains two Mountains together ; and the chain, with its ' iron star of five rays,' is still to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti ?/;^chain so much, and set it drif^ir.o - -'.vhu li -Jso shall be seen ? ^ Destiny has work for that swart burly-headed Mirabeau^ ; Pes- y^^l.^'^^^ watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his "Grandfather, stout CoL d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they nam.ed him), shattered and slashed by seven-and- twenty wounds in one fell day lie sunk together on the Bridge at Casano ; while Prince Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him,— -only the fly- ing sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head ; and Vendome, dropping his spyglass, m.oaned out, ' Mirabeau is dead, then ! ' Nevertheless he was not dead : he awoke to breathe, and miraculous surgery ;— for Gabriel was yet to be. With his silver stock he kept his scarred head erect, through long years ; and wedded ; and produced tough Marquis Victor, the Friend of Men. Whereby at last in the appointed year 1749, this long-expected rough-hewn Gabriel Honore did likewise see the light : roughest lion's-whelp ever littered of that rough breed. How the old hon (for our old Marquis too was lion-like, most unconquerable, kingly- io6 STA TES-GENERAL. genial, most perverse) gazed wonderingly on his offspring ; and determin*ed to train him as no hon had yet been ! It is in vain, O Marquis ! This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will n6t learn to draw in dogcart of Political Economy, and be a Friend oj Men ; he will not be Thou, must and will be Himself, another than Thou. Divorce lawsuits, Svhole family save one in prison, and three-score Lettres-de-Cachet' for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world. Our Luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle of Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his tower ; in the Castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the Fortress of Joux ; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes ;— all by Lettre- de-Cachet, from his lion father. He has been in Pontarher Jails (self-constituted prisoner) ; was noticed fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has pleaded before Aix Parleuients (to get back his wife); the public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear: "the clatter-teeth '\{claqMe-dents) \ " snarles singular old Mirabeau ; discerning in such t admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species. ' But as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfaringSy what has he not seen and tried ! From drill-sergeants, to prime-minis- ters, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of fnen he has seen. All manner of mei> he has gained ; for at bottom it is a social, loving heart, that wild unconquerable one :— more espe- cially all manner of women. From the Archer's Daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monni-er, whom he could not but ' steal,' and be beheaded for— in effigy ! For indeed hardly since the Arabian Prophet lay dead to All's adi jiratioii, was there seen such a Love-hero, with the strength of thirty men. _ In War, again, he has helped to conquer Corsica ; fought duels, irre- gular brawls ; horsewhipped calumnious barons. In Literature, he has written on Besfjotisin^ on Lettres-de-CacJiet : Erotics Sappliic-Wertereaii, Obscenities, Profanities ; Books on the Prus- sian l\^onarchy^ on Ca^liosfro, on Calonue. on the Water Com- panies of Paris :—Q.^ch book cjnip::; \ 'c will say, to a bitumi- nous alarum-fire ; huge, sinoky, sudden ! The firepan, the kind- ' ling, the bitumen were his own ; but the lumber, of rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel to him), was gathered from huckster, and ass-panniers, of every description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been heard to exclaim : Out upon it, the fire is mine / Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his r the man himself he can make his. All reflex and echo {tout de reflet et de rdverbcre) ! " snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men ! it is his sociahty, Ifis aggregative nature ; and w ill now be the quality of all for . him. \ In'^hat forty-years ' struggle against despotism,' he has gained the \ glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural THE PROCESSION. T07 gift of fellowships of being helped. Rare union ! This man can/ live self-suflicing— yet lives also in the life of other men ; can make men love him, work with him : a born king of men ! * But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has " made away with {htime^ swallowed) all Eormulas ; a fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man of system, then ; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any object ; and see through it, and conquer it : for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with loo'ic-spectacles ; but with an eye^ J Unhappily without Decalogue, Inoral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort ; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there : a Reality, not an Artificiality, not a Sham ! And so he, having struggled ' forty years against despotism,' and ^ made away with all formulas,' shall now become the spokesman pf a Nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off despotism ; to make away with her old formulas,— having found them naught, worn out, far from the reality ? She will make away with sttch formulas ; — and even go bare^ if need be, till she have found new ones. Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson- locks under the slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smotliered, but would fill all France with smoke. And now it has got air ; it will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all France with flame. Strange lot \ Forty years of that smoulder- ing, with foul fire-damp and vapour enough ; then victory over that ;-— and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high ; and, for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten fire- torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder-sign of an amazed Europe and then lies hollow, cold forever ! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honore, the greatest of them all : in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none like and none second to thee. But now if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may be the meanest ? Shall we say, that anxious, slight, ineffec- tual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles ; his eyes (were the glasses off ) troubled, careful ; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncert^iin future-time ; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green.^ That greenish-coloured {verddtre) individual is an Advocate of Arras ; his name is Maximilieji Robespiei'rc. llie son of an Advocate ; his father founded .mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince or Pretender. Maximilien the first-born was thriftily educated ; he had brisk Camille Desmouhns for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron, to let him depart thence, and resii^n in favour of a younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed ; home to paternal Arras ; and even had a Law-case * See De Staiil, ConsiiUrdiious 142); Barbaroux, Mcmoires, &c. loS STATES-GENERAL. there and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, ^in favour of the first Franklin thunder-rod.' With a strict painful mind, an under- standing small but clear and ready, he grew in favour with official persons, who could foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints him Judge of his diocese ; and he faithfully does justice to the people : till behold, one day, a culprit comes ^vhose crime merits hanging ; and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die. A strict-minded, strait-laced man ! A man unfit for Revolutions ? Whose small soul, transparenjt wholesoirne-looking as small ale, could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar^ — the mother of ever new alegar ; till all France were grown acetous virulent ? We shall see. Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so many grand and mean roll on, towards their several destinies, in that Procession ! There is Casales, the learned young soldier ; who shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the shadow of a name. Experienced Mounter, experienced Malouet; whose Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things shall soon leave stranded. A Petioii has left his gown and briefs at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading ; has not forgotten his violin, being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he is still young : convictions, beliefs, placid-unalterable are in that man ; not hindmost of them, behef in himself. A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Etienne, a slender young eloquent and vehement Bar- nave, will help to regenerate France. There are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry : but how many men here under thirty ; coming to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of such! The old to heal up rents ; the young to remove rubbish : — which latter, is it not, indeed, the task here ? Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou noticest the Deputies from Nantes 1 To us mere clothes-screens^ with slouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket ?i C aider of doleances with this singular clause, and more such in it : That ' the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with new gild- * brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two being more ^than sufficient The Rennes people have elected Farmer Gerard, 'a man of natural sense and rectitude, without any ' learning.' He walks there, with solid step ; unic[ue, ' in his rustic farmer-clothes ; ' which he will wear always ; careless of short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gerard, or ^ Fere Gerard, Father Gerard,' as they please to call him, will fly far ; borne about in endless banter ; in RoyaHst satires, in Republican didactic Almanacks.f As for the man Gerard, being asked once, what he did, after trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,— "I think," answered he, "that there are a good many * Hisiolre Parlcv(C)it',;rp, i. 33 t Actes des Apotres (by reltiur and others) ; Almanack du Phre Gdrard (bj Collot d'Herbois), &c. &c. THE PROCESSION. scoundrels among us." So walks Father Gerard; solid inJiis thick shoes, whithersoever bound. Anar\vorthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one other time ? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of prophecy: for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late. Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner : doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion ! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall ; in all cases of medical police and hygiene be a present aid : but, greater far, he can produce his ' Report on the Penal Code ; ' and reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of Guillotin's endeavours, gained not without meditation and reading ; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter : La Guillotine / " With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your " head {votes fais sauter la tete) in a twinkling, and you have no " pain ; ''—whereat they all laugh."^ Unfortunate Doctor ! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine ; then dying, shall through • long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the • wrong side of Styx and Lethe ; his name like to outlive Cesar's. See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honoured Historian of Astronomy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beautiful Philosophising, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thinness, ends in foul thick confusion— of Presidency, Mayorship, diplomatic Officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of ever- lasting Darkness ! Far was it to descend from the heavenly Galaxy to the Drapeau Rouge : beside that fatal dung-heap, on that last hell-day, thou must ^tremble,' though only with cold, 'de froid' Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not so miserable ; but to be weaker than our task. Wo the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hip- pogriff of a Democracy ; which, spurning the firm earth, nay lashing at the very stars^ no yet known Astolpho could have ridden ! In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters ; three hundred and seventy-four Lawyers ;t and at least one Clergyman : the Abbe Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among Its twenty. Behold him, the light thin man ; cold, but elastic, wiry ; mstmct with the pride of Logic ; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which, in its independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into transcendentalism ; and to sit there with a kind of godlike indifference, and look down on passion ! He is the man, and wisdom shall die with him This is the Sieyes who shall be System-builder, Constitution-builder General ; and build Constitutions (as many as wanted) skyhigh, -which shall all Mpnlteur Newspaper, of December ist, 1789 (in Hlstoire Parlementaire). bouiile, Mdmoires sur la FJvoluiion Fra?iqaisc (London, 1797), i, 63, no STA TES-GENERAL. unfortunately fall before he get the scaffolding away. "Z^ Politiqiie^^ said he to Dumont, " Polity is a science I think I have completed, (ackevee)."'^ What things, O Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see ! But were it not curious to know how Sieyes, now in these days (for he is said to be still alive)i' looks out on all that Constitution masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme age? Might we hope, still with the old irrefragable transcendentalism ? The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished one pleased Sieyes {vtcta Catoni). Thus, however, amid skyrending vivats^ and blessings from every heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by. Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy ; concerning both of whom it might be asked. What they specially have come for ? Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this question, put in a voice of thunder : What are you doing in God's fair Earth and Task-garden ; where whosoever is not working is beg- ging or stealing ? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only answer : Collecting tithes, Preserving game !— Remark, meanwhile, how U Orleans affects to step before his own Order, and mingle with the Commons. For him are vivats : few for the rest, though all wave in plumed ' hats of a feudal cut,' and have sword on thigh ; though among them is UAntraigiies, the young Languedocian gentleman, — and indeed many a Peer more or less noteworthy. There are Lzancourt, and La Rochcftnicault ; the liberal Anglo- maniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally j a couple of liberal Lameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette ; whose name shall be Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the world. Many a ' formula' has this Lafayette too made away with ; yet not all formulas. He sticks by the Washington-formula ; and by that he will stick ; — and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water, is found still hanging. Happy for him ; be it glorious or not ! Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto ; he can become a hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note further our old Parlementarv friend, Crispi7t- Catiline cV Espranaiil. He is re- turned from' the Mediterranean Islands, a redhot royalist, repen- tant to the finger-ends ;— unsettled-looking ; whose light, dusky- glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the National Assembly will by and by, to save time, 'regard as m a state of distraction.' Note lastly that globular Younger Mirabeau ; indignant that his elder I)rother is among the Commons :^ it is Viscomte Mirabeau ; named oftener Mirabeau Ton7ie(\u (Barrel Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quaHitities of strong liquor he contains. 7 here then walks our French Noblesse. All in the old pomp of chivalry : and yet, alas, how changed from the old position ; drifted f^ir down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs got * Dumoiit, Souvenirs sur Mirahcau, p. 64. f A.D. 1834. THE PROCESSION, m mto the ICquatorial sea, and fast thawing there ! Once these Chivalry Duces (Dukes, as they are stili named) did actually lead the world,— were it only towards battle-spoil, where lay the world's best wages then : moreover, being xhe ablest Leaders going, they had their lion's share, those Duces; which none could grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Ploughshares, Steam-Engines and Bills of Exchange have been invented ; and, for battle-brawling itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at eighteen- pence a-day, — what mean these goldmantled Chivalry Figures, walking there ' in black- velvet cloaks,' in high-plumed ' hats of a feudal cut ' ? Reeds shaken in the wind ! The Clergy have got up ; wdth Cahiers for abohshing pluralities, enforcing residence of bishops, better payment of tithes.^ The Dignitaries, we can observe, walk stately, apart from the numerous Undignified,— who indeed are properly little other than Commons disguised in Curate-frocks. Here, hov/ever, though by strange ways, shall the Precept be fulfilled, and they that are greatest (much to their astonishment) become least. P^or one example, out of many, mark that plausible G?^egoire : one day Cure Gregoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are wandering distracted, as Bishops partibus. With other thought, mark also the Abbe Mau7y : his broad bold face ; mouth accurately primmed; full eyes, that ray out intelligence, falsehood,--the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find it sophistical. Skilfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather, to make it look like new^ ; ahvays a rising man ; he used to tell Mercier, " You will see ; I shall be m the Academy before you."t Likely indeed, thou skilfullest Maury ; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal's Hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in the longrun— mere oblivion, like the rest of us ; and six feet of earth ! What boots it, vamping rotten leather on these terms ? Glorious in comparison is the livelihood thy good old F ather earns, by making shoes,— one may hope, in a sufficient manner. Maury does not want for audacity. He shall wear pistols, by and by ; and at death-cries of " The Lamp-iron ;" answer coolly, "Friends, will you see better there ?'' But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop lalleyraitd-Perig^orcf, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grim- ness lies m that irreverent Reverence of Autun. He will do and suffer strange things ; and will becoine surelv one of the strangest tilings ever seen, or hke to be seen. A man living in falsehood, and on falsehood ; yet not what vou can call a false man : there is ttie specialty ! It will be an enigma for future ages, one may hope : nitlierto such a product of Nature and Art was possible only for tnis age of ours,— Age of Paper, and of the Burning of Paper. Con^ siaer Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafavette as the topmost of tneir two kinds ; and say once more, lookin<- at what they did and ^vnat they were, O Tempiis ferax reruvi I On the whole, however, has not this unfortunate Clcro-y also aritted in the Time-stream, far from its native latitude ? An ano- * Hist, Pari, i. 322-27. f Mercier, Nouveau Paris. XI2 STA TES-GENERAL, malous mass of men ; of whom the whole world has already a dim | understanding- that it can understand nothing. They were once a : Priesthood, interpreters of Wisdom, revealers of the Holy that is i in Man : a true Clerus (or Inheritance of God on Earth) : but now? —They pass silently, with such Cahiers as they have been able to i redact ; and none cries, God bless them. King Louis with his Court brings up the rear : he cheerful, in i this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits ; still more Necker his | Minister. Not so the Queen ; on whom hope shines not steadily j any more. Ill-fated Queen ! Her hair is already gray with many j cares and crosses ; her first-born son is dying in these weeks : j black falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name ; ineffaceably j while this generation lasts. Instead of Vive la Reine, voices insult ; her with Vive Orleans. Of her queenly beauty little remains ex- cept its stateliness ; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no part, ^ she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen. Poor ^ Marie Antoinette ; with thy quick noble instincts ; vehement , glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the work thou- hast to do ! O there are tears in store for thee ; bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the future ! — And so, in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France. ( Some towards honour and quick fire-consummation ; most towards • dishonour ; not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration, i desperation : all towards Eternity ! — So many heterogeneities cast \ together into the fermenting-vat ; there, with incalculable action, '< counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments, to work i out healing for a sick moribund System of Society ! Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thousandfold complex a Society, ready to burst-up from its infinite depths ; and these men, its rulers and healers, without life-rule for themselves, — other life- rule than a Gospel according to Jean Jacques ! To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without Duty round him ; except it be ^ to make the Constitution.' He is without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him ; he has no God in the world. V What further or better belief can be said to exist in these Twelve Hundred 1 Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut ; in heraldic scutcheons ; in the divine right of Kings, in the divine right of Game-destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting half-belief; Ox worst of all, mere Macchiavellic pretence-of-belief,— in conse- crated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor oldjilaJian^Man^ Nevertheless in that immeasurable Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less confused and cor- rupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of a New Life dis- cernible : the deep fixed Determination to have done with Shams. A detenni^-wtion, which, consciously or /t^consciously, is fixeds THE PROCESSION, which waxes ever more fixed, into very madness and fxxed-idea ; which in such embodiment as hes provided there, shall now un- fold itself rapidly : monstrous, stupendous, unspeakable ; new for long thousands of years ! — How has the Heaven^s light, often- times in this Earth, to clothe itself in thunder and electric murki- ness ; and descend as molten lightning, blasting, if purifying • Nay is it not rather the very murkiness, and atmospheric suffoca- tion, that briitgs the lightning and the light ? The new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the Destruction of a World ? But how the -beputies assisted at High Mass, and heard sermon, and applauded the preacher, church as it was, when he preached politics ; how, next day, with sustained pomp, they are. for the first time, installed in their Salle des Menus (Hall no longer of Amusejnents), and become a States-General, — readers can fancy for themselves. The King from his estrade, gorgeous as Solomon in all his glory, runs his eye over that majestic Hall ; many- plumed, many-glancing ; bright- tinted as rainbow, in the galleries and near side spaces, where Beauty sits raining bright influence. Satisfaction, as of one that after long voyaging had got to port, plays over his broad simple face : the innocent King ! He rises and - speaks, with sonorous tone, a conceivable spe ech. With which, still more with the si^^cceedrng one-hour an'3r two-hour speeches of Garde -des- Sceaux and M. Necker, full of nothing but patriotism, hope, faith, and deficiency of the revenue, — no reader of these pages shall be tried. We remark only that, /as hiS Majesty, on finishing the speech, put on his plumed hat, and the Noolesse according to custom, imitated him, our Tiers-Etat Deputies did mostly, not without a shade of fierceness, in like manner clap-on, and even crush on their slouched hats ; and stand there awaiting the issue.* Thick buzz among them, between majority and minority of Couvrezvoits, Decouvrez-vous (Hats off. Hats on) ! To which his Majesty puts end, by taking off his own royal hat again. - The session terminates without further accident or omen than this ; with which, signfiicantly enough, France has opened her States- General. * Histoire Parletnentaire (i. 356). Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c. BOOK FIFTH. THE THIRD ESTATE. Y CHAPTER I. INERTIA. That exasperated France, in 'this same National Assembly of hers, has got something, nay something great, momentous, indis- pensable, cannot be doubted ; yet still the question were : Spe- cially what ? A question hard to solve, even for calm onlookers at this distance ; wholly insoluble to actors in the middle of it. The States-General, created and conflated by the passionate effort of the whole Nation, is there as a thing high and hfted up. Hope, jubilating, cries aloud that it v/ill prove a miraculous Brazen Ser- pent in the Wilderness ; whereon whosoever looks, with faith and obedience, shall be healed of all woes and serpent-bites. We may answer, it will at least prove a symbohc Banner ; round which the exasperating complaining Twenty-Five Millions, other- wise isolated and without power, may rally, and work — what it is in them to work. If battle must be the work, as one cannot help expecting, then shall it be a battle-banner (say, an Itahan Gon- falon, in its old Republican Carroccio) ; and shall tower up, car- borne, shining in the wind : and with iron tongue peal forth many a signal. A thing of prime necessity ; which whether in the van or in the centre, whether leading or led and driven, must do the fighting multitude inc^.lculable services. For a season, while it floats in the very front, nay as it w^ere stands solitary there, waiting whether force will gather round it, this same National Carroccio^ and the signal-peals it rings, are a main object with us. The omen of the 'slouch-hats clapt on' shows the Commons Deputies to have made up their minds on one thing : that neither Noblesse nor Clergy shall have precedence of them ; hardly even Majesty itself. To such length has the Qmtrat Social, and force of public opinion, carried us. For what is Majesty but the Dele- gate of the Nation; delegated, and bargained with (even rather tightly),— in some very singular posture of affiiirs, which Jean Jacques has not fixed the date of? Coming therefore into their Hall, on the morrow, an inorganic mass of Six Hundred individuals, these Commons Deputies per- INERTIA. 115 ceive, without terror, that they have it all to„th^"^selves 1 heir HaU is also the Grand or general Hall for all the Ihree Orders. But the Noblesse and Clergy, it would seem, have retired to their two separate Apartments, or Halls ; and are there verifying their powers,' not in a conjoint but in a separate capacity. Ihey are to constitute two separate, perhaps separately-voting Orders, then j It is as if both Noblesse and Clergy had silently taken for granted that they already were such ! Two Orders against one ; and so the Third Order to be left in a perpetual minority ? ^ Much may remain unfixed; but the negative of that is a thing fixed : in the Slouch-hatted heads, in the French Nation s head. Double representation, and ail else hitherto gained, were otherwise futile, null. Doubtless, the ' powers must be verified doubtless, the Commission, the electoral Documents of your Deputy must be inspected by his brother Deputies, and found vahd . it is tire preliminary of all. Neither is this question, of doing it separately or doing it conjointly, a vital one ; but if it lead to such ? It must be resisted ; wise was tha maxim, Resist the beginnings ! Nay were resistance unadvisable, even dang us, yet surely pause is very natural : pause, with Twenty-five Millions behind you, may become resistance enough.— The inorganic mass of Commons Deputies will restrict itself to a ' system of inertia/ and for the present remain inorganic. Such method, recommendable alike to sagacity and to timidity, do the Commons Deputies adopt ; and, not without adroitness, and with ever more tetiacity, they persist in it, day after day, week after week. For six weeks their history is of the kind named barren ; which indeed, as P'hilosophy knows, is often the fruit- fulest of all. These were their still creation-days ; wherein they sat incubating ! In fact, what they did was to do nothing, m a judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body reassembles ; regrets that they cannot get organisation, 'verification of powers m com- mon, and begin regenerating France. Headlong motions may be made, but let such be repressed; inertia alone is at once un- punishable and unconquerable. Cunning must be met by cunning ; proud pretension by inertia, by a low tone of patriotic sorrow ; low, but incurable, unalterable. Wise as serpents ; harmless as doves : what a spectacle for France ! Six Hundred inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit there, on their elliptic benches, longing passion- ately towards life ; in painful durance ; like souls waiting to be born. Speeches are spoken ; eloquent ; audible within doors and without. Mind agitates itself against mind ; the Nation looks on with ever deeper interest. Thus do the Commons Deputies sit in- cubating. There are private conclaves, supper-parties, consultations ; Breton Club, Club of Viroflay ; germs of many Clubs. Wholly an element of confused noise, dimness, angry heat wherein, however, the Eros- egg, kept at the 6t temperature, may hover safe, unbroken till it be hatched. In your Mouniers, Maiouets, Ii6 THE THIJW INSTATE. Lechapeliers in science sufficient for that ; fervour in your Bar- naves, Rabauts. At times shall come an inspiration from royal Mirabeau: he is nowise yet recognised as royal; nay he was groaned at/ when his name was first mentioned : but he is struggling towards recognition. In the course of the week, the Commons having called their Eldest to the chair, and furnished him with young stronger-lunged assistants,— can speak articulately ; and, in audible lamentable words, declare, as we said, that they are an inorganic body, lono-- mg to become organic. Letters arrive ; but an inorganic body cannot open letters ; they lie on the table unopened. The Eldest may at most procure for himself some kind of List or Muster- roll, to take the votes by ; and wait what will betide. Noblesse and Clergy are all elsewhere : however, an eager public crowds all galleries and vacancies ; which is some comfort. With effort It IS determined, not that a Deputation shall be sent,— for how can an morganic body send deputations ?— but that certain indi- vidual Commons Members shall, in an accidental wav, stroll into the Clergy Chamber, and then into the Noblesse one ; and men- ' tion there, as a thing they have happened to observe, that the Commons seem to be sitting waiting for them., in order to verify their powers. That is the wiser method ! The Clergy, among whom are such a multitude of Undignified, of mere Commons in Curates' frocks, depute instant respectful answer that' they are, and will now more than ever be, in deepest study as to that very matter. Contrariwise" the Noblesse, in cavaher attitude, reply, after four days, that they, for their part, are all verified and constituted ; which, they had trusted, the Commons also were ; such separate verification being clearly the proper constitutional wisdom-of-ancestors method as they the Noblesse will have much pleasure in demonstrating by a Commis- sion of their number, if the Commons will meet them, Commission against Commission ! Directly in the. rear of which comes a deputation of Clergy, reiterating, in their insidious conciliatory way, the same proposal. Here, then, is a complexity : what will wise Commons say to this 1 Warily, inertly, the wise Commons, considering that they are if not a French Third Estate, at least an Aggregate of individuals pretending to some title of that kind, determine, after talking on it five days, to name such a Commission,— though, as it were, with proviso not to be convinced : a sixth day is taken up in naming it ; a seventh and an eighth day in getting the forms of meetino-' place, hour and the hke, settled : so that it is not' till the evening of the 23rd of May that Noblesse Commission first meets Com- mons Commission, Clergy acting as Conciliators ; and begins the inipossible task of convincing it. One other meeting, on the 25th, will suffice : the Commons arc inconvinr ible, the Noblesse and Clergy irrefragably convincing ; the Commissions retire ; each Order persisting in its first pretensions."^ * Reported Debates, 6th May to istjune, 1789 (in Histoire Parlementairtu h 379-422). ^ INERTIA, 117 Thus have three weeks passed. For three weeks, the Third- Estate Carroccio, with far-seen Gonfalon, has stood stockstill, flouting the wind ; waiting what force would gather round it. Fancy can conceive the feeling of the Court ; and how counsel met counsel, and loud-sounding inanity whirled in that distracted vortex, where wisdom could not dwell. Your cunningly devised Taxing- Machine has been got together ; set up with incredible labour ; and stands, there, its three pieces in contact ; its two fly- wheels of Noblesse and Clergy, its huge working-wheel of Tiers- Etat. The two fly-wheels whirl in the softest manner ; but, pro- digious to look upon, the huge working-wheel hangs motionless, refuses to stir ! The cunningest engineers are at fault. How will it work, when it does begin ? Fearfully, my Friends ; and to many purposes ; but to gather taxes, or grind court-meal, one may apprehend, never. Could we but have continued gathering taxes by hand I Messeigneurs d'Artois, Conti, Conde (named Court Triumvirate), they of the anti-democratic Memoir e au Roi, has not their foreboding proved true ? They may wave reproachfully their high heads ; they may beat their poor brains ; but the cun- ningest engineers can do nothing. Necker himself, were he even listened to, begins to look blue. The only thing one sees advis- able is to bring up soldiers. New regiments, two, and a battalion of a third, have already reached Paris ; others shall get in march. Good were it, in all circumstances, to have troops within reach ; good that the command were in sure hands. Let Broglie be ap- pointed ; old Marshal Duke de Broglie ; veteran disciplinarian, of a firm drill-sergeant morality, such as may be depended on. For, alas, neither are the Clergy, or the very Noblesse what they should be ; and might be, when so menaced from without : entire, undivided within. The Noblesse, indeed, have their Cati- line or Crispin D'Espremenil, dusky-glowing, all in renegade heat ; their boisterous Barrel- Mirabeau ; but also they have their Lafayettes, Liancourts, Lameths ; above all, their D'Orleans, now cut forever from his Court-moorings, and musing drowsily of high and highest sea-prizes (for is not he too a son of Henri Ouatre, and partial potential Heir- Apparent ?)— on his voyage towards Chaos. From the Clergy again, so numerous are the Cures, actual deserters have run over : two small parties ; in the second party Cure Gregoire. Nay there is talk of a whole Hundred and Forty-nine of them about to desert in mass, and only restrained by an Archbishop of Paris. It seems a losing game. But judge if France, if Paris sat idle, all this while ! Addresses from far and near flow in : for our Commons have now grown organic enough to open letters. Or indeed to cavil at them ! Thus poor Marquis de Breze, Supreme Usher, Master of Cere- monies, or whatever his title was, writing about this time on some ceremonial matter, sees no harm in winding up with a ' Monsieur, yours with sincere attachment.' — " To whom does it address itself, this sincere attachment ? " inquires Mirabeau. " To the Dean of the Tiers- Etat." — " There is no man in France entitled to write that/' rejoins he ; whereat the Galleries and the World will not be Il8 THE THIRD ESTATE. kept from applauding.^ Poor De Breze ! These Commons have a still older grudge at him ; nor has he yet done with them. In another way, Mirabeau has had to protest against the quick suppression of his Newspaper, y(f??/^r;^(^/ of the States-General; — and to continue it under a new name. In which act of valour, the , Paris Electors, still busy redacting their Cahzer, could not but support him, by Address to his Majesty : they claim utmost ' pro- visory freedom of the press;' they have .spoken even about demolishing the Bastille, and erecting a Bronze Patriot King on tjie site ! — These are the rich Burghers : but now consider how it went, for example, with such loose miscellany, now all grown eleutheromaniac, of Loungers, Prowlers, social Nondescripts (and the distilled Rascality of our Planet), as whirls forever in the Palais Royal ; — or what low infinite groan, first changing into a growl, comes from Saint-Antoine, and the Twenty-five Millions in danger of starvation ! There is the indisputablest scarcity of corn ; — be it Aristocrat- plot, D'Orleans-plot, of this year ; or drought and hail of last year : in city and province, the poor man looks desolately towards a nameless lot. And this States -General, tli^at could make us an age of gold, is forced to stand motionless ; cannot get its powers verified ! All industry necessarily languishes, if it be not that of making motions. In the Palais Royal there has been erected, apparently by sub- scription, a kind of Wooden Tent {ejt planches de bois) ;t — most convenient ; where select Patriotism can now redact resolutions, deliver harangues, with comfort, let the weather be as it will. Lively is that Satan-at-Home ! On his table, on his chair, in every cafe^ stands a patriotic orator ; a crowd round him within ; a crowd listening from without, open-mouthed, through open door and window ; with ' thunders of applause for every sentiment of more than common hardiness.' In Monsieur Dessein's Pamphlet- ' shop, close by, you cannot without strong elbowing get to the counter : every hour produces its pamphlet, or litter of pamphlets ; ^ there were thirteen to-day, sixteen yesterday, ninety-two last week.' J Think of Tyranny and Scarcity ; Fervid-eloquence, Rumour, Pamphleteering ; Societe Fiiblicolc^ Breton Club, En- raged Club ; — and whether every tap-room, coffee-room, social reunion, accidental street-group, over wide France, was not an Enraged Club ! To all which the Commons Deputies can only listen with a 'sublime inertia of sorrow ; reduced to busy themselves Svith their internal pohce.' Surer position no Deputies ever occupied ; if they keep it with skill. Let not the temperature rise too high ; break not the Eros-egg till it be hatched, till it break itself ! An eager pubhc crowds all Galleries and vacancies! ^cannot be restrained from applauding.' The two Privileged Orders, the Noblesse all verified and const it u ted, may look on with what face they will ; not without a sc ( i ct tremor of heart. The Clergy, * Moniieur (in Hisloire Parlemcntaire, i. 405). + Histoirc Ir'arlementairet i. 429. J Arthlir Young, Travels, i. 104, INERTIA. 110 always acting the part of conciliators, make a clutch at the Galleries, and the popularity there ; and miss it. Deputation of them arrives, with dolorous message about the ' dearth of grains, and the necessity there is of casting aside vam formalities, and deliberating on this. An insidious proposal ; which, however, the Commons (moved thereto by seagreen Robespierre) dexterously accept as a sort of hint, or even pledge, that the Clergy will forth- with come over to them, constitute the States-General, and so cheapen grains 1^— Finally, on the 27th day of May, Mirabeau, judging the time now nearly come, proposes that ' the mertia 'cease;' that, leaving the Noblesse to their own stiff ways, the Clergy be summoned, ' in the name of the God of Peace,' to join the Commons, and begin.f To which summons if they turn a deaf ear,— we shall see 1 Are not one Hundred and Forty-nme ot them ready to desert ? , . -r^ • .1 O Triumvirate of Princes, new Garde-des-Sceaux Barentin, thou Home-Secretary Breteuil, Duchess Pohgnac, and Queen eager to listen,— what is now to be done? This Third Estate will get m motion, with the force of all France in it ; Clergy-machmery with Noblesse-machinery, which were to serve as beautiful counter- balances and drags, will be shamefully dragged after it,— and take fire along with it. What is to be done ? The CEil-de-Boeuf waxes more confused than ever. Whisper and counter-whisper ; a very tempest of whispers ! Leading men from all the Three Orders are nightly spirited thither ; conjurors many of them ; but can they conjure this ? Necker himself were now welcome, could he interfere to purpose. , tt -i Let Necker interfere, then ; and in the King's name ! Happily that incendiary ' God-of-Peace ' message is not yet answered. The Three Orders shall again have conferences ; under this Patriot Minister of theirs, somewhat may be healed, clouted up ; —we meanwhile getting forward Swiss Regiments, and a 'hundred 'pieces of field-artillery.' This is what the GEil-de-Boeuf, for its part, resolves on. , . ^1 • j But as for Necker— Alas, poor Necker, thy obstinate Third Estate has one first-last word, verification in common, as the pledge of voting and deliberating in common ! Half-way pro- posals, from such a tried friend, they answer with a stare. The tardy conferences speedily break up ; the Third Estate, now ready and resolute, the whole world backing it, returns to its Hall of the Three Order ; and Necker to the CEil-de-Bceuf, with the char- acter of a disconjured conjuror there— fit only for dismissal.^ And so the Commons Deputies are at last on their own strength getting under way? Instead of Chairman, or Dean, they have now got a President : AstronoiPxer Bailly. Under way, with a vengeance ! With endless vociferous and temperate eloquence, borne on Newspaper wings to all lands, they have now, on this 17th day of June, determined that their name is not Third Estate, hvit—Natio7ial Assembly ! They, then, are the Nation ? * Bailly, Mdmoires, i. 114. f Histoire Parlementairc, i. 413. X Debates, ist to 17th June 1789 (in Histoire Parlementaire, 1. 422-478). I20 THE THIRD ESTATE. Triumvirate of Princes, Queen, refractory Noblesse and Clergy, i what, then, are yo?if A most deep question scarcely answer- i al^le m living political dialects. All regardless of which, our new National Assembly proceeds to appomt a ' committee of subsistences ; ' dear to France, though It can find little or no'grain. Next, as if our National Assembly stood quite firm on its legs,— to appoint 'four other standing committees then to settle the security of the National Debt ; then that of the Annual Taxation : all within eight-and-forty hours. At such rate of velocity it is going : the conjurors of the Uiil-de-Boeuf may well ask themselves, Whither ? CHAPTER II. MERCURY DE BREZE Now surely were the time for a ' god from the machine there is a nodus worthy of one. The only question is, Which god ? Shall It be Mars de Broghe, with his hundred pieces of cannon Not yet, answers prudence ; so soft, irresolute is King Louis. Let it be Messenger Mercury, our Supreme Usher de Breze. On the morrow, which is the 20th of June, these Hundred and F orty-nme false Curates, no longer restrainable by his Grace of Pans, will desert in a body : let De Breze intervene, and produce —closed doors ! Not only shall there be Royal Session, in that Salle des Menus ; but no meeting, nor working (except bv car- penters), till then. Your Third • Estate, self-styled ' National 'Assembly,^ shall suddenly see itself extruded from its Hall, by carpenters, in this dexterous way ; and reduced to do nothing, 'not e^/en to meet, or articulately lament,~till Majesty, with Seance Royale and new miracles, be ready ! In this manner shall De Breze, as Mercury ex machznd, intervene ; and, if the CEil-de-Boeuf mistake not, work deliverance from the nodus. Of poor De Breze we can remark that he has yet prospered in none of his dealings with these Commons. Five weeks ago, when they kissed the hand of Majesty, the mode he took got nothing but censure ; and then his ' sincere attachment,' how was it scorn- fully whiffed aside ! Before supper, this night, he writes to Presi- dent Bailly, a new Letter, to be delivered shortly after dawn to- morrow, in the King's name. Which Letter, however, Bailly, in the pride of office, will merely crush together into his pocket, like a bill he does not mean to pay. ^ Accordingly on Saturday morning the 20th of June, shrill-sound- mg heralds proclaim through the streets of Versailles, that there is to be a S(fa7tce Royale next Monday ; and no meeting of the Statcs-(xeneral till then. And yet, we observe, Prcsiflent Bailly in sound of this, and with DeBr(:zc's Letter in his pocket, is proceeding, With National Assembly at his heels, to the accustomed Salle des MERCURY DE BREZE. 121 Menus ; as if De Breze and heralds were mere wind. It is shut, this Salle ; occupied by Gardes Frangaises. " Where is your Captain ? " The Captain shows his royal order : workmen, he is grieved to say, are all busy setting up the platform for his Majesty's Seance ; most unfortunately, no admission ; admission, at furthest, for President and Secretaries to bring away papers, which the joiners might destroy ! — President Bailly enters with Secretaries ; and returns bearing papers : alas, within doors, instead of patriotic eloquence, there is now no noise but hammering, sawing, and ( operative screeching and rumbling ! A profanation without parallel. The Deputies stand grouped on the Paris Road, on this um- brageous Avenue de Versailles ; complaining aloud of the indignity done them. Courtiers, it is supposed, look from their windows, and giggle. The morning is none of the comfortablest : raw ; it is even drizzling a little.^ But all travellers pause ; patriot gallery- men, mi'scellaneous spectators increase the groups. Wild counsels alternate. Some desperate Deputies propose to go and hold session on the great outer Staircase at Marly, under the King's windows ; for his Majesty, it seems, has driven over thither. Others talk of making the Chateau Forecourt, what they call Place Amies ^ a Runnymede and new Champ de Mai of free Frenchmen : nay of awakening, to sounds of indignant Patriotism, the echoes of the CEil-de-Boeuf itself. — Notice is given that President Bailly, aided by judicious Guillotin and others, has found place in the Tennis- Court of the Rue St. Frangois. Thither, in long-drawn files, hoarse-jingling, like cranes an wing, the Commons Deputies angrily wend. Strange sight was this in the Rue St. Frangois, Vieux Versailles ! A naked Tennis- Court, as the pictures of that time still give it : four walls ; naked, except aloft some poor wooden penthouse, or roofed spectators'-gallery, hanging round them : — on the floor not now an idle teeheeing, a snapping of balls and rackets ; but the bellowing din of an indignant National Representation, scandal- ously exiled hither ! However, a cloud of witnesses looks down on them, from wooden, penthouse, from wall-top, from adjoining roof and chimney ; rolls towards them from all quarters, with passionate spoken blessings. Some table can be procured to write on ; some chair, if not to sit on, then to stand on. The Secretaries undo their tapes ; Bailly has constituted the Assembly. [ Experienced Mounier, not wholly new to such things, in Parle- mentary revolts, wiiich he has seen or heard of, thinks that it were well, in these lamentable threatening circumstances, to unite them- selves by an Oath. — Universal acclamation, as from smouldering bosoms getting vent ! The Oath is redacted ; pronounced aloud by President Bailly, — and indeed in such a sonorous tone, that the cloud of witnesses, even outdoors, hear it, and bellow response to it. Six hundred right-hands rise with President Bailly's, to take God above to witness that they will not separate for man below, but will meet in all places, under all circumstances, wheresoever * Bailly, M^7noi?^cs, i. 185-206, 122 THE THIRD ESTATE. two or three can get together, till they have made the Constitution. Made the Constitution, Friends ! That is a long task. Six hun- dred hands, meanwhile, will sign as they have sworn : six hundred save one ; one Loyahst Abdiel, still visible by this sole light-pomt, and nameable, poor ' M. Martin d'Auch, from Castelnaudary, m Languedoc.' Hun they permit to sign or signify refusal ; they even save him from the cloud of witnesses, by declarmg ' his head deranged.' At four o'clock, the signatures are all appended ; new meeting is fixed for Monday morning, earher than the hour of the Royal Session ; that our Hundred and Forty-nine Clerical deserters be not balked : we will meet ' at the Recollets Church or else- where,' in hope that our Hundred and Forty-nine, will join us ;— and now it is time to go to dinner. This, then, is the Session of the Tennis-Court, f^mied Seance dii Ten de Paume ; the fame of which has gone forth to all lands. This is Mercurius de Breze's appearance as Deus ex viachind ; this is the fruit it brings ! The giggle of Courtiers in the Versailles Avenue has already died into gaunt silence. Did the distracted Court, with Gardes-des-Sceaux Barentin, Triumvirate and Com- pany, imagine that they could scatter six hundred National Deputies, big with a National Constitution, like as much barndoor poultry^ big with next to nothing,— by the white or black rod of a Supreme Usher? Barndoor poultry fly cackhng : but National Deputies turn round, lion-faced ; and, with uphfted right-hand, swear an Oath that makes the four corners of France tremble. President Bailly has covered himself with honour : which shall become rewards. The National Assembly is now doubly and trebly the Nation's Assembly ; not militant, martyred only, but triumphant ; insulted, and which could not be insulted. Pans disembogues itself once more, to witness, ' with grim looks,' the Seance Roy ale ."^ which, by a new fehcity, is postponed till Tuesday. The Hundred and Forty-nine, and even with Bishops among them, all in processional mass, have had free leisure to march off, and solemnly join the Commons sitting waiting in their Church. The Commons welcomed them with shouts, with embracmgs, nay with tears ;t for it is growing a life-and-death matter now. As for the Sea7ice itself, the Carpenters seem to have accom- plished their platform ; but all else remains unaccomphshed. Futile, we may say fatal, was the whole matter. King Louis enters, through seas of people, all grim-silent, angry with many things,— for it is a bitter raiu too. Enters, to a Third Estate, like- wise grim-silent ; which has been wetted waiting under mean porches, at back-doors, while Court and Privileged were entering by the front. King and Garde- des-Sceaux (there is no Necker visible) make known, not without longwindedness, the determina- tions of the royal breast. The Three Orders shall vote separately. On the other hand, France may look for considerable consti- tutional blessings ; as specified in these Five- and-thiily Articles,! * See Arthur Young [Tmveh, i. 115-iiS) : A. Lameth, &c. f Dumont, Souve?tirs sur Mirabeau, c. 4. t Ilisioire Paylcmcniairc, \ 13. MERCURY DE BREZE, 123 which Garde-des-Sceaux is waxing hoarse with reading. Which Five-and-thirty Articles, adds his Majesty again rising, if the Three Orders most unfortunately cannot agree together to effect them, I myself will effect : " seiil je feral le Men de mes peuples^' —which being interpreted may signify, You, contentious Deputies of the States-General, have probably not long to be here ! But, in fine, all shall now withdraw for this day ; and meet again, each Order in its separate place, to-morrow morning, for despatch of business. This is the determination of the royal breast : pithy and clear. And herewith King, retinue, Noblesse, majority of Clergy file out, as if the whole matter were satisfactorily com- pleted. These file out ; through grim-silent seas of people. Only the Commons Deputies file not out ; but stand there in gloomy silence, uncertain what they shall do. One man of them is certain ; one man of them discerns and dares ! It is now that King Mirabeau starts to the Tribune, and lifts up his lion-voice. Verily a word in season ; for, in such scenes, the moment is the mother of ages 1 Had not Gabriel Honore been there,— one can well fancy, how the Commons Deputies, affrighted at the perils which now yawned dim all round them, and waxing ever paler in each other's pale- ness, might very naturally, one after one, have glided offj and the whole course of European History have been different ! But he is there. List to the brool of that royal forest-voice ; sorrowful, low ; fast swelling to a roar ! Eyes kindle at the glance of his eye : — National Deputies were missioned by a Nation ; they have sworn an Oath ; they— but lo ! while the lion's voice roars loudest, what Apparition is this 1 Apparition of Mercurius de Breze, muttering somewhat !— ' Speak out," cry several.— Messieurs," shrills De Breze, repeating himself, " You have heard "the King's orders ! "—Mirabeau glares on him with fire-flashing face ; shakes the black lion's mane : Yes, Monsieur, we have "heard what the King was advised to say : and you who cannot be " the interpreter of his orders to the States-General ; you, who have " neither place nor right of speech here ; you are not the man to "remind us of it. Go, Monsieur, tell those who sent you that we " are here by the will of the People, and that nothing shall send us " hence but the force of bayonets l""^ And poor De Breze shivers forth from the National Assembly ;— and also (if it be not in one faintest glimmer, months later) finally from the page of History ! — Hapless De Breze ; doomed to survive long ages, in men's memory, in this faint way, with tremulent white rod I He was true to Etiquette, which was his Faith here below ; a martyr to respect of persons. Short woollen cloaks could not kiss Majesty's hand as long velvet ones did. Nay lately, when the poor little Dauphin lay dead, and some ceremonial Visitation came, was he not punctual to announce it even to the Dauphin's dead body : " Monseigneur. a Deputation of the States-General !"t Sun^ lachrymce rericm. But what does the CEil-de-Boeuf, now when De Breze shivers * Moiiitcur [Hist. Pari. ii. 22). f Montgaillard. ii. ^8. 124- THE THIRD ESTATE. back thither? Despatch ih^it same force of bayonets? Not soli the seas of people still hang multitudinous, intent on what isi passmg ; nay rush and roll, loud-billowing, into the Courts of the Chateau itself ; for a report has risen that Necker is to be dismissei Worst of all, the Gardes P>angaises seem indisposed to act : ' two 'Companies of them do not fire when ordered!'* Necker, for not being at the Seance, shall be shouted for, carried home in! trmmph ; and must not be dismissed. His Grace of Paris, on the! other hand, has to fly with broken coach-panels, and owe his life; to furious driving. The 6^^r^^^-^^-6'^?r/i- (Body-Guards), which you were drawing out, had better be drawn in again.f There is. no sending of bayonets to be thought of. Instead of soldiers, the (Eil-de-Boeuf sends— carpenters, to take! down the platform. Ineffectual shift ! In few instants, the veryj carpenters cease wrenching and knocking at their platform ; stand on It, hammer in hand, and listen open-mouthed.l The Third Estate is decreeing that it is, was, and will be, nothing but ai National Assembly ; and now, moreover, an inviolable one, alli members of it inviolable : 'infamous, traitorous, towards the' ^ Nation, and guilty of capital crime, is any person, body-corpo- ' rate, tribunal, court or commission that now or henceforth, during * the present session or after it, shall dare to pursue, interrogate, * arrest, or cause to be arrested, detain or cause to be detained,' 'any,' &c. &c. ' on whose part soever the same be commanded.' § ' Which done, one can wind up with this comfortable reflection [ from Abbe Sieyes : " Messieurs, you are today what you were * "yesterday." . ] Courtiers may shriek ; but it is, and remains, even so. Their ! well-charged explosion has exploded throuo^h the touch-hole s ' covering themselves with scorches, confusion, and unseemly soot ! i Poor Triumvirate, poor Queen ; and above all, poor Queen's Hus- band, who means well, had he any fixed meaning ! Folly is that wisdom which is wise only behindhand. Few months ago these Thirty-five Concessions had filled France with a rejoicing, which might have lasted for several years. Now it is unavailing, the very mention of it slighted ; Majesty's express orders set at nought. ' All France is in a roar ; a sea of persons, estimated at ' ten ' thousand,' whirls ' all this day in the Palais Royal.' || The re- maining Clergy, and likewise some Forty-eight Noblesse, D'Orl^ans among them, have now forthwith' gone over to the victorious Com- mons ; by whom, as is natural, they are received ' with acclama- 'tion.' The Third Estate triumphs ; Versailles Town shouting round it ; ten thousand whirling all day in the Palais Royal ; and all France standing a-tiptoe, not unlike whirling ! Let the GEil-de- Boeuf look to it. As for King Louis, he will swallow his injuries ; will temporise, keep silence ; will at all costs have present peace. * Histoire Pariementaire, ii. 26. f Bailly, i. 217. t Histoire Parlementaii-e, ii. 23. § Montgaillard', ii. 47. IJ Arthur Young, i. 119. BROGUE THE WAR-GOD. 12S It was Tuesday the 23d of June, when he spoke that peremptory, royal mandate ; and the week is not done till he has written to the remaining obstinate Noblesse, that they also must oblige him, and give in. D'Espremenil rages his last ; Barrel Mirabeau * breaks * his sword,' making a vow, — which he might as well have kept. The ' Triple Family ' is now therefore complete ; the third erring brother, the Noblesse, having joined it ; — erring but pardonable ; soothed, so far as possible, by sweet eloquence from President Bailly. So triumphs the Third Estate ; and States- General are be- come National Assembly ; and all France may sing Te jDeum, By wise inertia, and wise cessation of inertia, great victory has been gained. It is the last night of June: all night you meet nothing on the streets of Versailles but ^ men running with * torches' with shouts of jubilation. From the 2d of May when they kissed the hand of Majesty, to this 30th of June when men run with torches, we count seven weeks complete. For seven weeks the National Carroccio has stood far-seen, ringing many a signal ; and, so much having now gathered round it, may hope to stand. CHAPTER III. BROGX.IE THE WAR-GOD, The Court feels indignant that it is conquered ; but what then ? Another time it will do better. Mercury descended in vain ; now has the time come for Mars.— The gods of the CEil-de-Boeuf have withdrawn into the darkness of their cloudy Ida ; and sit there, shaping and forging what may be needful, be it ' billets of a new * National Bank,' munitions of war, or things forever inscrutable to men. ^ Accordingly, what means this * apparatus of troops ' ? The Na- tional Assembly can get no furtherance for its Committee of Sub- sistences ; can hear only that, at Paris, the Bakers' shops are besieged ; that, in the Provinces, people are living on ' meal-husks and boiled grass.' But on all highways there hover dust-clouds, with the march of regiments, with the trailing of cannon : foreign Pandours, of fierce aspect ; Sahs-Samade, Esterhazy, Royal- Allemand ; so many of them foreign ; to the number of thirty thousand— which fear can magnify to fifty : all wending towards Paris and Versailles ! Already, on the heights of Montmartre, is a digging and delving ; too like a scarping and trenching. The effluence of Paris is arrested Versailles-ward by a barrier of cannon at Sevres Bridge. From the Queen's Mews, cannon stand pointed on the National Assembly Hall itself. The National Assembly has its very slumbers broken by the tramp of soldiery, swarming and defihng, endless, or seemingly endless, all round those spaces, 126 THE THIRD ESTATE, at dead of night, ' without drum-music, without audible word of command.' * What means it ? Shall eight, or even shall twelve Deputies, our Mirabeaug, Barnaves at the head of them, be whirled suddenly to the Castle of Ham ; the rest ignominously dispersed to the winds ? No National Assembly can make the Constitution with cannon levelled on it from the Queen's Mews ! What means this reticence cf the CEil-de-Boeuf, broken only by nods and shrugs ? In the mystery of that cloudy Ida, what is it that they forge and shape ?— Such questions must distracted Patriotism keep asking, and receive no answer but an echo. Enough of themselves ! But now, above all, while the hungry food-year, which runs from August to August, is getting older ; becoming more and more a famine-year ? With ' meal-husks and boiled grass,' Brigands may actually collect ; and, in crowds, at farm and mansion, howl angrily. Food! Food I It is in vain to send soldiers against them : at sight of soldiers they disperse, they vanish as under ground ; then directly reassemble elsewhere for new tumult and plunder. Frightful enough to look upon ; but what \.o hear of, reverberated through Twenty- five Millions of suspicious minds ! Brigands and Broglie, open Conflagration, preternatural Rumour are driving mad most hearts in France. What will the issue of these things be ? At Marseilles, many weeks ago, t*he Townsmen have taken arms ; for ' suppressing of Brigands,' and other purposes : the military commandant may make of it what he will. Elsewhere, everywhere, could not the like be done ? Dubious, on the dis- tracted Patriot Imagination, wavers, as a last deliverance, some foreshadow of a Natio7ml Gtiard, But conceive, above all, the Wooden Tent in the Palais Royal ! A universal hubbub there, as of dissolving worlds : there loudest bellows the mad, mad- making voice of Rumour ; their sharpest gazes Suspicion into the pale dim World- Whirlpool ; discerning shapes and phantasms; imminent bloodthirsty Regiments camped on the Champ-de-Mars ; dispersed National Assembly; redhot cannon-balls (to burn Paris) ;— the mad War-god and Bellona's sounding thongs. To the calmest man it is becoming too plain that battle is in- evitable. Inevitable, silently nod Messeigneurs and Broghe : Inevitable and brief ! Your National Assembly, stopped short in its Consti- tutional labours, may fatigue the royal ear with addresses and remonstrances : those cannon of ours stand duly levelled ; those troops are here. The King's Declaration, with its Thirty-five^ too generous Articles, was spoken, was not listened to ; but remains yet unrevoked : he himself shall effect it, seiil ilfera ! As for Broglie, he has his headquarters at Versailles, all as in a seat of war : clerks writing ; significant staff-officers, inclined to taciturnity ; plumed aides-de-camp, scouts, orderlies flying or hovering. He himself looks forth, important, impenetrable; listens to Besenval Commandant of Paris, and his warning and * A. Lametb, AsscmbUc Constiiuante, i. 41. BROGUE THE WAR-GOD, 127 earnest counsels (for he has come out repeatedly on purpose), with a silent smile.* The Parisians resist ? scornfully cry Messeigneurs. As a meal-mob may ! They have sat qui^t, these five generations' submitting to all. Their Mercier declared, in these very years' that a Parisian revolt was henceforth ' impossible.'f Stand by the royal Declaration, of the Twenty-third of June. The Nobles of France, valorous, chivalrous as of old, will rally round us with one heart ; — and as for this which you call Third Estate, and which we call canaille of unwashed Sansculottes, of Patehns, Scribblers factious Spouters, — brave Broglie, Svith a whiff of grapeshot {salve de canons)^ if need be, will give quick account of it. Thus reason they : on their cloudy Ida ; hidden from men, — men also hidden from them. Good is grapeshot, Messeigneurs, on one condition : that the shooter also were made of metal ! But unfortunately he is made of flesh ; under his buffs and bandoleers your hired shooter has instincts, feelings, even a kind of thought. It is his kindred, bone of his bone, this same canaille that shall be whiffed; he has brothers in it, a father and mother,~hving on meal- husks and boiled grass. His very doxy, not yet 'dead i' the spital,' drives him into military heterodoxy ; declares that if he shed Patriot blood, he shall be accursed among men. The soldier, who has seen his pay stolen by rapacious Foulons, his blood wasted by Soubises, Pompadours, and the gates of promotion shut in- exorably on him if he were not born noble, — is himself not without griefs against you. Your cause is not the soldier's cause ; but, as would seem, your own only, and no other god's nor man's. For example, the world may have heard how, at Bethune lately, when there rose some 'riot about grains,' of which sort there are so many, and the soldiers stood drawn out, and the word ' Fire 1' was g:ven,--not a trigger stirred ; only the butts of all muskets rattled angrily against the ground ; and the soldiers stood gloom- ing, with a mixed expressio;i of countenance ;— till clutched ' each under the arm of a patriot householder,' they were all hurried off, in this manner, to be treated and caressed, and have their pay increased by subscription ! J ^ Neither have the Gardes Frangaises, the best regiment of the hne, shown any promptitude for street-firing lately. They re- turned grumbling from Reveillon's ; and have not burnt a single cartridge since ; nay, as we saw, not even when bid. A dangerous humour dwells in these Gardes. Notable men too, in their way ! Valadi the Pythagorean was, at one time, an officer of theirs. Nav, in the ranks, under the three-cornered felt and cockade, what hard heads may there not be, and reflections going on,— unknown to the public ! One head of the hardest we do now discern there : on the shoulders of a certain Sergeant Hoche. Lazare Hoche, that IS the name of him ; he used to be about the Versailles Royal 1 Stables, nephew of a poor herbwoman ; a handy lad ; exceedingly ; addicted to reading. He is now Sergeant Hoche, and can rise no * Besenval, iii. 398. f Mercier, Tableau de Paris, vi. 23. J Histoire Parlcmeiitairc. 128 THE THIRD ESTATE. farther : he lays out his pay in rushhghts, and cheap editions of books * On the whole, the best seems to be : Consign these Gardes Fran- gaises to their Barracks. So Besenval thinks, and orders. Con- signed to their barracks, the Gardes Frangaises do but form a * Secret Association,' an Engagement not to act against the ! National Assembly. Debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean ; debauched by money and women ! cry Besenval and innumerable others. Debauched by what you will, or in need of no debauch- ing, behold them, long files of them, their consignment broken, arrive, headed by their Sergeants, on the 26th day of June, at the Palais Royal ! Welcomed with vivats, with presents, and a pledge of patriot liquor ; embracing and embraced ; declaring in words that the cause of France is their cause ! Next day and the following days the like. What is singular too, except this patriot humour, and breaking of their consignment, they behave otherwise with ' the most rigorous accuracy.'f They are growing questionable, these Gardes ! Eleven ring- leaders of them are put in the Abbaye Prison. It boots not in the least. The imprisoned Eleven have only, M3y the hand of an individual,' to drop, towards nightfall, a line in the Cafe de Foy ; where Patriotism harangues loudest on its table. ' Two hundred young persons, soon waxing to four thousand,' with fit crowbars, roll towards the Abbaye ; smite asunder the needful doors ; and bear out their Eleven, with other mihtary victims : — to supper in the Palais Royal Garden ; to board, and lodging * in camp- beds, in the Theatre des Varietes ;' other national Prytaneum as yet not being in readiness. Most deliberate ! Nay so punctual were these young persons, that finding one military victim to have been imprisoned for real civil crime, they returned, him to his cell, with protest., Why new military force was not called out ? New military force was called out. New military force did arrive, full gallop, with drawn sabre : but the people gently Maid hold of their bridles the dragoons sheathed their swords ; lifted their caps by way of salute, and sat like mere statues of dragoons, — except indeed that a drop of liquor being brought them, they ' drank to the King and Nation with the greatest cordiality.'^ And now, ask in return, why Messeigneurs and Broglie the great god of war, on seeing these things, did not pause, and take some other course, any other course ? Unhappily, as we said, they could see nothing. I^ridc, which goes before a fall ; wrath, if not reasonable, yet pardonable, most natural, had hardened their hearts and heated their heads; so, with imbecility and violence (ill-matched pair), they rush to seek their hour. All Regiments are not Gardes Franc^aises, or debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean : let fresh undebauched Regiments come up ; let Royal-Allemand, Salis-Samade, Swiss Chateau-Vieux come uj), — which, can fight, but c^n hardly speak except in German * Dictionnaire des Hummcs Mdrquans, Londrcs (Paris), 1800, ii. 198, + Beacnval, iii. 394-6. J Histoire Farlcmcntaire, ii. 3a. TO ARMS! 129 gutUirals ; let soldiers march, and highways thunder with artillery-waggons : Majesty has a new Royal Session to hold,— and miracles to work there ! The whiff of grapeshot can, if needful, become a blast and tempest. In which circumstances, before the redhot balls begin raining, may not the Hundred-and- twenty Paris Electors, though their Cahier is long since hnished, see good to meet again daily, as an ' Electoral Club ' ? They meet first ' in a Tavern ; '—where ' the largest wedding-party' cheerfully give place to them.* But latterly they meet in the H6tel~de- Ville, in the Townhall itself. Flesselles, Provost of Merchants, with his Four Echevins {Scabins, Assessors), could not prevent it ; such was the force of public opinion. He, with his Echevins, and the Six-and-Twenty Town- Councillors, all appointed from Above, may well sit silent there, in their long gowns ; and consider, with awed eye, what prelude this IS of convulsion coming from Below, and how themselves shall fare in that i » CHAPTER IV. TO ARMS ! So hangs it, dubious, fateful, in the sultry days of July. It is the passionate printed advice of M. Marat, to abstain, of all things, from violence. t Nevertheless the hungry poor are already burn- mg Town Barriers, where Tribute on eatables is levied ; getting clamorous for food. The twelfth July nuorning is Sunday; the streets are all placarded with an enormous-sized De par le Roz, ' inviting peace- able citizens to remain within doors,' to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd. Why so 1 What mean these ' placards of enor- mous size ' 1 Above all, what means this clatter of military ; dragoons, hussars, rattling in from all points of the compass towards the Place Louis Ouinze ; with a staid gravity of face, though saluted with mere nicknames, hootings and even missiles ?J Besenval is with them. Swiss Guards of his are already in the Champs Elysees, with four pieces of artillery. Have the destroyers descended on us, then ? From the Bridge of Sevres to utmost Vincennes, from Saint-Denis to the Champ- de-Mars, we are begirt ! Alarm, of the vague unknown, is in every heart. The Palais Royal has become a place of awestruck mterjections, silent shakings of the head : one can fancy with what dolorous stound the noon-tide cannon (which the Sun fires at * Dusaulx, Prise de la Bastille [Collection des Mimoires, par Berville et Barrike, Pans, 1821), p. 269. ^ ^-^is au Peuple.ou les Ministres ddvoiUs, ist July, 1789 (in Histoira varlementatre, 11. 37. j j ^ ^ \ X Besenval, iii. 411, THE THIRD ESTATE, the crossing of his meridian) went off there ; bodeful, hke an m- articulate voice of doom/^ Are these troops verily come out ^ ao-ainst Bricrands ' ? Where are the Brigands? What mystery is m the wind?— Hark ! a human voice reportmg articulately ^the Tob's-new8 : Necker, People's Minister, Saviour of France, ts dismissed. Impossible ; incredible ! Treasonous to the public peace ' Such a voice ought to be choked in the water-works ;t --had not the news-bringer quickV Hed. Nevertheless, friends, make of it what you will, the news is true. Necker is gone. Necker hies northward incessantly, in obedient secrecy, since yesternio-ht. We have a new Ministry : Broglie the War-god ; Aristocrat Breteuil ; Fculon who said the people might eat grass I Rumour, therefore, shaU arise; in the Palais Royal, and m broad France. Paleness sits on every face ; confused tremor and fremescence ; waxing into thunder-peals, of Fury stirred on by Fear. But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Cafe de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face ; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol ! He sprino-s to a table : the Pohce satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time he speaks without stammering :— Friends, shall we die like hunted hares ? Like slieep hounded into their pinfold ; bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife ? The hour is come; the^ supreme hour of Frenchman and Man ; when Oppressors are to ^ try conclusions with Oppressed ; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance forever. Let such hour be well-zomc^ ! Us, meseems, , one cry only befits : To Arms ! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only : To arms !— " To arms !" yell responsive the innumerable voices : like one gi-e^it voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air : for all faces wax lire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter words.t does CamiUe evoke the Elemental Powers, in thi§ great moment.— Friends, continues Camille, some rallying sign ! Cockades ; green ones ;— the colour of hope !— As with the flight of locusts, these r^nxen tree leaves ; green ribands from the neigh> bourin^>- shops ; all green things are snatched, and made cockades of Camille descends from his table, 'stifled with embraces, wetted with tears ;' has a bit of green riband handed him ; sticks it in his hat. And now to Curtius' Image-shop there; to the Boulevards ; to the four winds ; and rest not till France be on fire ! France, so long shaken and wind-parched, is probably at the rip-ht inflammable point.— As for poor Curtius, who, one grieves to think, might be but imperfectly paid,~he cannot make two words about his Images. The Wax-bust of Necker, the Wax-bust of D'Orleans, helpers of France : these, covered with crape, as in funeral procession, or after the manner of suppliants appealing to * Hisloire Parlemcntairc, ii. Rr. t Ibitl- n ^ X Vicux Cordelier, par r;ui)ille Desmoulins, No. 5 (reprinted m Collection des Mi^moircs, par Buudouiii i'r^rcs, J'aris, 1825), p. 81. TO ARMS! 131 Heaven, to Earth, and Tartarus itself, a mixed multitude bears off. For a sign ! As indeed man, with his singular miagmative faculties, can do little or nothing without signs : thus Turks look to their Prophet's banner ; also Osier Mannikins have been burnt, and Necker's Portrait has erewhile figured, aloft on its perch. In this manner march they, a mixed, continually mcreasmg multitude ; armed with axes, staves and miscellanea ; grim, many- sounding, through the streets. Be all Theatres shut ; let all dancing, on planked floor, or on the natural greensward, cease ! Instead of a Christian Sabbath, and feast of gidngtcette taber- nacles, it shall be a Sorcerer's Sabbath ; and Paris, gone rabid, dance,— with the Fiend for piper ! * However, Besenval, with horse and foot, is in the Place Louis Quinze. Mortals promenading homewards, in the fall of the day, saunter by, from Chaillot or Passy, from flirtation and a little thin wine; with sadder step than usual. Will the Bust-Procession pass that way ! Behold it ; behold also Prince Lambesc dash forth on it, with his Royal-Allemands ! Shots fall, and sabre- strokes ; Busts are hewn asunder ; and, alas, also heads of men. A sabred Procession has nothing for it but to explode, along what streets, alleys, Tuileries Avenues it finds ; and disappear. One unarmed man lies Iiewed dovvn ; a Garde Fran^aise by his uniform : bear him (or bear even the report of him) dead and gory to his Barracks ; — where he has comrades still alive ! But why not now, victorious Lambesc, charge through that Tuileries Garden itself, where the fugitives are vanishing ? Not show the Sunday promenaders too, how steel glitters, besprent with blood ; that it be told of, and men's ears tingle ?— Tingle, alas, they did ; but the wrong way. Victorious Lambesc, in this his second or Tuileries charge, succeeds but in overturning (call it not slashing, for he struck with the flat of his sword) one man, a poor old schoolmaster, most pacifically tottering there ; and is driven out, by barricade of chairs, by flights of ' bottles and 'glasses,' by execrations in bass voice and treble. Most delicate is the mob-queller's vocation ; . wherein Too-much may be as bad as Not-enough. For each of these bass voices, and more each treble voice, borne to all parts of the City, rings now nothing but distracted indignation ; will ring all night. The cry, To arms ! roars tenfold ; steeples with their metal storm- voice boom out, as the sun sinks ; armorer's shops are broken open, plundered ; the streets are a hving foam-sea, chafed by all the winds. Such issue came of Lambesc's charge on the Tuileries Garden : no striking of salutary terror into Chaiflot promenaders ; a striking into broad wakefulness of Frenzy and the three Furies,— which otherwise were not asleep 1 For they lie always, those subter- ranean Eumenides (fabulous and yet so true), in the dullest exist- ence of man and can dance, brandishing their dusky torches, shaking their serpent-hair. Lambesc with Royal- Allemand may ride to his barracks, with curses for his marching-music ; then ride back again, like one troubled in mind : vengeful Gardes Fran^aises, sacreingy with knit brows, start out on him, from their 132 THE THIRD ESTATE. barracks in the Chaussee d'Antin ; pour a volley into him (killing and wounding) ; which he must not answer, but ride on.*^ Counsel dwells not under the plumed hat. If the Eumenides awaken, and Broglie has given no orders, what can a Besenval do ? When the Gardes Fran^aises, with Palais-Royal volunteers, roll down, greedy of more vengeance, to the Place Louis Quinze itself, they find neither Besenval, Lambesc, Royal- Allern and, nor : any soldier now there. Gone is military order. On the far Eastern Boulevard, of Saint-Antoine, the Chasseurs Normandie arrive, dusty, thirsty, after a hard day's ride ; but can find no billet-master, see no course in this City of confusions ; cannot get , to Besenval, cannot so much as discover where he is : Normandie must even bivouac there, in its dust and thirst,— unless sonie • patriot will treat it to a cup of liquor, with advices. Raging multitudes surround the H6tel-de-Ville, crying : Arms ! Orders ! The Six-and-twenty Town-Councillors, with their long ' gowns, have ducked under (into the raging chaos) ;— shall never ' emerge more. Besenval is painfully wriggling himself out, to the ' Champ-de-Mars ; he must sit there ' in the crudest uncertainty courier after courier may dash off for Versailles ; but will bring back no answer, can hardly bring himself back. For the roads are all blocked with batteries and pickets, with floods of carriages arrested for examination : such was Broglie's one sole order ; the , CEil-de-Boeuf, hearing in the distance such mad din, which sounded ' almost like invasion, will before all things keep its own head ; whole. A new Ministry, with, as it were, but one foot in the stirrup, cannot take leaps. Mad Paris is abandoned altogether to ; itself. • What a Paris, when the darkness fell ! A European m.etro- politan City hurled suddenly forth from its old combinations and arrangements ;* to crash tumultuously together, seeking new. Use and wont will now no longer direct any man ; each man, with what of originality he has, must begin thinking ; or following those that think. Seven hundred thousand individuals, on the sudden, find all their old paths, old ways of acting and deciding, vanish from under their feet. And so there go they, with clangour and terror, they know not as yet whether running, swimming or flymg, —headlong into the New Era. With clangour and terror : from above, Broglie the war-god impends, preternatural, v/ith his red- hot cannon-balls ; and from below, a preternatural Brigand-world menaces with dirk and firebrand : madness rules the hour. Happily, in place of the submerged Twenty-six, the Electoral Club is gathering; has declared itself a 'Provisional Municipality/ On the morrow it will get Provost Flesselles, with an Echevin or two, to give help in many things. For the present it decrees one- most essential thing : that forthwith a * Parisian Mihtia ' shall be enrolled. Depart, ye heads of Districts, to labour in this great work ; while we here, in Permanent Committee, sit alert. Let fencible men, each party in its own range of streets, keep watch Weber, ii. 75-91. GIVE US ARMS. 133 and ward, all night. Let Paris court a little fever-sleep ; confused by such fever-dreams, of * violent motions at the Palais Royal — ■ or from time to time start awake, and look out, palpitating, in its nightcap, at the clash of discordant mutually-unintelligible Patrols ; on the gleam of distant Barriers, going up ail-too ruddy towards the vault of Night.* CHAPTER V. GIVE US ARMS. On Monday the huge City has awoke, not to its week-da/|r industry : to what a different one ! The working man has become a fighting man ; has one, want only : that of arms. The industry of all crafts has paused ;— except it be the smith's, fiercely ham- mering pikes ; and, in a faint degree, the kitchener's, cooking off- hand victuals ; for douche va toujours. Women too are sewing cockades ; — not now of green, which being D'Artois colour, the H6tel-de-Ville has had to interfere in it ; but of red and blue, our old Paris colours : these, once based on a ground of constitutional white, are the famed TRICOLOR,— which (if Prophecy err not) * will go round the world.' All shops, unless it be the Bakers' and Vintners', are shut : Paris is in the streets ^—rushing, foaming like some Venice wine-glass into which you had dropped poison. The tocsin, by order, is pealing madly from all steeples. Arms, ye Elector Municipals ; thou Flesselles with thy Echevins, give us arms ! Flesselles gives what he can : fallacious, perhaps insidious promises of arms from Charleville ; order to seek arms here, order to seek them there. The new Municipals give what they can ; some three hundred and sixty indifferent firelocks, the equipment of the City- Watch : ' a man in wooden shoes, and without coat, directly clutches one of them, and mounts guard.' Also as hinted, an order to all Smiths to make pikes with their whole soul. Heads of Districts are in fervent consultation ; subordinate Patriotism roams distracted, ravenous for arms. Hitherto at the H6tel-de-Ville was only such modicum of indifferent firelocks as we have seen. At the so-called Arsenal, there hes nothing but rust, rubbish and saltpetre, — overlooked too by the guns of the Bastille. His Majesty's Repository, what they call Garde-Meuble, is forced and ransacked : tapestries enough, and gauderies ; but of serviceable fighting-gear small stock ! Two silver-mounted cannons there are ; an ancient gift from his Majesty of Siam to Louis Fourteenth : gilt sword of the Good Henri ; antique Chivalry arms and armour. These, and such as these, a neces- sitous Patriotism snatches i;Teedily, for want of better. The Siamese cannons go trundling, on an errand they were not meant * Deux Amis, i. 267-306. VOL. I, f THE THIRD ESTATE, for. Among the indifferent firelocks are seen tourney-lances ; the princely helm and hauberk glittering- amid ill-hatted heads, — as in a time when all times . and their possessions are suddenly sent jumbling ! At the Maison de Saint- Lazare^ Lazar- House once^ now a Correction-House with Priests, there was no trace of arms ; but, on the other hand, corn, plainly to a culpable extent. Out with it, lo market; in this scarcity of grains! — Heavens, will 'fifty-two carts,' in long row, hardly carry it to the Halle aux Bleds ? Well, truly, ye reverend Fathers, was your pantry filled ; fat are your larders ; over-generous your wine-bins, ye plotting exasperators of the Poor ; traitorous forestallers of bread 1 Vain is protesting, entreaty on bare knees : the House of Saint- Lazarus has that in it which comes not out by protesting. Behold,; how, from every window, it vomits : mere torrents of furniture, of bellowing and hurlyburly ; — the cellars also leaking wine. Till,' as was natural, smoke rose, — kindled, some say, by the desperate Saint- Lazaristes themselves, desperate of other riddance ; and the Establishment vanished from this world in fiame. Remark never- theless that ' a thief (set on or not by Aristocrats), being detected there, is ' instantly hanged/ Look also at the Chatelet Prison. The Debtors' Prison of La' Force is broken from without ; and they that sat in bondage to Aristocrats go free : hearing of which the Felons at the Chatelet do likewise ' dig up their pavements,' and stand on the offensive ; with the best prospects, — had not Patriotism, passing that way, ^ fired a volley ' into the Felon world ; and crushed it down again under hatches. Patriotism consorts not with thieving and felony surely also Punishment, this day, hitches (if she still hitch) after Crime, with frightful shoes-of-swiftness ! ' Some score or two ' of; wretched persons, found prostrate with drink in the cellars of that Saint-Lazare, are indignantly haled to prison ; the Jailor has no room ; whereupon, other place of security not suggesting itself, it is written, ' on les pe^idit^ they hanged them.'^ Brief is the word ; not without significance, be it true or untrue ! In such circumstances, the Aristocrat, the unpatriotic rich man is packing-up for departure. But he shall not get departed. A wooden-shod force has seized all Barriers, burnt or not : all that! enters, all that seeks to issue, is stopped there, and dragged to the Hotel-de-Ville : coaches, tumbrils, plate, furniture, ^ many meal- * sacks,' in time even ' flocks and herds ' encumber the Place de, Greve.t \ And so it roars, and rages, and brays ; drums beating, steeples| peahng ; criers rushing with hand-bells : " Oyez, oyez. All men to their Districts to be enroHed !" The Districts have met in' gardens, open squares ; are getting marshrvlled into volunteer troops. No redhot ball has yet fallen from Besenval's Camp ; on tlie contrary. Deserters with their arms are continually drop- ping in : nay now, joy of joys, at two in the afte^'noon, the Gardes * lJUtoirc Parle men taire, ii. 96. f Dusaulx, Prise d-^ la Basiille, p. 2 a GIVE US ARMS. 135 jFrangaises, being ordered to Saint-Denis, and flatly declining, ihave come over in a body ! It is a fact worth many. Three thou- I sand six hundred of the best lighting men, with complete accoutre- ment ; with cannoneers even, and cannon ! Their officers are left standing alone ; could not so much as succeed in ' spiking the guns.' The very Swiss, it may now be hoped, Chateau- Vieux and the others, will have doubts about fighting. Our Parisian Militia, — which some think it were better to name 'National Guard, — is prospering as heart could wish. It promised to be forty-eight thousand; but will in few hours double and quad- ruple that number : invincible, if we had only arms ! But see, the promised Charleviile Boxes, marked Artillerie ! Here, then, are arms enough 1 — Conceive the blank face of Pa- triotism, when it found them filled with rags, foul linen, candle- ends, and bits of wood ! Provost of the Merchants, how is this ? Neither at the Chartreux Convent, whither we were sent with signed order, is there or ever was there any weapon of war. Nay here, in this Seine Boat, safe under tarpaulings (had not the nose , of Patriotism been of the tinest), are ^five thousand-weight of gun- ; powder ; ' not coming in^ but surreptitiously going out ! What • meanest thou, Flesselles ? ^Tis a ticldish game, that of ' amusing' • us. Cat plays with captive mouse : but mouse with enraged cat, ; with enraged National Tiger ? Meanwhile, the faster, O ye black-aproned Smiths, smite ; wqth strong arm and willing heart. This man and that, all stroke from head to heel, shall thunder alternating, and ply the great forge- ' hammer, tili stithy reel and ring again ; while ever and anon, over- head, booms the alarm-cannon, — for the City has now got gun- : powder. Pikes are fabricated ; fifty thousand of them, in six-and- I thirty hours : judge whether the Black-aproned have been idle. ; Dig trenches, unpave the streets, ye others, assiduous, man and maid ; cram the earth in barrel-barricades, at each of them a a volunteer sentry ; pile the whinstones in windovz-sills and upper rooms. Have scalding pitch, at least boiling water ready, ye weak old women, to pour it and dash it on Royal-Allemand, with your old skinny arms : your shrill curses along with it will not be want- I ing ! — Patrols of the newborn National Guard, bearing torches, j scour the streets, all that night ; which otherwise are vacant, yet ! illuminated in every window by order. Strange-looking ; like some naphtlja-hghted City of the Dead, with here and there a flight of perturbed Ghosts. I O poor mortals, how ye make this Earth bitter for each other ; this fearful and wonderful Life fearful and horrible ; and wSatan has his place in all hearts ! Such agonies and ragings and wail- ings ye have, and have had, in all times : — to be buried all, in so deep silence ; and uie salt sea is not swoln with your tears. Great meanwhile is the moment, when tidings of Freedom reach '^is ; when the loui^ enthralled soiil, from amid its chains and ilid sla^HTn! ■ x^ rir ii ?tll]' only in blindness and be- crment, ail : y Mini lliat made it, that it will be / '• c? Underslcuu' luai well, it is the deep commandment^ dimmer F 3 J36 THE THIRD ESTATE. or clearer, of our whole being, to be free. Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles, toil- ings and sufferings, in this Earth. Yes, supreme is such a moment (if thou have known it) : first vision as of a flame-girt Sinai, in this our waste Pilgrimage,~which thenceforth wants not its pillar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night ! Something it is even,- nry, something considerable, when the chains have grown corr. sive, poisonous, to be free ' from oppression by our fellow-man; Forward, ye maddened sons of France ; be it towards this destiny or towards that ! Around you is but starvation, falsehood, corrup- tion and the clam of death. Where ye are is no abiding. Imagination may, imperfecdy, figure how Commandant Besen- val, in the Champ-de-Mars, has worn out these sorrowful hours Insurrection raging all round ; his men melting away ! From Versailles, to the most pressing messages, comes no answer ; or once only some vague word of answer which is worse than none. A Council of Officers can decide merely that there is no decision :i Colonels inform him, ' weeping,' that they do not think their men will fight. Cruel uncertainty is here : war-god Broghe sits yonder, laccessible in his Olympus ; does not descend terror-clad, does not produce his whiff of grapeshot ; sends no orders. Truly, in the Chateau of Versailles all seems mystery : m the Town of Versailles, were we there, all is rumour, alarm and indig- nation. An august National Assembly sits, to appearance, menaced with death; endeavouring to defy death. It has resolved ' that Necker carries with him the regrets of the Nation.' It has sent solemn Deputation over to the Chateau, with entreaty to have these troops withdrawn. In vain : his Majesty, with a singular composure, invites us to be busy rather with our own duty, making the Constitution ! Foreign Pandours, and suchlike, go pricking :m. I Drancin^^, with a swashbuckler air ; with an eye too probabl) the Salle des Mcmcs—\N(^rQ it not for the 'grim-looking countenances ' that crowd all avenues there^.Be firm, ye Nationa, Senators ; the cynosure of a firm, grim-looking people ! The august National Senators determine that there shall, a1 least, be Permanent Session till this thing end. Wherein, however consider that worthy Lafranc de Pompignan, our new President whom we have named Bailly's successor, is an old man, weariec with many things. He is the Brother of that Pompignan wh( meditated lamentably on the Book of Lamefitatio?is : Saves-voux p ourquoi Jdriinic Se lamentait touie sa vie f Cest qu il prdvoyait Que Pompignan Ic traduiraiti Poor Bishop Pompignan withdraws ; having got Lafayette fo helper or substitute : this latter, as nocturnal Vice-President, witl a thin liouse in disconsolate humour, sits sleepless, with light; ansnuffed ;— waiting what the hours will bring. ♦ See Lameth; Ferrieres, &c. STORM AND VICTORY. 13? I So at Versailles. But at Paris, agitated Besenval, before retiring for the night, has stept over to old M. de Sombreuil, of the Hotel des Invalides hard by. M. de Sombreuil has, what is a great secret, some eight-and-twenty thousand stand of muskets deposited in his cellars there ; but no trust in the temper of his Invalides. This day, for example, he sent twenty of the fellows down to un- screw those muskets ; lest Sedition might snatch at them ; but scarcely, in six hours, had the twenty unscrewed twenty gun-locks, or dogsheads {chie7is) of locks, — each Invalide his dogshead ! If ordered to fire, they would, he imagines, turn their cannon against himself. Unfortunate old military gentlemen, it is your hour, not of glory! Old Marquis de Launay too, of the Bastille, has pulled up his drawbridges long since, ' and retired into his interior ; ^ with sentries walking on his battlements, under the midnight sky, aloft over the glare of illuminated Paris ; — whom a National Patrol, passing that way, takes the liberty of firing at ; ' seven shots towards twelve at night,' which do not take effect ^ This was the 13th day of July, 1789 ; a worse day, many said, than the last 13th was, when only hail fell out of Heaven, not madness rose out of Tophet, ruining worse than crops ! In these same days, as Chronology will teach us, hot old Marquis : Mirabeaux lies stricken down, at Argenteuil, — not within sound of . these alarm-guns ; for he properly is not there, and only the body of him now lies, deaf and cold forever. It was on Saturday night ' that he, drawing his last life-breaths, gave up the ghost there ; — ( leaving a world, which would never go to his mind, now broken i out, seemingly, into deliration and the culb7ite generate. What is 1 it to him, departing elsewhither, on his long journey ? The old Chateau Mirabeau stands silent, far off, on its scarped rock, in that ! * gorge of two windy valleys ; ^ the pale-fading spectre now of a I Chateau : this huge World-riot, and France, and the World itself, I fades also, like a shadow on the great still mirror-sea ; and all I shall be as God wills. j Young Mirabeau, sad of heart, for he loved this crabbed brave I old Father ; sad of heart, and occupied with sad cares, — is with- I drawn from Public History. I'he great crisis transacts itself I without him.f CHAPTER VI. X STORM AND VICTORY. But, to the living and the struggling, a new. Fourteenth morning dawns. Under all roofs of this distracted City, is the nodus of a drama, not untragical, crowding towards solution. The bustlings" Md preparings, the tremors and menaces ; the tears that fell from * Deux Amis de la Libert^, i. 312. f Fil? ^doptif, Mirabeau ^ vi. 1. i. 138 THE THIRD ESTATE. old eyes ! This day, my soii-s, ye shall quit you like men. By the m-emory of your fathers' wrongs, by the hope of your children's rights I Tyranny impends in red wrath : help for you is none if not in your own right hands. This day ye must do or die. From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has heard the old cry, now waxing almost frantic, mutinous : Arms ! Arms! Provost Flesselles, or what traitors there are among you, may think of those Charleville Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty thousand of us ; and but the third man furnished with so much as a pike ! Arms are the one thing needful : with arms we are an unconquer- able man-defying National Guard ; without arms, a rabble to be whiffed with grapeshot. Happily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept, — that there lie muskets at the Hotel des Lnvalides. Thither will we : King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of authority a Permanent Committee can lend, shall go wdth us. Besenval's Camp is there ; perhaps he will not fire on us ; if he kill us we shall but die. Alas, poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that manner, has not the smallest humour to tire ! At five o'clock this morning, as he lay dreaming, oblivious in the Ecole Militaire, a ' figure ' stood suddenly at his bedside : ' with face rather handsome ; eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, air audacious :' such a figure drew Priam's curtains ! The m.essage and monition of the figure was, that resistance would be hopeless ; that if blood flowed, wo to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure ; and vanished. * Withal there was a kind of eio^juence that struck one.' Besenval admits that he should have arrested him, but did not.^ Who this figure, with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid and curt, might be ? Besenval knows, but mentions not. Camille Desmouhns P\- thagorean Marquis Valadi, inflamed with ' violent motions all niglit at the Palais Royal?' Fame names him, ' Young M. Meillar' ;t then shuts her lips about him for ever. In any case, behold about nine in the morning, our National Volunteers rolling in long wide flood, south-westward to the H die I des lnvalides ; in search of the one thing needful. King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny and officials are there ; the Cure of Saint-Etienne du Mont marches unpacific, at the head of his militant Parish ; the Clerks of the Bazoche in red coats we see marching, now Volunteers of the Ijazoche ; the Volunteers of the Palais Royal : — Nationl Volunteers, numerable by tens of thousands ; of one heart and mind. The King's muskets are the Nation's ; think, old M. de Sombreuil, how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them ! Old M. de Som- breuil would fain hold parley, send Couriers ; but it skills not ; the walls are scaled, no Invalide firing - a shot ; the gates must be flung open, l^atriotism rushes in, tumultuous, from grundsel up to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages ; rummaging dis- * Besenval, iii. 414. '\ Tableaux s tins thy day of emergence and new birth : and yet tliis same day come four vears— !— But let the curtains of the future hang. What shall de Launay / ojjicier, On the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin, — or .half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, " they are I " Sinks the drawbridge, — Usher Maillard bolting it when down ; rushes-in the living deluge : the Bastille is fallen ! Victoire I La Bastille est prise I"^ * Histoire de la Rivoliiiion, par Deuv Amis de la Liberte, i. ^.o^-o^oG ; Besenval, iii. 410-434; I^ms^mIx, Prise de la Bastille, 291-301. Bailly, Mc- moires ^Collection de Berville et Bar riire), i. 322 et seqq. 144 THE THIRD ESTATE. CHAPTER VII. NOT A REVOLT. WHY dwell on what follows ? Hulin's>. d^officer should have been kern but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up ; disguised m whke canvass smocks ; the Invalides without disguise ; their arms Tu iLTIgainsrthe ^all. The first rush of victors, in ecstacy tharthe death-peril is passed, ' leaps joyfully on their necKS ; but new V ctoi^ rush, and ever new, also in ecstacy not wholly of joy Is we said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlong ; had not the Gardes Francaises, in their cool military way ' wheeled round l^?h a™s ' 3ed,' it' would have plunged suicidally, by the hun- dred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch. - . And sou goes plunging through court a'^d corndor ; billowmg uncontrollable, firing from wmdows-on itself : in hot frenzy^of triumoh of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor invauaes w IHare ill ■ one Swiss, running off in his white smock is driven Wk with a death-thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to the Townhall to be judged !-Alas, already one poor Invalide has his IZ hand slashed^fT him ; his maimed body dragged to he pface de Grtve,and hanged there. This same right hand, it is said, turned back de Launay from the Powder- Magazine, and '"Delaunay, 'discovered in gray frock h P°PPy-coloured riband' is for killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shSrto the H6tel-de"ville ; Hulin Maillard and others escorting S E he ma?clfing foremost ' with the capitulation-paper on his sword? po^t.' /hrough roarings and cursmgs ; th jgh hus - lines clutchings, and at last through strokes ! Your escort is hnftl'ed as^de felled down ; Hulin sinks exhausted on a Jieap of . c Mi.pVnhlp de Launpv ' He shall never enter the Hotel de Vme nT;hi^ blood"^^^^^ that shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk hes on the steps !Ee; the head is off through the streets; ghastly, aloft on a Rigorous de Launrty has died ; crying out, " O frieiids, kill me fast Merciful dc Losme must die ; though Gratitude enibraces him' in this fearful hour, and will die for him; it avails not. ? r^lhers your wrath is cruel ! Your Place de Greve ,s become a Thtato'fZe Tiger; full of mere /ellowrngs and tl.^^^^^ o Wood One other officer is massacred ; one other invaiiae is han ed on the Lamp-iron : with difficulty, with generous persever. anrc the Gardes Franqaises will ve the rest. Provost Flesselles . s dck n lon^ since .A the paleness of death ^ ^ote^hS^ his scat 'to be judged at the P.alais Royal: —alas, to be snoi Sead, S'an unknclwn hand, at the turning of the first street !- O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant OH, NOT A REVOLT. reapers amid peaceful woody fields ; on old women spinning in cottages ; on ships far out in file silent main ; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, v/here hig-h-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketted Hussar-Officers ; — and also on this roaring Hell -porch of a H6tel- de-Ville ! Babel Tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of dis- tracted steel bristles, endless, in front of an Electoral Committee ; points itself, in horrid radii, against this and the other accused breast. It was the Titans warring with Olympus ; and they scarcely crediting it, have co7iqitered: prodigy of prodigies ; delirious,— as it could not but be. Denunciation, vengeance ; blaze of triumph on a dark ground of terror : all outward, all inward things fallen into one general wreck of madness ! Electoral Committee ? Had it a thousand throats of brass, it would not suffice. Abbe Lefevre, in the Vaults down below, is black as Vulcan, distributing that ' five thousand weight of Powder ; ' with what perils, these eight-and-forty hours ! Last night, a Patriot, in liquor, insisted on sitting to smoke on the edge of one of the Powder-barrels ; there smoked he, independent of the world,— till the Abbe ' purchased his pipe for three francs/ and pitched it far. , Elie, in the grand Hall, Electoral Committee looking on, sits * with drawn sv/ord bent in three places ; ' with battered helm, for I he was of the Queen's Regiment, Cavalry ; with torn regimentals, ' face singed and soiled ; comparable, some think, to 'an antique I warrior ; ' — ^judging the people ; forming a list of Bastillo Heroes. ; O Friends, stain not with blood the greenest laurels ever gained in this world : such is the burden of Elie's song ; could it but be listened to. Courage, Elie 1 Courage, ye Municipal Electors ! A declining sun ; the need of victuals, and of telling news, will bring assuagement, dispersion : all earthly things must end. Along the streets of Paris circulate Seven Bastille Prisoners, ' borne shoulder-high : seven Heads on pikes ; the Keys of the I Bastille ; and much else. See also the Garde Frangaises, in their I steadfast military way, marching home to their barracks, with the I Invahdes and Swiss kindly enclosed in hollow square. It is one I year and two months since these same men stood unparticipating, with Brennus d'Agoust at the Palais de Justice, when Fate over- took d'Espremenil ; and now they have participated ; and will participate. Not Gardes Francaises henceforth, but Ce7itre Grenadiers of the National Guard: men of iron discipline and humour, — not without a kind of thought in them ! Likewise ashlar stones of the Bastille continue thundering through the dusk ; its paper-archives shall fly white. Old secrets come to view ; and long-buried Despair finds voice. Read this portion of an old Letter ' If for my consolation Monseigneur * would grant me for the sake of God and the Most Blessed * Dated, a la Bastille, 7 Octobre, 1752 ; stgiicd Queret-Demery. Bastille DdvoilUe; in Linguet, Mdmoires sur la Bastille (Paris, 1821), p. 199. 146 THE THIRD ESTATE. 'Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife ; were it only ^her name on card to shew thrt she is alive ! It were the * greatest consolation I could receive ; and I should for ever bless * the greatness of Monseigneur.' Poor Prisoner, who namest thy- self Qiteret Demery, and hast no other history —she is deai, that dear wife of thine, and thou art dead ! 'Tis fifty years smce thy breaking heart put this question ; to be heard now first, and long heard, in the hearts of men. . . But so does the July twihght thicken ; so must Pans, as sick children, and all distracted creatures do, brawl itself finally mto a kind of sleep. Municipal Electors, astonished to find their heads still uppermost, are home : only Moreau de Saint-Mery ol tropical birth and heart, of coolest judgment : he, with two others, shall sit permanent at the Townhall. Paris sleeps ; gleams upward the illuminated City : patrols go clashing, without Common watch- word ; there go rumours ; alarms of war, to the extent of fifteen ' thousand men marching through the Suburb Samt-Antome, — who never got it marched through. Of the day's distraction judge by this of the night : Moreau dc Saint-Mery, ^before rising from *his seat, gave upwards of three thousand orders.'^ What a, head ; comparable to Friar Bacon^G Brass Head 1 Withm it lies all Paris. Prompt must the ansv/er be, right or wrong ; m i aris is no other Authority extant. Seriously, a most cool clear head ; , ^for which also thou O brave Saint- IMery, m many capacities, from august Senator to Merchant's-Clerk, Book-dealer, Vice-. King ; in many places, from Virginia to Sardinia, shalt, ever as a , brave man, find employment.t . ^ i i ^ -a Besenval has decamped, under cloud of dusk, amid a great 'afiPAience of people,' who 'did not harm him ; he marches, with faint-growing tread, down the left bank of the Seme, all nigli , -towards infinite space. Resummoned shall Besenval himself be ; for trial, for difficuU acquittal. His King's-troops, his Royal Allemand, are gone hence for ever. The Versailles Ball and lemonade is done ; the Orangery is silent except for nightbirds. Over in the Salle des Menus Vice- president La^avette, with unsnuffed lights, Svith some hundred of 'members, stretched on tables round him/ sits erect ; outwatching the Bear. This day; a second solemn Deputation went to his Majesty ; a second, and then a third : with no effect. What will the end of these things be ? , . . r .^..^^ . In the Court, all is mystery, not without ivhisperings of terror , though ye dream of lemonade and epaulettes, ye foohsh women ! His Majesty, kept in happy ignorance, perhaps dreams of double- barrels and the Woods of Meudon. Late at night, the Du^e de Liancourt, having official right of entrance gains ^^^^^5 to the Royal Aoartments; unfolds, with earnest cle^n-ness,^ m his^con- . stitutional way, the Job's-news. ^'Mms^; said poor une revolte.V^hy, that is a revolt ! Sire," answered Liancourt, It is not a revolt, it is a revolution.'' t Sr^p^^/A/^ UnivcrscUc, § Moreau Saint-Mery (by Fournier-Pescay). CONQUERING YOUR KING. 147 CHAPTER VIIL CONQUERING YOUR KING. On the morrow a fourth Deputation to the Chateau is On foot : of a more solemn, not to say awful character, for, besides ' orgies Mn the Orangery,' it seems, 'the grain convoys are all stopped;' nor has Mirabeau's thunder been silent. Such Deputation is on the poijit of setting out— when lo, his Majesty himself attended only by his two Brothers, step in ; quite in the paternal manner ; announces that the troops, and all causes of offence, are gone, and henceforth there shall be nothing but trust, reconcde- ment, good-will ; whereof he ' permits and even requests,^ a National Assembly to assure Paris in his name ! Acclamation, as of men suddenly delivered from death, gives answer. The whole Assembly spontaneously rises to escort his Majesty back ; ' interlacing their arms to keep off the excessive pressure from ' him for all Versailles is crowding and shouting. The Chateau Musicians, with a felicitous promptitude, strike up the Sein de sa Fainille (Bosom of one's Family) : the Queen appears at the Balcony with her little boy and girl, ' kissing them several times infinite Vivats spread far and wide ;— and suddenly there has come, as it were, a new Heaven-on-Earth. Eightv-eight august Senators, Bailly, Lafayette, and our repen- tant Archbishop among them, take coach for Paris, with the great intelligence ; benedictions without end on their heads. From the Place Louis Ouinze, v/herc they alight, all the way to the Hotel-de- Ville, it is one sea of Tricolor cockades, of clear National muskets ; one fempest of huzzaings, hand-clappings, aided by ' occasional * rollings ' of drum-music. Harangues of due fervour are delivered ; especially by Lally Tollendal, pious son of the ill-fated murdered Lally ; on whose head, in consequence, a civic crown (of oak or parsley) is forced,— which he forcibly transfers to Bailly's. But surely, for one thing, the National Guard must have a General ! Moreau de Saint-Mery, he of the ' three thousand ' orders,' casts one of his significant glances on the Bust of Lafayette, which has st®od there ever since the American War of Liberty. \Vhereupon,by acclamation, Lafayette is nominated. Again, in room of the slain traitor or quasi-traitor Flesselles, President Bailly shall be— Provost of the Merchants ? No : Mayor of Paris ! So be it. Maire de Paris I Mayor Bailly, General Lafayette ; vive Bailly^ vive Lafayette— ih^ universal out-of-doors multitude rends the welkin in confirmation.— And now, finally, let us to Notre-Dame for a 7> Deu7n. Towards Notre-Dame Cathedral, in glad procession, these Regenerators of the Country walk, tlu'ough a jubilant people : in fraternal manner ; Abbe Lefcvrc, still black with his gunpowder services, walking arm in arnawith the white-stoled Archbishop, THE THIRD ESTATE. Poor Bailly comes upon the Foundling Children, sent to kneel to him ; and ' weeps.' Te Deum^ our Archbishop officiating, is not only sung, but i-//^/— with blank cartridges. Our joy is boundless as our wo threatened to be. Paris, by her own pike and musket, and the valour of her own heart, has conquered the very wargods,— to the satisfaction now of Majesty itself. A courier is, this night, getting under way for Necker : the People's Minister, invited back by King, by National Assembly, and Nation, shall traverse France amid shoutings, and the sound of trumpet and timbrel. Seeing which course of things, Messeigneurs of the Court Trium- virate, Messieurs of the dead-born Broglie-Ministry, and others such, consider that their part also is clear : to mount and ride. Off, ye too-loyal Broglies, Polignacs, and Princes of the Blood ; off while it is yet time ! Did not the Palais-Royal in its late nocturnal ' violent motions,' set a specific price (place of payment not mentioned) on each of your heads ?— With precautions, with the aid of pieces of cannon and regiments that can be depended on, Messeigneurs, between the i6th night and tf 3 17th morning, get to their several roads. Not without risk ! Prince Conde has (or seems to have) ' men galloping at full speed ; ' with a view, it is thought, to fling him into the river Oise, at Pont-Sainte-Mayence."^ The Polignacs travel disguised ; friends, not servants, on their coach-box. Broglie has his own difficulties at Versailles, runs his own risks at Metz and Verdun ; does nevertheless get safe to Luxemburg, and there rests. This is what they call the First Emigration ; determined on, as appears, in full Court- conclave ; his Majesty assisting ; prompt he, for his share of it, to follow any counsel whatsoever. ' Three Sons 'of France, and four Princes of the blood of Saint Louis,' says Weber, ' could not more effectually humble the Burghers of Paris ' than by appearing to withdraw in fear of their life.' Alas, the Burghers of Paris bear it with unexpected Stoicism ! The Man d'Artois indeed is gone ; but has he carried, for example, the Land D'Artois with him? Not even Bagatelle the Country-house (which shall be useful as a Tavern) ; hardly the four-valet Breeches, leaving the Breeches-maker !— As for old Foulon, one learns that he is dead ; at. least a ' sumptuous funeral ' is going on ; the undertakers honouring him, if no other will Inten- dant Berthier, his son-in-law, is still living ; lurking : he joined Besenval, on that Eumenides' Sunday ; appearing to treat it with levity ; and is now fled no man knows whither. The Emigration is not gone many miles, Prince Conde hardly across the Oise, when his Majesty, according to arrangement, for the Emigration also thought it might do good, — under- t ikes a rather daring enterprise : that of visiting Paris in person. With a Hundred Members of Assembly; with small or no military escort, which indeed he dismissed at the Bridge of . * Weber, ii. 126. THE LANTERNS. 149 Sevres, poor Louis sets out ; leaving a desolate Palace ; a Queen weeping, the Present, the Past, and the Future all so unfriendly for her At the Barrier of Passy, Mayor Bailly, in grand gala, presents him with the keys ; harangues him, in Academic style ; mentions that it is a great day ; that in Henri Ouatre's case, the King had to make conquest of his People, but in this happier case, the Ppople makes conquest of its King {a conqtds son Roi). The King, so happily conquered, drives forward, slowly, through a steel people, all silent, or shouting only Vive la Nation; is harangued at the Townhall, by Moreau of the three-thousand orders, by King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, by Lally Tollendal, and others : knows not what to think of it, or say of it ; learns that he is ' Restorer of French Liberty,'— as a Statue of him, to be raised on the site of the Bastille, shall testify to all men. ^ Finally, he is shewn at the Balcony, with a Tricolor cockade in his hat ; is greeted now, with vehement acclamation, from Square and Street, from all windows and roofs :— and so drives home again amid glad mingled and, as it were, intermarried shouts, of Vive le Rot and Vive la Nation j wearied but safe. It was Sunday when the red-hot balls hung over us, in mid air : it is now but Friday, and 'the Revolution is sanctioned.' An August National Assembly shall make the Constitution ; and neither foreign Pandour, domestic Triumvirate, with levelled Can- non, Guy-Faux powder-plots (for that too was spoken of) ; nor any tyrannic Power on the Earth, or under the Earth, shall say ot it. What dost thou ?— So jubilates the people ; sure now of a Constitution. Cracked Marquis Saint-Huruge is heard under the windows of the Chateau ; murmuring sheer speculative-treason."^ CHAPTER IX. THE LANTERNE. The Fall of the Bastille may be said to have shaken all France to the deepest foundations of its existence. The rumour of these wonders flies every where : with the natural speed of Rumour ; with an effect thought to be preternatural, produced by plots. Did d'Orleans or Laclos, nay did Mirabeau (not overburdened with money at this time) send riding Couriers out from Paris ; to gallop *on all radii,' or highways, towards all points of France ? It is a miracle, which no penetrating man will call in question.t Already in most Towns, Electoral Committees were met ; to regret Necker, in harangue and resolution. In many a Town, as Rennes, Caen, Lyons, an ebullient people was already regretting him in brickbats and musketry. But now, at every Town's-end • Campan, ii. 46-64, f Toulongeon, (i. 95) ; Weber, &c. &cx ijo THE THIRD ESTATE. in France, there do arrive, in these days of terror, — ' men/ as men will arrive ; nay, ' men on horseback,' since JRumour oftenest travels riding. These men declare, with alarmed countenance. The Brigands to be coming, to be just at hand ; and do then- ride on, about then- further business, be what it might ! Where- upon the whole population of such Town, defensively flies to arms. Petition is soon thereafter forwarded to National Assembly ; in such peril and terror of peril, leave to organise yourself cannot be withheld : the armed population becomes everywhere an enrolled National Guard. Thus rides Rumour, careering along all radii, from Paris outwards, to such purpose : in few days, some say in not many hours^ all France to the utmost borders bristles with bayonets. Singular, but undeniable, — miraculous or not ! — But thus may any chemical liquid, though cooled to the freezing-point, or far lower, still continue liquid ; and then, on the slightest stroke or shake, it at once rushes wholly into ice. Thus has f^rance, for long months and even years, been chemically dealt with ; brought below zero ; and now, shaken by the Fall of a Bastille, it instan- taneously congeals : into one crystallised mass, of sharp-cutting steel ! Guai a chi la toccaj 'Ware who touches it ! In Paris, an Electoral Committee, with a new Mayor and , General, is urgent with belligerent workmen to resume their handi- crafts. Strong Dames of the Market {Danies de la Halle) deliver congratulatory harangues ; present ^ bouquets to the Shrine of ' Sainte Genevieve.' Unenrolled men deposit their arms, — not so readily as could be wished ; and receive ' nine francs.' With Te DeiimSj Royal Visits, and sanctioned Revolution, there is halcyon weather ; weather even of preternatural brightness ; the hurricane Doing overblown. Nevertheless, as is natural, the waves still run high, ho!lo\' rocks retaining their murmur. We are but at the 22nd of tli month, hardly above a week since the Bastille fell, when ; suddenly appears that old Foulon is alive ; nay, that he is hert in early morning, in the streets of ' Paris ; the extortioner, tli plotter, who would make the people eat grass, and was a liar froi the beginning ! — It is even so. The deceptive ' sumptuous funeral (of some domestic that died) ; the hiding-place at Vitry towards • Fontainbleau, have not availed that wretched old man. Some living domestic or dependant, for none loves Foulon, has betrayed him to the Village. Merciless boors of Vitry unearth him ; pounce . on him, like hell-hounds : Westward, old InfLimy ; to Pans, to be i jutlged at the II6tel-de- Ville ! His old head, which seventy-four ) years have bleached, is bare ; they have tied an emblematic bundle of grass on his back ; a garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck : in this manner ; led with ropes ; goaded on with . curses and menaces, must he. with his old limbs, sprawl forward ; 1 the pitiablest, most unpitied of all old men. Sooty Saint- Antoine, and every street, mustering its crowds as | he passes,— the Place de (ircve, the Hall of the H6tel-de- Ville j will scarcely hold his escort and him. Foulon must not only bo J THE LANTERNE, tgi iido-ed rio-hteouslv ; but judged there where he stands, without mv delay! Appoint seven judges, ye Municipals, or seventy-and- ^even ; name them yourselves, or we will name them : but judge ihn Electoral rhetoric, eloquence of Mayor Bailly, is wasted ^^xplaining the beauty of the Law's delay. Delay, and still delay ! Behold O Mayor of the People, the morning has worn itself into :QOon ; 'and he is still unjudged 1— Lafayette, pressmgly sent for, , arrives ; gives voice : This Foulon, a known man, is guilty almost "beyond 'doubt ; but may he not have accomplices ? Ought not the truth to be cunningly pumped out of him,— in the Abbaye Prison f It is a new light ! Sansculottism claps hands at which hand- clapping, Foulon (in his fainness, as his Destiny would have it) also claps See ! they understand one another ! " cries dark Sansculottism, blazing into fury of suspicion.— " Friends/' said a ' person in good clothes,' stepping forward, what is the use ot 'fudging this man ? Has he not been judged these thirty years ? With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, m its hundred hands : he is whirled across the Place de Greve, to the ' Lanterned Lamp- = iron which there is at the corner of the RueJe la Vannerie j plead- ' ing bitterly for life,— to the deaf winds. Qnly with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged ! His Body is dragged through J the streets ; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with I grass : amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eatmg people.t Surely if Revenge is a ' kind of Justice,' it is a ' wild kind I O mad Sansculottism hast thou risen, in thy mad darkness, m thy 1 soot and rags ; unexpectedly, like an Enceladus, livmg-'buried, ' from under his Trinacria ? They that would make grass be eaten do now eat grass, in this manner ? After long dumb-groanmg generations, has the turn suddenly become thine ?— To such abys- mal overturns, and frightful instantaneous inversions of the centre- of-gravity, are human Solecisms all liable, if they but knew it ; the more hable, the falser (and topheavier) they are !— To add to the horror of Mayor Bailly and his Municipals, word comes that Berthier has also been arrested ; that he is on his way hither from Compiegne. Berthier, Intendant (say, Tax-levier) ot Paris ; sycophant and tyrant ; forestaller of Corn ; contriver ot Camps against the people ;— accused of many things : is he not Foulori's son-in-law; and, in that one point, guilty of all.'' In these hours too, when Sansculottism has its blood up ! ihe shuddering Municipals send one of their numlDcr to escort him, with mounted National Guards. . r r At the fall of day, the wretched Berthier, still wearing a face ot courage, arrives at the Barrier ; in an open carriage ; with the Municipal beside him ; five hundred horsemen withdrawn sabres ; unarmed footmen enough ; not without noise ! Placards go brandished round him ; bearing legibly his indictment, as Sans- * Histoire Par lenient aire, ii. 146-0- ^ Deux Amisde la Liberty, ii. 6q-& THE THIRD ESTATE. cuiottism, with unlegal brevity, 'in huge letters,' draws it up * Paris is come forth to meet him : with hand-clappings, with 'win- dows flung up ; with dances, triumph-songs, as of the Furies ! Lastly the Head of Foulon : this also meets him on a pike. Well might his ' look become glazed,' and sense fail him, at such sight ! Nevertheless, be the man's conscience what it may, his nerves are of iron. At the H6tel-de-Ville, he will answer nothing. He says, he obeyed superior order ; they have his papers ; they may judge and determine : as for himself, not having closed an eye these two nights, he demands, before all things, to have sleep. Leaden sleep, thou miserable Berthier ! Guards rise with him, in motion towards the Abbaye. At the very door of the H6tel-de~ Ville, they are chitched ; flung asunder, as by a vortex of mad arms ; Berthier whirls towards the Lanterne. He snatches a musket ; fells and strikes, defending himself like a mad lion ; is borne down, trampled, hanged, mangled : his Head too, and even his Heart, flies over the City on a pike. Horrible, in Lands that had known equal justice ! Not so un- natural in Lands that had never known it. Ee sang qui coule est- il done si pitr ? asks Bamave ; intimating that the Gallows, though by irregular methods, has its own.— Thou thyself, O Reader, when thou turnest that corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, and discernest still that same grim Bracket of old Iron, wih not want for reflec- tions. ' Over a grocer's shop,' or otherwise ; with ' a bust of Louis ' XIV. in the niche under it,' or now no longer in the niche,—-// still sticks there : still holding out an ineffectual light, of fish-oil ; and has seen worlds wrecked, and says nothing. But to the eye of enlightened Patriotism, what a thunder-cloud was this ; suddenly shaping itself in the radiance of the halcyon weather ! Cloud of Erebus blackness : betokening latent elec- tricity without limit. Mayor BaiUy, General Lafayette throw up their commissions, in an indignant manner ;— need to be flattered back again. The cloud disappears, as thunder-clouds do. The halcyon weather returns, though of a grayer complexion ; of a character more and more evidently not supernatural. Thus, in any case, with w^hat rubs soever, shall the Bastille be abolished from our Earth ; and with it. Feudalism, Despotism ; and, one hopes, Scoundrelism generally, and all hard usage of man by his brother man. Alas, the Scoundrelism and hard usage are not so easy of abolition ! But as for the Bastille, it sinks day after day, and month after month ; its ashlars and boulders tumbling down continually, by express order of our Municipals. Crowds of the curious roam through its caverns ; gaze on the skeletons found walled up, on the oubliettes, iron cages, monstrous stone-blocks with padlock chains. One day we discern Mirabeau * ' II a voU le Rot et la France (He robbed the King and France).' ' He 'devoured the substance of the People.' ' He was the slave of the rich and ' the tyrant of the poor.' ' He drank the blood of the widow aiid orphan. * He betrayed his country.' See Deux Amis, ii. 67-73. THE LANTERNE. 153 there • along with the Genevese Dumont.^ Workers and on- lookers make reverent way for him ; fling verses, flowers on his path Bastille-papers and curiosities into his carriage, with vtvats. Able Editors compile Books from the Bastille Archives ; from what of them remain unburnt. The Key of that Robber- Den shall cross the Atlantic ; shall lie on Washington's hall-table. The ereat Clock ticks now in a private patriotic Clockmaker's apart- ment ; no longer measuring hours of mere heaviness. Vanished is the Bastille, what we call vanished : the body, or sandstones, of it hanging, in benign metamorphosis, for centuries to come, over the Seine waters, as Pont Louis Seize ;t the soul of it living, per- haps still longer, in the memories of men. So far, ye august Senators, with your Tennis-Court Oaths, your inertia and impetus, your sagacity and pertinacity, have ye brought us. " And yet think. Messieurs," as the Petitioner justly urged, " you who were our saviours, did yourselves need saviours," — the brave Bastillers, namely ; workmen of Paris ; many of them in straightened pecuniary circumstances !J Subscriptions are opened ; Lists are formed, more accurate than Elie's ; harangues are delivered. A Body of Ba'stille Heroes^ tolerably complete, did get together comparable to the Argonauts ; hoping to endure like them. But in little more than a year, the whirlpool of things threw them asunder again, and they sank. So many highest superlatives achieved by man are followed by new higher ; and dwindle into comparatives and positives ! The Siege of the Bastille, weighed with which, in the Historical balance, most other sieges, including that of Troy Town, are gossamer, cost, as we find, in killed and mortally wounded, on the part of the Besiegers, some Eighty-three persons : on the part of the Besieged, after all that straw-burning, fire-pumping, and deluge of musketry. One poor solitary invalid, shot stone-dead (roide-mort) on the battle- ments ;§ The Bastille Fortress, like the City of Jericho, was overturned by miraculous sound, * Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 305. f Dulaure : Histoirc de Paris, viii. 434. X Moniteur : Stance du Samedi 18 Juillet 1789 (in Histoire Parlementairs, a. 137)- § Dusaulx : Prise de la Bastille, p. 447, &c. 154 BOOK SIXTH- CONSOLIDATION. CHAPTER I. MAKE THE CONSTITUTION. HEREDerhaps is the place to fix, a little more precisely, what these two^ words, Fre7tch Revolution, shall mean ; for, strictly con- sidered, they may have as many meanings as there are speakers of them. All things are in revolution ; in change from monient to moment, which becomes sensible from epoch to epoch : m this Time-World of ours there is properly nothing else but revolution and mutation, and even nothing else conceivable. Revolution, you answer, means speedier change. Whereupon one has still to ask : How speedy 1 At what degree of speed ; in what particular points of this variable course, which varies in velocity, but can never stop till Time itself stops, does revolution begin and end ; cease to be ordinary mutation, and again become such ? It is a thing that will depend on definition more or less arbitrary. For ourselves we answer that French Revolution means here the open violent Rebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy against corrupt worn-out Authority : how Anarchy breaks prison ; bursts up from the infinite Deep, and rages uncontrollable, im- measurable, enveloping a world ; in phasis after phasis of fever- frenzy till the frenzy burning itself out, and what elements of new Order it held (since all Force holds such) developing them- selves, the Uncontrollable be got, if not reimprisoned, yet harnessed, and its mad forces made to work towards their object as sane regulated ones. For as Hierarchies and Dynasties of all kinds. Theocracies, Aristocracies, Autocracies, Strumpetocracies, have ruled over the world ; so it was appointed, in the decrees of Providence, that this same Victorious Anarchy, Jacobinism, Sansculottism, French Revolution, Horrors of French Revolution, or what else mortals name it, should have its turn. The ' destruc- *tive wrath ' of Sansculottism : this is what we speak, having un- happily no voice for singing. Surely a great Phenomenon : nay it is a transcendental one, overstepping all rules and experience ; the crowning Phenomenon MAKE THE CONSTITUTION. 155 I )f our Modern Time. For here again, most unexpectedly, comes mtique Fanaticism in new and newest vesture ; miraculous, as all Fanaticism is. Call it the Fanaticism of ' making away with formulas, de hiuner les formules' The world of formulas, the formed x^gvXdXt^ world, which all habitable world is,— must needs I late such Fanaticism like death ; and be at deadly variance with lit The world of formulas must conquer it ; or failing that, must ' lie execrating it, anathematising it ;— can nevertheless in nowise ■ prevent its being and its having been. The Anathemas are there, md the miraculous Thing is there. Whence it cometh ? Whither it goeth ? These are questions ! When the age of Miracles lay faded into the distance as an in- :redible tradition, and even the age of Conventionalities was now Did ; and Man's Existence had for long generations rested on mere formulas which were grown hollow by course of time ; and it i seemed as if no Reahty any longer existed but only Phantasms of reahties, and God's Universe were the work of the Tailor and i Upholsterer mainly, and men were buckram masks that went about becking and grimacing there,— on a sudden, the Earth I yawns asunder, and amid Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce 'brightness, rises Sansculottism, many-headed, fire-breathing, and asks : What think ye of me ? Well may the buckram masks j start together, terror-struck; 'into expressive well- concerted rgroups!' It is indeed, Friends, a most singular, most fatal thing. Let whosoever is but buckram and a phantasm look to it : ill verily may it fare with him ; here methinks he cannot much longer be. Wo also to many a one who is not wholly buckram, but partially real and human ! The age of Miracles has come back! 'Behold the W^orld-Phcenix, in fire-consummation and * fire-creation ; wide are her fanning wings ; loud is her death- ^ melody, of battle-thunders and falling towns ; skyward lashes * the funeral flame, enveloping all things : it is the Death-Birth of a World!' Whereby, however, as we often say, shall one unspeakable bless- ing seem attainable. This, namely : that Man and his Life rest no more on hollowness and a Lie, but on solidity and some kind of Truth* Welcome, the beggarliest truth, so it be one, in ex- , change for the royallest sham ! Truth of any kind breeds ever new and better truth ; thus hard granite rock will crumble down into soil, under the blessed skyey influences ; and cover itself with verdure, with fruitage and umbrage. But as for Falsehood, which in like contrary manner, grows ever falser,— what can it, or what should it do but decease, being ripe ; decompose itself, gently or even violently, and return to the Father of it, — too probably in flames of fire ? Sansculottism will burn much ; but what is incombustible it will not burn. Fear not Sansculottism ; recognise it for what it is, the portentous, inevitable end of much, the miraculous begin- ning of much. One other thing thou mayest understand of it : i that it too came from God ; for has it not been ? From of old, as 156 CONS OLID A TION. it is writtem, are His goings forth ; in the great Deep of things j fearful and wonderful now as in the beginning : in the whirlwind also He speaks ! and the wrath of men is made to praise Him.— But to gauge and measure this immeasurable Thing, and what is called account for it, and reduce it to a dead logic-formula, at- tempt not ! Much less shalt thou shriek thyself hoarse, cursing it ; for that, to all needful lengths, has been already done. As an actually existing Son of Time, look, with unspeakable manifold interest, oftenest in silence, at what the Time did bring : there- with edify, instruct, nourish thyself, or were it but to amuse and gratify thyself, as it is given thee. Another question which at every new turn will rise on us, requiring, ever new reply is this : Where the French Revolution specially is ? In the King's Palace, in his Majesty's or her Majesty's man-' agements, and maltreatments, cabals, imbecilities and woes,; answer some few : — whom we do not answen In the National^ Assembly, answer a large mixed multitude : who accordingly seat' themselves in the Reporter's Chair ; and therefrom noting what^. Proclamations, Acts, Reports, passages of logic-fence, bursts ofj parliamentary eloquence seem notable within doors, and whatj tumults and rumours of tumult become audible from without,-r-', produce volume on volume ; and, naming it History of the French; Revolution, contentedly publish the same. To do the like, to' almost any extent, with so mang Filed Newspapers, Choix des\ Rapports, Histoires Parlemmtaires as there are, amounting to' many horseloads, were easy for us Easy but unprofitable. Thef National Assembly, named now Constituent Assembly, goes its! course ; making the Constitution ; but the French Revolution alsoi goes its course. \ In general, may we not say that the French Revolution lies in^ the hear tand head of every violent-speaking, of every violent- 1 thinking French Man ? How the Twenty-five Millions of such, in their perplexed combination, acting and counter-acting may give birth to events ; which event successively is the cardinal one ; and from what point of vision it may best be surveyed : this is a problem. Which problem the best insight, seeking hght from all possible sources, shifting its point of vision whithersoever vision or glimpse of vision can be had, may employ itself in solving ; and be well content to solve in some tolerably approximate way. As to the National Assembly, in so far as it still towers eminent over Prance, after the manner of a car-borne Carroccio, though now no longer in the van ; and rings signals for retreat or for advance, — it is and continues a reahty among other reahties. But in so far as it sits making the Constitution, on the other hand, it is a fatuity and chimera mainly. Alas, in the never so heroic building of Montesquieu-Mably card-castles, though shouted over by the world, what interest is there? Occupied in that way, an august National Assembly becomes for us little other than a wSanhedrim of Pedants, not of the gerund-grinding, yet of no fruitfuller sort ; and its loud debatings and recriminations about Rights of Man, Right MARE THE CONSTITUTION^^ iS7 "J^^^i^A^^Vet^pensif, Veto absolu, what are they but so many Pedant's-curses, ' May God confound you for your Theory ^ af Irregular Verbs ! ' A Constitution can be built, Constitutions enough d la Sieyes: but the frightful difficulty.is that of getting men to come and ive in them ! Could Sieyes have drawn thunder and lightnmg out of Heaven to sanction his Constitution, it had been well : but without any thunder? Nay, strictly considered, is it not still true that without some such celestial sanction, given visibly in thunder or invisibly otherwise, no Constitution can in the long run be worth much more than the waste-paper it is written on ? The Constitu- tion, the set of Laws, or prescribed Habits of Acting, that men will live under, is the one which images their Convictions,— their Faith as to this wondrous Universe, and what rights, duties capabihties they have there ; which stands sanctioned, therefore, by Necessity itself • if not by a seen Deity, then by an unseen one. Other Laws, whe-e'of there are always enough r^«rfj/-made are usurpations ; which men do not obey, but rebel against, and abolish, by their earhest convenience. . . , The question of questions accordingly were. Who is it that especially for rebellers and abolishers, can make a t onstitution He that can image forth the general Behef when there is one ; that can impart one when, as here, there is none. A most rare man ; ever as of old a god-missioned man ! Here, however, m defect of such transcendent supreme man, Time with its inhnite succession of merely superior men, each yielding his httle contri- bution, does much. Force likewise (for, as Antiquarian Philo- sophers teach, the royal Sceptre was from the first something of a Hammer, to crack such heads as could not be convinced) will all along find somewhat to do. And thus in perpetual abolition and repa?ation, rending and mending, with struggle and striie, with pres-nt evil and the hope and effort towards future good, must the Constitution, as all human things do, build itself forward ; or unbuild itself, and sink, as it can and may. O Sieyes, and ye other Committeemen, and Twelve Hundred miscellaneous individuals from all parts of France ! What is the Belief of France, and yours if ye knew it? Properly that there shall be no Belief; that all formulas be swallowed. The Constitutiqn which will suit that ? Alas, too clearly, a No-Constitution, an Anarchy which also, m due season, shall be vouchsafed you. . , , ui j s ; But after all, what can an unfortunate National Assembly do { ' Consider only this, that there are Twelve Hundred miscellaneous individuals ; not a unit of whom but has his own thinking-apparatus, ' his own speaking-apparatus ! In every unit of them is some belief ' and wish, difierent for each, both that France should be regenerated, and also that he individually should do it. Twelve Hundred separate Forces, yoked miscellaneously to any object, miscellane- ously to all sides of it ; and bid pull for life I , ■ u 1 Or is it the nature of National Assemblies generally to do, .vith I endless labour and clangour, Nothing ? Are Representative Goy- 158 CONSOLIDATION, ernnients mostly at bottom Tyrannies too ? Shall we say, the Tyrants^ the ambitious contentious Persons, from all corners of the country do, in this manner, get gathered into one place ; and there, with motion and counter-motion, with jargon and hubbub, ctmcel one another, like the fabulous Kilkenny Cats ; and produce, for net-result, zero ; — the country meanwhile governincr or guiding itself^ by such wisdom, recognised or for most part unrecognised, as may exist in individual heads here and there? — Nay, even that were a great improvement : for, of old, with their Guelf Factions and Ghibelline Factions, with their Red Roses and White Roses, they were wont to cancel the whole country as well. Besides they do it now in a much narrower cockpit ; within the four walls of their Assembly House, and here and there an outpost of Hustings and Barrel-heads ; do it with tongues too, not with swords : — all which improvements, in the art of producing zero, are they not great? Nay, best of all, some happy Continents (as the Western one, with its Savannahs, where whosoever has four willing limbs finds food under his feet, and an infinite sky over his head) can do without governing. — What Sphinx-questions ; which the distracted world, in these very generations, must answer or die ! ! CHAPTER II. . THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. J One thing an elected Assembly of Twelve Hundred is fit for \ Destroying. Which indeed is but a more decided exercise of it^ natural talent for Doing Nothing. Do nothing, only keep agitat-' ing, debating ; and things will destroy themselves. So and not otherwise proved it with an august National Assembly. It took the name, Constituent, as if its mission and function had been to construct or build ; which also, with its whole soul, it endeavoured to do : yet, in the fates, in the nature of things, there lay for it precisely of all functions the most opposite to that.; Singukir, wha^ Gospels men will believe ; even Gospels according to Jean Jacques ! It was the fixed Faith of these National Deputies, as of all thinking Frenchmen, that the Constitution coukl be made; that they, there and then, were called to make it. How, with the toughness of Old Hebrews or Ishmaelite Moslem, did the otherwise light unbelieving People persist in this their Credo quia ijiipossibile ; and front the armed world with it ; and grow fanatic, and even heroic, and do exploits by it ! The Con- stituent Assembly's Constitution, and several others, will, being jjrintcd and not manuscript, survive to future generations, as an instructive wcl)-ni<;h incredible document of the Time : the most signi(icant Picture of the then existing l- ranee ; or at lowest. Picture of these men's Picture of it. THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 159 But in truth and seriousness, what could the National Assembly have done ? The thing to be done was, actually as they said, to re- generate France ; to abolish the old France, and make a new one ; quietly or forcibly, by concession or by violence, this, by the Law of Nature, has become inevitable. With what degree of violence, depends on the wisdom of those that preside over it. With perfect wisdom on the part of the National Assembly, it had all been otherwise ; but whether, in any wise, it could have been pacific^ nay other than bloody and convulsive, may still be a question. Grant, meanwhile, that this Constituent Assembly does to the last continue to be something. With a sigh, it sees itself mces- santly forced away from its infinite divine task, of perfecting ' the ' Theory of Irregular Verbs,' — to finite terrestrial tasks, which latter have still a significance for us. It is the cynosure of revo- lutionary France, this National Assembly. All work of Govern- ment has fallen into its hands, or under its control ; all men look to it for guidance. In the middle of that huge Revolt of Twenty- nve millions, it hovers always aloft as Carroccio or Battle- Standard, impelling and impelled, in the most confused way ; if it cannot give much guidance, it will still seem to give some. It emits pacifica- catory Proclamations, not a few ; with more or with less result. It authorises the enrolment of National Guards, — lest Brigands come to devour us, and reap the unripe crops. It sends missions to quell ^effervescences to deliver men from the Lanterne. It can listen to congratulatory Addresses, which arrive daily by the sackful ; mostly in King Cambyses' vein : also to Petitions and complaints from all mortals ; so that every mortal's complaint, if it cannot get redressed, may at least hear itself complain. For the rest, an august National Assembly can produce Parliamentary Eloquence ; and appoint Committees. Committees of the Con- stitution, of Reports, of Researches ; and of much else : which again yield mountains of Printed Paper ; the theme of new Par- liamentary Eloquence, in bursts, or in plenteous smooth-flowing floods. And so, from the waste vortex whereon all things go whirling and grinding, Organic Laws, or the similitude of such, slowly emerge. With endless debating, we get the Rights of Man written down and promulgated : true paper basis of all paper Constitutions. Neglecting, cry the opponents, to declare the Duties of Man ! Forgetting, answer we, to ascertain the Mights of Man ;— one of the fatalest omissions ! — Nay, sometimes, as on the Fourth of August, our National Assembly, fired suddenly by an almost preter- natural enthusiasm, will get through whole masses of work in one night. A memorable night, this Fourth of August : Dignitaries temporal and spiritual ; Peers, Archbishops, Parlement-Presidents, each outdoing the other in patriotic devotedness, come successively to throw their (untenable) possessions on the ' altar of the father- Mand.' With louder and louder vivats, for indeed it is ' after 'dinner' too,- -they abolish Tithes, Seignorial Dues, Gabelie, ex- ^ssive Preservation of Game ; nay Privilege, Immunity, Feudal- l6o CON SOLID A TION. ism root and branch ; then appoint a Te Deum for it ; and so, finally, disperse about three in the morning, striking the stars with their subhme heads. Such night, unforeseen but for' ever memor- able, was this of the Fourth of August 1789. Miraculous, or semi- miraculous, some seem to think it. A new Night of Pentecost shall we say, shaped according to the new Time, and new Church of Jean Jacques Rousseau ? It had its causes ; also its effects. In such manner labour the National Deputies ; perfecting their Theory of Irregular Verbs ; governing France, and being governed by it ; with toil and noise ; — cutting asunder ancient intolerable bonds; and, for new ones, assiduously spinning ropes of sand/ Were their labours a nothing or a something, yet the eyes of all France being reverently fixed on them, History can never very' long leave them altogether out of sight. For the present, if we glance into that Assembly Hall of theirs,^ it will be found, as is natural, ' most irregular.' As many as ' a ' hundred members are on their feet at once ; ' no rule in making' motions, or only commencements of a rule ; Spectators' Gallery- allowed to applaud, and even to hiss President, appointed once' a fortnight, raising many times no serene head above the waves. Nevertheless, as in all human Assemblages, like does begin arranging itself to like ; the perennial rule, UbiJioinines stint modi- sunt, proves valid. Rudiments of Methods disclose themselves ; rudiments of Parties. There is a Right Side i^Cote Droit), a Left, Side (Cote Gauche) ; sitting on M. le President's right hand, or on' his left : the Cote Droit conservative; the Cote Gauche d^sirncA tive. Intermediate is Anglomaniac Constitutionalism, or Two-'' Chamber Royalism ; with its Mouniers, its Lallys,— fast verging; towards nonentity, rreeminent, on the Right Side, pleads and ! perorates Cazales, the Dragoon-captain, eloquent, mildly fervent ; ' earning for himself the shadow of a name. There also blusters Barrel-Mirabeau, the Younger Mirabcau, not without wit : dusky d'Espremenil does nothing but sniff and ejaculate ; ;///>Z7, it is fondly thought, lay prostrate the Elder Mirabeau himself, would he but try ,t— which he does not. Last and greatest, see, for one moment, the Abbe Maury ; with his Jesuitic eyes, his impassive brass face, ' image of all the cardinal sins.' Indomitable, un- quenchable, he fights jesuitico-rhetorically ; with toughest lungs and heart ; for Throne, especially for Altar and Tidies. So that a shrill voice exclaims once, from the Gallery : " Messieurs of the " Clergy, you have to be shaved ; if you wriggle too much, you v/ill "get cut. "J The Left side is also called the d'Orleans side ; and sometimes derisively, the Palais Royal. And yet, so confused, real-imaginary seems everything, 'it is doubtful,'- as Mirabeau said, 'whether ' d'Orleans himself belong to that same d'Orleans Part\ .' What can be known and seen is, that his moon-visage does beam forth * Arthur YounfT, i. ITT. I f Bionfrapliic Ur/h>ersellc, § 1 j'Espremciiil (by lioaulieu). M J DicHounatrc dcs Homvics Mar^tiauSf ii. 519. Jl THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. i6l ! from that point of space. There likewise sits seagreen Robe- i spierre ; throwing in his Hght weight, with decision, not yet with i effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian ; he would make away I with formulas ; yet lives, moves, and has his being, wholly in for- I mulas, of another sort. ^ Peuple^ such according to Robespierre j ought to be the Royal method of promulgating Laws, ' Peuple^ [ *this is the Law I have framed for thee ; dost thou accept it — I answered from Right Side, from Centre and Left, by inextinguish- able laughter."^ Yet men of insight discern that the Seagreen may by chance go far : " this man," observes Mirabeau, " will do , somewhat ; he believes every word he says.'' • Abbe Sieyes is busy with mere Constitutional work : wherein, unluckily, fellow-workmen are less pliable than, with one who has completed the Science of Polity, they ought to be. Courage, Sieyes nevertheless ! Some twenty months of heroic travail, of contradiction from the stupid, and the Constitution shall be built ; I the top-stone of it brought out with shouting, —say rather, the top- paper, for it is all Paper ; and thoti hast done in it what the Earth or the Heaven could require, thy utmost. Note likewise this Trio ; memorable for several things ; memorable were it only that their history is written in an epigram : ' whatsoever these Three * have in hand,' it is said, ' Duport thinks it, Barnave speaks it, ^Lameth does it.'f But royal Mirabeau ? Conspicuous among all parties, raised above and beyond them all, this man rises more and more. As we often say, he has an eye^ he is a reality ; while others are formulas and eye-glasses. In the Transient he will detect the Perennial ; find some firm footing even among Paper-vortexes. His fame is gone forth to all lands ; it gladdened the heart of the crabbed old Friend of Men himself before he died. The very Postilions of inns have heard of Mirabeau : when an impatient Traveller complains that the team is insufficient, his Postilion answers, " Yes, Monsieur, the wheelers are weak ; but my mirabeau " (main horse), you see, is a right one, mais inon inirabeau est excellent rX And now. Reader, thou shalt quit this noisy Discrepancy of a National Assembly ; not (if thou be of humane mind) without pity. Twelve Hundred brother men are there, in the centre of Twenty-five Millions ; fighting so fiercely with Fate and with one 'another ; strugghng their hves out, as most sons of Adam do, for that which profiteth not. Nay, on the whole, it is admitted Further to be very dull, " Dull as this day's Assembly," said some one. " Why date, Pourquoi daterl^' answered Mirabeau. Consider- that they are Twelve Hundred ; that they not only speak, but read their speeches ; and even borrow and steal speeches to read !_ With Twelve Hundred fluent speakers, and :heir Noah's Deluge of vociferous commonplace, unattainable iilence may well seem the one blessing of Life. But figure * Moniteur, No. 67 (in Hist. Pari. ). f See Toulongeon, i. c. 3, J Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeaii, p. 255. CONS OLID A TION. Twelve Hundred pamphleteers ; droning forth perpetual pam- phlets ; and no man to gag them I Neither, as in the Amencaa Congress, do the arrangements seem perfect. A Senator has not his own Desk and Newspaper here ; of Tobacco (much less of Pipes) there is not the slightest provision. Conversation itsdf must be transacted in a l©w tone, with continual interruption • only ' pencil Notes ' circulate freely ; ' in incredible numbers to ' the foot of the very tribune.'*— Such work is it, regenerating a Nation ; perfecting one's Theory of Irregular Verbs ' CHAPTER III. THE GENERAL OVERTURN. Of the Kings Court, for the present, there is almost nothing whatever to be said. Silent, deserted are these halls; Royalty ^3^' forsaken of its war-god and all its hopes, till once the Utii-de-Boeuf rally again. The sceptre is departed from Kin^ Louis ; IS gone over to the Salles des Menus, to the Paris Town- hall, or one knows not whither. In the July days, while all ears were yet deafened by the crash of the Bastile, and Ministers and Princes were scattered to the four winds, it seemed as if the very Valets had grown heavy of hearing. Besenval, also in flight towards Infinite Space, but hovering a little at Versailles, was addressing his Majesty personally for an Order about post-horses : when Jo, the Valet m waiting places himself familiarly between his Majesty and me,^ stretching out his rascal neck to learn what It was ! His Majesty, in sudden choler, whirled round ; made a clutch at the tongs: 'I gently prevented him ; he grasped my hand m thankfulness ; and 1 noticed tears in his eyes t i oor King ; for French Kings also are men ! Louis Fourteenth himse f once clutched the tongs, and even smote with them ; but inen it was at Louvois, and Dame Maintenon ran up.— The Oueen sits weeping in her inner apartments, surrounded by weak wo7nen : sne IS at the height of unpopularity ; ' universally regarded as the eval genius of Prance. Her friends and familiar counsellors have all Hed ; and fled, surely, on the foolishest errand. The Chateau l ohgnac still frowns aloft, on its ^bold and enormous' cubical rock, amid the blooming champaigns, amid the blue girdlin- moun ains of Auvergne but no Duke and Duchess Poligna? look tor h f^-om^it; they have fled, they have ^ met Neckir at Bale ; they shal not return. That France should see her Nobles resist the Irresistible, Inevitable, with the face of angry men, was unhai)py, not unexpected : but with the face and sense of pettish I ^^'^ (PP- 159-67) >• Arthur Young. 2an, that man was not to die of starvation, while there wac bread reaped by him 1 It is among the Mights of Man. Seventy-two Chateaus have flamed aloft in the Maconn Js and Beaujolais alone : this seems the centre of the conflagration ; but it has spread over Dauphine, Alsace, the Lyonnais ; the whole South-East is in a blaze. All over the North, from Rouen to Metz, disorder is abroad : smugglers of salt go openly in arme^. bands : the barriers of towns are burnt ; toll-gatherers, tax- gatherers, official persons put to flight. ' It was thought,' says Young, ' the people, from hunger, would revolt ; • and we see they have done it. Desperate Lackalls, long prowling airrless, now finding hope in desperation itself, everywhere form a nucleus. They ring the Church bell by way of tocsin : and the rarish turns out I'D the work/^ Ferocity, atrocity ; hunger and revenge : such work as we can imagine ! Ill stands it now with the Seigneur, who, for example, ' ha?^ "walled up the only Fountain of the Township who has ridden high on his chartier and parchments ; who has preserved Game not wisely but too well. Churches also, and Canonries, are sacked, without mercy ; which have shorn the flock too close, forgetting to feed it. Wo to the land over which Sansculottism, in its day of vengeance, tramps roughshod,— shod in sabots ! Highbred Seig- neurs, with their delicate women and little ones, had to ' fly half- * naked,' under cloud of night ; glad to escape the flames, and even worse. You meet them at the tables-d'hdie of inns ; making wise reflections or foolish that ' rank is destroyed ; ' uncertain whither they shall now wend.f The metayer will find it convenient to be slack in paying rent As for the Tax-gatherer, he, long hunting ^ as a biped of prey, may now get hunted as one ; his Majesty's Exchequer will not ' fill up the Deficit,' this season : it is the notion of many that a Patriot Majesty, being the Restorer of French Liberty, has abolished most taxes, though, for their private ends, some men make a secret of it. Where this will end 1 In the Abyss, one may prophecy ; whither all Delusions, are, at all moments, travelling ; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time ; and be * See Hist, Part. ii. 243-6. f See Young, i. 149, &c. VOL. L i66 CONSOLIDATION. born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, in Heaven's Chancery itself ; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour. * The sign of a Grand " Seigneur being landlord,' says the vehement plain-spoken Arthur Young, ' are wastes, landes^ deserts, ling : go to his residence, you ' will find it in the middle of a forest, peopled with deer, wild boars * and wolves. The fields are scenes of pitiable management, as * the houses are of misery. To see so many millions of hands^ * that would be industrious, all idle and starving : Oh, if I were * legislator of France, for one day, I would make these great lords ^skip again !'-^ O Arthur, thou now actually beholdest them' skip : — wilt thou grow to grumble at that too ? ' , Tor long years and generations it lasted, but the ti-me came. . Featherbrain, whom no reasoning and no pleading could touch, > the glare of the firebrand had to illuminate : there remained but ' that method. Consider it, look at it ! The widow is gathering nettles for her children's dinner ; a perfumed Seigneur, delicately^ lounging in the CEil-de-Bceuf, has an alchemy whereby he will'' extract from her the third nettle, and name it Rent and Law : such • an arrangement must end. Ought it ? But, O most fearful is ; such an ending ! Let those, to whom God, in His great mercy, i has granted time and space^ prepare, another and milder one. To some it is a matter of wonder that the Seigneurs did not do j something to help themselves ; say, combine, and arm : for there were a ' hundred and fifty thousand of them,' all valiant enough, i Unhappily, p hundred and fifty thousand, scattered over wide'i Provinces, divided by mutual ill-will, cannot combine. Thai highest Seigneurs, as we have seen, had already emigrated, — with ! a view of putting France to the blush. Neither are arms now the ' peculiar property of Seigneurs ; but of every mortal who has ten shilhngs, wherewith to buy a secondhand firelock. Besides, those starving Peasants, after all, have not four feet and claws, that you could keep them down permanently in that manner. They are not even of black colour ; they are mere Un- washed Seigneurs ; and a Seigneur too has human bowels !— The Seigneurs did what they could ; enrolled in National Guards ; fled, with shrieks, complaining to Heaven and Earth. One Seig- neur, famed Memmay of Quincey, near Vesoul, invited all the rustics of his neighbourhood to a banquet ; blew up his Chateau and them with gunpowder ; and instantaneously vanished, no man yet knows whither.f Some halt dozen years after, he came back; and demonstrated that it was by accident. Nor are the authorities idle : though unluckily, all Authorities, Municipalities and such like, are in the uncertain transitionary state ; getting regenerated from old Monarchic to new Democratic ; no Official yet knows clearly what he is. Nevertheless, Mayors old or new do gather MarecJiausshs^ National Guards, Troops of the line ; justice, of tlic most sumnmry sort, is not wanting. The Electoral Committee of Macon, though but a Committee^ goes ♦ Arthur Young, j. 12, 48, 84, &c. f Hist. Pari. ii. i6t. THE GENERAL OVERTURN. 167 fr.he length of hanging, for its own behoof, as many as twenty. The Prevot of Dauphine traverses the country 'with a movable * column/ with tipstaves, gallows-ropes ; for gallows any tree wilV serve, and suspend its culprit, or ' thirteen ' culprits. Unhappy country ! How is the fair gold-and-green of the ripe bright Year defaced with horrid blackness : black ashes of Chateaus, black bodies of gibetted Men ! Industry has ceased in it ; not sounds of the hammer and saw, but of the tocsin and alarm-drum. The sceptre has departed, whither one knows not ; —breaking itself in pieces : here impotent, there tyrannous. National Guards are unskilful, and of doubtful purpose ; Soldiers are inclined to mutiny : there is danger that they two may quarrel, danger that they may agree. Strasburg has seen riots : a Townhall torn to shreds, its archives scattered white on the winds ; drunk soldiers embracing drunk citizens for three days, and Mayor Dietrich and Marshal Rochambeau reduced nigh to des- peration.*^ Through the middle of all which phenomena, is seen, on his triumphant transit, 'escorted,' through Befort for instance, 'by * fifty National Horsemen and all the military music of the place,' — -M. Necker, returning from Bale! Glorious as the meridian; though poor Necker himself partly guesses whither it is leading.t One highest culminating day, at the Paris Townhall; with immortal vivats, with wife and daughter kneeling publicly to kiss his hand ; with Besenval's pardon granted,— but indeed revoked before sunset : one highest day, but then lower days, and ever lower, down even to lowest \ Such magic is in a name ; and in the want of a name. Like some enchanted Mambrino's Helmet, essential to victory, comes this ' Saviour of France ; ' beshouted, becymballed by the world :— alas, so soou, to be /^/jenchanted, to iDe pitched shamefully over the lists as a Barber's Bason ! Gibbon 'could wish to shew him' (in this ejected, Barber's-Bason state) to any man of solidity, who were minded to have the soul burnt out of him, and become a caput mortinmi, by Ambition, unsuccessful or successful, j Another small phasis we add, and no more : how, in the Autumn months, our sharp-tempered Arthur has been ' ^Destered for some ^ days past,' by shot, lead-drops and slugs, ' rattling five or six times into my chaise and about my ears ; ' all the mob of the country gone out to kill game !§ It is even so. On the Cliffs of Dover, over all the Marches of France, there appear, this autumn, two Signs on the Earth : emigrant flights of French Seigneurs ; emigrant winged flights of French Game ! Finished, one may say, or as good as finished, is the Preservation of Game on this i^arth ; completed for endless Time. What part it had to play m the History of Civilisation is played plaiidite ; exeat I * Arthur Young, i. 141.— Damproartin : F.^'cii emeus qui se sont i)assds sou$ Vtes yeux, i. 105-127. ' t BLographie Unlvenelle, § Necker (by Lally-Tollendal). X Gibbon's Letters, \ ./ / § Young, i. 176. G 2 CONSOLIDA TION, In this manner does Sansculottism blaze up, illustrating many tilings ; — producing, among the rest, as we saw, on the Fourth of At gust, that semi-miraculous Night of Pentecost in the National Assembly ; semi miraculous, which had its causes, and its effects. Feudalism is struck dead ; not on parchment only, and by ink ; but in very fact, by fire ; say, by self-combustion. This conflagra- tion of the South-East will abate; will be got scattered, to the West, or elsewhither : extinguish it will not, till the fuel be all done. CHAPTER IV. IN QUEUE. If we look now at Paris,. one thing is too evident : that th6 Baker's shops have got their (lueues^ or Tails ; their long strings of purchasers, arranged m tail, so that the first come be the first served, — were the shop once open ! This waiting in tail, not seen since the early days of July, again makes its appearance in August. In time, we shall see it perfected by practice to the rank almost of an art ; and the art, or quasi-art, of standing in tail be- come one of the characteristics of the Parisian People, distinguish- ing them from all other Peoples w^hatsoever. But consider, while work itself is so scarce, how a man must not onh' realise money ; but stand waiting (if his wife is too weak to wait and struggle) for half days in the Tail, till he get it changed for dear bad bread ! Controversies, to the length, sometimes of blood and battery, must arise in these exasperated (2ueues. Or if no controversy, then it is but one accordant Pange Lingua of com- plaint against the Powers that be. France has begun her long Curriculum of Hungering, instructive and productive beyond Academic Curriculums ; which extends over some seven most strenuous years. As Jean Paul says, of his own Life, ' to a great 'height shall the business of Hungering go.' Or consider, in strange contrast, the jubilee Ceremonies ; for, in general, the aspect of Paris presents these two features : jubilee ceremonials and scarcity of victual. Processions enough walk in jubilee ; of Young Women, decked and dizened, their ribands all tricolor ; moving with song and tabor, to the Shrine of Sainte Genevieve, to thank her that the Bastille is down. The Strong Men of the Market, and the Strong Women, fail not with their bouquets and speeches. Abljc Fauchet, famed in such work (for Abb^ Lefevre coukl only distribute powder) blesses tricolor cloth for the National Guard ; and makes it a National Tricolor Flag ; victorious, or to be victorious, in the cause of civil and religious liberty all over the world. Fauchet, we say, is the man for J^e'Dcuins^ and public Consecrations ; — to which, as in this IN QUEUE. instance of the Flag, our National Guard will ^ reply with volleys of •musketry/ Church and Cathedral though it be;* filhng Notre D^me with such noisiest fuliginous Amen, significant of several things. On the whole, we will say our new Mayor Bailly ; our new Commander Lafayette, named also ' Scipio-Americanus,' have bought their preferment dear. Bailly rides in gilt state-coach, with beefeaters and sumptuosity ; Camille Desmoulins, and others, sniffing at him for it : Scipio bestrides the ^ white charger,' and waves with civic plumes in sight of all France. Neither of them, however, does it for nothing ; but, in truth, at an exorbitant rate. At this rate, namely : of feeding Paris, and keeping it from fight- ing. Out of the City-funds, some seventeen thousand of thft utterly destitute are employed digging on Montmartre, at tenpence a day, which buys them, at market price, ahiiost two pounds of bad bread ; — they look very yellow, when Lafayette goes to harangue them. The Townhall is in travail, night and day ; it must bring forth Bread, a Municipal Constitution, regulations of all kinds, curbs on the Sansculottic Press ; above all, Bread, Bread. Purveyors prowl the country far and wide, with the appetite of lions ; detect hidden grain, purchase open grain ; by gentle means or forcible, must and will find grain. A most thankless task ; and so difficult, so dangerous, — even if a man did gain some trifle by it ! On the 19th of August, there is food for one day.t Com- plaints there are that the food is spoiled, and produces an effect on the intestines : not corn but plaster-of- Paris ! Which effect on the intestines, as well as that ' smarting in the throat and palate/ a Townhall Proclamation warns you to disregard, or even to con- sider as drastic-beneficial. The Mayor of Saint-Denis, so black was his bread, has, by a dyspeptic populace, been hanged on the Lanterne there. National Guards protect the Paris Corn-Market : first ten suffice ; then six hundred.^ Busy are ye, Bailly, Brissot . de Warville, Condorcet, and ye others ! For, as just hinted, there is a Municipal Constitution to be made too. The old Bastille Electors, after some ten days of psalmodying over their glorious victory, began to hear it asked, in a splenetic tone. Who put yoic there ? They accordingly had to give place, not without moanings, and audible growlings on both sides, to a new larger Body, specially elected for that post. Which new Body, augmented, altered, then fixed finally at the number of Three Hundred, with the title of Town Representatives {ReJ)resentans de la Com mime), now sits there ; rightly portioned into Committees ; assiduous making a Constitution ; at all moments when not seek- ing flour. And such a Constitution ; little short of miraculous : one that shall ' consolidate the Revolution ' ! The Revolution is finished, then ? Mayor Bailly and all respectable friends of Freedom would fain think so. Your Revolution, like jelly sufficiently boiled^ needs * See Hist, Pari. iii. 20; Mercifcr, lihuveau Paris, &c. f See Bailly, Mdnioires^ ii. 137-409. % Hist, Pari. ii. 421. i7o CONS O LI DA TION. only to be poured into shapes^ of Constitution^ and ^ consolidated' therein ? Could it, indeed, contrive to coolj which last, however, is precisely the doubtful thing, or even the not doubtful ! Unhappy friends of Freedom ; consolidating > a Revolution ! They must sit at work there, their pavilion spread on very Chaos ; between two hostile worlds, the Upper Court-world, the Nether Sansculottic one ; and, beaten on by both, toil painfully, perilously, — doing, in sad literal earnest^ * the impassible.' CHAPTER V. THE FOURTH ESTATE. Pamphleteering opens its abysmal throat wider and wider : never to close more. Our Philosophes, indeed, rather withdraw ; after the manner 6f Marmontel, ' retiring in disgust the first day/ Abbe Raynal, grown gray and quiet in his Marseilles domicile, is little content with this work ; the last literary act of the man will again be an act of rebellion : an indignant Letter to the Constittcent Assembly J answered by ' the order of the day.^ Thus also Philo- sophe M'orellet puckers discontented brows ; being indeed threat- ened in his benefices by that Fourth of August : it is clearly going too far. How astonishing that those ' haggard figures in w^oollen *jupes' would not rest as satisfied with Speculation, and victorious Analysis, as we ! AlaSj yes : Speculation, Philosophism, once the ornament and wealth of the saloon, will now coin itself into mere Practical Propositions, and circulate on street and highway, universally ; with results ! A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up ; in- creases and multiplies ; irrepressible, incalculable. New Printers, new Journals, and ever new (so prurient is the world), let our Three Hundred curb and consolidate as they can ! Loustalot, under the wing of I Vudhomme dull-blustering Printer, edits weekly his Revolutions de Paris ; in an acrid, emphatic manner. Acrid, corrosive, as the spirit of sloes and copperas, is Marat, Friend of the People J struck already with the fact that the National As- sembly, so full of Aristocrats, ^can do nothing,' except dissolve itself, and make way for a better ; that the Townhall Representa- tives are little other than babblers and imbeciles, if not even knaves. Poor is this man ; squalid, and dwells in garrets ; a man unlovely to the sense, outward and inward ; a man forbid ; — and is becoming fanatical, possessed with fixed-*idea. Cruel liisus of Nature ! Did Nature, O poor Marat, as in cruel sport, knead thcc out of her leavinf^s, and miscellaneous waste clay ; and fling thee fortli slcjxlamclikc, a Distraction into this distracted Eigh- tcentli Century? Work is a]i{)ointcd thee there; which thou shalt do. The Tlircc llun(h-cd liave summoned and will again summon THE FOURTH ESTATE. 171 Marat : but always he croaks forth answer sufficient ; ahvays he will defy them, or elude them ; and endure no gag. Carra, ' Ex-secretary of a decapitated Hospodar/ and then of a Necklace-Cardinal ; likewise Pamphleteer, Adventurer in many scenes and lands, — draws nigh to Mercier, of the Tableati de Paris; and, with foam on his lips, proposes an A7t7tales Patriotiqiies. The Moniteiir goes its prosperous way ; Barrere ' weeps/ on Paper as yet loyal ; Rivarol, Royou are not idle. Deep calls to deep : your Dojnine Salvuiii Fac Re^em shall avvaken Pange Lingua; with an Ajni-du-Peuple there is a Kifig's-F^dtmd Newspaper, Ami-du-Roi, Camille Desmoulins has appointed himself Pronireur-General de la Lajtterne, Attorney- General of the Lamp-iron; and pleads, not with atrocity, under an atrocious title ; editing weekly his brilliant Revahitions of Paris and Brabant. Brilliant, we say : for if, in that thick murk of Journalism, with its dull blustering, with its fixed or loose fury, any ray of genius greet thee, be sure it is Camille's. The thing that Camille teaches he, with his light finger, adorns : brightness plays, gentle, unexpected, amid horrible confusions ; often is the word of Camille worth reading, w^hen no other's is. Questionable Camille, how thou glitterest with a fallen, rebelHous, yet still semi-celestial light ; as is the star-light, on the brow of Lucifer ! Son of the Morning, into what times and what lands, art thou fallen ! But in all things is good though not good for ' consohdating * Revolutions.' Thousand wagon4oads of this Pamphleteering and Newspaper matter, lie rotting slowly in the Pubhc Libraries of our Europe. Snatched from the great gulf, like oysters by biblio- maniac pearl-divers, there must they first r^/, then what was pearl, in Camille or others, may be seen as such, and continue as such. Nor has public speaking declined, though Lafayette and his Patrols look sour on it. Loud always is the Palais Royal, loudest the Cafe de Foy ; such a miscellany of Citizens and Citizenesses circulating there. ' Now and then,' according to Camille, 'some * Citizens employ the liberty of the press for a private purpose ; so ^that'this or the other Patriot finds himself short of his watch or * pocket-handkerchief ! ' But, for the rest, in Camille's opinion, ^nothing can be a liveher image of the Roman Forum. ' A Patriot ^proposes his motion ; if it finds any supporters, they make him mount on a chair, and speak. If be is applauded, he prospers ^and redacts ; if he is hissed, he goes his ways.' Thus they, cir- culating and perorating. Tall shaggy Marquis Saint-Huruge, a [I man that has had losses, and has deserved them, is seen eminent, (and also heard. ' Bellowing' is the character of his voice, like I that of a Bull of Bashan ; voice which drowns all voices, which I causes frequently the hearts of men to leap. Cracked or half- cracked is this tall Marquis's head ; uncracked are his lungs ; the cracked and the uncracked shall alike avail him. Consider further that each of the Forty-eight Districts has its own Committee ; speaking and motioning continually ; aiding in 172 CONSOLIDATION, the search for grain, in the search for a Constitution ; checkin| and spurring the poor Three Hundred ot the TownhalL Tha Danton, with a ' \o\qq. reverberating from the domes/ is Presiden of the Cordehers District ; which has aheady become a Goshei of Patriotism. That apart from the ' seventeen thousand utterl; ' necessitous, digging on Montmartre/ most of whom, indeed, havi got passes, and been dismissed into Space ' with four shihings,'— there is a strike^ or union, of Domestics out of place ; who assemble for public speaking : next, a strike of Tailors, for even they wil strike and speak ; further, a strike of Journeymen Cordwainers a strike of Apothecaries : so dear is bread."^ All these, having struck, must speak ; generally under the open canopy; and pass resolutions ; — Lafayette and his Patrols watching them suspiciousl) from the distance. Unhappy mortals : such tugging and lugging, and throttling oi one another, to divide, in some not intolerable way, the joint Fehcity of man in this Earth ; when the whole lot to be divided is such a ' feast of shells I '—Diligent are the Three Hundred ; none equals Scipio Americanus in dealing with mobs. But surely all these things bode ill for the consolidating of a Revolution. * Histoire Parlementairet ii. 359, 417, 433. 173 BOOK SEVENTH. THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. CHAPTER I. PATROLLOTISM. No, Friends, this Revolution ij not of the consohdating kitid. Do not fires, fevers, sown seeds, chemical mixtures, men, events ; ill embodiments of Force that work in this miraculous Complex of Forces, named Universe, — go on growing, through their natural Dhases and developments, each according to its kind ; reach their height, reach their visible decline ; finally sink under, vanishing, md what we call die'^. They all grow ; there is nothing but what ^rows, and shoots forth into its special expansion, — once give it eave to spring. Observe too that each grows with a rapidity proportioned, in general, to the madness and unhealthiness there s in it : slow regular growth, though this also ends in death, is vhat we name health and sanity. A Sansculottism, which has prostrated Bastilles, which has got )ike and musket, and now goes burning Chateaus, passing resolu- ions and haranguing under roof and sky, may be said to have I prung ; and, by law of Nature, must grow. To judge ' by the Inadness and diseasedness both of its'elf, and of the soil and ele- ! fient it is in, one might expect the rapidity and monstrosity would '>e extreme. Many things too, especially all diseased things, grow by shoots .nd fits. The first grand fit and shooting forth of Sansculottism /as that of Paris conquering its King; for Bailly's figure of hetoric was ail-too sad a reality. The King is conquered ; going .t large on his parole ; on condition, say, of absolutely good »ehaviour, — which, in these circumstances, will unhappily mean o behaviour whatever. A quite untenable position, that of Majesty put on its good behaviour ! Alas, is it not natural that 'hateyer lives try to keep itself living.^ Whereupon his Majesty's ehaviour will soon become exceptionable ; and so the Second rand Fit of Sansculottism, that of putting him in durance, can- Qt be distant. THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. Necker. in the National Assembly, is making moan, as usual about his Deficit : Barriers and Customhouses burnt ; the Tax- gacherei hunted, not hunting ; his Majesty's Exchequer all bat empty. The remedy is a Loan of thirty milUons ; then, on still more enticing terms, a Loan of eighty millions : neither of which Loans, unhappily, will the Stockjobbers venture to lend. The Stockjobber has no country, Except his own black pool of Agio, And yet, in those days, for men that have a country, Avhat a glow of patriotism burns in many a heart ; penetrating inwards to the very purse ! So early as the 7th of August, a Don PatrioUqiiCy 'a Patriotic Gift of jewels to a considerable extent,' has been solemnly made by certain Parisian women ; and solemnly accepted,, with honourable mention. Whom forthwith all the world takes to imitating and emulating. Patriotic Gifts, always with some heroic, eloquence, which the President must answer and the Assembly, hsten to, flow in from far and near : in such number that thC; honourable mention can only be performed in ' lists published at ' stated epochs/ Each gives what he can : the very cordwamers have behaved munificently ; one landed proprietor gives a forest ; fashionable society gives its shoebuckles, takes cheerfully to shoe- ties. Unfortunate females give what they ' have amassed in ' loving.' The smell of all cash, as Vespasian thought, is crood. \ Beautiful, and yet inadequate ! The Clergy must be ' invited ^ to melt their superfluous Church-plate,— in the Royal Mint. Nay finally, a Patriotic Contribution, of the forcible sort, must be deter-; mined on, though unwilhngly : let the fourth part of your declared yearly revenue, for this once only, be paid down ; so shall a National Assembly make the Constitution, undistracted at least by insolvency. Their own wages, as settled on the 17th of August, are but Eighteen Francs a day, each man ; but the Public Service must have sinews, must have money. To appease the Deficit ; not to ' combler, or choke, the Deficit,' if you or mortal could ! For withal, as Mirabeau was heard saying, " it is the Deficit that saves us." Towards the end of August, our National Assembly in its con- stitutional labours, has got so far as the question of Veto : shall Majesty have a Veto on the National . Enactments ; or not have a Veto ? What speeches were spoken, within doors and without ; clear, and also passionate logic ; imprecations, comminations ; gone happily, for most part, to Limbo ! Through the cracked brain, and uncracked lungs of Saint-Huruge, the Palais Royal rebellows with Veto. Journalism is busy, France rings with Veto. * I shall never forget,' says Dumont, 'my going to Paris, one of * these days, with Mirabeau ; and the crowd of people we found 'waiting for his carriage, about Le Jay the Bookseller's shop., 'They flung themselves before him; conjuring him with tears in * their eyes not to suffer the Veto Absolu. They were in a frenzy : ' " Monsieur le Comte, you are the people's father ; you must save * US \ you must defend us against those villains who are bringing * Histoire ParlcmcniairCi ii. 427, PATROLLOTISM. *back Despotism. If the King get ^;his Veto, what is the use of ^ National Assembly ? We are slaves ; all is done." ' Friends, // the sky fall, there will be catching of larks ! Mirabeau, adds bumont, was eminent on such occasions : he answered vaguely, with a Patrician imperturbability, and bound himself to nothing. Deputations go to the H6tei-de-Ville ; anonymous Letters to Aristocrats in the National Assembly, threatening that fifteen thousand, or sometimes that sixty thousand, 'will march to illumi- * nate you.' The Paris Districts are astir ; Petitions signing : Saint- Huruge sets forth from the Palais Royal, with an escort of lifteen hundred individuals, to petition in person. Resolute, or seemingly so, is the tall shaggy Marquis, is the Cafe de Foy : but resolute also is Commandant- General Lafayette. The streets are all beset by Patrols : Saint- Huruge is stopped at the Barriere des Bo-71 Hommesj he may bellow like the bulls of Bashan ; but abso- lutely must return. The brethren of the Palais Royal ' circulate all ' night,' and make motions, under the open canopy ; all Coffee- houses being shut. Nevertheless Lafayette and the Townhall do prevail : Saint-Huruge is thrown into prison ; Veto Absolu adjusts itself into Suspensive Veto, prohibition not forever, but for a term of time ; and this doom's-clamour will grow silent, as the others have done. So far has Consolidation prospered, though with difficulty ; re- Ipressing the Nether Sansculottic world ; and the Constitution shall be made. With difficulty : amid jubilee and scarcity ; Patriotic Gifts, Bakers'-queues ; Abbe-Fauchet Harangues, with their Aine?i )f plajtoon-musketry ! Scipio Americanus has deserved thanks Tom the National Assembly and France, They offer him sti- oends and emoluments, to a handsome extent ; all which stipends md emoluments he, covetous of far other blessedness than mere ;noney, does, in his chivalrous way, without scruple, refuse. I To the Parisian common man, meanwhile, one thing remains i nconceivable : that now when the Bastille is down, and French liberty restored, grain should contmue so dear. Our Rights |)f Man are voted, Feudahsm and all Tyranny abolished; yet I behold we stand in queue ! Is it Aristocrat forestallers ; a Tourt still bent on intrigues ? Something is rotten, somewhere. And yet, alas, what to do ? Lafayette, with his Patrols prohibits ivery thing, even complaint. Saint-Huruge and other heroes of he Veto lie in durance. People's- Friend Marat was seized ; r'rintersof Patriotic Journals are fettered and forbidden ; the very riawkers cannot cry, till they get license, and leaden badges. Blue National Guards ruthlessly dissipate all groups ; scour, with evelled bayonets, the Palais Royal itself. Pass, on your affairs, -long the Rue Taranne, the Patrol, presenting his bayonet, cries, To the left! Turn into the Rue Saint-Benoit, he cries, To the 'ight! . A judicious Patriot (like Camille Desmouhns, in this in- tance) is driven, for quietness' sake, to take the gutter. O much-suffering People, our glorious Revolution is evaporating * Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 156. 176 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. in tricolor ceremonies, and complimentary harangues ! Of which latter, as Loustalot acridly calculates, ' upwards of two thousand * have been delivered within the last month, at the Townhall * alone.'* And our mouths, unfilled with bread, are to be shut, under penalties ? The Caricaturist promulgates his emblematic Tablature : Le Patrouillotisme chassant le Patriotisme, Patrio- tism driven out by Patrollotism. Ruthless Patrols ; long superfine harangues ; and scanty ill-baked loaves, more like baked Bath bricksj — which produce an effect on the intestines ! Where will this end ? In consolidation ? CHAPTER II. O RICHARD, O MY KING. For, alas, neither is the Townhall itself without misgivings. The Nether Sansculottic world has been suppressed hitherto : but then: the Upper Court- world ! Symptoms there are that the CEil-de-; Boeuf is rallying. ; More than once in the Townhall Sanhedrim ; often enough^ from those outspoken Bakers'-queues, has the wish uttered itself :| O that our Restorer of French Liberty were here ; that he could see with his own eyes, not with the false eyes of Queens and Cabals, and his really good heart be enlightened ! For falsehood still environs him ; intriguing Dukes de Guiche, with Bodyguards ; scouts of Bouille ; a new flight of intriguers, now that the old is flown. What else means this advent of the Regiment de Flandre ; entering Versailles, as we hear, on the 23rd of September, with two pieces of cannon ? Did not the Versailles National Guard do duty at the Chateau ? Had they not Swiss ; Hundred Swiss ; Gardes-du-Corps^ Bodyguards so-called Nay, it would seem, the number of Bodyguards on duty has, by a manoeuvre, been doubled : the new reheving Battahon of them arrived at its time; but the old reheved one does not depart I Actually, there runs a whisper through the best informed Upper-Circles, or a nod still more potentous than whispering, of his Majesty's flying to Metz ; of a Bond (to stand by him therein) which has been signed by Noblesse and Clergy, to the incredible amount of thirty, or even of sixty thousand. Lafayette coldly whispers it, and coldly asseverates it. to Count d'Estaing at the Dinner-table ; and d'Estaing, one of The bravest men, quakes to the core lest some lackey overhear it ; and tumbles thoughtful, without sleep, all night.f Regiment Flandre, as we said, is clearly * Revolutions de Paris Newspaper (cited in Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 357). t Brouillon de Lettre de M, d'EsiatngMa Riine (in Histoire ParlemevU aire^ iii. 24). O RICHARD, O MY KING. 177 arrived. His Majesty, they say, hesitates about sanctioning the Fourth of August; makes observati^^ns, of chilHng tenor, on the very Rights of Man ! Likewise, may not all persons, the Bakers'- queues themselves discern on the streets of Paris, the most astonishing number of Officers on furlough. Crosses of St. Louis, and such like.'* Some reckon 'from a thousand to twelve hun- * dred.' Officers of all uniforms ; nay one uniform never before seen by eye : green faced wth red ! The tricolor cockade is not always visible : but what, in the name of Heaven, may these black cockades, which some wear, foreshadow Hunger whets everything, especially Suspicion and Indignation. Realities themselves, in this Paris, have grown unreal : preter- natural. Phantasms once more stalk through the brain of hungry France. O ye laggards and dastards, cry shrill voices from the Queues, if ye had the hearts of men, ye would take your pikes and secondhand firelocks, and look into it ; not leave your wives and daughters to be starved, murdered, and worse ! — Peace, women ! The heart of man is bitter and heavy ; Patriotism, driven out by Patrollotism, knows not what to resolve on. The truth is, the QEil-de-Boeuf has rallied ; to a certain unknown extent. A changed CEil-de-Boeuf ; with Versailles National Guards, in their tricolor cockades,, doing duty there ; a Court all flaring with tricolor ! Yet even to a tricolor Court men will rally. Ye loyal hearts, burnt-out Seigneurs, rally round your Queen ! With wishes ; which will produce hopes ; which will produce i attempts ! I For indeed self-preservation being such a law of Nature, what j Can a rallied Court do, but attempt and endeavour, or call it plot, I — with such wisdom and unwisdom as it has 1 They will fly, escorted, to Metz, where brave Bouille commands ; they will raise the Royal Standard : the Bond-signatures shall become armed men. Were not the King so 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 ijatural this Regiment de Flandre should be sent for, since it coiiid 178 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN, be got. It was natural that, at sight of mihtary bandoleers, the heart of the rallied Qiil-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 effect. Further, as such Dinner may be rather extensive, and even the Noncommissioned and the Common man be introduced, to see and to hear, could not His Majesty's Opera Apartment, which has lain quite silent ever since Kaiser Joseph was here, be obtained for the purpose The Hall of the Opera is granted ; the Salon d'Hercule shall be drawingroom. Not only the Officers of Flandre, but of the Swiss, of the Hundred Swiss, nay of the Versailles National Guard, such of them as have any loyalty, shall feast : it will be a Repast like few. And now suppose this Repast, the solid part of it, transacted ; and the first bottle over. Suppose the customary loyal toasts drunk ; the King's health, the Queen's with deafening vivats ; — that of the Nation ' omitted,' or even ' rejected.' Suppose champagne flowing ; with pot-valorous speech, with instrumental music ; empty feathered heads growing ever the noisier, in their own emptiness, in each other's noise! Her Majesty, who looks unusually sad to-night (his Majesty sitting dulled with the day's hunting), is told that the sight of it would cheer, her. Behold ! She enters there, issuing from her State-rooms, like the Moon from the clouds, this fairest unhappy Queen of Hearts ; royal Husband by her side, young Dauphin in her arms ! She descends from the Boxes, amid splendour and acclaim ; walks queen-hke, round the Tables ; gracefully escorted, gracefully nodding ; her looks full of sorrow, yet of gratitude and daring, with the hope of France on her mother-bosom ! And now, the band striking up, O Richard^ O nio7i Roi, ruiiivers fabando7i7ie{0 Richard, O my King, the world is all forsaking thee) — could man do other than rise to height of pity, of loyal valour ? Could featherheadcd young ensigns do other than, by white Bourbon Cockades, handed them from fair fingers ; by waving of swords, drawn to pledge the Queen's health : by trampling of National Cockades ; by scaling the Boxes, whence intrusive murmurs may come ; by vociferation, tripudiation, sound, fury and distraction, within doors and without, — testify what tempest-tost state of vacuity they are in ? Till champagne and tripudiation do their work ; and all lie silent, horizontal ; passively slumbering, with meed-of-battle dreams ! — A natural kepast ; in ordinary times, a harmless one - now BLACK COCKADES, 179 fatal, as that of Thyestes ; as that of Job's Sons, when a strong wind smote the four corners of their banquet-house ! Poor ill- advised Marie-Antoinette ; with a woman's vehemence, not with a sovereign's foresight ! It was so natural, yet so unwise. Next day, in public speech of ceremony, her Majesty declares herself delighted with the Thursday.' The heart of the CEil-de-Boeuf glows into hope ; into daring, which is premature. Rallied Maids of Honour, waited on by Abbes, sew 'white cockades ;' distribute them, with words, with glances, to epauietted youths ; who in return, may kiss, not with- out fervour, the fair sewing fingers. Captains of horse and foot go swashing with ' enormous white cockades nay one Versailles National Captain had mounted the like, so witching were the words and glances ; and laid aside his tricolor ! Well may Major Lecointre shake his head with a look of severity ; and speak audible resentful words. But now a swashbuckler, with enormous white cockade, overhearing the Major, invites him insolently, once and then again elsewhere, to recant ; and failing that, to duel. Which latter feat Major Lecointre declares that he will not per- form, not at least by any known laws of fence ; that he neverthe- less will, according to mere law of Nature, by dirk and blade, ^ exterminate ' any ^ vile gladiator,' who may insult him or the Nation ;— whereupon (for the M^jor is actually drawing his imple- ment) ^they are parted,' and no weasands sht."^ CHAPTER HI. BLACK COCKADES. But fancy what effect this Thyestes Repast and trampling on the National Cockade, must have had in the Salle des Memcs ; in the famishing Bakers'-queues at Paris ! Nay such Thyestes Repasts, it would seem, continue. Flandre has given its Counter- Dinner to the Swiss and Hundred Swiss ; then on Saturday there has been another. Yes, here with us is famine ; but yonder at Versailles is food ; enough and to spare ! Patriotism stands in queue, shivering hungerstruck, insulted by Patrol! otism ; while bloodyminded Aris- tocrats, heated with excess of high living, trample on the National Cockade. Can the atrocity be true? Nay, look : green uniforms faced with red ; black cockades, — the colour of Night ! Are we to have military onfall ; and death also by starvation For behold the Corbeil Cornboat, which used to come twice a-day, with its Plaster-of-Paris meal, now comes only once. And the ' * Moniteur Histohe Parl&mentaire, iii. 59); Deux (Amis m, 128-141); Campan (ii. 70-85), &c. &c. tSo THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN Townhall is deaf ; and the men are laggard and dastard !— At the Cafe de Foy, this Saturday evening, a new thing is seen, not the last of its kind : a woman engaged in public speaking. Her poor man, she says, was put to silence by his District ; their Presidents and Officials would not let him speak. Wherefore she here with her shrill tongue will speak ; d~enouncing, while her breath endures, the Corbeil-Boat, the Plaster-of-Paris bread, sac- rilegious Opera-dinners, green uniforms, Pirate Aristocrats, and those black cockades of theirs ! — Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least, to vanish. Them Patrollotism itself will not protect. Nay, sharp-tempered * M. Tassin,' at the Tuileries parade on Sunday morning, forgets all National military rule ; starts from the ranks, wrenches down one black cockade which is swashing ominous there ; and tramples it fiercely into the soil of France. Patrollotism itself is not without suppressed fury. Also the Districts begin to stir ; the voice of President Danton reverberates in the Cordeliers : People's-Friend Marat has flown to Versailles and back again ; — swart bird, not of the halcyon kind !* And so Patriot meets promenading Patriot, this Sunday : and sees his own grim care reflected on the face of another. Groups, in spite of Patrollotism, which is not so alert as usual, fluctuate deliberative : groups on the Bridges, on the Ouais, at the patriotic Cafds. And ever as any black cockade may emerge, rises the many-voiced growl and bark : Z bas, Down ! All black cockades are ruthlessly plucked off : one individual picks his up r.gaii: ; kisses it, attempts to refix it ; but a ' hundred canes start' in^o the *• air,' and he desists. Still worse went it with another indivicual ; doomed, by extempore Plebiscitum, to the Lanterne ; saved, with > difficulty, by some active Corps-de-Garde. — Lafayette sees signs of an effervescence ; which he doubles his Patrols, doubles his diligence, to prevent. So passes Sunday, the 4th of October 1789. Sullen is the male heart, repressed by Patrollotism ; vehement is the female, irrepressible. The public-speaking woman at the Palais Royal was not the only speaking one : — Men know not what the pantry when it grows empty, only house-mothers know. O viTomen, wives of men that will only calculate and not act ! Patrol- lotism is strong ; but Death, by starvation and miUtary onfall, is stronger. Patrollotism represses male Patriotism : but female Patriotism ? Will Guards named National thrust their bayonets into the bosoms of women Such thought, or rather such dim unshaped raw-material of a thought, ferments universally under the female night-cap ; and, by earliest daybreak, on slight hint, will explode. * Cam i lie's Newspaper, Revolutions de Paris et de Brabant (in Histoirt ParlemeniairSt iii. io8). THE MENADS. CHAPTER IV. ^THE MENADS. If Voltaire once, in splenetic humour, asKed his countrymen 2 "But you, Gualches, what have you invented?" they can now answer : The Art of Insurrection. It was an art needed in these last singular times : an art, for which the French nature, so full of vehemence, so free from depth, was perhaps of all others the fittest. Accordingly, to what a height, one may well say of perfection, has this branch of human industry been carried by France, within the last half-century ! Insurrection, which, Lafayette thought, might be *the most sacred of duties,' ranks now, for the French people, among the duties which they can perform. Other mobs are dull masses ; which roll onwards with a dull fierce tenacity, a dull fierce heat, but emit no light-flashes of genius as they go. The French mob, again, is among the liveliest phenomena of our world. So rapid, audacious ; so clear-sighted, inventive, prompt to seize the moment ; instinct with life to its finger-ends ! That talent, were there no other, of spontaneously standing in queue, distinguishes, as we said, the French People from all Peoples, ancient and modern. Let the Reader confess too that, taking one thing with another, perhaps few terrestrial Appearances are better worth considering than mobs. Your mob is a genuine outburst of Nature ; issuing from, or communicating with, the deepest deep of Nature. When so much goes grinning and grimacing as a lifeless Formality, *and under the stiff buckram no heart can be felt beating, here once more,' if nowhere else, is a Sincerity and Reality. Shudder at It ; or even shriek over it, if thou must ; nevertheless consider it. Such a Complex of human Forces and Individualities hurled forth, in their transcendental mood, to act and react, on circumstances and on one another ; to work out what it is in them to work. The thing they will do is known to no man ; least of all to themselves. It is the inflammablest immeasurable Fire- work, generating, con- suming itself. With what phases, to what extent, with what re- sults it will burn off, Philosophy and Perspicacity conjecture in vain. ' Man,' as has been written, * is for ever interesting to man ; ^ nay properly there is nothing else interesting.' In which light also, may we not discern why most Battles have become so weari- some ? Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism ; with the slightest possible developement of human individuality or spontaneity : men now even die, and kill one another, in an arti- ficial mann-^r. Battles ever since Homer's time, when they were Fighting Mobs, have mostly ceased to be worth looking at, worth reading of, or remembering. How many wearisome bloody Battles THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. does History strive to represent ; or even, in a husky way, to sing - — and she would omit or carelessly slur-over this one Insurrectiqn / of Women ? A thought, or dim raw-material of a thought, was fermenting all night, universally in the female head, and might explode. In squalid garret, on Monday morning. Maternity awakes, to hear children weeping for bread. Maternity ^nust forth to the streets, to the herb-markets and Bakers'-queues ; meets there with hunger- stricken Maternity, sympathetic, exasperative. O we unhappy women ! But, instead of Bakers'-queues, why not to Aristocrats^ palaces, the root of the matter? A lions I Let us assemble. To the H6tel-de-Ville ; to Versailles ; to the Lanterne ! In one of the Guardhouses of the Quartier Saint-Eustache, * young woman ' seizes a drum, — for how shall National Guards give fire on women, on a young woman ? The young woman seizes the drum ; sets forth, beating it, ' uttering cries relative to * the dearth of grains.' Descend, O mothers ; descend, ye Judiths, . to food and revenge ! — All women gather and go ; crowds storm all stairs, force out all women : the female Insurrectionary Force, according to Camille, resembles the Enghsh Naval one ; there is a universal ^ Press of women.' Robust Dames of the Halle, slim Mantua-makers, assiduous, risen with the dawn ; ancient Virginity tripping to matins ; the Housemaid, with early broom ; all must go. Rouse ye, O women ; the laggard men will not act ; they say, we ourselves may act ! And so, like snowbreak from the mountains, for every staircase is a melted brook, it storms ; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards the Hotel- de-Ville. Tumultuous ; with or without drum-music : for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine also has tucked up its gown ; and, with besom-staves, fire-irons, and even rusty pistols (void of ammunition), is flowing on. Sound of it flies, with a velocity of sound, to the utmost Barriers. By seven o'clock, on this raw October morning, fifth of the month, the Townhall will see wonders. Nay, as chance would have it, a male party are already there ; clustering tumultuously round some National Patrol, and a Baker who has been seized with short weights. They are there ; and have even lowered the rope of the Lanterne. So that the oflicial persons have to smuggle forth the short-weighing Baker by back doors, and even send ' to all the Districts ' for more force. Grand it was, says Camille, to see so many Judiths, from eight to ten thousand of them in all, rushing out to search into the root of the matter ! Not unfrightful it must have been ; ludicro-terrific, and most unmanageable. At such hour the overwatched Three Hundred are not yet stirring : none but some Clerks, a company of National Guards ; and M. de Gouvion, the Major-general. (Jouvion has fought in America for the cause of civil Liberty ; a man of no inconsiderable heart, but deficient in head. He is, for the moment, in his back apartment ; assuaging Usher Maillard, the Bastille- serjeant, who has come, as too many do, with ' representations.' The assuagement is still incomplete when our Judiths arrive. The National Cniards form on the outer stairs, with levelled USHER MAILLARD, bayonets ; the ten thousand Judiths press up, resistless ; with obtestations, with outspread hands, — merely to speak to the Mayor. The rear forces them ; nay, from male hands in the rear, stones already fly : the National Guards must do one of two things ; sweep the Place de Greve with cannon, or else open to right and left. They open ; the living deluge rushes in. Through all rooms and cabinets, upwards to the topmost belfry : ravenous ; seeking arms, seeking Mayors, seeking justice ; — while, again^ the better- cressed speak kindly to the Clerks ; point out the misery of these poor women ; also their ailments, some even of an interest- ing sort.* Poor M. de Gouvion is shiftless in this extremity ; — a man shift- less, perturbed ; who will one day commit suicide. How happy for him that Usher Maillard, the shifty, was there, at the moment, though making representations ! Fly back, thou shifty Maillard ; seek the Bastille Company ; and O return fast with it ; above all, with thy own shifty head ! For, behold, the Judiths can find no Mayor or Municipal ; scarcely, in the topmost belfrey, can they find poor Abbe Lefevre the Powder-distributor. Him, for want of a better, they suspend there ; in the palp morning light ; over the top of all Paris, which swims in one's failing eyes : — a horrible end ? Nay, the rope broke, as French ropes often did ; or else an Amazon cut it. Abbe Lefevre falls, 'some twenty feet, ra.ttling among the leads ; and iives long years after, though always with * a tr emblement in the limbs/f And now doors fly under hatchets ; the Judiths have broken the Armoury ; have seized guns and cannons, three money-bags, paper-heaps ; torches flare : in few minutes, our brave Hotel- de-Ville which dates from the Fourth Henry, will, with all that it kolds, be in flames ' CHAPTER V. USHER MAILLARD. In flames, truly, — were it not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot, shifty of head, has returned ! Maillard, of his own motion, for Gouvion or the rest would not even sanction him, — snatches a drum ; descends the Porch-stairs, ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls, his Rogues'-march : To Versailles ! A lions j a Versailles I As men beat on kettle or warmingpan, when angry she-bees, or say, flying desperate wasps, are to be hived ; and the desperate insects hear it, and cluster round it, — simply as round a guidance, where there was none : so now these Menads round shifty Maillard, Riding- Usher of the * Deuyi Amis, iii. 141-166, f Dusaulx, Frise de la Bastille (note, p. 281), l84 THE INSURRECTION OF V/OMEN. Ch.itelet. The axe pauses iipMfted ; Abbe Lefevre is left ha^ hanged ; from the belfry downwards all vomits itself. What rub- a-dubis that? Stanislas Maillard, Bastille-hero, will lead us to Versailles? Joy to thee, Maillard ; blessed art thou above Ridmg- Ushers ! Away then, away ! The seized cannon are yoked with seized cart-horses : brown- locked Demoiselle Theroigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as gunneress, ' with haughty eye and serene fair countenance ; ' com- parable, some thmk, to the Maid of Orleans, or even recallino^ ; the idea of Pallas Athene/^ Maillard (for his drum still rollsl IS, by heaven-rending acclamation, admitted General. Maillard' hastens the languid march. Maillai'd, beating rhythmic, with' sharp ran-tan, all along the Ouais, leads forward, with difficulty, his Menadic host. Such a host— marched not in silence 1 The' bargeman pauses on the River ; all wagoners and coachdrivers' fly; men peer from windows,— not women, lest they be pressed.' Sight of sights : Bacchantes, in these ultimate Formalized Ao-es i Bronze Henri looks on, fi-om his Pont-Neuf; the Monarchic Louvre, Medicean Tuileries see a day not theretofore seen. And now Maillard has his Menads in the Champs Ely sees (Fields Tartarean rather); and the Hotel-de-ViHe has suffered- con.paratively nothing. Broken doors ; an Abbe Lefevre, who 1 shall never more distribute powder ; three sacks of monev, most i part of which (for Sansculottism, though fsfmishing, is not without' honour) shall be returned :t this is all the damage. Great ' Maillard ! A small nucleus of Order is round his drum ; but his ' outskirts fluctuate like the mad Ocean : for Rascality male and ' female is flowing in on him, from the four winds ; guidance there is none but in his single head and two drumsticks. O Maillard, when, since War first was, had General of Force such a task before him, as thou this- day? Walter the Penniless still touches the feehng heart : but then Walter had sanction ; had space to turn m ; and also his Crusaders were of the male sex. Thou, this day, disowned of Heaven and Earth, art General of Menads Their inarticulate frenzy thou must on the spur of the . instant, render into articulate words, into actions that are not frantic. Fail in it, this way or that ! Pragmatical Officiality, with Its penalties and law-books, waits before thee ; Menads storm behind. If such hewed off the melodious head of Orpheus, and hurled it into the Pcneus waters, what may they not make of thee, —thee rhytlimic merely, with no music but a she-pskin drum Maillard did not fail. Remarkable Maillard, if fame were not an accident, and History a distillation of Rumour, how remarkable wert thou ! On theElysian Fields, there is pause and fluctuation; but, for Maillard, no return. He persuacles his Menads, clamorous for arms and the Arsenal, that no arms are in the Arsenal ; that an unarmed attitude, and petition to a National Assembly, will be the best : he hastily nominates or <-\arctions generalesscs, captains * Deux Amis, iii. 157. •(■ lUst, Pari. iii. 31a USHER MAILLARD, 18$ ^ tens and fifties and so, in loosest-flowing order, to the rhythm of some ^ eight drums' (having laid aside his own),' with the Bastille Volunteers bringing up his rear, once more takes the road. Chaillot, which will promptly yield baked loaves, is not plundered ; nor are the Sevres Potteries broken. The old arches 3f Sevres Bridge echo under Monadic feet; Seine River gushes 3n with his perpetual murmur ; and Paris flings after us the boom a tocsin and alarm-drum, — inaudible, for the present, amid shrill- sounding hosts, and the splash of rainy weather. To Meudon, ;o Saint Cloud, on both hands, the report of them is gone abroad ; md hearths, this evening, will have a topic. The press of women 5till continues, for it is the cause of all Eve's Daughters, mothers ;hat are, or that hope to be. No carnage-lady, were it with never such hysterics, but must dismount, in the mud roads, in her silk shoes, and walk.* In this manner, amid wild October weather, ;hey a wild unwinged stork-flight, through the astonished country, vend their way. Travellers of all sorts they stop ; especially Tavellers or couriers from Paris. Deputy Lechapelier, in his elegant vesture, from his elegant vehicle, looks forth amazed hrough his spectacles ; apprehensive for life ; — states eagerly that le is Patriot-Deputy Lechapelier, and even Old-President Lecha- )elier, who presided on the Night of Pentecost, and is original nember of the Breton Club. Thereupon ' rises huge shout of Vive Lechapelier, and several armed persons spring up behind and before to escort him.'t Nevertheless, news, despatches from Lafayette, or vague noise )f rumour, have pierced through, by side roads. In the National \ssembly, while all is busy discussing the order of the day ; re- gretting that there should be Anti-national Repasts in Opera- ialis ; that his Majesty should still hesitate about accepting the lights of Man, and hang conditions and peradventures on them, — Vlirabeau steps up to the President, experienced Mounier as it :hanced to be ; and articulates, in bass under-tone : *^ Mounier, ^aris marche stir nous (Paris is marching on us)." — May be Je n^en sais rien) V — "Believe it or disbelieve it, that is not my ;oncern ; but Paris, I say, is marching on us. Fall suddenly mwell ; go over to the Chateau ; tell them this. There is not a Qoment to lose." Paris marching on us?'' responds Mounier, /ith an atrabiliar accent : " Well, so much the better ! We shall he sooner be a Republic." Mirabeau quits him, as one quits an xperienced President getting blindfold into deep waters ; and the ,»rder of the day continues as before. Yes, Paris is marching on us ; and more than the women of ^aris ! Scarcely was Maillard gone, when M. de Gouvion's aessage to all the Districts, and such tocsin and drumming of the ^enerale, began to .take effect. Armed National Guards from jvery District ; especially the Grenadiers of the Centre, who are * Deux Amisyin. 159. f Ibid. iii. 177 ; Dictionnaire de^ flonimfs Rfar^uans, !i, 379 I85 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. our old Gardes Frangaises. arrive, in quick sequence, on the Place de Greve. An ^ immense people ^ is there ; Saint- Antoine, with pike and rusty firelock, is all crowding thither, be it welcome or unwelcome. The Centre Grenadiers are received with cheering : it is not cheers that we want,'^ answer they gloomily ; " the Nation has been insulted ; to arms, and come with us for orders !" Ha, sits the wind so ? Patriotism and Patrollotism are now one ! The Three Hundred have assembled ; ' all the Committees are. * in activity ; ' Lafayette is dictating despatches for Versailles, when a Deputation of the Centre Grenadiers introduces itself to him. The Deputation makes military obeisance ; and thus speaks, not without a kind of thought in it : Mon General, we are deputed by the Six Companies of Grenadiers. We do not think you a traitor, but we think the Government betrays you ; it is time that this end. We cannot turn our bayonets against women crying to us for bread. The people are miserable, the source of the mischief is at Versailles : we must go seek the King, and brings him to Paris. We mu>t exterminate {exterininer) the Regiment de Flandre and the Gardes-du-Corps, who have dared to trample on the National Cockade. If the . King be too weak to wear his crown, let him lay it down. You will crown his Son, you will name a Council of Regency ; and all will go better.'^^ Reproach- ful astonishment paints itself on the face of Lafayette ; speaks itself from his eloquent chivalrous lips : in vain. " My General, we would shed the last drop of our blood for you ; but the root of the mischief is at Versailles ; we must go and bring the King to Paris ; all the people wish it, tout le peiiple le vent.^^ My General descends to the outer staircase ; and harangues : once more in vain. " To Versailles ! To Versailles ! Mayor Bailly, sent for through floodc of Sansculottism, attempts academic oratory from his gilt state-coach ; realizes nothing but infinite hoarse cries of : ^' Bread ! To Versailles ! — and gladly shrinks within doors. Lafayette mounts the vv^hite charger ; and again harangues and reharangues : with eloquence, with firmness, indig- nant demonstration ; with all things but persuasion. " To Ver- sailles ! To Versailles ! " So lasts it, hour after hour ; for the space of half a day. The great Scipio Amcricanus can do nothing ; not so much as escape. Morbleii, vion General^' cry the Grenadiers scrrying their ranks as the white charger makes a motion that way, " You will not leave us, you will abide with us ! " A perilous juncture : Mayor Bailly and the Municipals sit quaking within doors ; My General is prisoner without : the Place de Grcve, with its thirty thousand Regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and Saint- Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel ; all hearts set, with a moody fixedness, on one object. Moody, fixed are all hearts : tranquil i-^ no heart,— if it be not that of the white charger, who paws there, with arched neck, composedly champing his bit \ as if no world, with its Dynasties and Eras, were now * Deux Amis, iii. i6i. TO VERSAILLES. 1S7 Stiahing down. The drizzly day tends westward ; the cry is still : '^To Versailles ! Nay now, borne from afar, come quite sinister cries ; hoarse, reverberating in longdrawn hollow murmurs, with syllables too like those of Laiiterne I Or else, irregular Sansculottism may be marching off, of itself ; with pikes, nay with cannon. The in- flexible Scipio does at length, by aide-de-camp, ask of the Muni- cipals : Whether or not he may go ? A Letter is handed out to him, over armed heads ; sixty thousand faces flash fixedly on his, there is stillness and no bosom breathes, till he have read. By Heaven, he grows suddenly pale ! Do the Municipals permit 1 * Permit and even order,' — since he can no other. Clangour of approval rends the welkin. To your ranks, then ; let us march ! It is, as we compute, towards three in the afternoon. Indignant National Guards may dine for once from their haversack : dined or undined, they march with one heart. Paris flings up her windows, claps hands, as the Avengers, with their shrilling drums and shalms tramp by ; she will then sit pensive, apprehensive, and pass rather a sleepless night."^ On the white charger, Lafayette, in the slowest possible manner, going and- coming, and eloquently haranguing among the ranks, rolls onward with his thirty thousand, Saint-Antoine, with pike and cannon, has preceded him ; a mixed multitude, of all and of no arms, hovers on his flanks and skirts ; She country once more pauses agape : Paris niarche sur nous. CHAPTER VI. TO VERSAILLES. For, indeed, about this same moment, Maillard has halted his draggled Menads on the last hill-top ; and now Versailles, and the Chateau of Versailles, and far and wide the inheritance of Royalty opens to the wondering eye. From far on the right, over Marly and Saint- Germains-en-Laye ; round towards Ramboillet^ on the left : beautiful all ; softly embosomed ; as if in sadness, in the dim moist weather ! And near before us is Versailles, New and Old ; with that broad frondent Avenue de Versailles between, — stately-frondent, broad, three hundred Yeet as men reckon, with four Rows of Elms ; and then the Chateau de Versailles^ j ending in royal Parks and Pleasances, gleaming lakelets, arbours, \ Labyrinths, the Menagerie, and Great and Little Trianon. High- ; towered dwellings, leafy pleasant places ; where the gods of this I lower world abide : whence, nevertheless, black Care cannot be excluded ; wh:±er Menadic Hunger is even now advancing, armed with pike-thyrsi ! Deux Amis, iii. 165. 188 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. Yes, yonder, Mesdames, where our straight frondent Avenue^ joined, as you note, by Two frordent brother Avenues from this hand and from that, spreads out into Place Royale and Palace Forecourt ; yonder is the Salle des Menus. ¥onder an august Assembly sits regenerating France. Forecourt, Grand Court, Court of Marble, Court narrowing into Court you may discern next, or fancy i on the extreme verge of which that glass-dome, visibly glittering hke a star of hope, is the— CEil-de-Boeuf ! Yonder, or nowhere in the world, is bread baked for us. But, O Mesdames, were not or/? thing good : That our cannons, with Demoiselle Theroigne and all show of war, be put to the rear ? Submission beseems petitioners of a National Assembly \ we are strrngers in Versailles^—wheiice. too audibly, theio come:: even now sound as of tocsin and gc?/^':rale / Also to put on, TDcssible, a cheerfrl countenance, hiding our ciorrowr^ nri even Co sing? Sorrow, pitied of the Heavens, is hateful, sucpi -ior/v to the Earth. —So counsels shifty Maillard • haranguing his Menads, on the heights near Versailles.*' Cunning Maillard's dispositions are obeyed. The draggled Insurrectionists advance up the Avenue, '\n three columns," among the four Elm-rows ; ' singing Henri Quatre^ wit' i what melody they can ; and shouting Vive le Roi, Versailles, though the Elm-rows are dripping wet, crowds from both sides, with : " Vivcjzi; 7Z0S Parzsiennes, Our Paris ones for ever ! Prickers, scouts have been out towards Paris, r/: the rumour deepened : whereby his Majesty, gone to shoot in the Woods of Meudon, has been happily discovered, and got home ; and the gdnerale and tocsin set a-sounding. The Bodyguards are already drawn up in front of the Palace Grates ; and loo!: dov n the Avenuo de Versailles ; sulky, in wet buckskins. Flandre too is there, repentant of the Opera-Repast. Also Dragoons dismounted are there. Finally Major Lecointre, and what he can gather of the Versailles National Guard ; though, it 's to bo observed, our Colonel, that c-mc sleepless Count d'Estaing, givLn^j neither order nor ammunition, has vanished most improperly ; one supposes, ' ito the CEil-de-Bceuf. Red-coated Swiss stand within the Grates, under arms. There likewise, in their inner room, * all the 'Ministers,' Saint-Priest, Lamentation Pompignan and the rest, arc assembled with M. Neck:r : they sit witii him there ; blank, expecting what the hour will bring. P -esident Mounier, though he answered Mirabeau with a tant mi^ux^ and affected to : •'ght the matter, had his own forebodings. Surely, for these four weary hours, he has reclined not on roses ! The order of the day is getting forward : a Deputation to his Majesty seems proper, that it might please him to grant 'Accept- *ancc pure and simple' to those Constitution-Articles of ours; the ' mixed qualified Acceptance,' with its peradventures, is satis- factory to neither gods nor men. So much is clear. And yet there is more, which no man speakS| * 'S'ZQ IJist. Pari. iii. 70-117; Deux Amis, iii. 166-177, &c. i89 which all men now vaguely understand. Disquietude, absence of mind is on every face ; Membesrs whisper, uneasily come and go : the order of the day is evidently not the day's want. Till at length, from the outer gates, is heard a rustling and justling, shrill uproar and squabbling, muffled by walls ; which testifies that the hour is come ! Rushing and crushing one hears now ; then enter Usher Maillard, with a Deputation of Fifteen muddy dripping Women, — having by incredible industry, and aid of all the macers, persuaded the rest to wait out of doors. National Assembly shall now, therefore, look its august task directly in the face : regenera- tive Constitutionalism has an unregenerate Sansculottism bodily in front of it ; crying, " Bread ! Bread ! " Shifty Maillard, translating frenzy into articulation ; repressive with the one hand, expostulative with the other, does his best ; , and really, though not bred to public speaking, manages rather well :— In the present dreadful rarity of grains, a Deputation of Female Citizens has, as the august Assembly can discern, come out from Paris to petition. Pl^jts of Aristocrats are too evident in the matter ; for example, one miller has been bribed ' by a bank- ^ note of 200 livres ' not to grind, — name unknown to the Usher, but fact provable, at least indubitable. Further, it seems, the National Cockade has been trampled on ; also there are Black Cockades, or were. All which things will not an august National Assembly, the hope of France, take into its wise immediate consideration ? And Menadic Hunger, impressible, crying " Black Cockades," crying " Bread, Bread," adds, after such fashion : Will it not ? — Yes, Messieurs, if a Deputation to his Majesty, for the ' Acceptance ' pure and simple,' seemed proper, — how much more now, for ^ the * afflicting situation of Paris;' for the calming of this efferves- cence ! President Mounier, with a speedy Deputation, among whom we notice the respectable figure of Doctor Guillotin, gets himself forthwith on march. Vice-President shall continue the order of the day ; Usher Maillard shall stay by him to repress the women. It is four o'clock, of the miserablest afternoon, when Mounier steps out. O experienced Mounier, what an afternoon ; the last of thy political existence ! Better had it been to ' fall suddenly unwell,' while it was yet time. For, behold, the Esplanade, over all its spacious expanse, is covered with groups of squalid dripping Women ; of lankhaired male Rascality, armed with axes, rusty pikes, old muskets, ironshod clubs (batons ferres, which end in knives or sword-blades, a kind of extempore billhook) ; — looking nothing but hungry revolt. The rain pours : Gardes-du-Corps go caracoling through the groups ' amid hisses ; ' irritating and agita- ting what is but dispersed here to reunite there. Innumerable squalid women beleaguer the President and Depu^ tation ; insist on going with him : has not his Majesty himself, looking from the window, sent out to ask, What we wanted.? *' Bread and speech with th^ King {Dii paz7t, ct parler au Roi)^ that was the answer. Twelve women are clamorously added to the Deputation ; and march with it, across the Esplanade ; bgrafJ.''''''^'''^'* ^^'^^^^""g Bodyguards, and the pour. rr,!vin^f!?^"* Mounier, unexpectedly augmented by Twelve Women, copiously escorted by Hunger and Rascality, is himself mistaken for a group : himself and his Women are dispersed by caracolers rally again with d^culty, among the mud.* Finally the Grate« are opened : the Deputation gets access, with the Twelve Women It ; of which latter. Five shall even see the face of his too in tSrSurn ^enadism, m the best spirits it can expect CHAPTER VII. AT VERSAILLES. But already Pallas Athene (in the shape of Demoiselle The^ roigne) is busy with Flandre and the dismounted Dragoons She and such women as are fittest, go through the ranks ; speak with an earnest jocosity ; clasp rough troopers to their patriot bosom crush down spontoons and musketoons with soft arms • can a man, that were worthy of the name of man, attack famishing patriot women ? ^ One reads that Theroigne had bags of money, which she disv tributed over Flandre :— furnished by whom? Alas, with money, bags one seldom sits on insurrectionary cannon. Calumnious RoyaK ism ! Theroigne had only the limited earnings of her profession of unfortunate-female ; money she had not, but brown locks, the tigure of a Heathen Goddess, and an eloquent tongue and heart. Meanwhile, Saint-Antoine, in groups and troops, is continually arriving; wetted, sulky; with pikes and impromptu billhooks- driven thus far by popular fixed-idea. So many hirsute fi^rures driven hither, in that manner : figures that have come to do they know not what ; figures that have come to see it done ' Distin- guished among all figures, who is this, of gaunt stature, with eaden breastplate, though a small one ;t bushy in red grizzled locks ; nay with long tile-beard ? It is Jourdan, unjust dealer in mules ; a dealer no longer, but a Painter's Layfi^ure, playino truant this day. From the necessities of Art comes^his long tile*^ beard ; whence his leaden breastplate (unless indeed he were some Hawker licensed by leaden badge) may have couie — will perhaps remain for ever a Historical Problem. Another Saul among the people we discern : ' J'erc Adam, Father Adam' as the groups name him ; to us better known as bull-voiced Marquis Saint-Huriige ; hero of the V^'/c? ; a man that has had * Mounier, ExJ>as^ J usf //ica f // [cMcd in Deux Amis, iii. 185). . + See Weber, ii. 185-231. AT VERSAILLES. 191 losses, and deserved them. The tall Marquis, emitted some days ago from limbo, looks peripatetically on this scene, from under his umbrella, not without interest. All which persons and things, hurled together as we see ; Pallas Athene, busy with Flandre ; patriotic Versailles National Guards, short of ammunition, and deserted by d'Estaing their Colonel, and commanded by Lecointre their Major ; then caracoling Bodyguards, sour, dispirited, with their buckskins wet ; and finally this flowing sea of indignant Squalor, — may they not give rise to occurrences ? Behold, however, the Twelve She-deputies return from the Chateau. Without President Mounier, indeed ; but radiant with joy, shouting '''Life to the King and his House P Apparently the news are good, Mesdames ? News of the best ! Five of us wer^ admitted to the internal splendours, to the Royal Presence. This slim damsel, ' Louison Chabray, worker in sculpture, aged only * seventeen,' as being of the best looks and address, her we ap- pointed speaker. On whom, and indeed on all of us, his Majesty looked nothing but graciousness. Nay, when Louison, addressing him, was like to faint, he took her in his royal arms ; and said gallantly, "It was well worth while {Elle en valut Men la peine) P Consider, O women, what a King 1 His words were of comfort, and that only : there shall be provision sent to Paris, if provision is in the world ; grains shall circulate free as air ; millers shall grind, or do worse, while their millstones endure ; and nothing be left wrong which a Restorer of French Liberty can right. Good news these ; but, to wet Menads, all too incredible ! There seems no proof, then ? Words of comfort are words only ; which will feed nothing. O miserable people, betrayed by Aristocrats, who corrupt thy very messengers ! In his royal arms. Made- moiselle Louisoa ? In. his arms ? Thou shameless minx, worthy of a name — that shall be nameless 1 Yes, thy skin is soft : ours is rough with hardship ; and well wetted, waiting here in the rain. No children hast thou hungry at home ; only alabaster dolls, that weep not ! The traitress 1 To the Lanterne ! — And so poor Louison Chabray, no asseveration or shrieks availing her, fair slim damsel, late in the arms of Royalty, has a garter round her neck, and furibund Amazons at each end ; is about to perish so, — when two Bodyguards gallop up, indignantly dissipating ; and rescue her. The miscredited Twelve hasten back to the Chateau, for an ' answer in writing.' Nay, behold, a new flight of Menads, with ' M. Brunout Bastille * Volunteer,' as impressed-commandant, at the head of it. These also will advance to the Grate of the Grand Court, and see what is toward. Human patience, in wet buckskins, has its limits. Bodyguard Lieutenant, M. de Savonnieres, for one moment, lets his temper, long provoked, long pent, give way. He not only dis- sipates these latter Menads ; but caracoles and cuts, or indig- nantly flourishes, at M. Brunout, the impressed-commandant; and, finding great relief in it, even chases him ; Brunout flying nimbh^, though in a pirouette manner, and now with sword also drawn. 192 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. At which sight of wrath and victory two other Bodyguards (for wrath is contagious, and to pent Bodyguards is so solacing) do likewise give way ; give chase, with brandished sabre, and in the air make horrid circles. So that poor Brunout has nothing for it but to retreat with accelerated nimbleness, through rank after rank ; Parthian-like, fencing as he flies ; above all, shouting lustily, " Oil nous laisse assassmer, They are getting' us assassi- nated V Shameful ! Three against one ! Growls come from the Le- cointrian ranks; bellowings, — lastly shots. Savonnieres' arm is raised to strike: the bullet of a Lecointrian musket shatters it; the brandished sabre jingles down harmless. Brunout has escaped, this duel well ended : but the wild howl of war is everywhere beginning to pipe ! The Amazons recoil; Saint-Antoine has its cannon pointed ffuU of grapeshot) ; thrice applies the lit flambeau ; which thrice refuses to catch, — the touchholes are so wetted ; and voices cry : Arrdtes, zl est pas temps encore^ Stop, it is not yet time!'^"* Messieurs of the Garde-clu-Corps, ye had orders not to fire ; nevertheless two of you limp dismounted, and one war-horse lies slain. Were it not well to draw back out of shot-range ; finally to file off, — into the interior 1 If in so filing off, there did a mus^ ketoon or two discharge itself, at these armed shopkeepers, hoot- ing and crowing, could man wonder t Draggled are your white cockades of an enormous size ; would to Heaven they were got exchanged for tricolor ones ! Your buckskins are wet, your hearts heavy. Go, and return not ! The Bodyguards file off, as v/e hint; giving and receiving shots; drawing no life-blood ; leaving boundless indignation. Some three times in the thickening dusk, a glimpse of them is seen, at this or the other Portal : saluted always with execrations, with the whew of lead. Let but a Bodyguard shew face, he is hunted by Rascality ; — for instance, poor ' M. de Moucheton of the Scotch ' Company,' owner of the slain war-horse ; and has to be smuggled off by Versailles Captains. Or rusty firelocks belch after him, shiv^ering asunder his — hat. In the end, by superior Order, the Bodyguards, all but the few on immediate duty, disappear ; or as it were abscond; and march, under cloud of night, to Ram- bouillet.f We remark also that the Versaillese have now got ammunition : all afternoon, the official Person could find none ; till, in these so critical moments, a patriotic Sublieutenant set a pistol to his ear, and would thank him to find some, — which he thereupon succeeded in doing. Likewise that Fkmdre, disonned by Pallas Athene, says openly, it will not fight with citizens ; and for token of peace, has exchanged cartridges with the VersaiUcse. Sansrulottism is now among mere friends; and can ' circulate * freely ; ' indignant at Bodyguards ; — complaining also considerat ely of hunger. * Deux AmiSf iii. 192-201. f WQhQX, ubi st(f>rdj. THE EQUAL DIET, CHAPTER Vlir. THE EQUAL DIET. But why lingers Mounier ; returns not with his Deputation? It is six, it is seven o'clock ; and still no Mounier, no Acceptance pure and simple. And, behold, the dripping Menads, not now in deputation but in mass, have penetrated into the Assembly : to the shamefullest interruption of public speaking and order of the day. Neither Maillard nor Vice-President can restrain them, except within wide limits ; not even, except for minutes, can the hon-voice of Mirabeau, though they applaud it : but ever and anon they break in upon the regeneration of France with cries of : " Bread ; not so much discoursing ! Du pamy pas -tant de longs discours — So insensible were these poor creatures to bursts of Parhamen- tary eloquence ! One learns also that the royal Carnages are getting yoked, as ifforMetz. Carriages, royal or not, have verily showed them- selves at the back Gates. They even produced, or quoted, a written order from our Versailles Municipality,— which is a Mon- archic not a Democratic one. However, Versailles Patroles drove them in again ; as the vigilant Lecointre had strictly charged them to do. A busy man, truly, is Major Lecointre, in these hours. For Colonel d'Estaing loiters invisible in the (Eil-de-Roeuf ; invisible, or still more questionably visible, for instants : then also a toe loyal Municipality requires supervision : no order, civil or militarv, taken about any of these thousand things ! Lecointre is at the Versailles Townhall : he is at the Grate of the Grand Court ; com- muning with Swiss and Bodyguards. He is in the ranks o- Flandre ; he is here, he is there : studious to prevent bloodshed ; to prevent the Royal Family from flying to Metz ; the Menads from plundering Versailles. At the fall of night, we behold him advance to those armed groups of Saint-Antoine, hovering all-too grim near the Salle des Menus. They receive him in a half-circle ; twelve speakers behind cannons, with lighted torches in hand, the cannon-mouths towards Lecointre : a picture for Salvator ! He asks, in temperate but courageous language : What they, by this their journey to Ver- sailles, do specially want ? The twelve speakers reply, in few words inclusive of much : Bread, and the end of these brabbles, Du pain, et la fin des affairesT When the affairs will end. no Major Lecointre, nor no mortal, can say ; but as to bread, he inquires, How many are you ?~ learns that they are six hundred, that a loai each will suffice ; and rideii off to the Municipality to get six hup^ (ired loaves. 194 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN, Which loaves, however, a MunicipaHty of Monarchic temper will not give. It will give two tons of rice rather,— could you but know whether it should be boiled or raw. Nay when this too is accepted, the Municipals have disappeared ; — ducked under, as the Six-and-Twenty Long-gowned of Paris did ; and, leaving not the smallest vestage of rice, in the boiled or raw state, they there vanish from History ! Rice comes not ; one's hope of food is baulked ; even one's hope of vengeance : is not M. de Moucheton of the Scotch Company, as we said, deceitfully smuggled off.? Faihng all which, behold only M. de Moucheton's slaui warhorse, lying on the Esplanade there ! Saint-Antoine, baulked, esurient, pounces on the slain warhorse ; flays it ; roasts it, with such fuel, of paling, gates, por- table timber as can be come at,— not without shouting : and^ after the manner of ancient Greek Heroes, they lifted their hands to the daintily readied repast; such as it might be.'^ Other Rascality prowls discursive ; seeking what it may devour. Flandre will retire to its barracks ; Lecointre also with his Versaillese,— all but; the vigilant Patrols, charged to be doubly vigilant. So sink the shadows of Night, blustering, rainy ; and all pathiv grow dark. Strangest Night ever seen in these regions, — perhapij'. since the Bartholomew Night, when Versailles, as Bassompiern** writes of it, was a chetif chdteaii. O for the Lyre of some Orpheus, to constrain, with touch of melodious strings, these mad masses intii Order ! For here all seems fallen asunder, in wide-yawning dislo» cation. The highest, as in down-rushing of a World, is come in contact with the- lowest : the Rascality of France beleaguering the Royalty of France; ' ironshod batons 'lifted round the diadem, not to guard it ! With denunciations of bloodthirsty Anti-national Bodyguards, are heard dark growlings against a Queenly Name. The Court sits tremulous, powerless ; varies with the varying temper of the Esplanade, with the varying colour of the rumours from Paris. Thick-coming rumours ; now of peace, now of war. Necker and all the Ministers consult ; with a blank issue. The Oul-de-Bceuf is one tempest of whispers : — We will fly to Metz ; we will not fly. The royal Carriages again attempt egress ; — though for trial merely ; they are again driven in by Lecointre's Patrols. In six hours, nothing has been resolved on ; not even the Acceptance pure and simple. In six hours .? Alas, he who, in such circumstances, cannot re- solve in six minutes, may give up the enterprise : him f^ate has already resolved for. And Menadism, meanwhile, and Sansculot- tism takes counsel with the National Assembly ; grows more and more tumultuous there. Mounier returns not ; Authority nowhenj shews itself : the Authority of France lies, for the present, with Lecointre and Usher Maillard. — This then is the abomination of desolation ; come suddenly, though long foreshadowed as inevit- able ! For, to the blind, all things are sudden. Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its * Weber; Ueux Amis, &c. THE EQUAL DIET. 195 own helper and speak for itself. The dialect, one of the rudestj is, what it could be, this.- At eight o'clock there returns to our Assembly not the Deputation ; but Doctor Guillotin announcing that it will return; also that there is hope of the Acceptance pure and simple. He himself has brought a Koyal Letter, authorising and commanding the freest * circulation of grains.' Which Royal Letter Menadism with its whole heart applauds. Conformably to which the Assembly forth- with passes a Decree ; also received with rapturous Monadic plaudits :— Only could not an august Assembly contrive further to "-fix the price of bread at eight sous the half-quartern ; butchers'- nieat at six sous the pound ; " which seem fair rates } Such motion do ' a multitude of men and women,' irrepressible by Usher Mail- lard, now make ; does an august Assembly hear made. Usher Maillard himself is not always perfectly measured in speech ; but if rebuked, he can justly excuse himself by the pecuharity of the circumstances.* But finally, this Decree well passed, and the disorder, continuing ; and Members melting away, and no President Mounier returning, —what can the Vice-President do but also melt away.? The Assembly melts, under such pressure, into dehquium ; or, as it is offieially called, adjourns. Maillard is despatched to Paris, with the ' Decree concerning Grains ' in his pocket ; he and some women, in carriages belonging to the King. Thitherward slim Louison Chabray has already set forth, with diat 'written answer,' which the Twelve She-deputies returned in to seek. Slim sylph, she has set forth, through the blacl: muddy country : she has much to tell, her poor nerves so flurried ; and travels, as indeed to-day on this road all persons do, with extreme slowness. President MCunier has not come, nor the Acceptance pure and simple ; though six hours with their events have come ; though courier on courier reports that Lafayette is coming. Coming, with war or with peace.? It is time that the Chateau also should determine on one thing or ; another ; that the Chateau^lso should show itself ahve, if it would continue living ! Victorious, joyful after such delay, Mounier does arri\'e at last, ^and the hard-earned Acceptance with him ; which now, alas, is of .small value. Fancy Mounier's surprise to find his Senate, whom ;lie hoped to charm by the Acceptance pure and smiple,— all gone; and in its stead a Senate of Menads ! For as p:rasmus's Ape mimicked, say with wooden splint, Erasmus shaving, so do these A^mazons hold, in mock majesty, some confused parody of National Assembly. They make motions ; deliver speeches ; pass enact- raients; productive at least of loud laughter. All galleries and Denchesare filled ; a strong Dame of the Market is in Mounier's whair. Not without difficulty, Mounier, by aid of macers, and per- jmasive speaking, makes his way to the Female-President : the ptrong Dame before abdicating signifies that, for one thing, she Und mdeed her whole senate male and female (for what was one * Aioniteiir {in Hist. Pari. ii. 105). 196 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN roasted warhorse among so many ?) are suffering very considerably from hunger. Experienced Mounier, in these circumstances, takes a twofold resolution : To reconvoke his Assembly Members by sound oi drum ; also to procure a supply of food. Swift messengers fly, to all bakers, cooks, pastrycooks, vintners, restorers ; drums beat, accompanied with shrill vocal proclamation, through all streets. They come : the Assembly Members come ; what is still better, the provisions come. On tray and barrow come these latter ; loaves, wine, great store of sausages. The nourishing baskets cir- culate harmoniously along the benches ; ;/(5>r, according to the Father of Epics, did any soul lack a fair share of victual {dairos ita-ris, an equal diet) ; highly desirable, at the moment.^ Gradually some hundred or so of Assembly members get edged in, Menadism making way a little, round Mounier's Chair ; listen; to the Acceptance pure and simple ; and begin, what is the order of the night, ' discussion of the Penal Code.^ All benches are crowded ; in the dusky galleries, duskier with unwashed heads, is a strange ^ coruscation,' — of impromptu billhooks.t It is exactly five months this day since these same galleries were filled with high-plumed jewelled Beauty, raining bright influences : and now?. To such length have we got in regenerating France. Methinks, the travail-throes are of the sharpest ! — Menadism will not be r&«; strained from occasional remarks ; asks, " What is use of the Penal Code ? The thing we want is Bread." Mirabeau turns round with; lion-voiced rebuke ; Menadism applauds him ; but recommences. Thus they, chewing tough sausages, discussing the Penal Code, make night hideous. What the issue will be? Lafayette with his thirty thousand must arrive first : him, who cannot now be distant, all men expect, as the messenger of Destiny. CHAPTER IX. LAFAYETTE. Towards midnight lights flare on the hill ; Lafayette's lights ! The roll of his drums comes up the Avenue de Versailles. With peace, or with war ? Patience, friends ! With neither. Lafayette is come, but not yet the catastrophe. He has halted and harangued so often, on the march ; spent nine hours on four leagues of road. At Montreuil, close on Ver* sailles, the whole Host had to pause ; and, with uplifted right hand, in the murk of Night, to these pouring skies, swear solemnly to respect the King's Dwelling ; to be faithful to King and National * Deux Amis, iii. 208. t Courier de Provence (Minibeau's Ncwspiiper), No. 50, p. 19. LAFAYETTE. 197 Assembly. Rage is driven down out of sight, by the laggard march ; the thirst of vengeance slaked in weariness and soaking clothes. Flandre is again drawn out under arms : but Flandre, grown so patriotic, now needs no ' exterminating.' The wayworn Batallions halt in the Avenue : they have, for the present, no wish 50 pressing as that of shelter and rest. Anxious sits President Mounier ; anxious the Chateau. There is a message coming from the Chateau, that M. Mounier would please return thither with a fresh Deputation, swiftly ; and so at least unite our two anxieties. Anxious Mounier does of himself send^ meanwhile, to apprise the General that his Majesty has been so Gracious as to grant us the Acceptance pure and simple. The General, with a small advance column, makes answer in passing ; speaks vaguely some smooth words to the National President, — glances, only with the eye, at that so mixtiform National Assembly; :hen fares forward towards the Chateau. There are with him two Paris Municipals ; they were chosen from the Three Hundred for ;hat errand. He gets admittance through the locked and pad- ocked Grates, through sentries and ushers, to the Royal Halls. The Court, male and female, crowds on his passage, to read their loom on his face ; which exhibits, say Historians, a mixture * of sorrow, of fervour and valour,' singular to behold.* The King, with Monsieur, with Ministers and Marshals, is waiting to receive him : tie " is come," in his highflown chivalrous way, " to offer his head br the safety of his Majesty's." The t^o Municipals state the wish )f Paris : four things, of quite pacific tenor. First, that the honour )f Guarding his sacred person be conferred on patriot National auards ; — say, the Centre Grenadiers, who as Gardes Frangaises vere wont to have thaf privilege. Second, that provisions be got, f possible. Third, that the Prisons, all crowded with political iellnquents, may have judges sent them. Fourth, that it would Please his Majesty to come and live in Paris. To all which four vishes, except the fourth, his Majesty answers readily, Yes ; or ndeed may almost say that he has already answered it. To the ourth he can answer only. Yes or No ; would so gladly answer, «^es and No ! — But, in any case, are not their dispositions, thank ieaven, so entirely pacitic ? There is time for deliberation. The )runt of the danger seems past ! Lafayette and d'Estaing settle the watches ; Centre Grenadiers re to take the Guard- room they of old occupied as Gardes Fran- aises ; — for indeed the Gardes du Corps, its late ill-advised ccupants. ^^re ,^one mostly to Rambouillet. That is the order of his nighc ; sufficient for the night is the evil thereof. Whereupon -afayette and the two Municipals, with highflown chivalry, take heir leave. So brief has the interview been, Mounier and his Deputation ^ere not yet got up. So brief and satisfactory. A stone is rolled :om every liear^. The fair Palace Dames ]3ublicly declare that |iis Lafayette, detestable though he be, is their saviour for once. Cven the ancient vinaigrous Tantcs admit it ; the King's Aunts, ^ ^ fctnoirc de M, le Comte de Lally-Tollcndal (Janvier 1790), p. 161-165, 198 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. ancient Graille and Sisterhood, known to. us of old. Queen Marie- Antoinette has been heard often say the Mke, She alone, among all women and all men, wore a face of courage, of lofty calmness and resolve, this day. She alone saw clearly what she 7neant to do ; and Theresa's Daughter do what she means, were all France threatening her : abide where her children are, where her hus- band is. Towards three in the morning all things are settled: the watches set, the Centre Grenadiers put into their old Guard-room, and harangued ; the Swiss, and few remaining Bodyguards harangued. The w^ayworn Paris Batallions, consigned to ' the hospitality of * Versailles,' lie dormant in spare-beds, spare-barracks, coffeehouses, empty churches. A troop of them, on their way to the Church of, Saint-Louis, awoke poor Weber, dreaming troublous, in the Rue Sartory. Weber has had his waistcoat-pocket full of balls all day; 'two hundred balls, and two pears of powder ! ' For waistcoats were waistcoats then, and had flaps down to mid-thigh. So many balls he has had all day ; but no opportunity of using them : he turns over now, execrating disloyal bandits ; swears a prayer or two, and straight to sleep again. Finally, the National Assembly is harangued ; which thereupon,: on motion of Mirabeau, discontinues the Penal Code, and dismisses, for this night. Menadism, Sansculottism has cowered into guard- houses* barracks of Flandre, to the light of cheerful fire ; failing! that, to churches, office-houses, sentry-boxes, wheresoever wretched- ness can find a lair. The troublous Day has brawled itself to rest: no lives yet lost but that of one warhorse. Insurrectionary Chaos lies slumbering round the Palace, like Ocean round a Diving-bell, — no crevice yet disclosing itself Deep sleep has fallen promiscuously on the high and on the low; suspending most things, even wrath and famine. Darkness covers the Earth. But, far on the North-east, Paris flings up her great yellow gleam ; far into the wet black Night. For all is illuminated there, as in the old July Nights ; the streets deserted, for alarm of war ; the Municipals all wakeful ; Patrols hailing, with the hoarse Who-goes. There, as we discover, our poor slim Louisa Chabray, her poor nerves all fluttered, is arriving about this v( hour. There Usher Maillard will arrive, about an hour hem ' towards four in the morning.' They report, successively, to a wakeful H6tel-dc-Ville what comfort they can report ; which again, with early dawn, large coriifortablc Placards, shall impart to all men. Lafayette, in the Hotel de Noaillcs, not far from the Chateau, having now finished haranguing, sits with his Officers consultin" at five o'clock the unanimous best counsel is, that a man so to and toiled for twenty-four hours and more, fling liimself on a bed, and seek some rest. Thus, then, has ended the First Act of the Insurrection of Women. How it will turn on the morrow.^ The morrow, as THE GRAND ENTRIES, 199 always, is with the Fates ! But his Majesty, one may hope, will consent to come honourably to Paris ; at all events, he can visit Paris. Anti-national Bodyguards, here and elsewhere, must take the National Oath ; make reparation to the Tricolor ; Flandre will swear. There may be much swearing ; much public speaking there will infallibly be : and so, with harangues and vows, may the flatter in some handsome way, wind itself up. Or, alas, may it not be all otherwise, ////handsome : the consent not honourable, but extorted, ignominious ? Boundless Chaos of Insurrection presses slumbering round the Palace, like Ocean round a Diving-bell ; and may penetrate at any crevice. Let but that accumulated insurrectionary mass find entrance ! Like the infinite inburst of water ; or say rather, of inflammable, self-ignit- ing fluid ; for example, ^ turpentine-and-phosphorus oil,' — ^fluid known to Spinola Santerre 1 CHAPTER X. THE GRAND ENTRIES. The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, had but broken over Versailles, when it pleased Destiny that a Bodyguard should look out of window, on the right wing of the Chateau, to see what prospect there was in Heaven and in Earth. Rascality male and femxale is prowling in view of him. His fasting stomach is, with good cause, sour ; he perhaps cannot forbear a passing malison on them ; least of all can he forbear answering such. Ill words breed worse : till the worst word came ; and then the ill deed. Did the maledicent Bodyguard, getting (as was too inevitable) better malediction than he gave, load his musketoon, and threaten to fire ; and actually fire? Were wise who wist ! It stands asserted ; to us not credibly. Be this as it may, menaced Rascality, in whinnying scorn, is shaking at all Grates : the fastening of one (some write, it was a chain merely) gives way \ Rascality is in the Grand Court, whinnying louder still. The maledicent Bodyguard, more Bodyguards than he do now give fire; a man's arm is shattered. Lecointre will depose"^' that 'the Sieur Cardaine, a National Guard without arms, was stabbed/ But see, sure enough, poor Jerome THeritier, an unarmed National Guard he too, ' cabinet-maker, a saddler's son, of Paris,' with the down of youthhood still on his chin, — he reels death-stricken ; rushes to the pavement, scattering it with his blood and brains ! — Allelew \ Wilder than Irish wakes, rises the howl : of pity; of infinite re- venge. In few moments, the Grate of the inner and inmost Court, which they name Court of Marble, this too is forced, or surprised, * Deposition de Lecointre (in Hist. Pari, iii. ni-115). H Z 200 THE INSURRECTION GF WOMEN. and burst open : the Court of Marble too is overflowed \ up the Grand Staircase, up all stairs and entrances rushes the living Deluge ! Deshuttes and Varigny, the two sentry Bodyguards, are trodden down, are massacred with a hundred pikes. Women snatch their cutlasses, or any v/eapon, and storm-in Menadic :— - other women lift the corpse of shot Jerome ; lay ^it down on the Marble steps ; there shall the livid face and smashed head, dumb for ever, speak. Wo now to all Bodyguards, mercy is none for them ! Miomandre de Sainte-Marie pleads v/ith soft words, on the Grand Staircase, 'descending four steps : ' — to the roaring tornado. His comrades snatch him up, by the skirts and belts ; hterally, from the jaws of Destruction ; and slam-to their Door. This also will stand few instants ; the panels shivering in, like potsherds. Barricading serves not : fly fast, ye Bodyguards ; rabid Insurrection, like the hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels ! The terrorstruck Bodyguards fly, bolting and barricading ; it follows. Whitherward? Through hall on hall : wo, now ! towards the Queen's Suite of Rooms, in the furtherest room of which the Queen is now asleep. Five sentinels rush through that long Suite ; they are in the Anteroom knocking loud : " Save the Queen ! " Trembling women fall at their feet with tears ; are answered : " Yes, we will die ; save ye the Queen ! " Tremble not, women, but haste : for, lo, another voice shouts far through the outermost door, '' Save the Queen ! " and the door shut. It is brave Miomandre's voice that shouts this second warning. He has stormed across imminent death to do it ; fronts imminent death, having done it. Brave Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the same desperate service, was borne down with pikes ; his comrades hardly snatched him in again alive. Miomandre and Tardivet : let the names of these two Bodyguards, as the names of brave men should, live long. Trembling Maids of Honour, one of whom from afar caught glimpse of Miomandre as well as heard him, hastily wrap the Queen ; not in robes of State. She flies for her hfe, across the &il-de-Boeuf ; against the main door of which too Insurrection batters. She is in the King's Apartment, in the King's arms ; she clasps her children amid a faithful few. The Imperial-hearted bursts into mother's tears : " O my friends, save me and my children, O mes amis^ sauves moi et mcs cnfans The battering of Insurrectionary axes clangs audible across the CEil-de-Boeuf. What an hour ! Yes, Friends : a hideous fearful nour ; shameful alike to Cjoverncd and Governor ; wherein Governed and Governor ignominously testify th:it their relation is at an end. Rage,whic' had brewed itself in twenty thousand hearts, ff)r the last four-and twenty hours, has taken fur. : Jep'ime's brnined corpse lies there r live-coal. It is, as we said, the infinite Element bursting in : wil surging through all corridors and conduits, THE GRAND ENTRIES. 20i Meanwhile, the poor Bodyguards have got hunted mostly into the CEil-de-Boeuf. They may die there, at the King's tlireshhold ; they can do httle to defend it. They are heaping iaboccreis (stools of honour), benches and all moveables, against the door ; at which the axe of Insurrection thunders.— But did brave Miomandre perish, then, at the Queen's outer door? No, he. was fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead ; he has nevertheless crawled mtner ; and shall live, honoured of loya! J:* "ranee. Remark also^, in flat contradiction to much which has been said and sung, that Insurrection did not burst that door he had defended ; but hurried elsewhither, seeking new bodyguards.^ Poor Bodyguards, with their Thyestes' Opera-Repast ! Well for them, that Insurrection has only pikes and axes ; no right sieging tools ! It shakes and thunders. Must they all perish miserably, and Royalty with them.^* Deshuttes and Varigny, massacred at the first inbreak, have been beheaded in the Marble Court : a sacrifice to Jerome's manes : Jourdan with the tile-beard did that duty wiUingly ; and asked, If there were no more ? Another captive they are leading round the corpse, with howl- chauntings : may not Jourdan again tuck up his sleeves.? And louder and louder rages Insurrection within, plundering if it cannot kill ; louder and louder it thunders at the CEil-de-Bceuf : what can now hinder its bursting in ?— On a sudden it ceases ; the battering has ceased ! Wild rushing : the cries grow fainter? there is silence, or the tramp of regular steps ; then a friendly knocking: " We are the Centre Grenadiers, old Gardes Frangaises : Open to us, Messieurs of the Garde-du- Corps ; we have not for- gotten how you saved us at Fontenoy ! "f The door is opened; enter Captain Gondran and the Centre Grenadiers : there are military embracings ; there is sudden deliverance from death into life. Strange Sons of Adam ! It was to 'exterminate ' these Gardes- du-Corps that the Centre Grenadiers left home : and now they have rushed to save them from extermination. The memory of common peril, of old help, melts the rough heart ; bosom is clasoed to bosom, not in war. The King shews himself, one moment, through the door of his Apartment, with : " Do not hurt my Guards ! " Soyons freres, Let us be brothers ! " cries Captain Gondran ; and again dashes off, with levelled bayonets, to sweep the Palace clear. Now too Lafayette, suddenly roused, not from sleep (for his eyes had not yet closed), arrives ; with passionate popular eloquence, with prompt military word of command. National Guards, sud- denly roused, by sound of trumpet and alarm-drum, are all arriving. ^ The death-melly ceases : the first sky-lambent blaze of Insurrection is got damped down ; it burns now, if unextinguished, yetflameless, as charred coals do, and not inextinguishable. The King's Apartments are safe. Ministers, Officials," and even some loyal National deputies are assembling round their Majesties. The consternation will, with sobs and confusion, settle down gradually, into plan and counsel, better or worse. * Campan, ii. 75-87. * Toulongeon, i. 144. VOL. I. ^ 202 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. But glance now, for a moment, from the royal windows ! A roaring sea of human heads, inundating both Courts ; billowing against all passages : Menadic women ; infuriated men, mad with revenge, with love of mischief, love of plunder ! Rascality has slipped its muzzle ; and now bays, three-throated, like the Dog of Erebus Fourteen Bodyguards are wounded ; two massacred, and as we saw, beheaded; Jourdan asking, "Was it worth while to come so far for two ? " Hapless Deshuttes aiM Varigny ! Their fate surely was sad. Whirled down so stiddenly 'to the abyss ; as men are, suddenly, by the wide thunder of the Mountain Avalanche, awakened not by them, awakened far off by others ! When the Chateau Clock last struck, they two were pacing languid, with poised musketoon ; anxious mainly that the next hour would strike. It has struck ; to them inaudible. Theil trunks lie mangled : their heads parade, ' on pikes twelve feet * long,' through the streets of Versailles ; and shall, about noon reach the Barriers of Paris,— a too ghastly contradiction to the large comfortable Placards that have been posted there ! The other captive Bodyguard is still circling the corpse of Jerome, amid Indian war- whooping ; bloody Tilebeard, with tucked sleeves, brandishing his bloody axe ; when Gondran and the Grenadiers come in sight. " Comrades, will you see a man massacred in cold blood Off, butchers ! answer they ; and the poor Bodyguard is free. Busy runs Gondran, busy run Guards and Captains ; scouring all corridors ; dispereing Rascality and Robbery ; sweeping the Palace clear. The mangled carnage is removed ; Jerome's body to the Townhall, for inquest : the fire of Insurrection gets damped, more and more, into measurable, manageable heat. Transcendent things of all sorts, as in the general outburst of multitudinous Passion, are huddled together ; the ludicrous, nay the ridiculous, with the horrible. Far over the billowy sea of heads, may be seen Rascality, caprioling on horses from the Royal Stud. The Spoilers these ; for Patriotism is always infected so, with a proportion of mere thieves and scoundrels. Gondran snatched their prey from them in the Chateau ; where- upon they hurried to the Stables, and took horse there. 13ut the generous Diomedes' steeds, according to Weber, disdained such scoundrel-burden ; and, flinging up their royal heels, did soor. project most of it, in parabolic curves, to a distance, amid peals of laughter : and were caught. Mounted National Guards secured the rottt. Now too is witnessed the touching last-flicker of Etiquette which sinks not here, in the Cimmerian World-wreckage, without a sign ; as the house-cricket might still chirp in the pealing of ;i Trump of Doom. " Monsieur," said some Master of Ccremonie- (one hopes it might be de I^reze), as Lafayette, in these fearful moments, was rushing- towards the inner Royal Apartments. '' Monsieur, Ic Roi %ums accordc les o;randes c?itrees. Monsieur, tht King grants you the (irand Entries/'— not finding it convenient to refuse tUcm ' * * 'loulongcon, i App. 120, FROM VERSAILLES, 303 CHAPTER XI. FROM VERSAILLES. 1 ^^Y^VER, the Paris National Guard, wholly under arms, has Cleared the Palace, and even occupies the nearer external spaces ; extruding miscellaneous Patriotism, for most part, into the Grand Court, or even into the Forecourt. The Bodyguards, you can observe, have now of a verity, hoisted the National Cockade for they step forward to the windows or balconies, hat aloft in hand, on each hat a huge tri- color ; and flmg over their bandoleers in sign of surrender ; and shout Vive la Nation. To which how can the generous heart respond but with, Vive le Roi j vivent les Gardes-du-Corps ? His Majesty himself has appeared with Lafayette on the balcony, and again appears : Vive le Roi greets him from all throats ; but also Pads'^'"^""^ throat is heard Le Roi a Paris/T}i^ King to Her Majesty too, on demand, shows herself, though there is pern in it : she steps out on the balcony, with her little boy and girl -No children, Point d'enfansj'' cry the voices. She gently pushes back her children; and stands alone, her hands serenely crossed on her breast : " should I die," she had said, " I will do It. Such serenity of heroism has its effect. Lafayette, with ready wit, m his highflown chivalrous way, takes that fair queenly hand ; and reverently kneeling, kisses it : thereupon the people do shout Vive la Reine. Nevertheless, poor Weber ^saw' (or even thought he saw ; for hardly the third part of poor Weber's experiences, m such hysterical days, will stand scrutiny) ' one of these brigands level his musket at her Majesty,'-with or without 'down ' brigands ^angrily struck it So that all, and the Queen herself, nay the vei7 Captain of the Bodyguards, have grown National! The very Captain of the Bodyguards steps out now with Lafayette. On the hat of the repentant man is an enormous tricolor ; large as a soup-platter, or n.;i. ' ^'T^^^ ^^"^^^t Forecourt. He takes the National ™ To fi. u elevating his hat ; at which sight all the f^^^ ^Z^^^^ their bayonets, with shouts. Sweet is reconcilement to the heart of man. Lafayette has sworn Flandre ; he swears the remaining Bodyguards, down in the Marble Court ; the people clasp them in their arms:-0, my brothers, why would ll^tT '^f^ ^^^^^^ there is joy over you, as over returning prodigal sons !-The poor Bodyguards, now National ^^.cTf^l''^' ^""^^^^ exchange arms; there shall be TparT^ fraternity. And still - Vive le Roi j " and also " Le Rvi 11 is the heart s wieh of all mortals. 204 THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN, Yes, The King to Paris : what else ? Ministers may consult^ and National Deputies wag their heads : but there is now no other possibiUty. You have forced him to go wilHngly. " At one o'clock! " Lafayette gives audible assurance to that purpose ; and universal Insurrection, with immeasurable shout, and a discharge of all the firearms, clear and rusty, great and small, that it has, returns him acceptance. What a sound ; heard for leagues : a doom peal !— That sound too rolls away ; into the Silence of Ages. And the Chateau of Versailles stands ever since vacant, hushed still ; its spacious Courts grassgrown, responsive to the hoe of the weeder. Times and generations roll on, in their confused Gulf-current ; and buildings hke builders have their destiny. Till one o'clock, then, there will be three parties, National Assembly, National Rascality, National Royalty, all busy enough. Rascality rejoices ; women trim themselves with tricolor. Nay^ motherly Paris has sent her Avengers sufficient ' cartloads of * loaves ; ' which are shouted over, which are gratefully consumed. The Avengers, in return, are searching for grain-stores ; loading them in fifty waggons ; that so a National King, probable harbinger of all blessings, may be the evident bringer of plenty, for one. And thus has Sansculottism made prisoner its King ; revokinr^ his parole. The Monarchy has fallen ; and not so much as honourably : no, ignominiously ; with struggle, indeed, oft re- peated ; but then with unwise struggle ; wasting its strength in fits and paroxysms ; at every new paroxysm, foiled more pitifully than before. Thus Broglie's whiff of grapeshot, which might have been something, has dwindled to the pot-valour of an Opera Repast, and O Richard, O inon Roi. Which again we shall see dwindle to a Favras' Conspiracy, a thing to be settled by the hanging of one Chevalier. Poor Monarchy ! But what save foulest defeat can await that, man, who wills, and yet wills not ? Apparently the King eithed has a right, assertible' as such to the death, before God and man J or else he has no right. Apparently, the one or the other ; coultfl he but know which ! May Heaven pity him ! Were Louis wisd| he would this day abdicate.— Is it not strange' so few Kings abdicate ; and none yet heard of has been known to commit suicide } Fritz the First, of Prussia, alone tried it ; and they cut ihe rope. As for the National Assembly, which decrees this niorning that it ' is inseparable from his Majesty,' and will follow him lo Paris, there may one thing be noted : its extreme want of bodily health. After the Fourteenth of July there was a certain sickhness observ- able among honourable Members; so many demanding passports, on account of infirm health. But now, for these following days, there is a perfect murrian : President Mounier, Lally Tollendal C^^rmont Tonncre. and all Constitutional Two-Chamber RoyaUst ncL hng change of air ; as most No-Chamber RoyaUsts h formerly done. For, in truth, it is the second E7iiip'ation this that has no FROM VERSAILLES. come ; most extensive among Commons Deputies, Noblesse, Clergy : so that ^ to Switzerland alone there go sixty thousand.' They will return in the day of accounts ! Yes, and have hot welcome. — But Emigration on Emigration is the peculiarity of France. One Emigration follows another ; grounded on reason- able fear, unreasonable hope, largely also on childish pet. The highflyers have gone first, now the lower flyers ; and ever the lower will go down to the crawlers. Whereby, however, cannot our National Assembly so much the more commodiously make the Constitution ; your Two-Chamber Anglomaniacs being all safe, distant on foreign shores ? Abbe Maury is seized, and sent back again : he, tough as tanned leather, with eloquent Captain Cazales and some others, will stand it out for another year. But here, meanwhile, the question arises : Was Philippe d'Orleans seen, this day, ' in the Bois de Boulogne, in grey surtout ; ' waiting under the wet sere fohage, what the day might bring forth ? Alas, yes, the Eidolon of him was,— in Weber's and other such brains. The Chatelet shall make large inquisition into the matter, examining a hundred and seventy witnesses, and Deputy Chabroud publish his Report ; but disclose nothing further.'^ What then has cr. :sed these two unparalleled October Days ? For surely such dramatic exhibition never yet enacted itself without Dramatist and Machinist. Wooden Punch emerges not, with his domestic sorrows, into the light of day, unless the wire be pulled t how can human mobs ? Was it not d'Orleans then, and Laclos, Marquis Sillery, Mirabeau and the sons of confusion, hoping to drive the King to Metz, and gather the spoil } Nay was it not, quite contrariwise, the GEil-de-Boeuf, Bodyguard Colonel de Guiche, Minister Saint-Priest and highflying Loyalists ; hoping also to drive him to Metz ; and try it by the sword of civil war ? Good Marquis Toulongeon, the Historian and Deputy, feels con- strained to admit that it was bothA Alas, my Friends, credulous incredulity is a strange matter. But when a whole Nation is smitten with Suspicion, and sees a dramatic miracle in the very operation of the gastric juices, what help is there? Such Nation is already a mere hypochondriac bundle of diseases ; as good as changed into glass ; atrabiliar, decadent ; and will suffer crises. Is not Suspicion itself the one thing to be suspected, as Montaigne feared only fear ? ^ Now, hov/ever, the short hour has struck. His Majesty is in his carriage, with his Queen, sister Elizabeth, and two royal chil- dren. Not for another hour can the infinite Procession get mar- shalled, and under way. The weather is dim drizzling ; the mind confused ; the noise great. Processional marches not a few our world has seen j Roman triumphs and ovations, Cabiric cymbal-beatings, Royal progresses, Irish funerals : but this of the French Monarchy marching to its bed remained to be seen. Miles long, and of breadth losing itself * Rapport de Chabroud [MoniUur, du 31 December, 1789). t Toulongeon, i. i^'',':*. 2g6 the insurrection of women in vagueness, for all the neighbouring country crowds to see. Slow ; stagnating along, like shoreless Lake, yet with a noise like Niagara, like Babel and Bedlam. A splashing and a tramping ; a hurrahing, uproaring, musket-volleying ; — the truest segment of Chaos seen in these latter Ages ! Till slowly it disembogue itself, in the thickening dusk, into expectant Paris, through a double row of faces all the way from Passy to the H6tel-de-Ville._ Consider this : Vanguard of National troops ; with trains of artillery ; of pikemen and pikewomen, mounted on cannons, on carts, hackney-coaches, or on foot ;— tripudiating, in tricolor ribbons from head to heel ; loaves stuck on the pomts of bayonets, green boughs stuck in gun barrels.^ Next, as main-march, ' fifty ' cartloads of corn,' which have been lent, for peace, from the stores of Versailles. Behind which follow stragglers of the Garde- du-Corps ; all humiliated, in Grenadier bonnets. Close on these comes the Royal Carriage ; come Royal Carriages : for there are an Hundred National Deputies toe, among whom sits Mirabeau,— his remarks not given. Then findly, pellmell, as rearguard, Flandre, Swiss, Hundred Swiss, othe- Bodyguards, Brigands, whosoever cannot get before. Between and among all which masses, flows without limit Saint- Antoine, and the Menadic Cohort. Menadic especially about the Royal Carriage ; tripu- diating there, covered with tricolor : singing ' allusive songs ; ' pointing with one hand to the Royal Carriage, which the illusions hit, and pointing to the Provisiori -wagons, with the other hand, and these words : ' Courage, Friends ' We shall not want bread now ; we are bringing you the Baker, the Bakeress, and Baker's Boy (le Boulanger, la Boidan^er.\^ et le petit Mitroit)P\ The wet day draggles the tricolor, but the joy is unextinguish- able. Is not all vvell now ? " Ah, Mada^ne, notre bonne Reme',' said some of these Strong-women some days hence, "Ah Madame, our good Queen, don't be a traitor any more {ne sovez plus traitre\ and we will all love von !" Poor Weber went splashing along, close by ti.^ Royal carriage, with the tear in his eye : 'their * Majesties did me the honour,' or I thought they did it, ' to testify, * ^om time to time, by shrugging of the shoulders, by looks directed ' to Heaven, the emotions they felt.' Thus, like frail cockle, floats the Royal Life-boat, helmless, on black deluges of RascaUty. Mercier, in his loose way, estimates the Procession and assis lants at two hundred thousand. He says it was one boundles inarticulate \\7Cc\7i'—transce7ic/etit Worid- Laughter ; comparabl to the Saturnalia of the Ancients. Wliy not? Here too, as w said, is Human Nature once more Innnan ; shudder at it whoso i of shuddering humour : yet behold it is lunnan. It has ' swallowe •all formulas ; ' it tripudiates even so. For which reason they tha collect Vases and Antiques, with figures of Dancing Bacchante * in wild and all but impossible positioiis,' may look with SOJ kntere^i on it. • Mercier, Nouveau Parh, iii. 21. •t Tonlongeon, i. 134-161 ; Deux Amis (iii. c. 9) ; &c. 05€V - FROM VERSA IZLES, 20? Thus, however, has the slow-moving Chaos or modern Saturnalia of the Ancients, reached the Barrier; and must halt, to he. harangued by Mayor Bailly. Thereafter it has to lumber along, between the double row of faces, in the transcendent heaven- lashing Haha ; two hours longer, towards the H6tel-de-Ville. Then again to be harangued there, by several persons ; by Moreau de Saint-Mery, among others ; Moreau of the Three-thousand orders, now National l3eputy for St. Domingo. To all which poor Louis, ^ who seemed to * experience a slight emotion ' on entering this Townhall, can answer only that he " comes with pleasure, with confidence among his people." Mayor Bailly, in reporting it, forgets ' confidence ; ' and the poor Queen says eagerly : " Add, with confidence.^'— " Messieurs," rejoins Mayor Bailly, "You are happier than if I had not forgot." Finally, the King is shewn on an upper balcony, by torchlight, with a huge tricolor in his hat : ' and all the ' people,' says Weber, * grasped one another's hands ; — thinking now surely the New Era 'was born.' Hardly till eleven at night can Royalty get to its vacant, long-deserted Palace of the Tuileries : to lodge there, somewhat in strolling-player fashion. It is Tuesday, the sixth of October, 1789. Poor Louis has Two other Paris Processions to make : one ludicrous-ignominious like this ; the other not ludicrous nor igno« minious, but serious, nay sublime. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CONTENTS OF VOT, H. I. II. III. IV. V. VIII. IX. X, XL XII. SOOK I. The Feast of Pikes, In the Tuileries . In the Salle de Manege The Muster .... Journalism .... Clubbism Je le jure .... Prodigies ..... Solemn Lkague and Covenant Symbolic Mankind , . . . . . As in the Age of Gold. Sound and Smoke . III. IV. V, *^I BOOK 11. Nanci. I. Bouille Arrears and Aristocrats Bouille at Metz . Arrears at Nanci . Inspector Malseigne Bouille at Nanci . BOOK III. The Tuileries. I. Epimenides II. The Wakeful . III. Sword in Hand IV. To FLY OR NOr TO FLY V. The Day of Poniards VI. Mirabeau . VIL Death of Mirabeau 4 CONTENTS BOOK IV. Varennes. CHAP. FACE I. Easter at Saint-Cloud • • io6 1. Easter at Paris » . . 109 Count Fersen . . . . . « * , .111 IV. Attitude • .116 V. The New Berline . 119 VI. Old-Dragoon Drouet • . 122 VII. The Night of Spurs 124 VIII. The Return ... . « • . . . 130 IX. Sharp Shot 133 BOOK V. Parliament First. I. Grande Acceptation , . 137 II. The Book of the Law 142 III. Avignon 148 IV. No Sugar . ' 153 V. Kings and Emigrants ....... 156 VI. Brigands and J ales 163 VII. CONSTI 1 UTION will NOT MARCH 165 VIII. The Jacobins 169 IX. Minister Roland 171 X. Petion-National-Pique <, 174 XI. The Hereditary Representaitve .... 176 XII. Procession of the Black Breeches .... 179 BOOK VI. The Marseillese. I. Executive that does not act . o o • . 183 II. Let us march ^ - .188 III. Some Consolation to Mankind 100 IV. Subterranean 19 V. At Dinner 195 VI. The Steeples at Midnight 19S VII. The Swiss 20. VIII. Constitution burst in Pieces • o • . - 20S THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Vol. IL— The Constitution. BOOK FIRST. THE FEAST OF PIKES. CHAPTER T. IN THE TUILERIES. The victim having once got his stroke-of-grace, the catastrophe can be considered as almost come. There is small interest now in watching his long low moans : notabk, only are his sharper agonies, what convulsive struggles he may take to cast the torture off from him ; and then finally the last departure of life itself, and how he lies extinct and ended, either wrapt hke Csesar in decorous mantle-lolds, or unseemly sunk together, like one that had not the force even to die. Was French Royalty, when wrenched forth from its tapestries m that fashion, on that Sixth of October 1789, such a victim? Universal France, and Royal Proclamation to all the Provinces, answers anxiously, No j nevertheless one may fear the worst. .Royalty was beforehand so decrepit, moribund, there is httle life \\\ It to h€al an injury. How much of its strength, which was of the imagination merely, has fled ; Rascality having looked plainly m the King's face, and not died ! When the assembled crows can pluck up their scarecrow, and say to it. Here shalt thou ^tand and not there ; and can treat with it, and make it, from an infinite, a quite finite Constitutional scarecrow,— what is to be looked for ? Not in the finite Constitutional scarecrow, but in what still un- measured, infinite-seeming force may rallv round it, is there thence- forth any hope. For it is most true that all available Authority IS mystic in its conditions, and comes ' by the grace of God.' 6 THE FEAST OF PIKES, Cheerfuller than watching the death-struggles of TRoyalism will it be to watch the growth and garnbolhngs of Sansculottism ; for, in human things, especially in human society, ail death is but a death-birth : thus if the sceptre is departing from Louis, it is only that, in other forms, other sceptres, were it even pike-sceptres, may bear sway. In a prurient element, rich with nutritive influences, v/e shall find that Sansculottism grows lustily, and even frisks in not ungraceful sport : as indeed most young creatures are sport- ful ; nay, may it not be noted further, that as the grown cat, and cat-species generally, is the cruellest thing known, so the merriest is precisely the kitten, or growing cat ? But fancy the Royal Family risen from its truckle-beds on the morrow of that mad day : fancy the Municipal inquiry, " How would your Majesty please to lodge ? " — and then that the King's rough answer, " Each may lodge as he can, I am well enough," is congeed and bowed away, in expressive grins, by the Townhall Functionaries, with obsequious upholsterers at their back ; and how the Chateau of the Tuileries is repainted, regarnished into a golden Royal Residence ; and Lafayette with his blue National Guards lies encompassing it, as blue Neptune (in the language of poets) does an island, wodlngly. Thither may the wrecks of reha- bilitated Loyalty gather, if it will become Constitutional ; for Con- stitutionalism thinks no evil ; Sansculottism itself rejoices in the King's countenance. The rubbish of a Menadic Insurrection, as in this ever-kindly world all rubbish can and must be, is swept aside ; and so again, on clear arena, under new conditions, with something even of a new stateliness, we begin a new course of action. Arthur Young has witnessed the strangest scene : Majesty walk- ing unattended in the Tuileries Gardens ; and miscellaneous tri- color crowds, who cheer it, and reverently make way for it : the very Queen commands at lowest respectful silence, regretful avoid- ance."^ Simple ducks, in those royal waters, quackle for crumbs from young royal fingers : the little Dauphin has a little railed garden, where he is seen delving, with ruddy cheeks and flaxen curled hair ; also a little hutch to put his tools in, and screen him- self against showers. What peaceable simplicity ! Is it peace of a Father restored to his children ? Or of a Taskmaster who has lost his whip ? Lafayette and the Municipality and universal Con- stitutionalism assert the former, and do what is in them to reahse it. Such Patriotism as snarls dangerously, and shows teeth, Pat- rollotism shall suppress ; or far better. Royalty shall soothe down the angry hair of it, by gentle pattings ; and, most effectual of all, by fuller diet. Yes, not only shall Paris be fed, but the King's hand be seen in that work. The household goods of the Poor shall, up to a certain amou«t, by royal bounty, be disengaged from pawn, and that insatiable Mont de Pictc disgorge : rides in the city with their vive-le-roi need not fail ; and so by substance * Arthur Young's Travels, i. 264-380. IN THE TUILERIES. 1 and show, shall Royalty, if man's art can popularise it, be popu- larised."^ Or, alas, is it neither restored Father nor diswhipped Taskmaster that walks there ; but an anomalous complex of both these, and of innumerable other heterogeneities ; reducible to no rubric, if not to this newly devised one : King Louis Restorer of French Liberty ? Man indeed, and King Louis like other men, lives in this world to mike rule out of the ruleless ; by his living energy, he shall force the absurd itself to become less absurd. But then if there be no living 'energy ; living passivity only ? King Serpent, hurled into his unexpected watery dominion, did at least bite, and assert credibly that he was there : but as for the poor King Log, tumbled hither and thither as thousandfold chance and other will than his might direct, how happy for him that he was indeed wooden ; and, doing nothing, could also see and suffer nothing ! It is a distracted business. For his French Majesty, meanwhile, one of the worst things is that he can get no hunting. Alas, no hunting henceforth ; only a fatal being-hunted ! Scarcely, in the next June weeks, shall he taste again the joys of the game-destroyer ; in next June, and never more. He sends for his smith-tools ; gives, in the course of the day, official or ceremonial business being ended, ^ a few * strokes of the hie, q2ielques coups de li^ne.i Innocent brother mortal, why wert thou not an obscure substantial maker of locks ; but doomed in that other far-seen craft, to be a maker only of world-follies, unrealities ; things self destructive^ which no mortal hammering could rivet into coherence ! Poor Louis is not without insight, nor even without the elements of will ; some sharpness of temper, spurting at times from a stagnating character. If harmless inertness could save him, it were well ; but he will slumber and painfully dream, and to do aught is not given him. Royahst Antiquarians still shew the rooms where Majesty and suite, in these extraordinary circum- stances, had their lodging. Here sat the Queen ; reading, — for she had tier library brought hither, though the King refused his ; taking vehement counsel of the vehement uncounselled ; sorrow- ing over altered times ; yet with sure hope of better : in her young rosy Boy, has she not the living emblem of hope ! It is a murky, working sky ; yet with golden gleams — of dawn, or of deeper meteoric night ? Here again this chamber, on the other side of the main entrance, was the King's : here his Majesty break- fasted, and did official work ; here daily after breakfast he re- ceived the Queen ; sometimes in pathetic friendliness ; sometimes in human sulkiness, for flesh is weak ; and, when questioned about business would answer : " Madame, your business is with the children." Nay, Sire, were it not better you, your Majesty's self, took the children So asks impartial History ; scornful that the thicker vessel was not also the stronger ; pity-struck for the * Deux Amis, iii. c. lo. + Le Chateau des TuilerieSf ou ricit, &c., par Roussel (in Hist. Par/, i?; 195-219). THE FEAST OF PIKES. porcelain-clay of humanity rather than for the tile-clay,— though indeed doth were broken ! ■ So, however, in this Medicean Tuileries, shall the French King and Queen now sit, for one-and-forty months ; and see a wildf fermenting France work out its own destiny, and theirs. Months bleak, ungenial, of rapid vicissitude ; yet with a mild pale splen- dour, here and there : as of an April that were leading to leafiest Summer ; as of an October that led only to ^everlasting Frost. Medicean Tuileries, how changed since it was a peaceful Tile field ! Or is the ground itself fate-stricken, accursed : an Atreus' Palace ; for that Louvre window is still nigh, out of which a Capet, whipt of the Furies, fired his signal of the Saint Bartholomew ! Dark is the way of the Eternal as mirrored in this world of Time : God's v/ay is in the sea, and His path in the great deep. CHAPTER II. IN THE SALLE DE MANEGE. To believing Patriots, however, it is now clear, that the Con- stitution will march, marcher, — had it once legs to stand on. v Quick, then, ye Patriots, bestir yourselves, and make it ; shape legs for it ! In the Archeveche, or Archbishop's Palace, his Grace himself having fled ; and afterw^ards in the Riding-hall, named Manege, close on the Tuileries : there does a National Assembly appivltself to the miraculous w^ork. Successfully, had there been any 'heaven-scaling Prometheus among them ; not successfully since there was none ! There, in noisy debate, for the sessions are occasionally ' scandalous,' and as many as three speakers have been seen in the Tribune at once,— let us continue to fancy it wearing the slow months. Tough, dogmatic, long of wind is Abbe Maury ; Ciceronian pathetic is Caz;i]cs. Keen-trenchant, on the other side, glitters a young P;irn;u'c ; p.l^liorrent of sophistry ; sheering, like keen Damascus sal)rc, al! sophistry asunder, --reckless what else he sheer with it. Simple sc(Miies1 thou, O solid Dutch-built Petion ; if solid, surely dull. Nor liic:gi\ ing in that tone of thine, liveher polemical Rabaut. With inclfabie serenity sniffs great Sieyes, aloft, alone ; his Constitution ye may babble over, ye may mar,, but can by no possibility mend : is not Polity a science he has ex- hausted .'^ Cool, slow, two military Lameths arc visible, with their quality sneer, or demi-sncer ; they shall gallantly refund their Mother's Pension, when the Red Book is produced ; gallantly be wounded in duels. A Marquis Toulongeon, whose Pen we yet thank, sits there ; in stoical meditative Jiumour, oftenest silent, accepts v/hat destiny will send. Thouret and Parlementary Duport produce mountains of Reformed Law ; liberal, Anglo* IN THE SALLE DE MANEGE. 9 maniac : available and unavailable. Mortals rise and fall. Shall goose Gobel, for example, - or Gobel, for he is of Strasburg Ger- man breed, be a Constitutional Archljishop? Alone of all men there, Mirabeau may begin to discern clearly whither all this is tending. Patriotism, accordingly, regrets that his zeal seems to be getting cool. In that famed Pentecost-Night of the Fourth of August, when new Faith rose suddenly into miraculous fire, and old Feudality was burnt up, men remarked that r*lirabeau took no hand in it ; that, in fact, he luckily hap= pened to be absent. But did he not defend the Veto, nay Veto A.bsolu J and tell vehement Barnave that six hundred irespon- sible senators would make of all tyrannies the insupportablest ? Again^ how anxious was he that the King's Ministers shoi.jd have seat and voice in the National Assembly ;— doubtless with an eye to being Minister himself ! Whereupon the National Assembly decides, what is very momentous, that no Deputy shall be Minis- ter ; he, in his haughty stormful manner, advising us to make it, *no Deputy called Mirabeau.'^ A man of perhaps inveterate Feudalisms ; of stratagems ; too often visible leanings towards the Royalist side : a man suspect ; whom Patriotism will unmask ! Thus, in these June days, when the question Who shall have right to declare war f comes on, you hear hoarse Hawkers sound dole- fully through the streets, " Grand Treason of Count Mirabeau, price only one sou ; " — because he pleads that it shall be not the Assembly but the King ! Pleads ; nay prevails : for in spite of the hoarse Hawkers, and an endless Populace raised by them to the pitch even of ^ Lanterned he mounts the Tribune next day ; grim-resolute ; murmuring aside to his friends that speak of dangcw : " I know it : I must come hence either in triumph, or else torn in fragments ; " and it was in triumph that he came. A man stout of heart ; whose popularity is not of the populace, ^ pas popzilaciere / whom no clamour of unwashed mobs without doors, or of washed mobs within, can scare from his way ! Dumont remembers hearing him deliver a Report on Marseilles ; ' every ^ word was interrupted on the part of the Cote Droit by abusive ^ epithets ; calumniator, liar, assassin, scoundrel [scelerat) : Mira- * beau pauses a moment, and, in a honeyed tone, addressing the ^ most furious, says : " 1 wait. Messieurs, till these amenities be ' exhausted." ' f A man enigmatic, difficult to unmask ! For ex- ample, whence comes his money ? Can the profit of a Newspaper, sorely eaten into by Dame Fe Jay ; can this, and the eighteen francs a-day your National Deputy has, be supposed equal to this expenditure? House in the Chaussee d'Antin ; Country-house at Argenteuil ; splendours, sumptuosities, orgies ; — living as if he had a mint ! All saloons barred against Adventurer Mirabeau, are flung wide open to King Mirabeau, the cynosure of Europe, whom female France flutters to behold,— though the Man Mirabeau is one and the same. As for money, one may conjecture that Royal- * Moniienr, Nos. 65. 86 (29th September, 7th November, 1789. f Dumont, Sunvcmrs, p. 278. THE FEAST OF PIKES. ism furnishes it ; /hich if Royalism do, will not the same be weL comPj as money always is to him ? \ Sold/ whatever Patriotism thinks, he cannot readily be : the spirituc. f^^e wi -^ch Is in that man ; which shining through such corx..;sio v. is nevertheless Conviction, rj- 1 makes him strong, and with.:ut ./aich he had no strength,— is not buyable nor saleable : in cuch transference of barter, it would vanish and not be. Per- ha .; s V-.)a .d /md not '^oXd.^paye pes vendu : as poor Rivarol, in the unhappi£&?v converse way, calls himself ' sold and not paid ! ' A man irCT:41iB^^. comet-like, in splendour and nebulosity, his wild way Z!--mn telescopic Patriotism may long watch, but, without higher mathematics, will not make out. A questionable most blanieable man ; yet to us the far notablest of all. With rich munificence, as we often say, in a most blinkard, bespectacled, logic-chopping generation, Nature has gifted this man with an eye. Wei om_: is his word, cber: where he speaks and works; and growing ever welcomer ; ic • it r.Ione goes to the heart of the busi- ness : logice cobwebbery shrinks itself together ; and thou seest a t/tmg^ how i: s, how it may be worked with. Unhappily our National Assembly has much to do : a France to regencin^s nd France is short of so many requisites; short even of cash! '^hcse same Finances give trouble enough; no chcking of the Deficit ; which gapes ever, Gz're, f^ive I To appease the Deficit v.C; venture on a hazardous step, sale of the Clergy's Lands and superfluous iCdifices ; most hazardous. Nay, given the sale, who i3 to buy them, ready-money having fled? Wherefore, on the 19th day of December, a paper-money of ' Assignats^ of Bonds secured, or assi^ned^ on that Clerico- National Property, and un- questionable at least in payment of that, — is decreed : the first of a long series of like financial performances, which shall astonish mankind. So that now, while old rags last, there shall be no lack of circulating medium ; whether of commodities to circulate thereon is another question. But, after all, does not this Assignat business speak volumes for modern science 1 Bankruptcy, we may say, was come, as the end of all Delusions needs must come : yet how gently, in softening diffusion, in mild succession, was it hereby made to fall ; — like no all-destroying avalanche ; like gentle showers of a powdery impalpable snow, shower after shower, till all was indeed buried, and yet little was destroyed that could not be replaced, be dispensed with ! To such length has modern machi- nery reached. Bankruptcy, we said, was great ; but indeed Money itself is a standing miracle. On the whole, it is a matter of endless difficulty, that of the Clergy. Clerical property may be made the Nation's^ and the Clergy hired servants of the State ; but if so, is it not an altered Church 1 Adjustment enough, of the most confused sort, has be- come unavoidable. Old landmarks, in any sense, avail not in a new P>ance. Nay literally, the very (Jround is new divided ; your old party-coloured Provinces become new uniform Depart- me7ils, Eighty-three in number ; — whereby, as in some sudden IN THE SALLE DE MENEGE. II shifting of the Earth's axis, no mortal knows his new latitude at once. The Twelve old Parlements too, what is to be done with them ? The old Parlements are declared to be all ' in permanent ' vacation,'--till once the new equal-justice, of DeiDartmental Courts, National Appeal-Court, of elective Justices, Justices oi Peace, and other Thouret-and-Duport apparatus be got ready. They have to sit there, these old Parlements, uneasily waiting ; as it were, with the rope round their neck ; crying as they can. Is there none to deliverus? But happily the answer being. No7te, none, they are a manageable class, these Parlements. They can be bullied, even into silence ; the Paris Parliament, v/iser than most, has never whimpered. They will and must sit there ; in such vacation as is fit ; their Chamber of Vacation distributes in the interim what little justice is going. With the rope round their neck, their destiny may be succinct ! On the 13th of November 1790, Mayor Baiily shall walk to the Palais de Justice, few even heeding him ; and with municipal seal-stamp and a little hot wax, seal up the Parlementary Paper-rooms, — and the dread Pariement of Paris pass away, into Chaos, gently as does a Dream ! So shall the Parlements perish, succinctly ; and innumer- able eyes be dry. Not so the Clergy. For granting even that Religion were dead ; that it had died, half-centuries ago, with unutterable Dubois ; or emigrated lately, to Alsace, with Necklace-Cardinal Rohan ; or that it now walked as goblin revenajit with Bishop Talleyrand of Autun ; yet does not the Shadow of Religion, the Cant of Religion, still linger ? The Clergy have means and material : means, of number, organization, social weight ; a material, at lowest, of public ignorance, known to be the mother of devotion. Nay, withal, is it incredible that there might, in simple hearts, latent here and there like gold-grains in the mud-beach, still dwell some real Faith in God, of so singular and tenacious a sort that even a Maury or a Talleyrand, could still be the symbol for it ?— Enough, the Clergy has strength, the Clergy has craft and indig- nation. It is a most fatal business this of the Clergy. A welter- ing hydra-coil, which the National Assembly has stirred up about its ears ; hissing, stinging: which cannot be appeased, alive; vyhich cannot iDe trampled dead ! Fatal, from first to last \ Scarcely after fifteen months' debating, can a Civil Constitution of the Clergy be so much as got to paper ; and then for getting it into reality ^ Alas, such Civil Constitution is but an agreement to disagree. It divides France from end to end, with a new split, infinitely comphcating all the other splits ;— Catholicism, what of it diere is left, with the Cant of Catholicism, raging on the one side, and sceptic Heathenism on the other ; both, by contra- diction, waxing fanatic. What endless jarring, of Refractory hated Priests, and Constitutional despised ones ; of tender con- sciences, like the King's, and consciences hot-seared, like cer- tain of his People's : the whole to end in Feasts of Reason and a War of La Vendee ! So deep-seated is Religion in the heart of man, and holds of all infinite paasions. If the dead echo THE FEAST OF PIKES. of it still did so much, what could not the living voice of it once do? Finance and Constitution, Law and Gospel : this surely were : work enough ; yet this is not all. In fact, the Ministry, and ■ Necker himself whom a brass inscription 'fastened by the people i 'over his door-linter testifies to be the ' Mmistre adore^ are ! dwindling into clearer and clearer nullity. Execution or legisla- tion, arrangement or detail, from their nerveless fingers all drops ; undone ; all lights at last on the toiled shoulders of an august Representative Body. Heavy-laden National Assembly ! It has' to hear of innumerable fresh revolts. Brigand expeditions ; of Chateaus in the West, especially of Charter-chests, Chartiers^ set on fire ; for there too the overloaded Ass frightfully recalcitrates. | Of Cities in the South full of heats and jealousies ; which will, end in crossed sabres, Marseilles against Toulon, and Carpentras beleagured by Avignon ; — such Royalist collision in a career of Freedom ; nay Patriot collision, which a mere difiference of velo- city will bring about ! Of a Jourdan Coup-tete, who has skulked thitherward, from the claws of the Chatelet ; and will raise whole scoundrel-regiments. > Also it has to hear of Royalist Camp of J ales : Jales mountain- i girdled Plain, amid the rocks of the Cevennes ; whence Royahsm,; as is feared and hoped, may dash down like a mountain deluge,' and submerge France ! A singular thing this camp of Jales ; i existing mcstly on paper. For the Soldiers at Jales, being pea- ; sants or National Guards, were in heart sworn Sansculottes ; and ail that the Royalist Captains could do was, with false words, to keep them, or rather keep the report of them, drawn up there, visible to all imaginations, for a terrc.- and a sign, — if peradven- ture France might be reconquered by theatrical machinery, by the picture of a Royalist Army done to the life I"^' Not till the third sum- mer was this portent, burning out by fits and then fading, got finally extinguished ; was the old Castle of Jales, no Camp being visible to the bodily eye, got blown asunder by some National Guards. Also it has to hear not only of Brissot and his Friends of the Blacks^ but by and by of a whole St. Domingo blazing skyward ; blazing in hteral fire, and in far worse metaphorical ; beaconing the nightly main. Also of the shipping interest, and the landed- interest, and all manner of interests, reduced to distress. Of In- dustry every where manacled, bewildered ; and only Rebellion thriving. Of sub-officers, soldiers and sailors in mutiny by land and water. Of soldiers, at Nanci, as we shall see, needing to be cannonaded by a brave Bouilld. Of sailors, nay the very galley- slaves, at Brest, needing also to be cannonaded ; but with no Bouille to do it. For indeed, to say it in a word, in those days there was no Ki^ii!; in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.f * Dam [) martin, Ev&ncmcns, i. 208. t See Deux Amis, iii. c. 14; iv. c. 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 14. Expedition de.s Voloit' iaires de Brest sur lAxnnion ; Les Lyo7niais Sauveurs des Dauphinois; Massacre au Mails ; Troubles du Ma rue (I^amphlcts and Kxccrpts, in Hist* Part. iii. 251 ; iv. 162-168), &c. IN THE SALLE DE MENEGE, 13 Such things has an august National Assembly to hear of, as it goes on regenerating France. Sad and stern : but what remedy? Get the Constitution ready ; and all men will swear to it : for do not * Addresses of adhesion' arrive by the cartload? In this manner, by Heaven's blessing, and a Constitution got ready, shall the bottomless fire-gulf be vaulted in, with rag-paper ; and Order will wed Freedom, and live with her there,— till it grow too hot for them. O Cote Gauche, worthy are ye, as the adhesive Ad- dresses generally say, to ' fix the regards of the Universe ; ' the regards of this one poor Planet, at lowest ! — Nay, it must be owned, the Cote Droit makes a still madder figure. An irrational generation ; irrational, imbecile, and with the vehement obstinacy characteristic of that ; a generation which will not learn. Falhng* Bastilles, Insurrections of Women, thou- sands of smoking Manorhouses, a country bristling with no crop but that of Sansculottic steel : these were tolerably didactic lessons ; but them they have not taught. There are still men, of whom it was of old written, Bray them in a mortar ! Or, in milder language, They have wedded their delusions : fire nor steel, nor any sharpness of Experience, shall sever the bond ; till death do us part ! Of such may the Heavens have mercy ; for the Earth, with her rigorous Necessity, will have none. Admit, at the same time, that it was most natural. Man lives by Hope : Pandora when her box of gods'-gifts flew all out, and became gods'-curses, still retained Hope. How shall an irra- tional mortal, when his high-place is never so evidently pulled down, and he, being irrational, is left resourceless, — part with the behef that it will be rebuilt ? It would make all so straight again ; it seems ,so unspeakably desirable ; so reasonable, — would you but look at it aright ! For, must not the thing which was continue to be ; or else the sohd World dissolve ? Yes, persist, O infatuated Sansculottes of France ! Revolt against constituted Authorities ; hunt out your rightful Seigneurs, who at bottom so loved you, and readily shed their blood for you, — in country's battles as at Ross- bach and elsewhere ; and, even in preserving game, were preserv- ing you, could ye but have understood it : hunt them out, as if they were wild wolves ; set fire to their Chateaus and Chartiers as to wc4f-dens ; and what then ? Why, then turn every man his hand against his fellow ! In confusion, famine, desolation, regret the days that are gone ; rueful recall them, recall us with them. To repentant prayers we will not be deaf. So, with dimmer or clearer consciousness, must the Right Side reason and act. An inevitable position perhaps ; but a most false one for them. Evil, be thou our good : this henceforth must virtually be their prayer. The fiercer the effervescence grows, the sooner will it pass ; for after all it is but some mad effervescence ; the World is solid, and cannot dissolve. For the rest, if they have any positive industry, it is that of plots, and backstairs conclaves. Plots which cannot be executed ; which are mostly theoretic on their part ; — for which nevertheless this and the other practical Sieur Augeard, Sieur Maillebois, Sieur 14 THE FEAST OF PIKES. Bonne Savardin, gets into trouble, gets imprisoned, and escapes 1 with difficulty. Na5^ there is a poor practical Chevalier Favras ] who, not without some passing reflex on Monsieur himself, gets \ hanged for them, amid loud uproar of the world. Poor Favras, | he keeps dictating his last will at the ' H6tel-de-Ville, through the i ' whole remainder of the day,' a weary February day ; offers to j reveal secrets, if they will save him ; handsomely dechnes since ' they will not ; then dies, in the flare of torchlight, with >politest composure ; remarking, rather than exclaiming, with outspread , hands : " People, I die innocent ; pray for me.*'^ Poor. Favras type of so much that has prowled indefatigable over France, in ' days now ending ; and, in freer field, might have earned instead ' of prowling,— to thee it is no theory ! , In the Senate-house again, the attitude of the Right Side is that of calm unbehef. Let an august National Assembly make a, Fourth-of- August Abolition of Feudality ; declare the ClSrgy / State-servants who shall have wages ; vote Suspensive Vetos, new ^ Law-Courts ; vote or decree what contested thing it will ; have it responded to from the four corners of France, nay get King's : Sanction, and what other Acceptance were conceivable,— the Right Side, as we find, persists, with imperturbablest tenacity, in ^ considering, and ever and anon shews that it still considers, all ■ these so-called Decrees as mere temporar^T whims, which indeed f stand on paper, but in practice and fact are not, and cannot be. \ Figure the brass head of an Abbe Maury flooding forth Jesuitic | eloquence in this strain ; dusky d'Esprem^nil, Barrel Mirabeau i (probably in liquor), and enough of others, cheering him frorn thC ': Right ; and, for example, with what visage a seagreen Robespierre? eyes him from the Left. And how Sieyes ineffably sniffs on him, or does not deign to sniff ; and how the Galleries groan in spirit, or bark rabid on him : so that to escape the Lanterne, on stepping forth, he needs presence of mind, and a pair of pistols in his girdle ! For he is one of the toughest of men. Here indeed becomes notable one great difference between our two kinds of civil war ; between the modern lingual or Parlia- mentary-logical kind, and the ancient, or rnamml kind, in the steel battle-field ;— much to the disadvantage of the former. In the manual kind, where you front your foe with drawn weapon, one right stroke is final ; lor, physically speaking, when the brains are out the man does honestly die, and trouble you no more. But how diff"erent when it is with arguments you fight! Here no vic- tory yet definable can be considered as final. Beat him down, with Parliamentary invective, till sense be fled ; cut him in two, hanging one half in this dilemma-horn, the other on that ; blow the brains or thinking-faculty quite out of him for the time : it skills not ; he rallies ^and revives on the morrow; to-morrow he repairs his golden fires ! The thing that will logically extinguish i him is pcrluips still a desideratum in Constitutional civilisation, j For how, till a man know, in some measure, at what point he be- * See Deux Amis, iv. c. 14, 7 ; Hist, PafL vi. 384* IN THE SALLE DE MANEGE. eomes logically defunct, can Parliamentary Business be carried on, and Talk ceaso or slaL: ? Doubtless it was some feeling of this difficulty ; and the clear insight how little such knowledge yet existed in the French Nation, new ia the Constitutional career, and how defunct Aristocrats would continue to walk for unlimited periods, as Partridge the Almanack-maker did, — that had sunk into the deep mind of Peo- ple's-friend Marat, an eminently practical mind ; and had grown there, in that richest putrescent soil, into the most original plan cf action ever submitted to a People. Not yet has it grown ; but it has germinated, it is growing ; rooting itself into Tartarus, branch- ing towards Heaven : the second season hence, we shall see it risen out of the bottomless IDarkness, full-grown,, into disastrous Twilight, — a Hemlock-trefc, great as the world; on or under whose boughs all the People's-friends of the world may lodge. ^ Two ' hundred and sixty thousand Aristocrat heads : ' that is the pre- cisest calculation, though one would not stand on a few hundreds ; yet we never rise as high as the round three hundred thou- sand. Shudder at it, O People ; but it is as true as that ye your- selves, and your People's-friend, are alive. These prating Sen- ators of yours hover ineffectual on the barren letter, and will never save the Revolution. A Cassandra- Marat cannot do it, with his single shrunk arm ; but with a few determined men it were possible. " Give me," said the People's-friend, in his cold way, when young Barbaroux, once his pupil in a course of what was called Optics, went to see him, Give me two hundred Naples Bravoes, armed each with a good dirk, and a muff on his left arm by way of shield : with them I will traverse France, and accom- plish the Revolution."^ Nay, be grave, young Barbaroux ; for thou seest, there is no jesting in those rheumy eyes ; in that soot- bleared figure, most earnest of created things ; neither indeed is there madness, of the strait-waistcoat sort. Such produce shall the Time ripen in cavernous Marat, the man Torbid ; living in Paris cellars, lone as fanatic Anchorite in his tThebaid ; say, as far-seen Simon on his Pillar,— taking peculiar i views therefrom. Patriots may smile ; and, using him as bandog now to be muzzled, now to be let bark, name him, as Desmoulins does, 'Maximum of Patriotism ' and 'Cassandra-Marat:' but ; were it not singular if this dirk-and-muff plan of his (with super- I ficial modifications) proved to be precisely the plan adopted 1 I After this manner, in these circumstances, do august Senators l.regenerate France. Nay, they are, in very deed, believed to be re- I generating it ; on account of which great fact, main fact of their ' history, the wearied eye can never be permitted wholly to ignore ; them. [ But looking away now^ from these precincts of the Tuileries, [ where Constitutional Royalty, let Lafayette water it as he will, lan- I guishes too like a cut branch ; and august Senators are perhaps at i bottom only perfecting their ' theory of defective verbs,' — how does the young Reality, young Sansculottism thrive The attentive ob- * Mdmoires de Barbaroux (Paris, 1822), p. 57. THE FEAST OF PIKES, server can answer: It thrives bravely; putting forth new buds; expanding the old buds into leaves, into boughs. Is not French Existence, as before, most prurient, dM loosened, most nutrient for it? Sansculottism has the property of growing by what other- things die of : by agitation, contention, disarrangement ; nay, in a word, by what is the symbol and fruit of all these : Hunger. In such a France as this, Hunger, as we have remarked, can hardly fail. The Provinces, the Southern Cities feel it in their turn ; and what it brings: Exasperation, preternatural Suspicion* In Paris some halcyon days of abundance followed the Menadic , Insurrection, with its Versailles grain-carts, and recovered Re- storer of Liberty ; but they could not continue. The month is ^ still October when famishing Saint- Antoine, in a moment of ; passion, seizes a poor Baker, innocent * Francois the Baker ;'* and J hangs him, in Constantinople wise ; - but even this, singular as it ' may seem, does not cheapen bread ! Too clear it is, no Royal bounty, no Municipal dexterity can adequately feed a Bastile- destroying Paris. Wherefore, on view of the hanged Baker, Con- , stitutionalism in sorrow and anger dem.ands * Loi Martiale' a • kind of Riot Act ; and indeed gets it, most readily, almost be- : fore the sun goes down. This is that famed Martial Law, with its Red Flag, its ' Dra- ] ' peau Rouge'! in virtue of which Mayor Bailly, or any Mayor, has ■ but henceforth to hang out that new Oriflainme of his ; then to read or mumble something about the King's peace ; and, after cer- | tain pauses, serve any undispersing Assemblage with musket-shot, { or whatever shot will disperse it. A decisive Law ; and most just \ on one proviso: that all Patrollotism be of God, and all mob- '| assembhng be of the Devil ; otherwise not so just. Mayor Bailly I be unwilling to use it ! Hang not out that new Oriflamme,y?^2:w not oigold but of the want of gold ! The thrice-blessed Revolu- tion is do7te, thou thinkest } If so it will be well with thee. But now let no mortal say henceforth that an august National ; Assembly wants riot : all it ever wanted was riot enough to bal- ance Court-plotting ; all it now wants, of Heaven or of Earth, is to get its theory of defective verbs nerfectcd. CHAPTER in. THE MUSTER. With Famine and a Const-itutional theory of defective verb: . going on, all other excitement. is conceivable. A universal shak - ing and sifting of French Existence this is: in the course ol which, for one thing, what a multitude of low-lying figures an sifted to the top, and set busily to work there! *2ist October, 1789 {Mojtiteur, No. 76X THE MUSTER. 17 Dogleech Marat, now far-seen as Simon Stylites, we already know ; him and others, raised aioft. The mere sample, these, of what is coming, of what continues coming, upwards from the realm of Night !— Chaumette, by and by Anaxagoras Chaumette, one already descries: mellifluous in street- gi oups ; not now a sea-boy on the high and giddy mast : a mellifluous tribune of the common people, w4th long curling locks, on bourne-^x.o]x^ of the thoroughfares; able sub-editor too; who shall rise— to the very gallows. Clerk Tallien, he also is become sub-editor ; shall becom.e able editor ; and more. Bibliopolic Momoro, Typogra- phic Pruhomme see new trades opening. Collot d'Herbois, tearing a passion to rags, pauses on the Thespian boards ; listens, with that black bushy head, to the sound of the world's drama : shall the Mimetic become Real } Did ye hiss him, O men of Lyons } * Better had ye clapped ! Happy now, indeed, for all manner of ■mi77ietic, half-original men ! Tumid blustering, with more or less of sincerity, which need not be entirely sincere, yet the sincerer the better, is like to go far. Shall we say, the Revolution-element works itself rarer and rarer ; so that only lighter and lighter bodies will float in it ; till at last the mere blown-bladder is your only swimmer.^ Limitation of mind, then vehemence, promptitude, audacity, shall all be available ; to which add only these two : cunning and good lungs. Good fortune must be presupposed. Accordingly, of all classes the rising one, we observe, is now the Attorney class • witness Bazires, Carriers, Fouquier-Tinvilles, Bazoche-Captain Bourdons : more than enough. Such figures shall Night, from her wonder-bearmg bosom, emit ; swarm after swarm. Of another deeper and deepest swarm, not yet dawned on the astonished eye; of pilfering Candle-snuffers. Thief-valets, disfrocked Ca- puchins, and so many Hebcrts, Henriots, Ronsins, Rossicrnols let us, as long as possible, forbear speaking. Thus over France, all stirs that has what the Physiologists call irritabzhty m it : how much more all wherein irritability has perfected Itself into vitality ; into actual vision, and force that can will! All stirs; and if not in Paris, flocks thither. Great and 'greater waxes President Danton in his Cordeliers Section • his rhetorical tropes are all ' gigantic energy flashes from black brows, menaces in his athletic figure; rolls in the sound of his v-oice ' reverberating from the domes ;' this man also, like Aiirabeau, has a natural eye, and begins to see whither Constitu- aonahsm is tending, though with a wish in it different from iMirabeau s. Remark, on the other hand, how General Dumouriez has quit- -ed Normandy and the Cherbourg Breakwater, to come— whither A C may guess. It is his second or even third trial at Paris, since 'IS New Era began; but now it is in right earnest, for he has ted all else. W iry, elastic unwearied man ; whose life was but ittle and a march ! No, not a creature of Choiseul s ; " the ^Buzot, Mcmoires (Paris, 1S23), p. 90. i8 THE FEAST OF PIKES, creature of God and of my sword,"— he fiercely answered in old days. Overf ailing- Corsican batteries, in the deadly fire-hail; wriggling invincible from under his horse, at Closterkamp of the Netherlands, though tethered with crushed stirrup-iron and * nineteen wounds tough, minatory, standing at bay, as forlorn hope, on the skirts of Poland; intriguing, battling in cabinet and field ; roaming far out, obscure, as King's spial, or sitting sealed up, enchanted in Bastille ; fencing, pamphleteering, scheming and struggling from the very birth of him,* — the man has come thus far. How repressed, how irrepressible ! Like some incarnate spirit in prison, which indeed he was ; hewing on granite walls for deliverance ; striking fire flashes from them. And now has the general earthquake rent his cavern too } Twenty years younger, what might he not have done ! But his hair has a shade of gray ; \ his way of thought is all hxed, military. He can grow no further, - and the new v;orld is in such growth. We will name him, on the ' whole, one of Heaven's Swiss ; without faith ; wanting above all _ things work, v/ork on any side. Work also is appointed him ; and-! he will do it. - Not from over France only are the unrestful flocking towards ; Paris ; but from all sides of Europe. Where the carcase is, ^ thither will the eagles gather. Think how many a Spanish " Guzman, Martinico Fournier named ' Fournier /Vi/;//^';"/6*<^/;^,' ^ Engineer Miranda from the very Andes, were flocking or had ' flocked ! Walloon Pereyra might boast of the strangest parent- age : him, they say, Prince Kaunitz the Diplomatist heedlessly dropped;' like ostrich-egg, to be hatched of Chance— into an Q%'ix\Qh.-eater I Jewish or German Froys do business in the great Cesspool of Agio; which Cesspool this AssignaU fiat has quickened, into a Mother of dead dogs. Swiss Claviere could found no Socinian Genevese Colony in Ireland;- but he paused, years ago, prophetic before the Minister's Hotel at Paris ; and said, it was borne on his mind that he one day was to be Minister, and laughed.f Swiss Pachc, on the other hand, sits sleekheaded, frugal ; the wonder of his own alle}/-, and even of« neighboring ones for humility of mind, and a thought deeper than most men's : sit there, Tartuffe, till w^anted ! Ye Italian Dufournys, Flemish Prolys, flit hither all ye bipeds of prey! Come whosesoever head is hot ; thou of mind ungaverned, be it chaos as of undevelopment or chaos as of ruin ; the man who cannot get known, the man who is too well known ; if thou have any vendible faculty, nay if thou have but edacity and loquacity, come ! They come ; with hot unutterabilities in their heart ; as Pilgrims towards a miraculous shrine. Nay how many come as vacant Strollers, aimless, of whom Europe is full merely towards something! For benighted fowls, when you beat their bushes, rush towards any lijrht. Thus Frederick Baron Trenck too is here ; mazed, purblind, from the ceils of Magdeburg ; Minotauric ' * Dumouriez, Memo'res, \, 28, &c. \ Dumont, Souvenirs srtr Miyabeaii, p. 399. THE MUSTER. 19 cells, and his Ariadne lost ! Singular to say, Trenck, in these years, sells wme ; not indeed in bottle, but in wood. Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her live- saving Needham; to whom was solemnly presented a * civic ' sword,'— long since rusted into nothingness. Her Paine • rebel- lious Staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single Needle- man, did by his ' Conifnon Sejtse' Pamphlet, free America -—that he can and will free all this World ; perhaps even the ' other. Price- Stanhope Constitutional Association sends over to congratu- late ;* welcomed by National Assembly, though they are but a London Club ; whom Burke and Toryism eye askance. On thee too, for country's sake, O Chevalier John Paul be a , word spent, or misspent ! In faded naval uniform, Paul Vones I lingers visible here ; like a wine-skin from which the wine is all : drawn. Like the ghost of himself ! Low is his once loud bruit • ; scarcely audible, save, with extreme tedium, in ministerial ante- \ chambers ; m this or the other charitable dining-room, mindful of the past. What changes; culminatings and declinings ' Not I now, poor Paul, thou lookest wistful over the Solway brine by the i foot of native Criftel, into blue mountainous Cumberland, iAto blue ( Inhnitude ; environed with thrift, with humble friendhness • thv- . self, young fool, longing to be aloft from it, or even to be away irom It. \ es, beyond that sapphire Promontory, which men name St. Bees, which is not sapphire either, but dull sandstone, when one gets close to it, there is a world. Which world thou too shalt taste of !— From yonder White Haven rise his smoke-clouds • ominous though metfectual. Proud Forth quakes at his bellying sails ; had not the wind suddenly shifted. Flamborough reapers i homegomg, pause on the hill-side : for what sulphur-cloud is that that defaces the sleek sea ; sulphur-cloud spitting streaks of fire ^ A sea cockfight it is, and of the hottest ; where British Serai^is and 1^ rench-American Bon Ho7nme Richard do lash and throttle ,each other, m then* fashion; and lo the desperate valour has •suffocated the deliberate, and Paul Jones too is of the Kino-s of the Sea ! ^ ^The Euxine, the Meotian waters felt thee next, and long-skirted ; -urks, 0 Paul; and thy fiery soul has wasted itself in thousand iContradictions ;— to no purpose. For, in far lands, with scarlet |Nassau-Sregens, with sinful Imperial Catherines, is not the heart- jbroken, even as at home with the mean Poor Paul ! huncrer and dispiritment track thy sinking footsteps : once or at mos^ twice in this Revolution-tumult the figure of thee emerges ; mute, ghost- : Ike, as with stars dim-twinklmg through/ And then, when the • light IS gone quite out, a National Legislature grants ' ceremonial tuneral ! As good had been the natural Presbyterian Kirk-bell and SIX feet of Scottish earth, among the dust of thy loved ones' \--^uch world lay beyond the Promontory of St. Bees. Such is |tne lite of sinful mankind here below. t Moriitatr, lo Novembre, 7 Decembre, 1789. §6 THE FEAST OF PIKES. But of all strangers, far the notablest for us is Baron Jean Baptiste de Clootz; — or, dropping baptisms and feudalisms, World- Citizen Anacharsis Clootz, from Cleves, Him mark, judicious Reader. Thou hast known his Uncle, sharp-sighted thorough- i going Cornelius de Pauw, who mercilessly cuts down cherished | illusions ; and of the finest antique Spartans, will make mere | modern cutthroat Mainots.^ The like stuff is in Anacharsis : hot I metal ; full of scoriae, which should and could have been smelted | out, but which will not. He has wandered over this terraqueous t Planet ; seeking, one may say, the Paradise we lost long ago. i He has seen English Burke ; has been seen of the Portugal In- \ c^uisition ; has roamed, and fought, and written ; is writing, among i other things, ^ Evidences of the Jkfa/wmelan Religion.' But now, ?i like his Scythian adoptive godfather, he finds himself in the Paris i Athens ; surely, at last, the haven of his soul. A dashing man, f beloved at Patriotic dinner-tables ; with gaiety, nay with humour ; i headlong, trenchant, of free purse ; in suitable costume ; though i what mortal ever more despised costumes? Under all costumes ^ Anacharsis seeks the man ; not Stylites Marat will more "freely trample costumes, if they hold no man. This is the faith of Ana- j charsis : That there is a Paradise discoverable ; that all costumes :t ought to hold men. O Anacharsis, it is a headlong, swift-going i faith. Mounted thereon, meseems, thou art bound hastily for the City of Nowhere J and wilt arrive / At best, we may say, arrive > in good riding attitude j which indeed is something. So many new persons, and new things have come to occupy this Prance. Her old Speech and Thought, and Activity which springs from those, are all changing ; fermenting towards unknowri issues. To the dullest peasant, as he sits sluggish, overtoiled, b' his evening hearth, one idea has come : that of Chateaus burnt of Chateaus combustible. How altered all Coffeehouses, in Pre vince or Capital ! The Autre de Procope has now other questions than the Three Stagyrite Unities to settle ; not theatre-controver- sies, but a world-controversy : there, in the ancient pigtail mode- or with modern Brutus' heads, do well-frizzed logicians hold hub- bub, and Chaos umpire sits. The ever-enduring Melody of Paris Saloons has got a new ground-tone : ever-enduring ; which has been heard, and by the listening Heaven too, since Julian the Apostate's time and earlier ; mad now as formerly. Ex-Censor Suard, i5';r-Censor, for we have freedom of the Press; he may be seen there ; impartial, even neutral. Tyrant Grimm rolls large eyes, over a questionable coming Time. Atheist Naigeon, beloved disciple of Diderot, crows, in his small difficult way, heralding glad davvn.f But, on the other hand, how many Morellcts, Marmontels, who had sat all their life hatching Philo- sophe eggs, cackle now, in a state bordering on distraction, at the * De Pauw, RtU hcrcfies sur les Grecs, &c. _ J f Nciigeon : Addrc^sc d I' Asscmbliic Nationate (Faxis, ijgo) sur la liberty dci opinions. JOURNALISM. 21 brood they have brought out ! * It was so delightful to have one's Philosophe Theorem demonstrated, crowned in the saloons : and now an infatUcited people will not continue speculative, but have Practice ? There also observe Preceptress Genlis, or Sillery, or Sillery- Genlis, — for our husband is both Count and Marquis, and we have more than one title. Pretentious, frothy ; a puritan yet creedless ; darkening counsel by words without wisdom ! For, it is in that thin element of the Sentimentalist and Distinguished- Female that Sillery- Genlis works ; she would gladly be sincere, yet can grov/ no sincerer than sincere-cant : sincere-cant of many forms, ending in the devotional form. For the present, on a neck still of mode- rate whiteness, slie wears as jewel a miniature Bastille, cut on mere sandstone, but then actual Bastille sandstone. M. le Mar- quis is one of d^Orleans's errandmen ; in National Assembly, and elsewhere. Madame, for her part, trains up a youthful d' Orleans generation in what superfinest morality one can ; gives meanwhile rather enigmatic account of fair Mademoiselle Pamela, the Daugh- ter whom she has adopted. Thus she, in Palais Royal saloon whither, we remark, d'Orleans himself, spite of Lafayette, has re- turned from that English ' mission ' of his : surely no pleasant mission : for the Enghsh would not speak to him ; and Saint Hannah More of England, so unlike Saint Sillery-Genhs of France, saw him shunned, in Vauxhall Gardens, like one pest-struck,t and ills red-blue impassive visage waxing hardly a shade bluer. CHAPTER IV. JOURNALISM. As for Constitutionahsm, with its National Guards, it is doing 'Vhat it can ; and has enough to do : it must, as ever, with one land wave persuasively, repressing Patriotism ; and keep the )ther clenched to menace Royahst plotters. A most delicate task ; equiring tact. Thus, if People's-friend Marat has to-day his writ of 'prise de corps, or seizure of body,' served on him, and dives out of sight, o-morrow he is left at large ; or is even encouraged, as a sort of jandog whose baying may be useful. President Danton, in open ■ ;iall,with reverberating voice, declares that, in a case like Marat's, ■i 'force may be resisted by force." Whereupon the Chatelet serves Danton also with a writ ;— which however, as the whole Cordeliers , District responds to it, what Constable will be prompt to execute? ji Twice more, on new occasions, does the Chatelet launch its writ ; i* See Marmontel, Mhnoires, passim ; Morellet, Mdmoires, Sec. + Hannah More's Li/e and Correspo?ide7ice, ii. c. 5. THE FEAST OF PIKES.^ and twice ^ ■ n : the body of Danton cannot be seued b ( Chatelet! b . - - ^i, ^>hould he even fly for a season, shall behold the Chatelet .tseii tiung into limbo. Municipality and Brissot, meanwhile, are far on with tae.r Mu^icS Constitution. The Sixty Dhtricts shall become Forty- Xa^iLtiom ; much shall be adjusted, and Paris have its Con- ; ftu ion A Constitution wholly Elective ; as indeed all French \ Government shall and must be. And yet, one fatal element ha been roduced : that of citoyen act,/. No man who does not pay he"«^r' d^anrent, or yearly ta^ equal to three days' labour, shall be other than a passive citizen : not the slightest vote for h.mj were he J}/;'^, all the year round, with sledge hammer, with forest- eveUin- axe f ' Unheard of ! cry Patriot journals. \es truly, my PatiS°Fr1ends, if Liberty, the passion and prayer of all mens Lu means Liberty to send your fifty-thousandth part of a new 'ron'ue-fencer into National Debating-club, then be the gods wit- nessfve are hardly entreated. Oh, if in National (f^^ Africans name it , such blessedness is venly fat tyrant would deny it to Son of Adam ! Nay, might there not be a Female Parlir.ment too, with 'screams from the Opposition 'benches ' and ' the honourable Member borne out in hysterics r! a Chi dren's Parliament would 1 gladly consent ; or even lower i ve wished it. Beloved Brothers ! L.b"ty, one migln ^^^^^^ •ictuallv as the ancient wise men said, of Heaven. On this Lanh where thinks the enlightened public, did a brave little Dame de ; sSl (no Necker's Daughter, but a far shrewder than she) find tt'neSest approach to Libert'y ? A^'er mature computati^^^^^^^^^^ as Uilworth's, her answer is In the Bastille* Of Heaven -nc-vprr^anv askinf'-. Wo that they should tor that is tn^ ;ery mi^e^y !' ^' Of Heaven " means much ; share in the National Pilaver it may, or may as probably wt-^ mean, "^tne SanscuVottic bo^h that cannot fail to flo-^^ - J«t™ Thp voire of the People bcms; the voice oi God, shall not suca dMneToice make itself heard? To the ends of France ; and in ; many dXts as when the first great Babel w^s to be built ! Some loud as the lion ; some sniall as the ^"ck.ng fo^ himself has his instructive Journal or Journals, with *- eneya h dmen working in them ; and withal has quarrels enough with Daine le Jay, his Female Bookseller, so ultra-comphant other- ''''''Kin'^s-mend Royou still prints himself. Barr^re sheds tears of ampHght^ isstlls' the^ useful Monitenr, f-Xf^l" slfe in S diurnat: with facts and few commentaries ; official, sate in iiw, * f-«!c OcStriiil : AUmolres (I'uris, 1S21). i. 169-280. S e Uuiiioiit : Suuvsnirs, 6. JOl/RXAL/SAf. 23 n.iddle Its able Editors sunk long since, recoverably or irre- coverably, in deep darkness. Acid Loustalot, with his ' vigour,' as of young sloes, shall never ripen, but die untimely : his Prudhorame, however, will not let that Revolutions de Paris die ; but edit it himself, with much else,— dull-blustering Printer though he be. Of Cassandra-Marat we have spoken often ; yet the most sur- prismg truth remains to be spoken : that he actually does not w;jnt sense ; but, with croaking gelid throat, croaks out masses of the truth, on several things. Nay sometimes, one might almost fancv he had a perception of humour, and were laughing a little, far down m his inner man. Camille is wittier than ever, and more outspoken, cynical ; yet sunny as ever. A ' light melodious crea- ture; * born,' as he shall yet say with bitter tears, ' to write verses;' light Apollo, so clear, soft-lucent, in this war of the Titans, wherein he shall not conquer ! Folded and hawked Newspapers exist in all countries ; but, in such a Journalistic element as this of France, other and stranger sorts are to be anticipated. What says the English reader to a Journal- Afiiche, Placard journal; legible to him that has no half- penny; in bright prism.atic colours, calling the eye from afar } Such, m the coming months, as Patriot Associatiens, public and private, advance, and can subscribe funds, shall plenteously hano- themselves out: leaves, limed leaves, to catch what they can'^T The very Government shall have its Pasted Journal; Louvet, busy yet with a new ' charming romance,' shall write Sejilinelles and post tnem with effect ; nay Bertrand de Moleville, in his extremitv shall stiil more cunningly try it.* Great is Journalism.. Is not every Aoie Editor a Ruier of the World, being a persuader of it • though self-elected, yet sanctioned, by the sale of his Numbers ^ Whorn indeed the world has the readiest method of deposing, should need be : that of merely d.o\Xi Anaxagoras Chaumette we saw mounted on bourne- stones while Tallien worked sedentary at the subeditorial desk. In any corner of the civilized world, a tub can be inverted, and an articulate-speaking biped mount thereon. Nay, with contrivance, a portable trestle, or folding stool can be procured, for love or money; this the peripatetic Orator can take m his hand, and, driven out here, set it up again there ; saying mildly, with a Sage Bias, Omnia mea mecu77t porto. Such is Tournahsm, hawked, pasted, spoken. How changed since One old Metra walked this same Tuileries Garden, m gilt cocked hat, with Journal at his nose, or held loose-folded behind his back ; and was a notability of Paris, ' Metra the Newsman ; * and Louis himself was wont to say : Qu'en dU Melra? the first Venetian News-sheet was sold for ^gazsa, or farthing, and named Gazette ! We live in a fertile w^orld. ' CHAPTER V. CLUBBISM. WHERE the heart is full, it seeks, for a thousand reasons in a thousand ways, to impart itself. How sweet, indispensable, in such cases, is fellowship; soul mystically strengthenmg soul The meditative Germans, some think, have been of opmion that Enthusiasm in the general means simply excessive Congregating 1-Schwarmerey or Swarming, At any rate, do we not see glim- mering half-red embers, if laid together, get into the brightest ^ such^^^^ France, gregarious Reunions will needs multiply, in- tensify French Life will step out of doors, and, from domestic, become a public Ch.h Life Old Clnlxs, ^hich already g^^^^^^^^^ natcd, grovv and ilourish ; new .every where bud forth, It is the * Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, viii. 483 *, Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c, CLUB B ISM. 25 sure sympton of Social Unrest : in such way, most infallibly of all, does Social Unrest exhibit itself ; find solacement, and also nutriment. In every French head there hangs now, whether for terror or for hope, some prophetic picture of a New France : prophecy which brings, nay which almost is, its own fulfilment ; and in all ways, consciously and unconsciously, works towards that. Observe, moreover, how the Aggregative Principle, let it be but deep enough, goes on aggregating, and this even in a geometrical progression : how when the w^hole world, in such a plastic time, is forming itself into Clubs, some One Club, the strongest or luckiest, shall, by friendly attracting, by victorious compelling, grow ever stronger, till it become immeasurably strong ; and all the others, with their strength, be either lovingly absorbed into it, or hostilely abolished by it ! This if the Club-spirit is universal ; if the time is plastic. Plastic enough is the time, universal the Club-spirit : such an all-absorbing, paramount One Club cannot be wanting. What a progress, since the first salient-point of the Breton Committee I It worked long it secret, not languidly ; it has come with the National Assembly to Paris ; calls itself Club ; calls itself in imitation, as is thought, of those generous Price- Stanhope English, French Revolution Club j but soon, with more originality, Club of Frie7tds of the Constitution. Moreover it has leased for itself, at a fair rent, the Hall of the Jacobin's Convent, one of our * superfluous edifices ' and does therefrom now, in these spring months, begin shining out on an admiring Paris. And so, by degrees, under the shorter popular title of facobins' Club, it shall become * emorable to all times and lands. Glance into the interior : strongly yet modestly benched and seated ; as many as Thirteen Hundred chosen Patriots ; Assembly Memibers not a few. Barnave, the two Lameths are seen there ; occasionally Mirabeau, perpetually Robespierre ; also the ferret-visage of Fouquier-Tinville with other attorneys ; Anacharsis of Prussian Scythia, and miscellaneous Patriots^ — though all is yet in the most : perfectly clean-washed --tate ; decent, nay dignified. President on I platform, President's bell are^ not wanting ; oratorical Tribune I high-raised ; nor strangers' galleries, wherein also sit women. Has any French Antiquarian Society preserved that written Lease of the Jacobins Convent Hall ? Or was it, unluckier even than Magna Charta, dipt by sacrilegious Tailors ? Universal History is not indifferent to it. These Friends of the Constitution have met mainly, as their name may foreshadow, to look after Elections when an Election comes, and procure fit men ; but likewise to consult generally that the Commonweal take no damage ; one as yet sees not how. For indeed let two or three gather together any where, if it be not in Church, where all are bound to the passive state ; no mortal can say accurately, themselves as little as .any, for what they are gathered. How often has the broached barrel proved not to be lOr joy and heart effusion, but for duel and head-breakage ; and 26 THE FEAST OF PIKES. the promised feast become a Feast of the Lapithae ! This Jacobins Club, which at first shone resplendent, and was thought to be a new celestial Sun for enlightening the Nations, had, as things all have, to work through its appointed phases : it burned unfortu- nately more and more lurid, more sulphurous, distracted ; — and swam at last, through the astonished Heaven, like a Tartarean Portent, and lurid-burning Prison of Spirits in Pain. Its style of eloquence ? Rejoice, Reader, that thou knowest it not, that thou canst never perfectly know. The Jacobins pub- lished a Journal of Debates, where they that have the heart may examine : impassioned, dull-droning Patriotic-eloquence ; implac- able, unfertile — save for Destruction, which was indeed its work : most Avearisome, though most deadly. Be thankful that Oblivion covers so much ; that all carrion is by and by buried in the green Earth's bosom, and even makes her grow the greener. The Jacobins are buried ; but their work is not ; it continues ' making 'the tour of the world,' as it can. It might be seen lately, for instance, with bared bosom and death-defiant eye, as far on as Greek Missolonghi ; and, strange enough, old slumbering Hellas was resuscitated, into so77i7ia7nbulism which will become clear wakefulness, by a voice from the Rue St. Honore ! All dies, as we often say ; except the spirit of man, of what man does. Thus has not the very House of the Jacobins vanished ; scarcely linger- ing in a few old men's memories ? The St. Honor^ Market has brushed it away, and now where dull- droning eloquence, like a Trump of Doom, once shook the world, there is pacific chaffering for poultry and greens. The sacred National Assembly Hall itself has becorne common ground ; President's platform permeable to wain and dustcart ; for the Rue de Rivoli runs there. Verily, at Cockcrow (of this Cock or the other), all Apparitions do melt and dissolve in space. The Paris became *the Mother- Society, Societe-Mere ;^ and had as many as ' three hundred ' shrill-tongued daughters in * direct correspondence' with her. Of indirectly corresponding, what we may call grand-daughters and minute progeny, she counted 'forty-four thousand ! '—But for the present we note only two things : the first of them a mere anecdote. One night, a couple of brother Jacobins are doorkeepers ; for the members take this post of duty and honour in rotation, and admit none that have not tickets : one doorkeeper was the worthy ieur Lais, a patriotic Opera-singer, stricken in years, whose windpipe is long since closed without result ; the other, young, and named Louis Philippe, d'Orleans's firstborn, has in this latter time, after un- heard-of destinies, become Citizen-King, and struggles to rule for a season. All-flesh is grass ; higher reedgrass or creeping herb. The scconJ thing we li ive to note is historical : that the Mother-Society, even ii. litis i^s (-nhli^ent period, cannot content all Patriots. Alread) !(. must throw olT, so to speak, two dis- satisfied swarms ; a swarm to the right, a swarm to the left. One party, which thinks the Jacobins Jvikcwarm, constitutes itself into Club of the Cordeliers J hotter Club: it is Danton's element; JE LE JURE. 27 with whom goes Desmoiilins. The other party, aoaiu, which thinks the Jacobins scalding-hot, tiies off to the right, and l:)ecomes ' Ckib of 1789, Friends of the Monarchic Constitution.' They are afterwards named ' Feuillans Club ' their place of meeting being the Feuillans Convent. Lafayette is, or becomes, their chief-man; supported by the respectable Patriot everywhere, by the mass of Property and Intelligence,— with the most flourishing prospects. They, in these June days of 1790, do, in the Palais Royal, dine solemnly with open vvindov/s ; to the cheers of the people ; with toasts, with inspiriting songs,— with one song at least, among the feeblest ever sung.* They shall, in due time be hooted forth, over the borders, into Cimmerian Night. Another expressly Monarchic or Royalist Club, ' Chib des Monarcliiens^ though a Club of ample funds, and all sitting in damask sofas, cannot realise the smallest momentary cheer ; realises only scoffs and groans till, ere long, certain Patriots in disorderly sufficient number, proceea thither, for a night or for nights, and groan it out of pain. Vivacious a] one shall the Mother-Society and her family be. The very Cordeliers may, as it were, return into her bosom, which will have grovrn warm enough. Fatal-looking ! Are not such Societies an incipient New Order of Society itself? The Aggregative Principle anew at work in a Society grown obsolete, cracked asunder, dissolving into rubbish and primary atoms ? CHAPTER VI. JE LE JURE. With these signs of the times, is it not surprising that the dominant feeling all over France was still continually Hope ? O blessed Hope, sole boon of man ; whereby, on his strait prison walls, are painted beautiful fr.r-stretching landscapes ; and into the night of very Death is shed holiest dawn ! Thou art to ail an inde- feasible possession in this God's-world : to the wise a sacred Constantine's-banner, written on the eternal skies ; under which they shall conquer, for the battle itself is victory : to the foolish some secular 7nirai^e, or shadow of still waters, painted on the parched Earth ; whereby at least their dusty pilgrimage, if devious, becomes cheerfuller, becomes possible. In the death-tumults of a sinking Society, French Hope sees only the birth-struggles of a new unspeakably better Society ; and sings, with full assurance of faith, her brisk Melody, which some inspired fiddler has in these very days composed for her, — tb^ * Hist. Pari. vi. 334. ?8 THE FEAST OF PIKES. world-famous ca-tra. Yes ; 'that will go and then there will comc'-l All men hope : even Marat hopes— that Patriotism will take muff and dirk. King Louis is not without hope : in the chapter of chances ; in a flight to some Bouille ; in getting popu- larized at Paris. But what a hoping People he had, judge by the fact, and series of facts, now to be noted. Poor Louis, meaning the best, with little insight and even less determination of his own, has to follow, in that dim wayfaring of his, such signal as may be given him ; by backstairs Royahsm, by official or backstairs Constitutionahsm, whichever for the month may have convinced the royal mind. If flight to Bouille, and (horrible to think !) a drawi7tgoi the civil sword do hang as theory, portentous in the background, much nearer is this fact of these Twelve Hundred Kings, who sit in the Salle de Manege. Kings uncontrollable by him, not yet irreverent to him. Could kind management of these but prosper, how much better were it than armed Emigrants, Turin-intrigues, and the help of Austria ! Nay, are the two hopes inconsistent ? Rides in the suburbs, we have found, cost little ; yet they always brought vivats.'' Still cheaper is a soft word ; such as has many times turned away wrath. In these rapid days, while France is all getting divided into Depart- ments, Clergy about to be remodelled. Popular Societies rising, and Feudalism and so much else is ready to be hurled into the melting-pot,— might one not try } On the 4th of February, accordingly, M. le President reads to his National Assembly a short autograph, announcing that his Majesty will step over, quite in an unceremonious way, probably about noon. Think, therefore, Messieurs, what it may mean ; especially, how ye will get the Hall decorated a httle. Ihe Secretaries' Bureau can be shifted down from the platform ; on the •President's chair be slipped this cover of velvet, ' of a violet colour ' sprigged with gold fleur-de-lys ; '—for indeed M. le President has had previous notice underhand, and taken counsel with Doctor Guillotin. Then some fraction of ' velvet carpet,' of like texture and colour, cannot that be spread in front of the chair, where the Secretaries usually sit? So has judicious Guillotin advised : and the effect is found satisfactory. Moreover, as it is probable that his Majesty, in spite of the fleur-de-lys-velvet, wfll stand and not sit at all, the President himself, in the interim, presides standing. And so, while some honourable Member is discussing, say, the division of a Department, Ushers announce : " His Majesty ! In person, with small suite, enter Majesty : the honourable Mem- ber stops short ; the Assembly starts to its feet ; the Twelve Hundred Kings ' almost all,' and the (;alleries no less, do welcome the Restorer of French Liberty with loyal shouts. His Majesty's Speech, in diluted conventional phraseology, expresses this mainly : That he, most of all Frenchmen, rejoices to see France getting regenerated ; is sure, at the same time, that they will deal gently with her in the process, and not regenerate her roughly- .S(^c Berlrand-Moleville, i. 241, &C. JE LE JURE, Such was his Majesty's Speech : the feat he performed was coming to speak it, and going back again. Surely, except to a very hoping People, there was not much here to build upon. Yet what did they not build ! The fact that the King has spoken, that he has voluntarily come to speak, how inexpressibly encouraging ! Did not the glance of his royal countenance, like concentrated sunbeams, kindle all hearts in an august Assembly ; nay thereby in an inflammable enthusiastic France ? To move ' Deputation of thanks ' can be the happy lot of but one man ; to go in such Deputation the lot of not many. The Deputed have gone, and returned with what highest-flown compliment they could ; whom also the Queen met, Dauphin in hand. And still do not our hearts burn with insatiable gratitude ; and to one other man a still higher blessedness suggests itself: To move that we all renew the National Oath. Happiest honourable Member, with his word so in season as word seldom was ; magic Fugleman of a whole National Assembly, which sat there bursting to do somewhat ; Fugleman of a whole onlooking France ! The President swears ; declares that every one shall swear, in distinct je le jure. Nay the very Gallery sends him down a written slip signed, with their Oath on it ; and as the Assembly now casts an eye that, way, the Gallery all stands up and swears again. And then out of doors, consider at the Hotel- de-Ville how Bailly, the great Tennis-Court swearer, again swears, towards nightful, with all the Municipals, and Heads of Districts assembled there. And ' M. Danton suggests that the public * would like to partake : ' whereupon Bailly, with escort of Twelve, steps forth to the great outer staircase ; sways the ebullient multitude with stretched hand : takes their oath, with a thunder of ' rolling drums,' with shouts that rend the welkin. And on all streets the glad people, with moisture and fire in their eyes, * spontaneously formed groups, and swore one another,'"^ — and the whole City was illuminated. "This was the Fourth of February 1790 : a day to be marked white in Constitutional annals. Nor is the illumination for a night only, but partially or totally it lasts a series of nights. For each District, the Electors of each District, will swear specially ; and always as the District swears ; it illuminates itself Behold them. District after District, in some open square, where the Non-Electing People can all see and join : with their uplifted right hands, and je le ju^^e : with rolling drums, with embracings, and that infinite hurrah of the enfranchised,— which any tyrant that there may be can consider ! Faithful to the King, to the Law, to the Constitution which the National Assembly shall make. Fancy, for example, the Professors of Universities parading the streets with their young France, and swearing, in an enthusiastic manner, not without tumult. By a larger exercise of fancy, expand duly this little word : The like was repeated in every Town and District of France ! Nay one Patriot Mother, in Lagnon of Brittany, asscmljles her ten children ; and, with her own aged * Newspapers (in Hist. Pari. iv. 445). 30 THE FEASr OF PIKES. hand, swears them all herself, the highsouled venerable womaa Of all which., moreover, a National Asseu^bly must be eloquently apprised. Such three weeks of swearing ! Saw the sun ever such a swearing people ? Have they been bit by a swearmg tarantula? No : but they are men and Frenchmen; they have Hope ; and, singular to say, they have Faith, were it only m the Gospel according to Jean Jacques. O my Brothers ! would to Heaven it were even as ye think and have sworn ! But there are Lovers' Oaths, which, had they been true as love itself, cannot be kept ; not to speak of Dicers' Oaths, also a known sort. CHAPTER VII.- PRODIGIES. To such length had the Contrat Social brought it, in beheving hearts. Man, as is well said, lives by faith ; each generation has " its own faith, more or less ; and laughs at the faith of its prede- ; cessor,-~most unwisely. Grant indeed that this faith in the Social' Contract belongs to the stranger sorts ; that an unborn generation : may very wisely, if not laugh, yet stare at it, and piously consider. \ For, alas, what is Contrat ? If all men were such that a mere spoken or sworn Contract v/ould bind them, all men were then true men, and Government a superfluity. Not what thou and I have promised to each other, but what the balance of our forces can make us perform to each other : that, in so sinful a world as ours, is the thing to be counted on. But above all, a People and a Sovereign promising to one another; as if a whole People, changing from generation to generation, nay from hour to hour, could ever by any method be made to speak or promise ; and to speak mere solecisms : " We, be the Heavens witness, which Heavens however do no miracles now ; we, ever-changing Millions, will allow thee, changeful Unit, to force us or govern us ! " The world has perhaps seen few faiths comparable to that. So nevertheless had the world then construed the matter. Had they not^o construed it, how different had their hopes been, their attempts, their results ! But so and not otherwise did the Upper Powers will it to be. Freedom by Social Contract : such was verily the Gospel of that Era. And all men had believed in it, as in a Heaven's Glad-tidings men should ; and with overflowing heart and uphfted voice clave to it, and stood fronting Time and Eternity on it. Nay smile not ; or only with a smile sadder than tears ! This too was a better faith than the one it had replaced : than faith merely in the Everlasting Nothing and man's Digestive Power ; lower than which no faith can go. Not that such universally prevalent, universally jurant, feehng of PRODIGIES, 31 Hope, could be a unanimous one. Far from that ! The time was ominous : social dissolution near and certain ; social renovation still a problem, difficult and distant even though sure. But if ominous to some clearest onlooker, whose faith stood not vjith one side or with the other, nor in the ever- vexed jarring of Greek with Greek at all, — how unspeakably ominous to dim RoyaHst partici- pators ; for v/hom Royalism was Mankind's palladium ; for whom, whh the abolition of Most-Christian Kingship and Most-Talleyrand Bishopship, all loyal obedience, all religious faith was to expire, and final Night envelope the Destinies of Man ! On serious hearts, of that persuasion, the matter sinks down deep ; prompting, as we have scon, to backstairs Plots, to Emigration wilh pledge of war, to Monarchic Clubs ; nay to still madder things. The Spirit of Prophecy, for instance, had been considered extinct for some centuries : nevertheless these last-times, as indeed is the tendency of last-times, do revive it ; that so, of French mad things, we might have sample also of the maddest. In remote rural districts, whither Philosophism has not yet radiated, where a heterodox Constitution of the Clergy is bringing strife round the altar itself, and the very Church-bells are getting melted into small mxoney-coin, it appears probable that the End of the World cannot be far off. Deep-musing atribaliar old men, especially old women, hint in an obscure way that they know what they know. The Holy Virgin, silent so long, has not gone dumb and truly now, if ever more in this world, were the time for her to speak: One Prophetess, though careless Historians have omitted her name, condition, and whereabout, becomes audible to the general ear ; credible to not a few : credible to Friar Gerle, poor Patriot Chartreux, in the National .Assembly itself ! She, in Pythoness' recitative, with wildstaring eye, sings that there shall be a Sign ; that the heavenly Sun himself will hang out a Sign, or Mock-Sun, —which, many say, shall be stamped with the Head of hanged Favras. List, Dom Gerle, with that poor addled poll of thine ; list, O list ;— and hear nothing.* Notable however was that 'magnetic vellum, veliji viao-jictujac- of the Sieurs d'Hozicr and Petit-Jean, Parlementeers of Rouen. Sweet young d'Hozier, ' bred in the faith of his Missal, and of 'parchment genealogies,' and of parchment generally: adusi, melancholic, middle-aged Petit-Jean : why came these two to Saint^ Cloud, where his Majesty was hunting, on the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul ; and waited there, in antechambers, a wonder to whispering Swiss, the livelong day ; and even waited without the Grates, when turned out ; and had dismissed their valets to Paris, as with purpose of endless waiting t Thcv have a niao;netic vellum, these two ; whereon the Virgin, wonderfulfv cloihingherself in Mes- merean Caghostric Occult-Philosopb n 1 1 - 1 .ired them to jot down instructions and predictions for a \ ' -icd Kino-. To whom by Higher Order, they will thi. .ciu it; ^md save thJ Monarchy and World. Unaccountable pair of visual-objects ! \'e Should be men, and of the Eighteenth Century ; but your magnetic * Deux Amis, v. c. 7, 32 THE FEAST OF PIKES. vellum forbids us so to interpret. Say, are ye aught ? Thus ask the Guardhouse Captains, the Mayor of St. Cloud ; nay, at great length, thds asks the Committee of Researches, and not the Municipal, -but the National Assembly one. No distinct answer, for weeks. At last it becomes plain that the right ansvver is -nega- tive. Go, ye Chimeras, with your magnetic vellum ; sweet young Chimera, adust middle-aged one ! The Prison-doors are opeOo Hardly again shall ye preside the Rouen Chamber of Accounts ; but vanish obscurely into Limbo.* CHAPTER VHI. SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. Such dim masses, and specks of even deepest black, work in that white-hot glow of the French mind, now wholly in fusion, and co7t{\\^\oxi. Old women here swearing their ten children on the new Evangel of Jean Jacques ; old women there looking up for . Favras' Heads in the celestial Luminary : these are preternatural, signs, prefiguring somewhat. ' " ■ In fact, to the Patriot children of Hope themselves, it is un- i 'deniable that difficulties exist : emigrating Seigneurs ; Parlements ; in sneaking but most malicious mutiny (though the rope is round ' their neck) ; above all, the most decided ' deficiency of grains.' ' Sorrowful : but, to a Nation that hopes, not irremediable. To a Nation which is in fusion and ardent communion of thought ; which, for example, on signal of one Fugleman, will lift its right hand hke a drilled regiment, and swear and illuminate, till every village from Ardennes to the Pyrenees has rolled its village-drum, and sent up its little oath, and glimmer of tallow-illumination some fathoms into the reign of Night ! If grains are defective, the fault is not of Nature or National Assembly, but of Art and Antinational Intriguers. Such malign individuals, of the scoundrel species, have power to vex us, while the Constitution is a-making. Endure it, ye heroic Patriots : nay rather, why not cure it 1 Grains do grow, they lie extant there in sheaf or sack ; only that regraters and Royalist plotters, to pro- voke the people into illegality, obstruct the transport of grains. Quick, ye or;:^;mise(l Patriot Authorities, armed National Guards, meet togetlicr : unite your goodwill ; in union, is tenfold strength :' let the f:()n cent red flash of your Patriotism strike stealthy Scoun- drelism Ijlind, paralytic, as with a coup de soleil. Under which hat or nightcap of the Twenty- five millions, this pregnant Idea first rose, for in some one head it did rise, no man can now say. A most small idea, near at hand for the whole world: but a living one, lit ; and which waxed, whether into greatness or * Sec Deux Amis, v, 199. SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. not, into immeasurable size. When a Nation is in this state that the Fugleman can operate on it, what will the word in season, the act m season, not do ! It will grow verily, like the Boy's Bean in the Fairy-Tale, heaven-high, with habitations and adventures on It, in one night. It is nevertheless unfortunately still a Bean (for your long-lived Oak grows not so) ; and, the next night, it may lie felled, horizontal, trodden into common mud.— But remark, at least, how natural to any agitated Nation, which has Faith, this business of Covenanting is. The Scotch, believing in a righteous Heaven above them, and also in a Gospel, far other than the Jean-Jacques one, swore, in their extreme need, a Solemn League and Covenant,— as Brothers on the forlorn-hope, and im- minence of batde, who em.brace looking Godward ; and got the whole Isle to swear it ; and even, in their tough Old- Saxon Hebrew-Presbyterian way, to keep it more or less ;— for the thing, as such thmgs are, was heard in Heaven, and partially ratified there ; neither : : it yet dead, if thou wilt look, nor like to die. The French too, with their Gallic-Ethnic excitabihty and effervescence, have, as we have seen, real Faith, of a sort ; they are hard bestead, though in the middle of Hope : a National Solemn League and Covenant there may be in France too ; under how different con- ditions ; with hov/ different developement and issue ! Note, accordingly, the small commencement ; first spark of a mighty firework : for if the particular hat cannot be fixed upon, the particular District can. On the 29th day of last November, were National Guards by the thousand seen filing, from far and' near, With military music, with Municipal officers m tricolor sashes, to- wards and along the Rhone-stream, to the Httle town of Etoile. There with ceremonial evolution and manoeuvre, with farfaronad- mg, musketry-salvoes, and what else the Patriot genius could devise, they made oath and obtestation to stand faithfully by one another, under Law and King ; in particular, to have all manner of grains, while grains there were, freely circulated, in spite both of robber and regrater. This was the meeting of Etoile, in the mild end of November 1789. „ But now, if a mere empty Review, followed by Review-dinner, iball, and such gesticulation and flirtaUon as there maybe, interests jthe happy County-town, and makes it the envy of surrounding Lounty-towns, how much m.ore might this ! In a fortnight, larg-er Montelimart, half ashamed of itself, will do as^ good, and bett^er. On the Plain of MontJiimart, or what is equally sonorous, 'under I ' tne Walls of MontelimaiV the thirteenth of December sees new leathering and obtestation ; six thousand strong ; and now indeed, with these three remarkable improvements, as unanimously re- solved on there. First that the men of Montelimart do federate with the already federated men of Etoile. Second, that, implyinp- Clot expressing the circulation of grain, they ' swear in the face of • (^od and their Country ' with much more emphasis and compre- aensiveness, ' to obey all decrees of the National Assembly, and • see them obeyed, till death, jusqu'd la mort: Third, and most VOL. lU C 34 THE FEAST OF PIKES. important, that official record of all this be solemnly delivered in to ?he National Assembly, to M. de Lafayette, and to the Ives ore ' of French Liberty ; ' who shall all take what comfort frotn it they can. Thus does larger Montelimart vindicate its Patriot im- portance, and maintain its rank in the mumcipal scale.- And so, with the New-year, the signal is hoisted ; for is not «. National Assembly, and solemn deliverance there at lowest a National Telegraph ? Not only gram shall circulate, le here is grain, on highways or tlie Rhone-waters, over all tiuit oouth- Easternregion,-where also if Monsiegneur d'Arto.s saw good to break hi from Turin, hot welcome might wait hun; but wliatsoever Province of France is straitened for gram or vexed with a muti- nous Parlement, unconstitutional plotters, Monarchic Clubs or any other Patriot ailment,-can go and do likewise, or even do be^tej And now especially, when the February swearing has set them all Sfg t From Brituny to Burgundy, on most Plams of P rance, undl; most City-walls, it is a blaring of trumpets, waving o{ banners a constitutional manoeuvring : under thevernal sk.es whUe Nature too is putting forth her green Hopes, under bright _ Tunrhine defaced by the storrnful East; like Patriotism victon-- ; ous though with difficulty, over Aristocracy and defect of grain! , ThVe march and constitutionally wheel, to the f«-^r«-mg n ooa ' of fife and drum, under their tricolor Municipals, our clear- ; geamini Pha'Ces ; or halt,_with uplifted t-h-J -d lerv-salvoes that imitate Jove's thunder; and all the Country, and r^etaphorically all 'the Universe,' is looking on. Wholly, fn thdr b?st appa'rel, brave men, and beautifully dizened women most of whom have lovers there ; swearing, by the eternal Heavens and this green-growing all-nutritive Earth, that Prance Sweetest days, when (astonishing to say) mortals have actually met together in communion and fellowship ; and man were it only S^ce through long despicable centuries, is ior moments yenly the Ser of man !-And^hen the Deputations to the NaUon^al A^^^^^ semblv with highflown descriptive harangue; to 1^^- i;^*^/^^^^^ and the Restofer ; very frequently moreoveyo the Mo^^^^^^^^ Pntriotism sitting on her stout benches m that Hal ot the jaco- Lnsf The genfral ear is filled with Federation. New names o Patriots emerge, which shall one day become famihai . Boyer- FonfrMe eToquent denunciator of a rebellious Bourdeaux Par e- S Max ?sm"rd eloquent reporter of the Federation of Draguig- brethren mention a Fraternity of «//true ^^enc^-^^ j/. ^^^^ Ipncrth of invokiniT 'perdition and death' on any renegaae . more- * Hist. ParL vii. 4. SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. 35 not one Federation, and universal Oath of Brotherhood, once for ail A most pertinent suggestion ; dating from the end of March. Which pertinent suggestion the whole Patriot world can- not but catch, and reverberate and agitate till it h^zom^ loud : -—which, in that case, the Townhall Municipals had better take up, and meditate. Some universal Federation seems inevitable : the Where is given ; clearly Paris : only the Wlien, the How ? These also pro- ductive Time will give ; is already giving. For always as the Federative work goes on, it perfects itself, and Patriot genius adds contribution after contribution. 1 hus, at Lyons, in the end of the May month, we behold as many as fifty, or some say sixty thou- sand, met to federate ; and a multitude looking on, which it would be difficult to number. From dawm to dusk ! For our Lyons Guardsipen took rank, at five in the bright dewy morning ; came pouring in, bright-gleaming, to the Ouai de Rhone, to march thence to the Federation-field ; amid wavings of hats and lady- handkerchiefs ; glad shoutings of some two hundred thousand Patriot voices and hearts ; the beautiful and brave ! Among whom, courting no notice, and yet the notablest of all, what queenUke Figure is this ; with her escort of house-friends and Champagneux the Patriot Editor ; come abroad with the earliest ? Radiant with enthusiasm are those dark eyes, is that strong Minerva-face, look- ing dignity and earnest joy ; joyfullest she where all are joyful. It is Roland de la Piatriere's Wife ! f Strict elderly Roland, King's Inspector of Manufactures here ; and now likewise, by popular choice, the strictest of our new Lyons Municipals : a man who has gained much, if worth and faculty be gain ; but, above all things, has gained to wife Phlipon the Paris Engraver's daughter. Reader, mark that queenhke burgher-woman : beautiful, Amazonian-grace- ful to the eye ; more so to the mind. Unconscious of her worth (as all worth is), of her greatness, of her crystal clearness; genuine, the creature of Sincerity and Nature, in an age of Arti- ficiality, Pollution and Cant ; there, in her still completeness, in her still invincibility, she, if thou knew it, is the noblest of all living Frenchwomen,— and will be seen, one day. O blessed rather while ///^seen, even of herself! For the present she gazes, nothing doubting, into this grand theatricality ; and thinks her young dreams are to be fulfilled. From dawn to dusk, as we said, it lasts : and truly a sight like few. Flourishes of drums and trumpets are something : but think of an ' artificial Rock fifty feet high,' all cut into crag-steps, not without the simihtude of ' shrubs ! ' The interior canity, for in sooth it is made of deal,-^stands solemn, a ' Temple of Concord : on the outer summit rises ' a Statue of Liberty,' colossal, seen for ! miles, with her Pike and Phrygian Cap, and civic column ; at her ; feet a Country's Altar, ' Autel dc la Patrie .-'—on all which neither ' deal-timber nor lath and plaster, with paint of various colours, ' e been spared. But fancy then the banners all placed on the * Reports, &c. (in Hist. Pari. ix. 122-147), t Madame Roland, Mdmoircs, i. {Discours Prcliiyiinairc, p. 23). .C 3 36 THE FEAST OF PIKES, steps of the Rock; high-mass chaunted ; and the civic oath of fi^-ty thousand : with what volcanic outburst of sound from iron and other throats, enough to frighten back the very Soane and Rhone ; and how the brightest fireworks, and balls, and even repasts closed in that night of the gods ! ^ And so the Lyons •:Federa^^on vanishes too, swallowed of darkness ;- and yet not wholly for our brave fair Roland was there ; also she, though m the deepest privacy, writes her Narrative of it m Champagneux s Courier de Lyons; a piece which ' circulates to the extent of six^y thousand ; ' which one would like now to read. But on the whole, Paris, we may see, will have httle to devise ; will onlv have to borrow and apply. And then as to the day, what day of all the calendar is fit, if the Bastille Anniversary be not? The particular spot too, it is easy to see, must be the Champ-de- Mars ; where many a Julian the Apostate has been lifted on bucklers, to France's or the world's sovereignty ; and irgn Franks, loud-clanging, have responded to the voice of a Charlemagne ; and from of old mere sublimities have been familiar. CHAPTER IX. SYMBOLIC. How natural, in all decisive circumstances, is Symbolic Repre- sentation to all kinds of men ! Nay, what is man's whole terrestrial Life but a Symbolic Representation, and making visible, of the Celestial invisible Force that is in him ? By act and world he strives to do it ; with sincerity, if possible ; failing that, with theatricality, which latter also may have its meaning. An Almack's Masquerade is not nothing ; in more genial ages, your Christmas Guisings, Feasts of the Ass, Abbots of Unreason, were a consider- able something : sincere sport they were ; as Almacks may still be sincere wish for sport. But what, on the other hand, must not sincere earnest have been : say, a Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles have been ! A whole Nation gathered, in the name of the Highest, under the eye of the Highest; imagination herself flag- ^ing under the reality ; and all noblest Ceremony as yet not grown ceremonial, but solemn, significant to the outmost fringe ! Neithci", in modern private life, are theatrical scenes, of tearful women wetting whoie ells of cambric in concert, of impassioned bush)'- whiskcred youth threatening suicide, and such like, to be so entirely detested : drop thou a tear over them thyself rather. At any rate, one can remark that no Nation will throw-by its work, and deliberately go out to make a scene, without meaning soiixething thereby. For indeed no scenic individual, with knavish * Pari. xli. 274. MANKIND. 37 hvDocritical views, will take the trouble to soUloqmse a scene : Kow consider, is not a scenic Nation placed prec.sely m hat predicament of soliloquising ; for its own behoof alone ; to solace Fts own sensibilities, maudhn or other ?-Yet in this respect, of readiness for scenes, the difference of Nations, as of men, is very ffreat If our Saxon- Puritanic friends, for example, swore and figned their National Covenant, without discharge of gunpowder or the beating of any drum, in a dingy Covenant-Close of the Edinburgh High-street, in a mean room, where men now drink mean liquor, it was consistent with their ways so to swear it Our Gallic-Encyclopedic friends, again, must have a Champ-de-Mar., seen of all the world, or universe ; and such a Scenic Exhibition, to which the Cohseum Amphitheatre was but a stroller s barn as this old Globe of ours had never or hardly ever beheld. Which method also we reckon natural, then and there. Nor perhaps was the respective keeping of these two Oaths far out of due pro- portion to such respective display in taking them : inverse pro- portion, namely. For the theatricahty of a People goes m a compound-ratio : ratio indeed of their trustfulness, sociability, fervency ; but then also of their excitability, of their porosity, not "continent; or say, of their explosiveness, hot-flashing, but which *^°How true also, once more, is it that no man or Nation of men, conscious doing a great thing, was ever, m that thing, doing other than a smtu one ! O Champ-de-Mars Federation, with three hundred drummers, twelve hundred wind-musicians, ana artillery planted on height'after height to boom the tidings of it aU ovTr France, in flw minutes ! Could no Atheist-Naigeon contrive to discern, eighteen centuries off, those Thirteen most poor mean-dressed men, at frugal Supper, m a mean Jewish dwelling, with no symbol but hearts god-initiated into the Divme ' depth of Sorrow,' and 2iDo this in remembrance of me ;—an(i so cease that small difficult crowing of his, if he were not doomed to it? CHAPTER X. MANKIND. Pardonable are human theatricalities ; nay perha.ps touching, like the passionate utterance of a tongue which with ?inc«tty stammers ; of a head which with insincerity ^^f.'^^^^'T^^y'"^ gone distracted. Yet, in comparison with unpremeditated outbursts oi Nature, such as an Insurrection of Women, how foisonless, un- edifying, undelightful ; like small ale palled, ^i^e an efrervescence that has effervesced ! Such scenes, coming of forethought we^ they world-great, and never so cunningly devised, are at boitoir 38 THE FEAST OF PIKES, mainly pasteboard and paint. But the others are original, etnitted from the great everliving heart of Nature herself : what figure they will assume is unspeakably significant. To us, there- fore, let the French National Solemn League, and Federation, be the highest recorded triumph of the Thespian Art ; triumphant surely, since the whole Pit, which was of Twenty-five Millions, not only claps hands, but does itself spring on the boards and passion - ately set to playing there. And being such, be it treated as such : with sincere cursory admiration ; with wonder from afar. A whole Nation gone mumming deserves so much ; but deserves not. that loving minuteness a Menadic Insurrection did. Much more let prior, and as it were, rehearsal scenes of Federation come and go, henceforward, as they list ; and, on Plains and under City- v/alls, innumerable regimental bands blare off into the Inane, without note from us. One scene, however, the hastiest reader will momentarily pause on : that of Anacharsis Clootz and the Collective sinful Posterity of Adam. — For a Patriot Municipality has now% on the 4th of June, got its plan concocted, and got it sanctioned by National Assembly ; a Patriot King assenting ; to whom, were he even free to dissent, Federative harangues, overflowing with loyalty, have doubdess a transient sweetness. There shalt come Deputed National Guards, so many in the hundred, from each of the Eighty-three Depart- ments of France. Likewise from all Naval and Military King's Forces, shall Deputed quotas come ; such Federation of National with Royal Soldier has, taking place spontaneously, been already seen and sanctioned. For the; rest, it is hoped, as many as forty thousand may arrive : expenses to be borne by the Deputing District ; of all which let District and Department take thought, and elect fit men, — whom the Paris brethren will fly to meet and welcome. Now, therefore, judge if our Patriot Artists^are busy; taking deep counsel how to make the Scene worthy of a look from the Universe ! As many as fifteen thousand mxn, spade-men, barrow- men, stone-builders, rammers, with their engineers, are at work on the Champ-de-Mars ; hollowing it out into a natural Amphi- theatre, fit for such solemnity. For one may hope it will be annual and perennial ; a ' P^east of Pikes, Fc>te des Pignes'' notablest among the high-tides of the year : in any case ought not a Scenic Vree Nation to have some permanent National Amphitheatre.^ The Champ-de-Mars is getting hollowed out; and the daily talk and the nightly dream in most Parisian heads is of Federation, and that only. Federate Deputies arc already under way. National Assembly, what with its natural work, what with hearing and answering harangues of P^ederates, of this Federation, will have enough to do ! Harangue of 'American Connnittce,' among whom is that faint ligure of Paul Jones 'as with the stars dim-twinkling through it, —come to congratulate us on the prospect of such auspicious day. Harangue of Hastille Conouf^ro-s. rome to * renoimce' any special vccompensc, "jriniity;- since the MANKIND. 39 Centre Grenadiers rather grumble. Harangue of ' Tennis-Court ^ Club; who enter with far-gleaming Brass-plate, aloft on a pole, and the Tennis-Court Oath engraved thereon ; which far gleammg Brass-plate they purpose to affix solemnly in^ the Versailles original locality on the 20th of this month, which is the anniversary, as a deathless memorial, for some years : they will then dme, as they come back, in the Bois de Boulogne cannot, however, do it without aporising the world. To such things does the august National Assembly ever and anon cheerfully listen, suspending Us regenerative labours ; and with some touch of impromptu elo- quence, make friendly reply ;— as indeed the wont has long been ; for it is a gesticulating, sympathetic People, and has a heart, and wears it on its sleeve. . r a u v In which circumstances, it occurred to the mmd of Anacharsis Clootz that while so much was embodying itself mto Club or Committee, and perorating applauded, there yet remained a greater and greatest ; of which, if //also took body and perorated, what might not the effect be: Humankind namely, le Genre Humain itself! In v/hat rapt creative moment the Thought rose in Anacharsis^s soul; all his throes, while he went about giving shape and birth to it ; how he was sneered at by cold worldlings ; but did sneer again, being a man of polished sarcasm ; and moved to and fro persuasive in coffeehouse and soiree, and dived down assiduous-obscure in the great deep of Pans making his Thought a Fact : of all this the spiritual biographies of that period say nothing. Enough that on the 19th evening of June 1790, the Sun's slant rays lighted a spectacle such as our foolish litde Planet has not often had to show : Anacharsis Clootz enter- ing the august Salle de Manege, with the Human Species at his heels. Swedes, Spaniards, Polacks ; Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, dwellers in Mesopotamia : behold them all ; they have come to claim place in the grand Federation, having an undoubted interest ^^^^'Our ambassador titles," said the fervid Clootz, are ^^i^ot writ- ten on parchment, but on the living hearts of all men. 1 hese whiskered Polacks, long-flowing turbaned Ishmaelites, astrological Chaldeans, who stand so mute here, let them plead with you, august Senators, more eloquently than eloquence could, il^^y are the mute representatives of their tongue-tied, befettered, heavy- laden Nations ; whofromout of that dark bewilderment gaze wistful, amazed, with half-incredulous hope, towards you, and this your bright light of a French Federation : bright particular day-star, the herald of universal day. We claim to stand there, as mute monuments, pathetically adumbrative of much.— From bench and gallery comes ' repeated applause for what august Senator but is flattered even by the very shadow of Human Species depending on him ? From President Sieyes, who presides this remarkable fortnight, in spite of his small voice, there comes eloquent thougti shrill reply. Anacharsis and the ' Foreigners Committee shall have place at the F ederation ; on condition of tellmg their re- See Deux Amis, v. 122 ; HisL ParL &c. THE FEAST OF PIKES, spective Peoples what they see there. In the mean time, we invite them to the ' honours of the sitting, honneur de la seance^ A long-flowing Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and utters articulate sounds : but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the French dialect,* his words are like spilt water ; the thought he had in him remains conjectui:al to this day. Anacharsis and Mankind accept the honours of the sitting ; and have forthwith, as the old Newspapers still testify, the satis- faction to see several things. First and chief, on the motion of Lameth, Lafayette, Saint-Fargeau and other Patriot Nobles, let the others repugn as they will : all Titles of Nobility, from Duke to Esquire, or lower, are henceforth abolished. Then, in like manner. Livery Servants, or rather the Livery of Servants. Neither, for the future, shall any man or woman, self-styled noble, be * incensed, —foohshly fumigated with incense, in Church ; as the wont has been. In a word. Feudalism being dead these ten months, why should her empty trappings and scutcheons survive ? The very Coats-of-arms will require to be obliterated ; — and yet Cassandra Marat on this and the other coach-panel notices that they 'are but painted-over,' and threaten to peer through again. So that henceforth de Lafayette is but the Sieur Motier, and Saint-Fargeau is plain Michel Lepelletier ; and Mirabeau soon after has to say huffingly, With your Riqjietti yon have set Europe at cross-purposes for three days." For his Counthood is not in- different to this man ; which indeed the admiring People treat him with to the last. But let extreme Patriotism rejoice, and chiefly Anacharsis and Mankind ; for now it seems to be taken for granted that one Adam is Father of us all ! — Such was, in historical accuracy, the famed feat of Anacharsis. Thus did the most extensive of Public Bodies find a sort of spokes- man. Whereby at least we may judge of one thing : what a humour the once sniffing mocking City of Paris and Baron Clootz had got into ; when such exhibition could appear a propriety, next door to a sublimity. It is true, Envy did in after times, pervert this success of Anacharsis ; making him, from incidental * Speaker of the Foreign-Nations Committee,' claim to be official permanent ' Speaker, Orateur^ of the Human Species,' which he only deserved to be ; and alleging, calumniously, that his astro- logical Chaldeans, and the rest, were a mere French tag-rag*and- bobtail disguised for the nonce ; and, in short, sneering and fleer- ing at him in her cold barren way ; all which, however, he, the man he was, could receive on thick enough panoply, or even rebound therefrom, and also go his way. Most extensive of Public Bodies, we may call it ; and also the most unexpected : for who could have thought to see All Nations in the Tuileries Riding- Mall ? But so it is ; and truly as strange things may happen when a whole People goes mumming and miming. Hast not thou thyself perchance seen diademed Cleo- patra, daughter of the Ptolemies, pleading, almost with bended * Moniiezir, &c. (in Hist, Pari, xii. 283). AS IN THE AGE OE GOLD, 41 knee, in unheroic tea-parlour, or dimlit retail-shop, to inflexible t^ross Burghal Dignitary, for leave to reign and die ; being dressed for it, and "moneyless, with small children ; — while suddenly Con- stables have shut the Thespian barn, and her Antony pleaded in [vain ? Such visual spectra flit across this Earth, if the Thespian [Stage be rudely interfered with : but much more, when, as was said, Pit jumps on Stage, then is it verily, as in Herr Tieck's [Drama, a Verkehrte IVelt, of World Topsyturvied ! Having seen the Human Species itself, to have seen the ' Dean \ of the Human Species,' ceased now to be a miracle. Such V Doyen du Ge7ire Ihimain, Eldest of Men,' had shewn himself |there, in these weeks : Jean Claude Jacob, a born Serf, deputed [from his native Jura Mountains to thank the National Assembly for enfranchising them. On his bleached worn face are ploughed the furrowings of one hundred and twenty years. He has heard : dim patois-tdiV^, of immortal Grand-Monarch victories ; of a burnt I Palatinate, as he toiled and moiled to make a little speck of this rEarth greener ; of Cevennes Dragoonings ; of Marlborough going to the war. Four generations have bloomed out, and loved and hated, and rustled off : he was forty-six when Louis Fourteenth died. The Assembly, as one man, spontaneously rose, and did 'reverence to the Eldest of the World ; old Jean is to take seance I among them, honourably, with covered head. He gazes feebly there, with his old eyes, on that new wonder-scene ; dreamlike to jhim, and uncertain, wavering amid fragments of old memories and 'dreams. For Time is all growing unsubstantial, dreamlike ; Jean's '■ eyes and mind are weary, and about to close, — and open on a far other wonder-scene, which shall be real. Patriot Subscription, Royal Pension was got for him, and he returned home glad; but in two months more he left it all, and went on his unknown ! way.* CHAPTER XL AS IN THE AGE OF GOLD. Meanwhile to Paris, ever going and returning, day after day, and all day long, towards that Field of Mars, it becomes painfully apparent that the spadework there cannot be got done in time. There is such an area of it ; three hundred thousand square feet : for from the Ecole militaire (which will need to be done up m wood with balconies and galleries) westward to the Gate by the river (where also shall be wood, in triumphal arches), we count same thousand yards of length ; and for breadth, from this um- brageous Avenue of eight rows, on the South side, to that corrc- * Deux Amk, iv. iii. 42 THE FEAST OF PIKES. spending one on the North, some thousand feet, more or less. AT this to be scooped out, and wheeled up in slope along the sides high enough ; for it must be rammed down there, and shaper stair-wise mto as many as ' thirty ranges of convenient seats,' firm-trmimed with turf, covered with enduring timber ;--and the'r our huge pyramidal Fatherland's-Altar, Auiel de la Patrte, in the centre, also to be raised and stair-stepped ! Force-work with 1 vengeance ; it is a World's Amphitheatre ! There are but fifteen, days good ; and at this languid rate, it might take half as t7i;ui\ weeks. What is singular too, the spademen seem to work lazily'; they will not work double-tides, even for offer of more wages' though their tide is but seven hours ; they declare angrily thatlhe human tabernacle requires occasional rest ! Is it Aristocrats secretly bribing ? Aristocrats were capable i>\ that. Only six months since, did not evidence get afloat that sub- terranean Paris, for we stand over quarries and catacombs, dangerously, as it were midway between Heaven and the Abyss,' and are hollow underground,— was charged with gunpowder, which should make us Meap ? ' Till a Cordelier's Deputation actually went to examine, and found it— carried off again !^ An accursed^ mcurable brood ; all asking for ' passports,' in these sacred days! Trouble, of rioting, chateau-burning, is in the Limousin and else- where ; for they are busy ! Between the best of Peoples and the best of Restorer- Kings, they would sow grudges ; with what a fiend's-grin would they see this Federation, looked for by the Universe, fail ! Fail for want of spadework, however, it shall not. He that has four hmbs, and a French heart, can do spadework ; and will ! On the first July Monday, scarcely has the signal-cannon boomed ; scarcely have the languescent mercenary Fifteen Thousand laid down then- tools, and the eyes of onlookers turned sorrowfully to the still high Sun ; when this and the other Patriot, fire in his. eye, snatches barrow and mattock, and himself begins indignantly wheeling. Whom scores and then hundreds follow ; and soon a volunteer Fifteen Thousand are shovelling and trundling ; with the heart of giants ; and all in right order, wi\h that extemporaneous adroitness of theirs : whereby such a lift has been given, worth three mercenary ones ;— which may end when the late twilight thickens, in triumph shouts, heard or heard of beyond Mont- martre ! * A sympathetic population will wcit, next day, with eagerness, till the tools are free. Or why wait.? Spades elsewhere exist ! And so now bursts forth that effulgence of Parisian enthusiasm, . good-heartedness and brotherly love; such, if Chroniclers are trustworthy, as was not witnessed since the Age of Gold. Paris, male and female, precipitates itself towards *"its South-west ex- tremity, spade on shoulder. Streams of men, without order ; or m order, as ranked fellow craftsmen, as natural or accidental * 23rd December, 1789 (Newspapers in Hist. Pari, iv, 44). AS IN THE AGE OF GOLD, 43 reunions, march towards the Field of Mars. Three-deep these march ; to the sound of stringed music ; preceded by young girls with green boughs, and tricolor streamers : they have shouldered, soldier- wise, their shovels and picks ; and with one throat are singing ca-ira. Yes, pardieu ca-ira, cry the passengers on the streets. ' All corporate Guilds, and pubhc and private Bodies of Citizens, from the highest to the lowest, march ; the very Hawkers, one finds, have ceased bawling for one day. The neighbouring Villages turn out : their able men come marching, to village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash. As many as one hundred and fifty thousand workers : nay at certain seasons, as some count, two hundred and fifty thousand ; for, in the afternoon especially, what mortal but, finishing his hasty day's work, would run I A stirring city : from the time you reach the Place Louis Ouinze, southward over the River, by all Avenues, :it is one living throng. So many workers ; and no mercenary mock-workers, but real ones that lie freely to it : each Patriot stretches himself against the stubborn glebe ; hews and wheels with the whole weight that is in him. Amiable infants, aimables eitfafis ! They do the 'police des * r atelier^ too, the guidance and governance, themselves ; wdth that ready will of theirs, with that extemporaneous adroitness. It is a true brethren's work ; all distinctions confounded, abolished ; as it was in the beginning, when Adam himself delved. Longfrocked tonsured Monks, with short-skirted Water-carriers, with swallow- tailed well-frizzled //^^-r^/^^A^s of a Patriot turn ; dark Charcoalmen, meal-white Peruke-makers ; or Peruke-wearers, for Advocate and Judge are there, and all Heads of Districts : sober Nuns sisterhke with flaunting Nymphs of the Opera, and females in common cir- cumstances named unfortunate : the patriot Rag-picker, and per- fumed dweller in palaces ; for Patriotism like New-birth, and also like Death, levels 'all. The Printers have come marching, Prud- homme's all in Paper- caps with Revolutions de Paris printed on them ; as Camille notes ; wishing that in these great days there should be a Facte des Ecrivains too, or Federation of Able , Editors.* Beautiful to see I The snov/y linen and dehcate panta- : loon alternates with the soiled check shirt and bushel-breeches ; 1 for both have cast their coats, and under both are four limbs and and a set of Patriot muscles. There do they pick and shovel ; or bend forward,. yoked in long strings to box-barrow or overloaded tumbril ; joyous, with one mind. Abbe Sieyes is seen pulling, wiry, vehement, if too light for draught ; by the side of Beauhar- nais, who shall get Kings though he be none. Abbe Maury did not pull ; but the Charcoalmen brought a mummer guised hke him, so he had to pull in effigy. Let no august Senator disdain the work : Mayor Bailly, Generalissimo Lafayette are there ; — and, alas, shall be there ao^ain another day ! The King himself Comes to see : sky-rending Vive-le-roi ; ^ and suddenly with *■ See Newspapers, (in Ilisi. Pari. vi. 381-406). THE FEAST OF PIKES. ^shouldered spades they form a guard of honour round him' Whosoever can come comes ; to work, or to look, and bless the work. Whole families have come. One whole family we see clearly, of three generations : the father picking, the mother shovelliix^, the young ones wheeling assiduous ; old grandfather, hoary with ninety-three years, holds in his arms the youngest of all frisky, not helpful this one ; who nevertheless may tell it to his grand- children ; and how the Future and the Past alike looked on, and with failing or with half-formed voice, faltered their qa-ira. A vintner has wheeled in, on Patriot truck, beverage of wine : " Drink not, my brothers, if ye are not dry ; that your cask may last the longer neither did any drink, but men ' evidently ex- *hausted.' A dapper Abbe looks on, sneering " To the barrow ! cry several ; whom he, lest a worse thing befal him, obeys : never- theless one wiser Patriot barrowman, arriving now, interposes his ^' arretez setting down his own barrow, he snatches the Abbe's ; trundles it fast, hke an infected thing, forth of the Champ-de-Mars circuit, and discharges it there. Thus too a certain person (of some quality, or private capital, to appearance), entering hastily, flings down his coat, waistcoat and two watches, and is rushing to the thick of the work : ^- But your watches?'' cries the general voice. — " Does one distrust his brothers ? " answers he ; nor were the watches stolen. How beautiful is noble-sentiment : like gossamer gauze, beautiful and cheap ; which will stand no tear and wear ! Beautiful cheap gossamer gauze, thou film-shadow of a raw- material of Virtue, which art not woven, nor likely to be, Into Duty ; thou art better than nothing, and also worse ! Young Boarding-school Boys, College Students, shout Vivi la Natio7t^ and regret that they have yet ' only their sweat to give.' What say we of Boys? Beautifullest Hebes ; the loveliest of Paris, in their light air-robes, with riband-girdle of tricolor, are there ; shovelling and wheeling with the rest : their Hebe eyes brighter with enthusiasm, and long hair in beautiful dishevelment : hard-pressed are their small fingers ; but they make the patriot barrow go, and even force it to the summit of the slope (with a little tracing, which what man's arm were not too happy to lend? ) — then bound down with it again, and go for more ; with their long locks and tricolors blown back : graceful as the rosy Hours. O, as that evening Sun fell over the Champ-de-Mars, and tinted with fire the thick umbrageous boscage that shelters it on this hand and on that, and struck direct on those Domes and two-and- j forty Windows of the Ecole Militaire, and made them all of bur- ; nished gold, — saw he on his wide zodiac road other such sight ? i A living garden spotted and dotted with such flowerage ; all colours of the prism ; the beautifullest blent friendly with the usefullest ; all growing and working" brotherlike there, under one j warm feeling, were it but for days ; once and no second time ! | But Night is sinking ; these Nights too, into Eternity. The | * Mcrcicr. ii. 76, &c. AS IN THE AGE OF GOLD, 45 hastiest Traveller Versailles-ward has drawn bridle on the heights of Chaillot : and looked for moments over the River ; reporting at Versailles what he saw, not without tears.* Meanwhile^ from all points of the compass, Federates are arriving : fervid children of the South, who glory in their ' Mirabeau ; ' considerate North-blooded Mountaineers of Jura; sharp Bretons, with their Gaelic suddenness ; Normans not to be overreached in bargain : all now animated with one noblest hre of Patriotism. Whom the Paris brethren march forth to receive ; with military solemnities, with fraternal embracing, and a hospi- tality worthy of the heroic ages. They assist at the Assembly's Debates, these Federates : the Galleries are reserved for them. They assist in the toils of the Champ-de-Mars ; each new troop will put its hand to the spade ; lift a hod of earth on the Altar of the Fatherland. But the flourishes of rhetoric, for it is a gesticu- lating People ; the moral-sublime 6f those Addresses to an august Assembly, to a Patriot Restorer! Our Breton Captain of Federates kneels even, in a fit of enthusiasm, and gives up his sword ; he wet-eyed to a King wet-eyed. Poor Louis ! These, as he said afterwards, were among the bright days of his life. Reviews also there mu?t be ; royal 'Federate-reviews, with King, Queen and tricolor Court looking on : at lowest, if, as is too common, it rains, our Federate Volunteers will file through the inner gateways, Royalty standing dry. Nay there, should some stop occur, the beautifullest fingers in France may take you softly by the lapelle, and, in mild flute-voice, ask : " Monsieur, of what Province are you ? " Happy he who can reply, chivalrously lowering his sword's point, "Madame, from the Province your ancestors reigned over." He that happy ^Provincial Advocate,' now Provincial Federate, shall be rewarded by a sun-smile, and such melodious glad words addressed to a King : " Sire, these are your faithful Lorrainers." Cheerier verily, in these holidays, is this ^skyblue faced with red' of a National Guardsman, than the dull black and gray of a Provincial Advocate, which in workdays one was used to. For the same thrice-blessed Lorrainer shall, this evening, stand sentry at a Queen's door; and feel that he could die a thousand deaths for her : then again, at the outer gate, and even a third time, she shall see him ; nay he will make her do it ; presenting arms with emphasis, 'making his musket jingle again' : and in her salute there shall again be" a sun-smile, and that little blonde-locked too hasty Dauphin shall be ad- monished, " Salute then, 'Monsieur, don't be unpolite : '^ and therewith she, like a bright Sky-wanderer or Planet v/ith hex luae Moon, issues forth pecuhar.f ^ But at night, when Patriot spadework is over, figure the sacred nghts of hospitality ! Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau,\i mere private senator, but w'*h great possessions, has daily his ' hundred dinne. - juests ; ' the table of Generalissimo Lafayette may aouble that * Mercier, ii. 8i., f Narrativf^ by a LoiTainc Federate (given in Hist. Pari. vi. 389-91). 4.6 THE FEAST OF PIKES, number. In lowly parlour, as in lofty saloon, the wine-cup passes round ; crowned by the smiles of Beauty ; be it of lightly-tripping Grisette, or of high-sailing Dame, for both equally have beauty^ and smiles precious to the brave. CHAPTER XI L SOUND AND SMOKE. And so now, in spite of plotting Aristocrats, lazy hired spademen, and almost of Destiny itself (for there has been much rain), the Champ-de-Mars, on the 13th. of the month is fairly ready; trimmed, rammed, buttressed with firm masonry ; and Patriotism can stroll over it admiring ; and as it were rehearsing, for in every • head is some unutterable image of the morrow. Pray Heaven ' there be not clouds. Nay what far worse cloud is this, of a mis- 'i guided Municipality tl^at talks of admitting Patriotism, to the 1 solemnity, by tickets ! Was it by tickets we were admitted to the work ; and to what brought the work 1 Did we take the Bastille i by tickets ? A misguided Municipality sees the error ; at late midnight, rolling drums announce to Patriotism starting half out of its bed-clothes, that it is to be ticketless. Pull down thy night-cap therefore ; and, with demi-articulate grumble, significant of several things, go pacified to sleep again. To- morrow is Wednesday morning ; unforgetable among the fasti- of the world. The morning comes, cold for a July one ; but such a festivity would make Greenland smile. Through every inlet of that National Amphitheatre (for it is a league in circuit, cut with open- ings at due intervals), iloods-in the living throng ; covers without tumult space after space. The Scole Militaire has galleries and . ovcrvaulting canopies, where Carpentry and Painting have vied, for the upper Authorities ; triumphal arches, at the Gate by the River, bear inscriptions, if weak, yet well-meant, and orthodox. Far aloft, over the Altar of the Fatherland, on their tall crane standards of iron, swing pensile our antique Cassolettes ox pans of incense ; dispensing sweet incense-fumes, — unless for the Heatlien Mythology, one sees not for whom. Two hundred thousand Patriotic Men ; and, twice as good, one hundred thousand Patriotic Women, all decked and glorified as one can fancy, sit waiting in this Champ-de-Mars. What a picture : that circle of bright-dyed Life, spread up there, on its thirty-seated Slope ; leaning, one would say, on the thick um- brage of those Avenuc-Trccs,for the stems of them are hidden by the height ; and all beyond it mere greenness of Summer P^arth, v/itb the gleams of waters, or v/hitc sparklings of stone-edifices : little SOUND AND SMOtCE. 47 circular enamel-picture in the centre of sucli a vase— of eitieraW t A vase not empty : the InvaUdes Cupolas want not their popula- tion, nor the distant Windmills cf Montmartre ; on remotest .steeple and invisible village belfry, stand men with spy-glasses. On the heights of Chaillot are many-coloured undulating groups ; round and far on, over all the circling heights that embosom Paris, it is as one more or less peopled Amphitheatre ; which the eye grows dim with measuring. Nay heights, as was before hmted, have cannon ; and a floating-battery of cannon is on the Seine. When eye fails, ear shall serve ; and all France properly is but one Amphitheatre : for in paved town and unpaved hamlet, men walk listening ; till the muffled thunder sound audible on their horizon, that they too may begin swearing and firing I"^ But now, to streams of music, come Federates enough,— for they have assembled on the Boulevard Saint- Antoine or thereby, and come marching through the City, with ttieir Eighty-three Department Banners, and blessings not loud but deep ; comes National Assembly, and takes seat under its Canopy ; comes Royalty, and takes seat on a throne beside it. And Lafayette, on white charger, is here, and all the civic Functionaries ; and the Federates form dances, till their strictly mihtary evolutions and manceuvres can begin. Evolutions and manoeuvres ? Task not the pen of mortal to describe them : truant imagination droops ; — declares that it is not v/orth while. There is v/heehng and sweeping, to slow, to quick, and double quick-cime : Sieur Morter, or Generahssimo Lafayette, loi' they are one and the same, and he is General of France, in the King'c stead, for four-and-twenty hours ; Sieur Metier must step forth, with tho: sublime chivalrous gait of his ; solemnly ascend the stc ,^3 of Che Fatherland's Altar, in sight of Heaven and of the scarcely breathing Earth ; and, under the creak of those swinging Casso^^ffsc, ' pressing his sword's point firmly there,' pronounce the Oath, To King, to Law,^ and Nation (not to mention ' grains ' with their circulating), in his own name and that of armed France. Whereat there is waving of banners and acclaim sufficient. The Nationol Assembly must swear, stand- ing in its place ^ the King him:.clf audibly. The King swears ; and now the welkin split with vivats; let citizens enfranchised embrace, each smiting heartily his palm into his fellow's ; and armed Fede- rates clang their arms ; above all, that floating battery speak ! It has spoken, — to the four corners uf France. From eminence to eminence, bursts the thunder ; faint-heard, loud-repeated. What a stone, cast into what a lake ; in circles that do not grow fainter. From Arras to Avignon ; from Metz to Bayonne I Over 3rleans and Blois it rolls, in cannon-recitative ; Puy bellows of it amid his granite mountains ; Pau where is the shell-cradle of Great Henri. At far Marseilles, one can think, the ruddy evening witnesses^ it ; over the deep-blue Mediterranean waters, the Castle of If ruddy- tinted darts forth, from every cannon's mouth, its tongue of Are ; and ail the people shout : Yes, France is free. O glorious France * Deux AmiSf v. i68. 4S THE FEAST OF PIKE?. that has burst out so ; into universal sound and smoke ; and at- tained—the Phrygian Cap of Liberty ! In all Towns, Trees of Liberty also may be planted ; with or without advantage. Said we not, It is the highest stretch attained by the Thespian Art on this Planet, or perhaps attainable ? The Thespian Art, unfortunately, one must still call it ; for behold there, on this Field of Mars, the National Banners, before there could be any swearing, were to be all blessed. A most proper operation ; since surely without Heaven's blessing bestowed, say even, audibly or inaudibly sought, no Earthly banner or contrivance can prove victorious : but now the means of doing it } By what thrice-divine Franklin thunder-rod shall miraculous fire be drawn out of Heaven ; and descend gently, life-giving, with health to the souls of men Alas, by the simplest : by Two Hundred shaven- crowned Individuals, ' in snow-white albs, with, tricolor girdles,' arranged on the steps of Fatherland's Altar ; and, at their head for spokesman, SouFs Overseer Talleyrand- Perigord ! These shall act as miraculous thunder-rod,— to such length as they can. O ye deep azure Heavens, and thou green all-nursing Earth ; ye Streams ever-flowing ; deciduous Forests that die and are born again, con- tinually, like the sons of men ; stone Mountains that die daily with every rain-shower, yet are not dead and levelled fpr ages of ages, nor born again (it seems) but with new world-explosions, and such tumultuous seething and tumbhng, steam half way to the Moon ; O thou unfathomable mystic All, garment and dwellingplace of the Unnamed ; O spirit, lastly, of Man, who mouldest and modellest that Unfathomable Unnameable even as we see,— is not the7'e a miracle : That some French mortal should, we say not have be- lieved, but pretended to imagine that he believed that Talleyrand and Two Hundred pieces of white Cahco could do it ! Here, however, we are to remark with the sorrowing Historians of that day, that suddenly, while Episcopus Talleyrand, long-stoled, With mitre and tricolor belt, was yet but hitching up the Altar-steps, to do his miracle, the material Heaven grew black ; a north-wind, moaning cold moisture, began to sing ; and there descended a very deluge of rain. Sad to see ! The thirty-staired Seats, all round our Amphitheatre, get instantaneously slated with mere umbrellas, fallacious when so thick set : our antique Cassolettes become Water-pots ; their incense-smoke gone hissing, in a whiff of muddy vapour. Alas, instead of vi vats, there is nothing now but the furious peppering and rattlin- From three to four hun- dred thousand human individuals feci that they have a skin: happily ///^pervious. The General's sash runs water : how all mihtary banners droop ; and will not wave, but lazily flap, as if metamorphosed into painted tin-banners ! Worse, far worse, these hundred thousand, such is the Historian's testimony, of the fairest of France ! Their snowy muslins all splashed and draggled ; the ostrich feather shrunk shamefully to the backbone of a feather: all caps are ruined; innermost pasteboard molten into Its original pap : Beauty no longer swims decorated in her garniture, like Love-goddess hidden-revealed in her Paphian SOUND A^^D SMOKE. 49 douds, but struggles in disastrous imprisonment in it, for *the * shape was noticeable ; ' and now only sympathetic interjections, titterings, teeheeings, and resolute good-humour will avail. A deluge ; an incessant sheet or fluid-column of rain such that our Overseer's very mitre must be filled ; not a mitre, but a filled and leaky fire-bucket on his reverend head ! — Regardless of which, Overseer Talleyrand performs his miracle : the Blessing of Talley- rand, another than that of Jacob, is on all the Eighty-three depart- mental flags of France ; which wave or flap, with such thankfulness as needs. Towards three o'clock, the sun beams out again : the remaining evolutions can be transacted under bright heavens, though with decorations much damaged.^ On Wednesday our Federation is consummated : but the festivities last out the week, and over into the next. Festivities such as no Bagdad Caliph, or Aladdin with the Lamp, could have equalled. There is a Jousting on the River ; with its water- somersets, splashing and haha-ing : Abbe Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet, preaches, for his part, in 'the rotunda of the Corn- * market/ a Harangue on Franklin ; for whom the National Assembly has lately gone three days in black. The Motier and Lepelietier tables still groan with viands ; roofs ringing with patriotic toasts. On the fifth evening, which is the Christian Sabbath, there is a universal Ball. Paris, out of doors and in, man, woman and child, is jigging it, to the sound of harp and four-stringed fiddle. The hoariest-headed man will tread one other measure, under this nether Moon : speechless nurselings, infants as we call them, vr]'nLa T^Kva, crow in arms ; and sprawl out numb-plump little limbs,~impatient for muscularity, they know not why. The stiffest balk bends more or less ; all joists croak. Or out, on the Earth's breast itself, behold the Ruins of the Bastille. All lamplit, allegorically decorated : a Tree of Liberty sixty feet high ; and Phrygian Cap on it, of size enormous, under which King Arthur and his round-table might have dined ! In the depths of the background, is a single lugubrious lamp, render- ing dim-visible one of your iron cages, half-buried, and some Prison stones,— Tyranny vanishing downwards, all r-one but the skirt : the rest wholly lamp-festoons, trees real or of pasteboard ; in the similitude of a fairy grove ; with this inscription, readable to runner: 'Id Von danse. Dancing Here.' As mdeed had been obscurely foreshadowed by Cagliostrof prophetic Quack of Quacks, when he, four years ago, quitted the grim durance ;— to falT into a grimmer, of the Roman Inquisition, and not quit it. But, after all, what is this Bastille business to that of the Champj: Elysees I Thither, to these Fields well named Elysian, all feet tend. It is radiant as day with festooned lamps ; little oil-cups, ; like variegated fire-flies, daintily illumine the highest leaves : trees 1 there are all sheeted with variegated fire, shedding far a glimmer 1 into the dub'ous wood. There, under the free sky, do tight- j Umbed Federate?, with fairest newfound sweethearts', elastic as * Deux Amis, v. 143-170. t See his Leitrc au Pcuplc Franvais (London, 1786). so THE FEAST OF PIKES. Diana, and not of that coyness and tart humour of Diana, thread their jocund mazes, all through the ambrosial night ; and hearts were touched and fired ; and seldom surely had our old Planet, in that huge conic Shadow of hers ' wL^ch goes beyond the Moon, * and is named Nighty curtained such a Ball-room. O if, accord ing to Seneca, the very gods look down on a good man strugglin with adversity, and smile ; what must they think of Five-anc twenty million indifferent ones victorious over it, — for dght days and more ? In this way, and in such ways, however, has the Feast of Pikes danced itself off ; gallant Federates wending homewards, towards every point of the compass, with feverish nerves, heart and head much heated ; some of them, indeed, as Dampmartin's elderly respectable friend, from Strasburg, quite ' burnt out with liquors; and flickering towards extinction."^ The Feast of Pikes has danced itself off, and become defunct, and the ghost of a Feast ; — nothing of it now remaining but this vision in men's memory ; and the place that knew it (for the slope of that Champ-de-Mars is crumbled to half the original heightf) now knowing it no more. Undoubtedly one of the memorablest National Hightides. Never or hardly ever, as we said, was Oath sworn with such heart-effusion, emphasis and expenditure of joyance ; and then it was broken irremediably within year and day. Ah, why ? When the swearing of it was so heavenly-joyful, bosom clasped to bosom, and Five- and-twenty million hearts all burning together : O ye inexorable Destinies, why?— Partly because it was sworn with such over- joyance ; but chiefly, indeed, for an older reason : that Sin had come into the world and Misery by Sin ! These Five-and-twenty millions, if we will consider it, have now henceforth, with that Phrygian Cap of theirs, no force over them, to bind and guide ; neither in them, more than heretofore, is guiding force, or rule of just living : how then, while they all go rushing at such a pace^ on unknown ways, with no bridle, towards no aim, can hurlyburly un- utterable fail For verily not Federation-rosepink is the colour of this Earth and her work : not by outbursts of noble-sentiment, but with far other ammunition, shall a man front the world. But how wise, in all cases, to ' husband your fire ; ' to keep it deep down, rather, as genial radical-heat ! Explosions, the forciblest, and never so well directed, are questionable ; far oftenest futile, always frightfully wasteful : but think of a man, of a Nation of men, spending its whole stock of fire in one artificial Firework ! So have we seen fond v/eddings (for individuals, like Nations, have their Hightides) celebrated with an outburst of triumph and deray, at which the eklerly shook their heads. Better had a serious cheerfulness been ; for the enterprise was great. Fond pair ! the more triumphant ye feel, and victorious over terrestrial evil, which seems all abolished, the wider-eyed will your disappointment be to 6nd terrestrial evil still extant. " And why extant will each of * Dampmartin, Evcnemens, i. 144-184, f Duiaure, IJistoire dc Paris ^ viii. 35, i^, SOUND A'NJ) S^lOK} , .1 cry : " Because my false mate has })layed the traitor ; evil was abolished : / meant faithfully, and did, or would have done," Whereby the overs weet moon of honey changes itself into long years of vinegar ; perhaps divulsive vinegar, like Hannibal's. Shall we say then, the French Nation has led Royalty, or wooed and teased poor Royalty to lead her^ to the hymeneal Fatherland's Altar, in such oversweet manner ; and has, most thoughtlessly, to celebrate the nuptials witii due shine and demonstration, — burnt her bed ? -I BOOK SECOND. j NANCI, * CHAPTER L » BOUILLE. Dimly visible, at Metz on the North- Eastern frontier, a certain- brave Bouille, last refuge of Royalty in all straits and meditationsi of flight, has for many months hovered occasionally in our eye ;] some name or shadow of a brave Bouille : let us now, for a little/i look fixedly at him, till he become a substance and person for us.j The man himself is worth a glance ; his position and procedure, there, in these days, will throw light on many things. j For it is with Bouille as with all French Commanding Officers ;| only in a more emphatic aegitre. The grand National Federation, we already guess, was but empty sound, or worse : a last loudest universal Hep-hep-hurrah, with full bumpers, in that National, Lapithi€-feast of Constitution-making ; as in loud denial of the. palpably existing ; as if, with hurrahings, you would shut out notice of the inevitable already knocking at the gates ! Which new National bumper, one may say, can but deepen the drunken-, ness ; and so, the louder it swears Brotherhood, will the sooner and the more surely lead to Cannibalism. Ah, under that fra-, *ernal shine and clangour, what a deep world of irreconcileable i /iscords lie momentarily assuaged, damped down for one moment ! Respcctal^le military Federates have barely got home to their quarters ; and the inflammablest, ' dying, burnt up with liquors, * and kindness,' has not yet got extinct ; the shine is hardly out of men's eyes, and still blazes filling all men's memories,— when your discords burst forth again very considerably darker than ever. Let us look at l^ouilld, and see how. Bouille for the present commands in the Garrison of Metz, and! far and wide over the East and North ; being indeed, by a late act of Government with sanction of National Assembly, appointed i one of our Four supreme Generals. Rochambeau and Mailly, | men. and Marshals of note in these days, though to us of small I moment, are two of his colleagues ; tough old babbling Liickner, | also of small moment tor us, will probably be the third. Marquis ! ARREARS AND ARISTOCRATS. de Bouille is a determined Loyalist: ; not indeed disinclined to moderate reform, but resolute against immoderate. A man long suspect to Patriotism ; who has more than once given the august Assembly trouble ; who would not, for example, take the National Oath, as he was bound to do, but always put it off on this or the other pretext, till an autograph of Majesty requested him to do it as a favour. There, in this post if not of honour, yet of eminence and danger, he waits, in a silent concentered manner ; very dubious of the future. 'Alone,' as he says, or almost alone, of ah the old military Notabilities, he has not emigrated ; but thinks always, in atrabiliar moments, that there will be nothing for him too but to cross the marches. He might cross, sa}^, to Treves or Coblentz where Exiled Princes will be one day ranking ; or say, over into Luxemburg where old Broghe loiters and languishes. Or is there not the great dim Deep of European Diplomacy ; where your Calonnes, your Breteuils are beginning to hover, dimly discernible ? With immeasurable confused outlooks and purposes, with no clear purpose but this of still trying to do His Majesty a service, Bouille waits ; struggling what he .can to keep his district loyal, his troops faithful, his garrisons furnished. He maintains, as yet, with his Cousin Lafayette' some thin diplomatic correspondence, by letter and messenger ; chivalrous constitutional professions on the one side, military gravity and brevity on the other ; which thin correspondence, one can see growing ever the thinner and hollower, towards the verge of entire vacuity * A quick, choleric, sharply discerning, stubbornly endeavouring man ; with suppressed-ex- plosive resolution, with valour, nay headlong audacity : a man who was more in his place, Honlike defending those Windward Isles, or, as with military tiger- spring, clutching Nevis and Montserrat from the English, — than here in this suppressed condition, muzzled and fettered by diplomatic packthreads ; looking out for a civil war, which may never arrive. Fev\^ years ago Bouille was to have led a French East- Indian Expedition, and reconquered or con- quered Pondicherri and the Kingdoms of the Sun : but the whole world is suddenly changed, and he with it ; Destiny willed it not in that way but in this. CHAPTER IL ARREARS AND ARISTOCRATS. Indeed, as to the general outlook of things, Bouille himself ; augurs not well of it. The French Army, ever since those old Bastille days, and earlier, has been universally in the questionablest State, and growing daily worse. Discipline, which is at all times * Bouille, Mimoires (London, 1797), i. c. 8, KANCI a kind of miracle, and \vorks by faith broke down then ; one sees not with that near prospect of recovering itself. The Gardes Frangaises played a deadly §;an:c ; but how they won it, and wear the prizes of it, all men know. In that general overturn, we saw the Hired Fighters refuse to fight. The very Swiss of Chateau- Vieux, w^hich indeed is a kind of French Swiss, from Geneva and the Pays de Vaud, are understood to have declined Deserters glided over; Royal- Allemand itself looked disconsolate, though' stanch of purpose. In a word, we there saw Military Rule, in the shape of poor Besenval with that convulsive unmanageable Camp of his, pass two martyr days on the Champ-de-Mars ; and then, veiling itself, so to speak, 'under cloud of night,' depart' * down the left bank of the Seine/ to seek refuge elsewhere ; this' ground having clearly become too hot for it. But what new ground to seek, what remedy to try ? Quarters that were ' uninfected : ' this doubtless, with judicious strictness of drilling, were the plan. Alas, in all quarters and places, from Paris onward to the remotest hamlet, is infection, is seditious contagion: inhaled, propagated by contact and converse, till the dullest soldier catch it ! There is speech of men in uniform ' with m.en not in uniform; men in uniform read journals, and even write in them.* There are public petitions or remonstrances, ' private emissaries and associations ; "there is discontent, jealousy,^ uncertainty, sullen suspicious humour. The whole French Army, fermenting in dark heat; glooms ominous, boding good to no one. So that, in the general social dissolution and revolt, we are to have this deepest and dismallest kind of it, a revolting soldiery ? Barren, desolate to look upon is this same business of revolt under all its aspects ; but how infinitely more so, when it takes the aspect of military mutiny 1 The very implement of rule and restraint, whereby all the rest was managed and held in order, has become precisely the frightfullest immeasurable implement of mis- rule ; like the element of Fire, our indispensable all-ministering servant, when it gets the mastery, and becomes conflagration. Discipline we called a kind of miracle : in fact, it is not miracu- lous how one man moves hundreds of thousands; each unit of whom it may be loves him not, and singly fears him not, yet has to obey him, to go hither or go thither, to march and halt, to give death, and even to receive it, as if a Fate had spoken ; and the wwd-of-command becomes, almost in the literal sense, a magic- word .J* Which magic-word, again, if it be onc^ /or^^otte?t; the spell of it once broken ! The legions of assiduous ministering spirits rise on you now as menacing fiends ; your free orderly arena becomes a tumult-place of the Nether Pit, and the hapless magician is rent limb from limb. Military mobs are mobs with muskets in their hands ; and also with death hanging over their heads, for death is the penalty of disobedience and they have disobeyed. AnH now if all mobs are properly frenzies, and work, frenetically wit! mad fits of hot and of cold, fierce rage alternating so incoherent!) See Newspapers of July, 1789 (ia Hist, Purl. ii. 35)/&c. ARREARS AND ARISTOCRATS. 55 with panic terror, consider what your mihtary mob will be, with such a conflict of duties and penalties, whirled between remorse and fury, and, for the hot fit, loaded fire-arms in its hand ! To the soldier himself, revolt is frightful, and oftenest perhaps pitiable; and yet so dangerous, it can only be hated, cannot be pitied. An anomalous class of mortals these poor Hired Killers ! With a frankness, which to the Moralist in these times seems surprising, they have sworn to become machines; and nevertheless they are still partly men. Let no prudent person in authority remind them of this latter fact ; but always let force, let injustice above all, stop short clearly on i/n's side of the rebounding-point ! Soldiers, as we often say, do revolt : were it not so, several things which are transient in this world might be perennial. Over and above the general quarrel which all sons of Adam maintain with their lot here below, the grievances of the French soldiery reduce themselves to two, First that their Officers are Aristocrats ; secondly that they cheat them of their Pay. Two grievances ; or rather we might say one, capable of becoming a hundred; for in that single first proposition, that the Officers are Aristocrats, what a multitude of corollaries lie ready ! It is a bottomless ever-flowing fountain of grievances this ; what you may call a general raw-material of grievance, wherefrom individual grievance after grievance will daily body itself forth. Nay there will even be a kind of comfort in getting it, from time to time, so embodied. Peculation of one's Pay ! It is embodied ; made tangible, made denounceable ; exhalable, if only in angry words. For unluckily that grand fountain of grievances does exist : Aristocrats almost all our Officers necessarily are ; they have it in the blood and bone. By the law of the case, no man can pretend to be the pitifuUest lieutenant of militia, till he have first verified, to the satisfaction of the Lion-King, a Nobihty of four genera- tions. Not Nobility only, but four generations of it : this latter is the improvement bit upon, in comparatively late years, by a certain ' War-minister much pressed for commissions.* An improvement which did relieve the over pressed War-minister, but which split France still funber into yawning contrasts of Commonalty and Mobility, nay of nevv Nobility and old ; as if already with your tiew and old, and then with your old, older and oldest, there were not contrastsand discrepancies enough; — the general clash whereof men now see and hear, and in the singular vrhirlpool, all contrasts I gone together to the bottom ! Gone to the bottom or going; with I uproar, without return ; going every v/here save in the Military section of things ; and there, it may be asked, can they hope to continue always at the top ? Apparently, not. It is true, in a time of external Peace, when there is no fighting but only drilling, this question, How you rise from the ranks, may seem tlicoretical rather. But in reference to the rights of Man it is continually practical. The soldier has sworn to be faithful not I to the King only, but to the Law and the Nation. Do our com- Dainpinartin, Lvcncmcns^ i S9. NANCL manders love the Revolution ? ask all soldiers. Unhappily no,^ they hate it, and love the Counter-Revolution. Young epauletted ' men, with quahty-blood in them, poisoned with quality-pride, do sniff openly, with indignation struggling to become contempt, at our Rights of Man, as at some newfangled cobweb, which shall ; be brushed down again. Old officers, more cautious, keep silent, with closed uncurled lips ; but one guesses what is passing within. ; Nay who knows, how, under the plausiblest word of command, , might lie Counter-Revolution itself, sale to Exiled Princes and the ; Austrian Kaiser : treacherous Aristocrats hoodwinking the smai] ; insight of us common men In such manner works that general raw-material of grievance ; disastrous ; instead of trust and reve- 1 rence, breeding hate, endless suspicion, the impossibility of com- manding and obeying. And now when this second more tangible grievance has articulated itself universally in the mind of the com- \ mon man : Peculation of his Pay ! Peculation of the despicablest I sort does exist, and has long existed ; but, unless the new-declared j Rights of Man, and all rights whatsoever, be a cobweb, it shall no \ longer exist. The French Military System seems dying a sorrowful suicidal \ death. Nay more, citizen, as is natural, ranks himself against citizen j in this cause. The soldier finds audience, of numbers and sympathy 1 unlimited, among the Patriot lower-classes. Nor are the higher ! wanting to the officer. The officer still dresses and perfumes him- ' self for such sad unemigrated soiree as there may still be ; and speaks his woes,— which woes, are they not Majesty's and Nature's ? Speaks, at the same time, his gay defiance, his hrm-set resolution. Citizens, still more Citizenesses, se^ the right and the wrong ; noi the Military System alone will die by suicide, but much along with it. As was said, there is yet possible a deeper overturn than ans yet witnessed : that deepest tipinm of the black-burning sul- j phurous stratum whereon all rests and grows ! But how these things may act on the rude soldier-mind, with its military pedantries, its inexperience of all that lies off the parade- ground ; inexperience as of a child, yet fierceness of a man and vehemence of a Frenchman ! It is long that secret communin in mess-room and guard-room, sour looks, thousandfold pel vexations between commander and commanded, measure eve where the weary military day. Ask Captain Dampmartin ; authentic, ingenious literary officer of horse ; who loves the Rei of Liberty, after a sort ; yet has had his heart grieved to the qm many times, in the hot South-W^cstcrn region and elsewhere ; niul has seen riot, civil battle by daylight and by torchlight, and anarchy | hatefuller than death. How insubordinate Troopers, with drink, in their heads, meet Captain Dampmartin and another on the' ramparts, where there is no escape or side-path"; and make mili- tary salute punctually, for we look calm on them ; yet make it in! a snappish, almost insulting manner : how one morning they Meave all their chamois shirts' and siipcrtluous buffs, which they are tired of, laid in piles at the Captain's doors ; whereat ^ we * laugh,' as the ass docs, eating thistles : nay how they ^ knot twa! ARREARS AND ARISTOCRATS, S7 'forage-cords together/ with universal noisy cursing, with evident intent to hang the (Quarter-master : — all this the worthy Captain, looking on it through the ruddy-and-sable of fond regretful memory, has flowingiy written down."^ Men growl in vague discontent ; officers fling up their commissions, and emigrate in disgust. Or let us ask another literary Officer ; not yet Captain ; Sub- lieutenant only, in the Artillery Regiment La Fere : a young man of twenty-one ; not unentitled to speak ; the name of him is Napoleon Buo7iaparte. To such height of Sublieutenancy has he now got promoted, from Brienne School, five years ago ; ^ being 'found qualified in mathematics by La Place/ He is lying at Auxonne, in the West, in these months ; not sumptuously lodged — *in the house of a Barber, to whose wife he did not pay the cus- ' tomary cegree of respect ; ' or even over at the Pavilion, in a chamber wic^i bare walls ; the only furniture an indifferent * bed * without curtains, two chairs, and in the recess of a window a table * covered with books and papers : his Brother Louis sleeps on a * coarse mattrass in an adjoining room.^ However, he is doing something great : v^^riting his first Book or Pamphlet, — eloquent vehement Letter to M. Matteo Bttttafitoco, our Corsican Deputy, who is not a Patriot but an Aristocrat, unworthy of Deputyship. Joly of Dole is Publisher. The literary Subheutenant corrects the proofs ; ' sets out on foot from -Auxonne, every morning at four 'o'clock, for Dole : after looking over the proofs, he partakes of an ' extremeiy frugal breakfast with Joly, and immediately prepares ^ for returning to his Garrison ; where he arrives before noon, 'having thus walked above twenty miles in the course of the ' morning.' This Sublieutenant can remark that, in drawing-rooms, on streets, on highways, at inns, every where mxn's minds are ready Lo kindle into a flame. That a Patriot, if he appear in the drawing- room, or amid a group of officers, is liable enough to be dis- ':ouraged, so great is the m.ajority against him : but no sooner does he get into the street, or among the soldiers, than he feels ig-m as if the whole Nation were with him. That after the amous Oath, To the Kmg^ to the Nation a7td Law^ there was a jreat change ; that before this, if ordered to fire on the people, he X)r one would have done it in the King's name ; but that after this, I n tho I^ation's name, he would not have done it. Likewise that i:he 1 i.triot officers, more numerous too in the Artillery and iKngincers than elsewhere, were few in number; yet that having |ihe^j'_diors on their side, they ruled the regiment ; and did often lieliver the Aristocrat brother officer out of peril and strait. One : iay, fo? example, ' a member of our own mess roused the mob, by j " singing, from the windows of our dining-room, O Richard, O niy \' King; and I had to snatch him from their furv.'f ' All w.hich let ihe reader multiply by ten thousand ; and spread Timpinartin, livcnenicns, i. 122-146. \orvins, Histoirede Napoleon, i. 47; Las Cases, Md))ioires (translated ^ OtO Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon, i. 23-31). NANCI. it with slight variations over all the camps and garrisons of \ France The French Army seems on the verge of universal \ mutiny. n i . Universal mutiny ! There is m that what may well make \ Patriot Constitutionalism and an august Assembly shudder. | Something behoves to be done ; yet what to do no man can tell. \ Mirabeau proposes even that the Soldiery, having come to such a \ pass, be forthwith disbanded, the whole Two Hundred and Eighty j Thousand of them ; and organised anew.^ Impossible this, in so j sudden a manner ! cry all men. And yet hterally, answer vve, it | is inevitable, in one matter or another. Such an Army, with its \ four-generation Nobles, its Peculated Pay, and m.en knotting | forage-cords to hang their quartermaster, cannot subsist beside 1 such a Revolution. Your alternative is a slow-pining chronic dis- solution and new organization ; or a swift decisive one ;^ the agonies spread over years, or concentrated into an hour. With a Mirabeau for Minister or Governor the latter had been the choice ; with no Mirabeau for Governor it will naturally be the former. CHAPTER HI. BOUILLE AT METZ. To Bouille, inhis North-Eastern circle, none of these things are altojrether hid. Many times flight over the marches gleam out on him as a last guidance in such bewilderment : nevertheless he continues here : struggling always to hope the best, not from nev\^ organisations but from happy Counter-Revolution and return to the "old For the rest it is clear to him that this same National Federation, and universal swearing and fraternising of People and Soldiers, has done * incalculable mischief.' So much that fer- mented secretly has thereby got vent and become open : National Guards and Soldiers of the line, solemnly embracing one another on all parade-fields, drinking, swearing patriotic oaths, fall into disorderly street processions, constitutional unmilitary exclama- tions and hurrahings. On which account the Regiment Picardie, for one, has to be drawn out in the square of the barracks, here at M^tz, and sharply harangued by the General himself; but ex- presses penitence.! T . 1 1- • 1 u Far and near, as accounts testify, insubordmation has begun eriimbling louder and louder. Otlicers liave been seen shut up in their mess-rooms; assaulted witli rlamorous demands, not without menaces. The insubordinate ringleader is dismissed with ' yellow fiirlou^di,' vellow infamous thing they call a^r/.^z/^^^^y^^////^ but ten new ringleaders rise in his stead, and the yellow cartouche * Monitcur, 1790, No. 233. \ Bouille, Me??ioires, i. 113- BOUILLE AT METZ. 59 ceases to be thought disgraceful. ' Within a fortnight,' or at furthest a month, of that subUine Feast of Pikes, the whole French Army, demanding Arrears, forming Reading Clubs, frequenting Popular Societies, is in a state which Bouille can call by no name but that of mutiny. Bouille knows it as few do; and speaks by dire experience. Take one instance instead of many. It is still an early day of August, the precise date now undis- coverable, when Bouille, about to set out for the waters of Aix la Chapelle, is once more suddenly summoned to the barracks of Metz. The soldiers stand ranked in fighting order, muskets loaded, the officers all there on compulsion ; and require, with many-voiced emphasis, to have their arrears paid. Picardie was penitent ; but we see it has relapsed : the wide space bristles and lours with mere mutinous armed men Brave Bouille advances to the nearest Regiment, opens his commanding lips to harangue ; obtains nothing but querulous-indignant discordance, and the sound of so many thousand livres legally due. The moment is trying ; there are some ten thousand soldiers now in Metz, and one spirit seems to have spread among them. Bouille is firm as the adamant ; but what shall he do ? A German Regiment, named of Salm, is thought to be of better temper : nevertheless Salm too may have heard of the precept. Thou shall not steal ; Salm too may know that money is money. Bouille walks trustfully towards the Regiment de Salm, speaks trustful words ; but here again i-s answered by thecry of forty- four thousand livres odd sous. A cry waxmg more and more vociferous, as Salm's humour mounts; which cry, as it will produce no cash or promise of cash, ends in the wide simultaneous whirr of shouldered muskets, and a determined quick-time march on the part of Salm —towards its Colonel's house, in the next street, there to seize the colours and military chest. Thus does Salm, for its part ; strong in the faith that meuin is not tuwn, that fair speeches are not forty-four thousand livres odd sous. Unrestrainable ! Salm tramps to military time, quick con- suming the way. Bouille and the officers, drawing sword, have to dash into double quick pas-de-charge, or unmilitary running ; to get the start ; to station themselves on the outer staircase, and stand there with what of death-defiance and sharp steel they have ; Salm truculently coiling itself up, rank after rank, opposite them, in such humour as we can fancy, which happily has not yet mounted to the murder-pitch. There will Bouille stand, certain at least of one man's purpose ; in grim calmness, awaiting the issue. What the intrepidest of men and generals can do is done. Bouille, though there is a barricading pricket at each end of the street, and death under his eyes, contrives to send for a Dragoon Regiment with orders to charge : the dragoon officers mount ; the dragoon men will not : hope is none there for him. The street, as we say, barricaded ; the earth all shut out, only the indifferent heavenly Vault overhead : perhaps here or there a timorous householder peering out of window, with prayer for Bouille ; copious Rascality, on the pavement, with prayer for Salm : there NANCL do the two parties stand -—like chariots locked in a narrow thoroughfare ; Hke locked wrestlers at a dead-grip ! For two hours they stand ; Bouille's sword glittering in his hand, adaman- tine resolution clouding his brows : for two hours by the clocks of Metz Moody-silent stands Salm, with occasional clangour ; but does not fire. Rascality from time to time urges some grenadier to level his musket at the General ; who looks on it as a bronze General would ; and always some corporal or other strikes it up. In such remarkable attitude, standing on that staircase for two hours, does brave Bouille, long a shadow, dawn on us visibly out of the dimness, and become a person. For the rest, smce Salm has not shot him at the first instant, and since in himself there is no variableness, the danger will diminish. The Mayor, ' a man ' infinitely respectable,' with his Municipals and tricolor sashes, finally gains entrance ; remonstrates, perorates, promises ; gets Salm persuaded home to its barracks. Next day, our respectable Mayor lending the money, the officers pay down the half of the demand in ready cash. With which liquidation Salm pacifies itself, and for the present all is hushed up, as much as may be."^ Such scenes as this of Metz, or preparations and demonstra- ' tions towards such, are universal over France : Dampmartm, with , his knotted forage-cords and piled chamois jackets, is at Stras- burg in the South-East ; in these same days or rather nights, Royal Champagne is ' shouting Vive la Natum, an diable les ' Aristocrates, with some thirty lit candles,' at Hesdm, on the far North- West. " The garrison of Bitche," Deputy Rewbell is sorry to state, " went out of the town, with drums beating ; deposed its officers ; and then returned into the town, sabre m hand.''t Ought not a National Assembly to occupy itself with these ob- jects ? Military France is everywhere full of sour inflammatory humour, which exhales itself fuliginously, this way or that : a whole continent of smoking flax ; which, blown on here or there by any angry wind, might so easily start into a blaze, into a con- tinent of fire ! 1 1 ^ .1 ^ Constitutional Patriotism is in deep natural alarm at these things. The august Assembly sits diligently deliberating ; dare nowise resolve, with Mirabeau, on an instantaneous disbandment and extinction ; finds that a course of palliatives is easier. But at least and lowest, this grievance of the Arrears shall be rectified. A plan, much noised of in those days, under the name Decree ot ' the Sixth of August,' has been devised for that. Inspectors shall visit all armies ; and, with certain elected corporals and soldiers * able to write,' verify what arrears and peculations do he due, and make them good. Well, if in this way the smoky heat be cooled down ; if it be not, as we say, ventilated over-much, or, by sparks and collision somewhere, sent /// 1 * Bouille, i. 140-5. t Moniicur (in Hist. Pari, vil 29). ARREARS AT NANCL 6i CHAPTER IV. ARREARS AT NANCI. We are to remark, however, that of all districts, this of Bouille's seems the mfiammablest. It was always to Bouille and Metz that Royalty would fly : Austria lies near ; here more than elsewhere must the disunited People look over the borders, into a dim sea of foreign Politics and Diplomacies, with hope or apprehension, with mutual exasperation. It was but in these days that certain Austrian troops, marching peaceably across an angle of this region, seemed an Invasion realised: and there rushed towards Stenai, with musket on shoulder, from all the winds, some thirtv thousand National Guards, to inquire what the matter was.^ A matter of mere diplomacy it proved ; the Austrian Kaiser, in haste to get to Bel- gium, had bargained for this short cut. The infinite dim move- ment of European Politics waved a skirt over these spaces pass- mg on Its way ; like the passing shadow of a condor ; and such a winged flight of thirty thousand, with mixed cackling and crowing- rose m consequence ! For, in addition to all, this people, as we said, IS much divided : Aristocrats abound ; Patriotism has both Aristocrats and Austrians to watch. It is Lorraine, this reo-ion • not so illuminated as old France : it remembers ancient Feudal- isms; nay, withm man's memory, it had a Court and King of its own or indeed the splendour of a Court and King, without the burden. Then, contrariwise, the Mother Society, which sits in the Jacobins Church at Paris, has Daughters in the Towns here • ^riU-tongued, driven acrid : consider how the memory of o-ood King Stanislaus, and ages of Imperial Feudalism, may comport with this New acrid Evangel, and what a virulence of discord there may be ! In all which, the Soldiery, officers on one side private men on the other, takes part, and now indeed principal part ; a J^oldiery, moreover, all the hotter here as it lies the denser, the frontier Province requiring more of it. So stands Lorraine : but the capital City, more especially so The pleasant City of Nanci, which faded Feudalism loves, where Kino- Stanislaus personally dwelt and shone, has an Aristocrat Municipa''. hty, and then also a Daughter Society: it has some forty thousand divided souls of population ; and three large Regiments, one of which is Swiss Chateau-Vieux, dear to Patriotism ever since it re- lused fighting, or was thought to refuse, in the Bastille days. Here unhappily all evil influences seem to meet concentered ; here, of all places, may jealousy and heat evolve itself. These many months, accordingly, man has been set against man. Washed against Unwashed; Patriot Soldier against Aristocrat Captain, ever the more bitterly ; and a long score of grudges has been run- nmg up. . * MoniiezLr^ Seance du 9 Ao^it 179a 62 N ANCI. Nameable grudges, and likewise unnameable : for there is a punctual nature in Wrath ; and daily, were there but glances of the eye tones of the voice, and minutest commissions or omissions, it will jot down somewhat, to account, under the head of sundries, which always Swells the sum-total. For example, m April last, in those times of preliminary Federation, when National Guards and Soldiers were every where swearing brotherhood, and ail France was locally federating, preparing for the grand National Feast of Pikes, it v/as observed that these Nanci Officers threw cold water on the whole brotherly business ; that they first hung back from appearing- at the Nanci Federation ; then did appear, but in mere redingote and undress, with scarcely a clean shirt on ; nay that one of them, as the National Colours flaunted by m that solemn moment, did, without visible necessity, take occasion to S'bit ^ Small ' sundries as per journal,' but then incessant ones ! The Aristocrat Municipality, pretending to be Constitutional, keeps mostly quiet ; not so the Daughter Society, the five thousand adult male Patriots of the place, still less the five thousand female : not so the young, whiskered or whiskerless, four-generation Noblesse in epaulettes ; the grim Patriot Swiss of Chateau- Vieux etferves- cent infantry of Regiment du Roi, hot troopers of Mestre-de- Camp ' Walled Nanci, which stands so bright and trim, with its straight street,, spacious squares, and Stanislaus' Architecture on ihe fniitful alluvium of the Meurthe ; so bright, amid the yellow cornfields in these Reaper-Months,— is inwardly but a den of dis- cord, anxiety, inflammability, not far from exploding Let BouillS look to it. If that universal military heat, which we liken to a vast continent of smoking flax, do any where take fire his beard, here in Lorraine and Nanci, may the most readily of all get singed by it. Bouilli, for his part, is busy enough, but only with the general superintendence ; getting his pacified Salm, and all other still tole-able Regiments, marched out of Metz, to southward towns and villages • to rural Cantonments as at Vic, Marsal and thereabout, by the still waters ; where is plenty of horse-forage, sequestered parade-ground, and the soldier's speculative faculty can be sti led by drilling. Salm, as we said, received only half payment of arrears ; naturally not without grumbling. Nevertheless that scene of the drawn sword may, after all, have raised LouiUe in the mind of Salm ; for men and soldiers love intrepidity and swift in- flexible decision, even when they suffer by it. As '"deed -s not this fundamentallv the quality of qualities for a man ? A qualuy which by itself is' next to nothing, since inferior anirnals, asses, dogs, even mules have it ; yet, in due combination, it is the indis- pensable basis of all. . u i i Of Nanci and its heats. Bouill^, commanaer of the whole, knows nothing special ; understands generally that the troops in that * Deux Amis, v. 2.17. ARREARS AT NANCI. 63 City are perhaps the worst.^ The Officers there have it all, as they have long had it, to themselves ; and unhappily seem to man- age it ill. ' Fifty yellow furloughs,' given out in one batch, do surely betoken difficulties. But what was Patriotism to think of certain light-fencing Fusileers * set on,' or supposed to be set on, * to insult the Grenadier-club,' considerate speculative Grenadiers, and that reading-room of theirs ? With shoutings, with hootings; till the speculative Grenadier drew his side-arms too; and there ensued battery and duels ! Nay more, are not swashbucklers of the same stamp ' sent out ' visibly, or sent out presumably, now in the dress of Soldiers to pick quarrels with the Citizens ; now, dis- guised as Citizens, to pick quarrels with the Soldiers ? For a cer- tain Roussiere, expert in fence, was taken in the very fact ; four Officers (presum.ably of tender years) hounding him on, who there- upon fled precipitately ! Fence master Roussiere, hailed to the guardhouse, had sentence of three months' imprisonment : but his comrades demanded 'yellow furlough' for/^/;;^ of all persons; nay, thereafter they produced him on parade ; capped him in paper- helmet inscribed, Iscariot ; marched him to the gate of City ; and there sternly commanded him to vanish for evermore. On all which suspicions, accusations and noisy procedure, and on enough of the like continually accumulating, the Officer could not but look with disdainful indignation ; perhaps disdainfully express the same in w^ords, and ' soon after fly over to the ' Austrian s,' So that when it here as elsewhere comes to the question of Arrears, the humor and procedure is of the bitterest : Regiment Mestre-de-Camp getting, amid loud clamour, some three gold louis a-man, which have, as usual, to be borrowed from the Municipality; Swiss Chateau-Vieux applying for the like ; but getting instead \v- stantaneouS(f^>?/rr6>/.s-,or cat-o'-nine-tails, with subsequent unsuffer- able hisses from the women and children ; Regiment du Roi, sick of hope deferred, at length seizing its military chest and marching it to quarters, but next day marching it back again, through streets, all struck silent : - unordered paradings and clamours, not without strong liquor ; objurgation, insurbordination ; your military ranked Arrangement going all (as Typographers say of set types, in a^ similar case) rapidly to pie !t Such is Nanci in these early days of^ August ; the sublime Feast of Pikes not yet a month old. . Constitutional Patriotism, at Paris and elsewhere, may well quake at the news. War-Minister Latour du Pin runs breathless to the National Assembly, with a written message that * all is ' burning, tout bride tout pr esse! The National Assembly, on the spur of the instant, renders such Decret, and * order to submit and ' repent,' as he requires ; if it will avail any thing. On the other hand. Journalism, through all its throats, gives hoarse outcry, con- demnatory, elegiac-applausive. The Forty-eight Sections, lift up ires; sonorous Brevv^er, or call him now^ CWd?;/^?/ Santerre, is not nt, in the Faubourg Saint- Antoine. For, meanwhile, the Nanci :/^l(liers have sent a Deputation of Ten, furnished with documents Bouillc, i. c, 9, \ Deux Amis^ v. c. 8. 64 NANCL and proofs ; v/ho will tell another story than the ^ all-is-burning one Which deputed Ten, before ever they reach the Assembly Hall, assiduous Latour du Pin picks up, and on warrant of Mayor Bailly, claps in prison ! Most unconstitutionally ; for they had officers' furloughs. Whereupon Saint-Antoine, in mdignant un- certainty of the future, closes its shops. Is Bouille a traitor then, sold to Austria? In that case, these poor private sentinels have revoked mainly out of Patriotism ? New Deputaticn, Deputation of National Guardsmen now, sets forth from Nanci to enlighten the Assembly. It mee:: the old deputed Ten returning, quite unexpectedly ^///hanged ; ana pro- ceeds thereupon with better prospects ; but effects nothing. De- putations, Government Messengers, Orderlies at hand-gallops, Alarms, thousand-voiced Rumours, go vibrating continually; backwards and forwards,— scattering distraction. N ot till the last week of August does M. de Malseigne, selected as Inspector, get down to the scene of mutiny ; with Authority, with cash, and ' Decree of the Sixth of August.' He now shall see these Arrears liquidated, justice done, or at least tumult quashed. CHAPTER V. INSPECTOR MALSEIGNE. Of Inspector Malseigne we discern, by direct light, that he is *of Herculean stature ; ' and infer, with probabihty, that he is of truculent moustachioed aspect,— for Royalist Officers now leave the upper lip unshaven ; that ho is of indomitable bull-heart ; and also, unfortunately, of thick bull-head. On Tuesday the 24th of August, 1790, be opens session as Inspecting Commissioner; meets those 'elected corporals and ' soldiers that can write.' He finds the accounts of Chateau-Vieux to be complex ; to require delay and reference : he takes to haran^ sruine, to reprimanding ; ends amid audible grumbling. Next morning, he resumes session, not at the Townha 1 as prudent Municipals counselled, but once more at the barracks Unfortu- nately Chateau-Vieux, grumbling all night, w;ill now hear of no delay or reference ; from reprimanding on his part, it goes to bullying,— answered with continual cries of Ju(!:cz iotii de suite judge it at once whereupon M. de Malseigne will off in a hull But lo, Chateau-Vieux, swarming all about the barrack-court, has sentries at every gate ; M. de Malseigne, demanding egress, can- not get it, though Commandant Denoue backs him ; can get only " Juires tout de suited Here is a nodus ! ' . Bull-hearted M. de Malseigne draws his sword ; and will torce egress. Confused splutter. M. de Malseigne's sword breaks ; he snatches Commandant Denoue's : the sentry is wounded. M. de INSPECTOR MALSEIGNE. 65 Malseigne, whom one is loath to kill, does force egress, — followed by Chateau-Vieux all in disarray ; a spectacle to Nanci. M. de Malseigne walks at a sharp pace, yet never runs ; wheeling from time to time, with menaces and movements of fence ; and so reaches Denoue's house, unhurt ; which house Chateau-Vieux, in an agitated manner, invests, — hindered at yet from entering, by a crowd of officers formed on the staircase. M. de Malseigne retreats by back ways to the Townhall, flustered though undaunted; amid an escort of National Guards. From the Townhall he, on the morrow, emits fresh orders, fresh plans of settlement with Chateau-Vieux ; to none of which will Chateau-Vieux listen : whereupon finally he, amid noise enough, emits order that Chateau-Vieux shall march on the morrow morning, and quarter at Sarre Louis. Chateau-Vieux flatly refuses marching ; M. de Malseigne 'takes act^ due notarial protest, of such refusal, — if happily that may avail him. This is the end of Thursday ; and, indeed, of M. de Malseigne's Inspectorship, which has lasted some fifty hours. To such length, in fifty hours, has he unfortunately brought it. Mestre-de-Camp and Regiment du Roi hang, as it were, fluttering : Chateau-Vieux is clean gone, in what way we see. Over night, an Aide-de-Camp of Lafayette's, stationed here for such emergency, sends swift emissaries far and wide, to summon National Guards. The slum- ber of the country is broken by clattering hoofs, by loud fraternal knockings ; every where the Constitutional Patriot must clutch his fighting-gear, and take the road for Nanci. And thus the Herculean Inspector has sat all Thursday, among terror-struck Municipals, a centre of confused noise : all Thurs- day, Friday, and till Saturday towards noon. Chiteau-Vieux, in spite of the notarial protest, will not march a step. As many as four thousand National Guarcjs are dropping or pouring in ; un- certain what is expected of them, still more uncertain what will be obtained of them. For all is uncertainty, commotion, and sus- picion : there goes a word that Bouille, beginning to bestir himself in the rural Cantonments eastward, is but a Royalist traitor ; that Chdteau-Vieux and Patriotism are sold to Austria, of which latter M. de Malseigne is probably some agent. Mestre-de-Camp and Roi flutter still more questionably : Chateau-Vieux, far from marching, ' waves red flags out of two carriages,' in a passionate manner, along the streets ; and next morning answers its Officers : " Pay us, then ; and we will march with you to th- r/orld's end ! " Under which circumstances, towards noon on Saturday, M. de Malseigne thinks it were good perhaps to inspect the ramparts, — on horseback. He mounts, accordingly, with escort of three troopers. At the gate of the city, he bids tvx^o of them wait for his return ; and with the third, a trooper, to be depended upon, he —gallops off for Luneville ; where lies a certain Carabineer Regiment not yet in a mutinous state ! The two left troopers soon get uneasy ; discover how it is, and give the alarm. Mestre- de-Camp, to the number of a hundred, saddles in frantic haste, as if sold to Austria ; gallops out pellmell in chase of its Inspector. VOL. II. D 66 NANCL And so they spur, and the Inspector spurs ; careering, with noise and jingle, up the valley of the River Meurthe, towards Luneyille and the midday sun: through an astonished country; indeed almost their own astonishment. . , , j ivt i What a hunt , Actason-like ;— wnich Action ^ de Malse gnc happily m.' I'o arms, ye Carabineers of Luneville : to chas- tise mutinous men, insulting your General Officer, msuUmg your own quarters ;-above all things, fire soo7i, lest there be parleying and ye refuse to fire ! The Carabineers fire soon, exploding upon the first stragglers of Mestre-de-Camp ; who shrink at the very flash, and fall back hastily on Nanci, in a state not far from dis- traction. Panic and fury : sold to Austria without an tf; so much per regiment, the very sums can be specified ; and traitorous Mai- seigne is fled ! Help, O Heaven ; help, thou Earth,-ye un- washed Patriots ; ye too are sold like us ! M^ef.^ Effervescent Regiment du Roi primes its firelocks Mestre-de- Camp saddles wholly : Commandant Denoue is seized, is flung in prison with a 'canvass shirt' {sarreau de /^^^/^ about him ; Chiteau-Vieux bursts up the magazines ; distribuces three 'thousand fusils 'to a Patriot people: Austria shall have a hot bargain. Alas, the unhappy hunting-dogs, as we said, have hunted away their huntsman ; and do now run .hownng and baying, on what trail they know not ; nigh rabid ! And so there is tumultuous march of men, through the niglit ; with halt on the heights of Flinval, whence Luneville can be seen all illuminated. Then there is parley, at four in the morning ; and reparley ; finally thete is agreement : the Carabineers give la ; Malseigne is surrendered, with apologies on all sides. After weary confused hours, he is even got under way ; the Lunevillers all turning out, in the idle Sunday, to see such departure : home- eoing of mutinous Mestre-de-Camp with its Inspector captive. Mestre-de.Camp accordingly marches ; the LuncviUers look See! at the corner of the first street, our Inspector bounds ott again, bull-hearted as he is ; amid the slash of sabres the crackle of musketry ; and escapes, full gallop, with only a ball lodged in his hvifi-jerkin. The Herculean man ! And yet it is an escape to no purpose. For the Carabineers, to whom after the hardest Sunday's ride on record, he has come circling back, stand de- ' liberating by their nocturnal watch-fires ;' deliberatmg of Austria, of traitors, and the rage of Mestre-de Camp. So that, on he whole, the next sight we have is that of M. de Malseigne, on the Monday afternoon, faring bull-hearted through the streets ot Nanci ; in open carriage, a soldier standing over him with drawn sword ; amid the ' furies of the women,' hedges of National Guards, and confusion of Babel : to the Prison beside Com- mandam Denoue ! That finally is the lodging of Inspector Mal- ^^Sui^ely it is time Bouill($ were drawing near. The Country all « Deux Amis. v. 206-251; Newspapers and Documents (in Hut:.Parl. vii. 59-162). BOUILLE AT NANCI. 67 round, alarmed with watchfires, illuminated towns, and marching and rout, has been sleepless these several nights. Nanci, with its uncertain National Guards, with its distributed fusils, mutinous soldiers, black panic and redhot ire, is not a City but a Bedlam. CHAPTER VI. BOUILLE AT NANCL Haste with help, thou brave Bouille : if sv/ift help come not, all is now verily 'burning and may burn,— to what lengths and breadths ! Much, in these hours, depends on Bouille ; as it shall now fare with him, the whole Future may be this way or be that. If, for example, he were to loiter dubitating, and not come : if he were to come, and fail : the whole Soldiery of France to blaze into mutiny. National Guards going some this way, some that ; and Royalism to draw its rapier, and Sansculottism to snatch its pike ; and the Spirit of Jacobinism, as yet young, girt with sun-rays, to grow instantaneously mature, girt with hell-fire,— as mortals, in one night of deadly crisis, have had their heads turned gray ! Brave Bouille is advancing fast, with the old inflexibihty; gathering himself, unhappily 'in small affluences,' from East, from West and North ; and now on Tuesday morning, the last day of the month, he stands all concentered, \mhappily still in small, force, at the village of Frouarde, within some few miles. Son of Adam with a more dubious task before him is not in the world this Tuesday morning. A weltering inflammable sea of doubt ano peril, and Bouille sure of simply one thing, his own determination. Which one thing, indeed, may be worth many. He puts a most firm face on the matter : ' Submission, or unsparing battle and 'destruction; twenty>four hours to make your choice : ' this was the tenor of his Proclamation ; thirty copies of which he sent yesterday to Nanci :— all which, we find, were intercepted and not posted.^ Nevertheless, at half-past eleven, this morning, seemingly by way of answer, there does wait on him at Frouarde, some Deputa- tion from the mutinous Regiments, from the Nanci Municipals, to see what can be done. Bouille receives this Deputation, 'in a 'large open court adjoining his lodging:' pacified Salm, and the rest, attend also, being invited to do it,— all happily still in the right humour. The Mutineers pronounce themselves with a decisiveness, which to Bouille seems insolence; and happily to Salm also. Salm, forgetful of the Metz staircase and sabre, demands that the scoundrels 'be hanged' there and then. Bouille * Compare Bouille, Memoires, i. i53-r76 ; Dtux Amis, v. 2^1-271 : HiO^ Petri, ubi supra. D 3 6S NANCL represses the hanging ; but answers that mutinous Soldiers have i one course, and not more than one : To hberate, with heartfelt \ contrition, Messieurs Denoue and de Malseigne; to get ready j forthwith for marching off, whither he shall order; and ^submit \ *and repent,' as the National Assembly has decreed, as he i yesterday did in thirty printed Placards proclaim. These are his k terms, unalterable as the decrees of Destiny. Which term's as j they, the Mutineer deputies, seemingly do not accept, it were good 3 for them to vanish from this spot, and even promptly; with him \ too, in few instants, the word will be. Forward ! The Mutineer I deputies vanish, not unpromptly; the Municipal ones, anxious | beyond right for their own individualities, prefer abiding with \ Bouille. ! Brave Bouille, though he puts a most firm face on the matter, i knows his position full well : how at Nanci, what with rebellious j soldiers, with uncertain National Guards, and so many disiributed \ fusils, there rage and roar some ten thousand fighting men ; while j with himself is scarcely the third part of that number^ in National \ Guards also uncertain, in mere pacified Regiments, — for the \ present full of rage, and clamour to march ; but whose rage and \ clamour may next moment take such a fatal new figure. On the top of one uncertain billow, therewith to calm billows ! Bouille j must ^abandon himself to Fortune;' who is said sometimes to \ favour the brave. At half-past twelve, the Mutineer deputies j having vanished, our drums beat ; we march : for Nanci ! Let \ Nanci bethink itself^ then; for Bouille has thought and de- \ termined. And yet how shall Nanci think : not a City but a Bedlam ! | Grim Chateau- Vieux is for defence to the death ; forces the j Municipahty to order, by tap of drum, all citizens acquainted with artillery to turn out, and assist in managing the cannon. On the- 3 other hand, effervescent Regiment du Roi, is drawn up in its : barracks ; quite disconsolate, hearing the humour Salm is in ; and ; ejaculates dolefully from its thousand throats: "-La lot, la lot, \ Law, law Mestre-de-Camp blusters, with profane swearing, in mixed terror and furor ; National Guards look this way and that, not knowing what to do. What a Bedlam-City : as many plans ^ as heads ; all ordering, none obeying : quiet hone,— except the Dead, who sleep underground, having done their fighting ! And, behold, l^ouille'proves as good as his word : 'at half-past ^two' scouts report that he is within half a league of the gates ; rattling along,* with cannon, and array ; breathing nothing but destruction. A new Deputation, Municipals, Mutineers, Officers, goes out to meet him ; with passionate entreaty for yet one other hour. Bouille grants an hour. Then, at the end thereof, no Denoue or Malseigne appearing as promised, he rolls his drums, and again takes the road. Towards four o'clock, the terror-struck ; Townsmen may see him face to face. His cannons rattle there, in their carriages ; his vanguard is within thirty paces of the Gate i Stanislaus. Onward like a Planet, by appointed times, by law. of J Nature ! What next? I-o, flag of truce and chamade ; conjuration I EOVILLE AT NANCI. 69 to halt : Malseigne and Denoue are on the street, coming hither ; the soldiers all repentant, ready to submit and march ! Adaman- tine Bouille's look alters not ; yet the word Halt is given : gladder moment he never saw. Joy of joys ! Malseigne and Denoue do verily issue ; escorted by National Guards ; from streets all frantic, with sale to Austria and so forth : they salute Bouille, un- scathed. Bouille steps aside to speak with them, and with other heads of the Town there ; having already ordered by what Gates and Routes the mutineer Regiments shall file out. Such colloquy with these two General Officers and other principal Townsm.en, was natural enough ; nevertheless one wishes Bouille had postponed it, and not stepped aside. Such tumultuous inflammable masses, tumbling along, making way for each other ; this of keen nitrous oxide, that of sulphurous fire- damp, — were it not well to stand between them, keeping them well separate, till the space be cleared ? Numerous stragglers of Cha- teau- Vieux and the rest have not marched with their main columns, which are filing out by the appointed Gates, taking station in the open meadows. National Guards are in a state of nearly dis- tracted uncertainty ; the populace, armed and unharmed, roll openly dehrious, — betrayed, sold to the Austrians, sold to the Aristocrats. There are loaded cannon with lit matches among them, and Bouille's vanguard is halted within thirty paces of the Gate. Command dwells not, in that mad inflam.mable mass ; which smoulders and tumbles there, in blind smoky rage ; which will not open the Gate when summoned ; says it will open the cannon's throat sooner ! — Cannonade not, O Friends, or be it through my body ! cries heroic young Desilles, young Captain of Roi^ clasping the murderous engine in his arms, and holding it. Chateau- Vieux Swiss, by main force, with oaths and menaces, wrench off the heroic youth ; who undaunted, amid still louder oaths, seats himself on the touch-hole. Amid still louder oaths ; with ever louder clangour,— and, alas, with the loud crackle of first one, and then three other muskets ; w^hich explode into his body ; which roll // in the dust, — and do also, in the loud madness of such moment, bring lit cannon-match to ready priming ; and so, with one thunderous belch of grapeshot, blast some fifty of Bouille's vanguard into air ! Fatal ! That sputter of the first musket-shot has kindled such a cannon-shot, such a death-blaze ; and all is now redhot madness, conflagration as of Tophet. With demoniac rage, the Bouille van- guard storms through that Gate Stanislaus ; with fiery sweep, sweeps Mutiny clear away, to death, or into shelters and cellars ; from which latter, again, Mutiny continues firing. The ranked Regiments hear it in their meadow ; they rush back again through the nearest Gates ; Bouille gallops in, distracted, inaudible ;~and now has begun, in Nanci, as in that doomed Hall of the Nibelun- gen, ' a murder grim and great.' • Miserable : such scene of dismal aimless madness as the anger of Heaven but ^^rely permits among men ! From cellar or from [garret, from open street in front, from successive corners of cross- 70 NANCL streets on each hand, Chateau-Vieux and Patriotism keep up the murderous roUing-fire, on murderous not Unpatriotic fires. Your blue National Captain, riddled with balls, one hardly knows on whose side fighting, requests to be laid on the colours to die : the patriotic Woman (name not given, deed surviving) screams to Chateau-Vieux that it must not fire the other cannon ; and even flings a pail of water on it, since screaming avails not."^ Thou shalt fight ; thou shalt not fight ; and with whom shalt thou fight ! Could tumult awaken the old Dead, Burgundian Charles the Bold might stir from under that Rotunda of his : never since he. raging, sank in the ditches, and lost Life and Diamond, was such a noise heard here. Three thousand, as some count, lie mangled, gory ; the half of Chateau-Vieux has been shot, without need of Court Martial. Cavalry, of Mestre-de-Camp or their foes, can do httle. Regiment du Roi was persuaded to its barracks ; stands there palpitating. Bouille, armed with the terrors of the Law, and favoured of For- tune, finally triumphs. In two murderous hours he has penetrated to the grand Squares, dauntless, though with loss of forty officers and five hundred men : the shattered remnants of Chateau-Vieux are seeking covert. Regiment du Roi, not effervescent now, alas no, but having effervesced, will offer to ground its arms ; will ' march in a quarter of an hour.' Nay these poor effervesced re- quire ' escort ' to march with, and get it ; though they are thousands strong, and have thirty ball-cartridges a man ! The Sun is not yet down, when Peace, which might have come bloodless, has come bloody : the mutinous Regiments are on march, doleful, on their three Routes ; and from Nanci rises wail of women and rnen, the voice of weeping and desolation ; the City weeping for its slain who awaken not. These streets are empty but for victorious patrols. Thus has Fortune, favouring the brave, dragged Bouille, as him- self says, out of such a frightful peril, ' by the hair of the head.' An intrepid adamantine man this Bouille :— had he stood m old Broglie's place, in those Bastille days, it might have been all different ! He has extinguished mutiny, and immeasurable civil war. Not for nothing, as we see ; yet at a rate which he and Con- stitutional Patriotism considers cheap. Nay, as for Bouille, he, urged by subsequent contradiction which arose, declares coldly, it was rather against his own private mind, and more by public military rule of duty, that he did extinguish it,*!— immeasurable ( ivil war being now the only chance. Urged, we say, by sub- sequent contradiction ! Civil war, indeed, is Chaos ; and in all vital Chaos, there is new Order shaping itself free : but what a faith this, that of all new Orders out of Chaos and Possibility of Man and his Universe, Louis Sixteenth and Two-Chamber Monarchy were precisely the one that would sha|)e itself! It is like undertaking to throw deuce-ace, say only live hundred sue* cessive times, and any other throw to be fatal- for Bouille. * Deux Amis, v. 268, Bouille, i. 175. BOViLLE AT NANCY, 7t Rather thank Fortune, and Heaven, always, thou intrepid Bouille ; and let contradiction go its way ! Civil war, conflagrating uni- versally over France at this moment, might have led to one thmg or to another thing : meanwhile, to quench conflagration, whereso- ever one finds it, wheresoever one can ; this, in all times, is the rule for man and General Officer. But at Paris, so agitated and divided, fancy how it went, when the continually vibrating Orderlies vibrated thither at hand gallop, with such questionable news ! High is the gratulation ; and also deep the indignation. An august Assembly, by over- whelming majorities, passionately thanks Bouille ; a King's auto- graph, the voices of all Loyal, all Constitutional men run to the same tenor. A solemn National funeral-service, for the Law- defenders slain at Nanci, is said and sung in the Champ de Mars ; Bailly, Lafayette and National Guards, all except the few that protested, assist. With pomp and circumstance, with episcopal Calicoes in tricolor girdles, Altar of Fatherland smoking with cas- solettes, or incense-kettles ; the vast Champ-de-Mars wholly hung round with black mortcloth— which mortcloth and expenditure Marat thinks had better have been laid out in bread, in these dear days, and given to the hungry hving Patriot.^ On the other hand, living Patriotism, and Saint-Antoine, which we have seen noisily closing its shops and such like, assembles now ' to the number ^of forty thousand ; ' and, ;7^nh loud cries, under the very windows of the thanking National Assembly, demands revenge for murdered Brothers, judgment on Bouille, and instant dismissal of War- Minister Latour du Pin. At sound and sight of which things, if not War-Minister Latour, yet ^ Adored Minister^ Necker, sees good on the 3d of September 1790, to withdraw sofdy almost privily,— with an eye to the 'recovery of his health.' Home to native Switzerland ; not as he last came ; lucky to reach it ahve ! Fifteen months ago, we saw him coming, with escort of horse, with sound of clarion and trumpet : and now at Arcis-sur-Aube, while he departs unescorted soundless, the Populace and Municipals stop him as a fugitive, are not unlike massacring him as a traitor ; the National Assembly, consuked on the matter, gives him free egress as a nullity. Such an unstable 'drift-mould of Accident' is the substance of this lower world, for them that dwell in houses of clay ; so, especially in hot regions and times, do the proudest palaces we Wild of it take wings, and become Sahara sand- palaces, spinning many pillared in the whirlwind, and bury us tinder their sand ! — In spite of the forty thousand, the National Assembly persists in its thanks ; and Royalist Latour du Pin continues Minister. The forty thousand assemble next day, as loud as ever ; roll towards Latour's Hotel ; find cannon on the porch-steps with flambeau lit ; and have to retire elsewhither, and digest their spleen, or re-absorb it into the blood. Over in Lorraine, meanwhile, they of the distributed fusils, * Ami du Peuple (in Hist. Pari, ubi siipr^i). 72 NANCL ringleaders of Mestre-de-Camp, of Roi^ have got marked out for judgment ;—yet shall never get judged. Briefer is the doom of Chateau-Vieux. Chateau-Vieux is, by Swiss law, given up for instant trial in Court-Martial of its own officers. Which Court- Martial, with all brevity (in not many hours), has hanged some Twenty-three, on conspicuous gibbets ; marched some Three- score in chains to the Galleys ; and so, to appearance, fmished the matter off. Hanged men do cease for ever from this Earth ; but out of chains and the Galleys there may be resuscitation in triumph. Resuscitation for the chained Hero ; and even for the chained Scoundrel, or Semi-scoundrel ! Scottish John Knox, such World-Hero, as we know, sat once nevertheless pulling: grim-taciturn at the oar of French Galley, ' in the W ater of ' Lore 2ind even flung their Virgin-Mary over, instead of kissing her,— as 'a pefited bredd' or timber Virgin, who could naturally swim.-^ So, ye of Chateau-Vieux, tug patiently, not without hope ! But indeed at Nanci generally, Aristocracy rides triunaphantj rough. Eouille is gone again, the second day ; an Aristocrat^ Municipahty, with free course, is as cruel as it had before been cowardly. The Daughter Society, as the mother of the whole- mischief, lies ignominiously suppressed ; the Prisons can hold no. more ; bereaved down-beaten Patriotism murmurs, not loud buf deep. Here and in the neighbouring Towns, 'flattened balls' picked from the streets of Nanci are worn at buttonholes : balls flattened in carrying death to Patriotism ; men wear them there, in perpetual memento of revenge. Mutineer Deserters roam the woods ; have to demand charity at the musket's end. All is dissolution, mutual rancour, gloom and despair :-— till National- Assembly Commissioners arrive, v/ith a steady gentle flame of ConstiJtutionahsm in their hearts ; who gently lift up the down- trodden, gently pull down the too uplifted ; reinstate the Daughter Society, recall the Mutineer Deserter; gradually levelling, strive in all wise ways to smooth and soothe. With such gradual mild levelling on the one side ; as with solemn funeral-service, Cassolettes, Courts-Martial, National thanks,— all that Officiality can do is done. The buttonhole will drop its flat ball ; the black ashes, so far as may be, get green again. This is the 'Affair of Nanci by some called the ' Massacre of 'Nanci ;'— properly speaking, the unsightly wrong-side oi that thrice glorious Feast of Pikes, the right-side of which formed a spectacle for the very gods. Right-side and wrong lie always so near : the one was in July, in August the other ! Theatres, the theatres over in London, are bright with their pasteboard simu- lacrum of that ' Federation of the French People,' brought out as Drama : this of Nanci, we may say, though not played in any pasteboard Theatre, did for many months enact itself, and even: walk spectrally— in all French heads. For the news of it fly; pealing through all France ; awakening, in town and village, in * Knox's History of the A'e/ormation, b. i. BO'UILLE AT NANCL n clubroom, messroom, to the utmost borders, some mimic reflex or imaginative repetition of the business ; always with the angry questionable assertion : It was right ; It was wrong. Whereby come controversies, duels ; embitterment, vam jargon ; the has- tening forward, the augmentmg and intensifying of whatever new explosions lie in store for us Meanwhile, at this cost or at that, the mutiny, as we say, is stilled. The French Army has neither burst up in universal simultaneous delirium ; nor been at once disbanded, put an end to, and made new again. It must die in the chronic manner, through years, by inches ; with partial revolts, as of Brest Sailors or the like, which dare not spread ; with men unhappy, insubor- dinate ; officers unhappier, in Royalist moustachioes, taking horse, singly or in bodies, across the Rhine :^ sick dissatisfaction, sick disgust on both sides ; the Army moribund, fit for no duty :— till it do, in that unexpected manner. Phoenix-like, vvith long throes, get both dead and newborn ; then start forth strong, nay stronger and even strongest. Thus much was the brave Bouille hitherto fated to do. Where- with let him again fade into dimness ; and at Metz or the rural Cantonments, assiduously drilling, mysteriously diplomatising, in scheme within scheme, hover as formerly a faint shadow, the hop© of Royalty. * See Dampmartin, i. 249, &c. &c. BOOK THIRD. THE TUILERIES. CHAPTER I. EPIMENIDES. How true that there, is nothing dead in this Universe ; that what we call dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order ! ' The leaf that lies rotting in moist winds/ says one, ' has " still force ; else how could it rol ? ' Our whole Universe is but an infinite Complex of Forces ; thousandfold, from Gravitation up to Thought and Will ; man's Freedom environed with Necessity of Nature : in all which nothing at any moment slumbers, but all is for ever awake and busy. The thing that lies isolated inactive thou shalt nowhere discover ; seek every where from the granite mountain, slow-mouldering since Creation,' to the passing cloud- vapour, to the living man ; to the action, to the spoken word of man. The word that is spoken, as we know, flies-irrevocable : not less, but more, the action that is done. ' The gods themselves,' sings Pindar, ' cannot annihilate the action that is done.' No : this, once done, is done always ; cast forth into endless Time ; and, long conspicuous or soon hidden, must verily work and grow for ever there, an indestructible new element in the Infinite of Things. Or, indeed, what is this Infinite of Things itself, which men name Universe, but an action, a sum-total of Actions and Activities.'^ The living ready-made sum-total of these three, — which Calculation cannot add, cannot bring on its tablets ; yet the sum, we say, is written visible : All that has been done. All that is doing. All that will be done ! Understand it well, the Thing thou beholdest, that Thing is an Action, the product and expression of exerted Force : the All of Things is an infmite conjugation of the verb To do. Shoreless Founl>iin-()ccan of Force, of power to do ,* wherein Force rolls and circles, billowing, many-streamed, har- monious ; wide as Immensity, deep as Eternity ; beautiful and terrible, not to be comprehended : this is what man names Existence and Universe; lliis tliousand-tinlcd Flame-image, at once veil and revelation, reflex such as he, in his poor brain and jbeart, can naiiit^ of One Unnarneable dwelling in inaccessible EPJMENIDES, 7S light ! From beyond the Star-galaxies, from before the Beginning of Days, it biliows and rolls, — round thee, nay thyself art of it, in this point of Space where thou now standest, in this moment which thy clock measures. Or apart from all Transcendentalism, is it not a plain truth of sense, which the duller mind can even consider as a truism, that human things wholly are in continual movement, and action and reaction ; working continually forward, phasis after phasis, by unalterable laws, towards prescribed issues ? How often must w^e say, and yet not rightly lay to heart : The seed that is sown, it will spring ! Given the summer's blossoming, then there is also given the autumnal withering : so is it ordered not with seedfields only, but with transactions, arrangements, philosophies, societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever man works with in this lov/er world. The Beginning holds in it the End, and all that leads thereto ; as the acorn does the oak and its fortunes. Solemn enough, did we think of it, — which unhappily and also happily w^e do not very much ! Thou there canst begin ; the Beginning is for thee, and there : but where, and of what sort, and for whom will the End be 1 All grows, and seeks and endures its destinies : consider likewise how much grows, as the trees do, whether ive think of it or not. So that when your Epimenides, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since named Rip van Winkle, awakens again, he hnds it a changed world. In that seven-years' sleep of his, so much has changed ! All that is without us will change while we think not of it ; much even that is within us. The truth that was yesterday a restless Problem, has to-day grown a Belief burning to be uttered : on the morrow, contradiction has exasperated it into mad Fanaticism ; obstruction has dulled it into sick Inertness ; it is sinking towards silence, of satisfaction or of resignation. To-day is not Yesterday, for man or for thing. Yesterday there was the oath of Love- ; to-day has come the curse of Hate. Not willingly : ah, no ; but it could not help coming. The golden radiance of youth, would it willingly have tarnished itself into the dimness of old age ? — Fearful : how we stand enveloped, deep-sunk, in that Mystery of Time ; and are Sons of Time ; fashioned and woven out of Time ; and on us, and on all that we have, or see, or do, is written : F^est notp Continue not, Forward to thy doom ! But in seasons of Revolution, which indeed distinguish them- selves from common seasons by their velocity mainly, your miraculous Seven-sleeper might, with miracle enough, xvuk^' sooner : not by the century, or seven years, need he sleep ; often not by the seven months. Fancy, for example, some new Peter Klaus, sated with the jubilee of that Federation day, had lain down, say directlv after the Blessing of Talleyrand ; and, reckoning it all safe 7iow, had fallen composedly asleep under the timber-work of the Father- land's Altar ; to sleep there, not twenty-one years, but as it were year and day. The cannonading of Nanci, so far off, does not disturb him ; nor does the black mortcloth, close at hand, nor the requiemb chanted, and minute guns, incense pans and concourse 76 THE TUILERIES. right over his head : none of these ; but Peter sleeps through them all. Through one circling year, as we say ; from July the 14th of 1790, till July the 17th of 1791 : but on that latter day, no Klaus, nor most leaden Epimenides, only the Dead could continue sleeping ; and so our miraculous Peter Klaus awakens. With what eyes, O Peter ! Earth and sky have still their joyous July look, and the Champ-de-Mars is niiiltitudinous with men : but the jubilee-huzzahing has become Bedlam- shrieking, of terror and revenge ; not blessing of Talleyrand^ or any blessing, but cursing, imprecation and shrill wail ; our cannon- salvoes are turned to sharp shoi ; for swinging of incenj^e-pans and Eighty three Departmental Banners, we have waving of the one sanguineus Drapeau- Rouge. — Thou foolish Klaus ! The one lay in the other, the one was the other minus Time ; even as Hannibal's rock-rending vinegar lay in the sweet new wine. That sweet Federation was of last year ; this sour Divulsion is the self-same substance, only older by the appointed days. No miraculous Klaus or Epimenides sleeps in these times : and yet, may not many a man, if of due opacity and levity, act the same miracle in a natural way ; we mean, with his eyes open ? Eyes has he, but he sees not, except what is under his nose. With a sparkling briskness of glance, as if he not only saw but saw- through, such a one goes whisking, assiduous, in his circle of ofhcialities ; not dreaming but that it is the whole world : as, indeed, where your vision terminates, does not inanity begin there, and the world's end clearly disclose itself — to you ? Whereby our brisk sparkling assiduous official person (call him, for instance, Lafayette), suddenly startled, after year and day, by huge grape- shot tumult, stares not less astonished at it than Peter Klaus would have done. Such natural-miracle Lafayette can perform ; and indeed not he only but most other officials, non-officials, and generally the whole French People can perform it ; and do bounce up, ever and anon, like amazed Seven-sleepers awakening ; awakening amazed at the noise they themselves make. So strangely is Freedom, as we say, environed in Necessity ; such a singular Somnambulism, of Conscious and Unconscious, of Volun- tary and Involuntary, is this life of man. If any where in the world there was astonishment that the Federation Oath went into grape-shot, surely of all persons the French, first swearers and then shooters, felt astonished the most. Alas, offences must come. The sublime Feast of Pikes, with its effulgence of brotherly love, unknown since the Age of Gold, has changed nothing. That prurient heat in Twenty-fTve milhons of hearts is not cooled thereby ; br is still hot, nay hotter. Lift off the pressure of command from so many millions ; all pressure or binding rule, except such melodramatic Federation Oath as they have bound theuisehws with ! F'or Thou sJialt was from of old the condition of man's being, and his weal and blessedness was in obeying that. Wo for him when, were it on best of the clearest necessity, rebelHon, disloyal isolation, and mere / willy becomes his rule ! But the Gospel of Jean- Jacques has come, THE WAKEFUL. 77 and the first Sacrament of it has been celebrated : all things, as we say, are got into hot and hotter prurience ; and must go on pruriently fermenting, in continual change noted or unnoted. *Worn out with disgusts,' Captain after Captain, in Royalist moustachioes, mounts his warhorse, or his Rozinante war-garron, and rides minatory across the Rhine ; till all have ridden. Neither does civic Emigration cease : Seigneur after Seigneur must, in like manner, ride or roll ; impelled to it, and even compelled. For the very Peasants despise him in that he dare not join his order and fight. Can he bear to have a Distaff, a Qiteitoidlle sent to him ; say in copper-plate shadow, by post ; or fixed up in wooden reality over his gate-lintel : as if he were no Hercules but an Omphale 1 Such scutcheon they forward to him diligently from behind the Rhine ; till he too bestir himself and march, and in sour humour, another Lord of Land is gone, not taking the Land with him. Nay, what of Captains and emigrating Seigneurs ? There is not an angry word on any of those Twenty-five million French tongues, and indeed not an angry thought in their hearts, but is some fraction of the great Battle. Add many successions of angry words together, you have the manual brawl ; add brawls together, with the festering sorrows they leave, and they rise to riots and revolts. One reverend thing after another ceases to meet reverence : in visible material combustion, chateau after chateau mounts up; in spiritual invisible combustion, one authority after another. With noise and glare, or noisily and unnoted, a whole Old System of things is vanishing piecemeal : on the morrow thou shalt look and it is not. CHAPTER 11. THE WAKEFUL ^ Sleep who will, cradled in hope and short vision, like Lafayette, ^ who always in the danger done sees the last danger that will threaten him,'— Time is not sleeping, nor Time's seedfield. : That sacred Herald s-College of a new Dynasty ; we mean the i Sixty and odd Billstickers with their leaden badges, are not sleep- ing. Daily they, with pastepot and cross-staff, new clothe the walls of Paris in colours of the rainbow : authoritative heraldic, as we say, or indeed almost magical thaumaturgic ; for no Placard- Journal that they paste but will convince some soul or souls of nien. The Hawkers bawl ; and the Balladsingers : great Journal- ism blows and blusters, through all its throats, forth from Paris towards all corners of France, like an Coins' Cave ; keeping alive all manner of fires. * Dftmpmartin, THE TUILERIES. Throats or Journals there are, as men count,"^ to the number of some hundred and thirty-three. Of various cahbre ; from vour Cheniers, Gorsases, Camilles, down to your Marat, down now to your incipient Hebert of the Pere Duchesne j these blow, wrtk fierce weight of argument or quick light banter, for the Rights of Man : Durosoys, Royous, Peltiers, Sulleaus, equally with^mixed tactics, inclusive, singular to say, of much profane Parody,t arc blowing for Altar and Throne. As for Marat the People's- Friend, his voice is as that of the bullfrog, or bittern by the sohtary pools ; he, unseen of men, croaks harsh thunder, and that alone con- tinually,— of indignation, suspicion, incurable sorrow. The Peo-; pie are sinking towards luin, near starvation itself : * My dear ' friends,' cries he, 'your indigence is not the fruit of vices nor of 'idleness, you have a right to life, as good as Louis XVI., or the * happiest of the century. What man can say he has a right to ' dine, when you have no bread ? 'J The People sinking on the one hand : on the other hand, nothing but wretched Sieur Motiers, treasonous Riquetti Mirabeaus ; traitors, or else shadows, and simulacra of Quacks, to be seen in high places, look where you will ! Men that go mincing, grimacing, with plausible speech and^ brushed raiment ; hollow within : Quacks Political ; Quacks scientific. Academical ; all with a felTow-feeling for eacli^other, and kind of Quack public- spirit ! Not great Lavoisier himse.., or any of the Forty can escape this rough tongue ; which wants not fanatic sincerity, nor, strangest of all, a certain rough caustic sense. And then the ' three thousand gaming-houses ' that are in Paris ; cesspools for the scoundrelism of the world ; sinks of iniquity and debauchery, — whereas without good morals Liberty is impossible ! There, in these Dens of Satan, which one knows, and perseveringly denounces, do Sieur Motier's mouchards consort and colleague ; battening vampyre-like on a People next-door to starvation. ' O Peuple ! ' cries he oftimes, with heart-rending accent. Treason, delusion, vampyrism, scoundrelism, from Dan to Beersheba ! The soul of Marat is sick with the sight : but what remedy ? To erect ' Eight Hundred gibbets,' in convenient rows, and proceed to . hoisting ; ' Riquetti on the first of them ! ' Such is the brief recipe of Marat, Friend of the People. So blow and bluster the Hundred and thirty-three : nor, as would seem, are these sufficient ; for there are benighted nooks in France, to which Newspapers do not reach ; a,nd every where is * such an appetite for news as was never seen in any country.' Let an expeditious Dampmartin, on furlough, set out to return home from Paris,§ he cannot get along for 'peasants stopping hiiu ' on the highway ; overwhelming him with questions : ' the Mailrc de Paste will not send out the horses till you have well nigh quarrelled with him, but asks always. What ncws.^ At Autun, Mn 'spite of the rigorous frost 'for it is now January, 1 791, nothing * Mercier, iii. 163. f See Hist. Pari. vii. 51. X Ami du Peuplt, No. 306. S«3e other Excerpts in Hist. Petri, viii. I39« 349, 428-433 ; ix. 85-93, &c. § Dampmartin, i. 184. THE WAKEFUL. ^ill serve but you must gather your wayworn limbs, and thouglits, and ' speak to the muUitudes from a window opening mto the market-place.' It is the shortest method : This, good Christian people, is Eerily what an August Assembly seemed to me to be doing ; this and no other is the news ; • Now my weary lips I close ; Leave me, leave me lo repose.' The good Dampmartin !— But, on the whole, are not Nations as^ lonishingly true to their National character ; which indeed runs m :he blood? Nineteen hundred years ago, Juhus Caesar, with his quick sure eye, took note how the Gauls waylaid men. * It is a habit of theirs,' says he, 'to stop travellers, were it even by constraint, and inquire whatsoever each of them may have heard ' or known about any sort of matter : in their towns, the common • people beset the passing trader ; demanding to hear from what 'regions he came, what things he got acquainted with there. Ex- ; ' cited by which rumours and hearsays they will decide about the ■ 'weightiest matters; and necessarily repent next m.oment that they ' did it, on such guidance of uncertain reports, and many a traveller •answering with mere fictions to please them, and get off.'* Nme- teen hundred years ; and good Dampmartin, wayworn, in winter frost, prabably with scant light of stars and fish-oil, still perorates from the Inn-window ! This People is no longer called Gaulish ; and it has wholly become braccatus, has got breeches, and suffered change enough : certain fierce German Fi^anken came storming over ; and, so to speak, vaulted on the back of it ; and always after, in their grim tenacious way, have ridden it bridled ; for German is, by his very name, Gtterre-\s\7m, or man that wars and 9!;ars. And so the People, as we say, is now called French or ; Frankish : nevertheless, does not the old Gaulish and Gaehc Celt- . hood, with its vehemence, effervescent promptitude, and what good and ill it had, still vindicate itself httle adulterated ?— _ For the rest, that in such prurient confusion, Clubbism thrives ;and spreads, need not be said. Already the Mother of Patriotism, I sitting in the Jacobins, shines supreme over all ; and has paled J; the poor lunar light of that Monarchic Club near to final extinc- ::tion. She, we say, shines supreme, girt with sun-light, not yet with infernal lightning ; reverenced, not without fear, by Munici- : pal Authorities ; counting her Barnaves, Lameths, Petions, of a I National Assembly ; most gladly of all, her Robespierre. Corde- jliers, again, your Hebert, Vincent, Bibliopolist Momoro, groan j audibly that a tyrannous Mayor and Sieur Motier harrow them \ with the sharp iribula of Law, intent apparently to suppress them i by tribulation. How the Jacobin Mother-Society, as hinted for- \ merly, sheds forth Cordeliers on this hand, and then Feuillans on jthat; the Cordeliers 'an ehxir or double-distillation of Jacobin 1 'Patriotism ;' the other a wide-spread weak dilution thereof; how i; she will re-absorb the former into her Mother-bosom, and storni- ; fully dissipate the latter into' Nonentity : how she breeds and * De Bcllo Galileo, iv. 5- So THE TUILERIES. brings forth Three Hundred Daughter- Societies ; her rearing o them, her correspondence, her endeavourings and continue' travail : how, under an old figure, Jacobinism shoots forth organic filaments to the utmost corners of confused dissolved France organising it anew :— this properly is the grand fact of th< Time. To passionate Constitutionalism, still more to Royalism, whicl see all their own Clubs fail and die, Clubbism will naturally gro\\' to seem the root of all -evil. Nevertheless Clubbism is not death but rather new organisation, and life out of death: destructive, indeed of the remnants of the Old ; but to the New important, indispens- able. That man can co-operate and hold communion with manj herein lies his miraculous strength. In hut or hamlet. Patriotism mourns not now like voice in the desert : it can walk to the nearest Town ; and there, in the Daughter-Society, make its ejaculation into an articulate oration, into an action, guided forward by the Mother of Patriotism herself. All Clubs of ConstitutionaHsts, and such like, fail, one after another, as shallow fountains : Jaco- binism alone has gone down to the deep subterranean lake of waters ; and may, unless filled in, flow there, copious, continual] like an Artesian well. Till the Great Deep have drained itseli up : and all be flooded and submerged, and Noah's Deluge out-* deluged ! On the other hand, Claude Fauchet, preparing mankind for a Golden Age now apparently just at hand, has opened his Cercle Social^ with clerks, corresponding boards, and so forth ; in the precincts of the Palais Royal. It is Te-Den7n Fauchet ; the samd who preached on Franklin's Death, in that huge Medicean rotundai of the Halle aux bleds. He here, t^is winter, by Printing-press and melodious Colloquy, spreads bruit of himself to the utmost City-barriers. * Ten thousand persons ' of respectability attend there ; and listen to this ' Procureur-Gencral de la Verite, Attorney- ' General of Truth,' so has he dubbed himself ; to his sage Con- dorcet, or other eloquent coadjutor. Eloquent Attorney-tieneral He blows out from him, better or Worse, what crude or ripe thing he holds: not without result to himself ; for it leads to a Bishoprick, though only a Constitutional one. Fauchet approves himself a! glib-tongued, strong-lunged, . whole-hearted human individual : much flowi'ng matter there is, and really of the better sort, about Right, Nature, P>encvolence, Progress ; v/hich flowing matter, whether 'it is pantheistic,' or is pot-theistic, only the greener mind, in these days, need read. Busy Brissot was long ago of purpose to estal)lish precisely some such regenerative Social Circle: nay he had tried it, in ' Newman-street Oxford-street,' of the Fo^ Babylon; and failed, — as some say, surreptitiously pocketing the cash. Fauchet, not Brissot, was fated to be the happy man ;! whereat, however, generous Brissot will with sincere heart sing a timber-toned Ni/nc I)o7?mie* But 'ten thousand persons of ^respectability :' what a bwlk have many things in proportion to * Sec Brissot, Patnote-Fraitqais Newspaper ; Fauchet, Douche de-J'W, &C Icxcerpted in Hist, Purl, viii., ix. et seqq.)» SWORD IN HAND. 8i their magnitude ! This Cercle Social, for which Brissot chants in sincere timber-tones such Nunc Domine, what is it ? Unfortun- ately wind and shadow. The main reahty one finds m it now is perhaps this : that an ^Attorney-General of Truth' did once take shape of a body, as Son of Adam, on our Earth, though but for months or moments ; and ten thousand persons of respectability attended, ere vet Chaos and Nox had reabsorbed him. Hundred and thirty-three Paris Journals ; regenerative Social Circle ; oratory, in Mother and Daughter Societies, from the bal- conies of Inns, by chimney-nook, at dinner-table,— polemical, ending many times in duel ! Add ever, like a constant growling accompaniment of bass Discord : scarcity of work, scarcity ot food. The winter is hard and cold ; ragged Bakers'-queues, liRe a black tattered flag-of-distress, wave out ever and anon. It is the third of our Hunger-years this new year of a glorious Revolu- tion. The rich man when invited to dinner, in such distress- seasons, feels bound in pohteness to carry his own bread m his pocket : how the poor dine ? And your glorious Revolution has done it, cries one. And our glorious Revolution is subtilety, by black traitors worthy of the Lamp-iron, /^r-z/^r/^^ to do it, cries another 1 Who will paint the huge whirlpool wherein France, all shivered into wild incoherence, whirls ? The jarring that went on under every French roof, in every French heart ; the diseased things that were spoken, done, the sum-total whereof is the French Revolution, tongue of man cannot tell. Nor the laws of action that work unseen in the depths of that huge blind Incoherence ! With amazement, not with measurement, men look on the Immeasureable ; not knowing its laws ; seei7tg, with all different degrees of knowledge, what new phases, and results of event, its laws bring forth. France is as a monstrous Galvanic Mass, wherein all sorts of far stranger than chemical galvanic or electric forces and substances are at work ; electrifying one another, posi- tive and negative ; filling with electricity your Ley den-jar s,-- Twenty-five millions in number 1 As the jars get full, there will, from time to time, be, on slight hint, an explosion. CHAPTER III. SWORD IN HAND. !i On such wonderful basis, however, has Law, Royalty, Authority, [ and whatever yet exists of visible Order, to maintain itself, while I it can. Here, as in that Commixture of the Four Elements did : the Anarch Old, has an august Assembly Spread its pavilion ; cur- Uined by the dark infihite of discords ; founded on the wavering I l^ttomless of the Abyss ; and keeps continual hubbub. Time 82 THE TUILERIES. % around it, and Eternity, and the Inane ; and it does what it can^ : what is given it to do. Glancing relunctantly in, once more, we discern httle that is edifying : a Constitutional Theory of Defective Verbs struggling i forward, with perseverance, amid endless interruptions : Mirabeau, . from his tribune, with the weight of his name and genius, awing down much JaCobin violence ; which in return vents itself the louder over in its Jacobins Hall, and even reads him sharp lectures : there.* This man's path is mysterious, questionable ; difficult, ' and he walks without companion in it. Pure Patriotism does not now count him among her chosen ; pure Royalism abhors him : ,' yet his weight with the world is overwhelming. Let him travel ■ on, companionless, unwavering, whither he is bound, — while it is yet day with him, and the night has not come. But the chosen band of pure Patriot brothers is small ; counting ' only some Thirty, seated now on the extreme tip of the Left, separate from the world. A virtuous Petion ; an incorruptible Robespierre, most consistent, incorruptible of thin acrid men : ; Triumvirs Barnave, Duport, Lameth, great in speech, thought, action, each according to his kind ; a lean old Goupil de Prefeln on these and what will follow them has pure Patriotism to depend. ' There too, conspicuous among the Thirty, if seldom audible, i Phihppe d'Orleans may be seen sitting : in dim fuliginous be- ' wilderment ; having, one might say, arrived at Chaos ! Gleams ' there are, at once of a Lieutenancy and Regency ; debates in the Assembly itself, of succession to the Throne ^ in case the present • Branch should fail ; ^ and Philippe, they say, walked anxiously, in silence, through the corridors, till such high argument were done : but it came all to nothing ; Mirabeau, glaring into the man, and through him, had to ejaculate in strong untranslatable language : Ce j — f- — ne vaut pas la peine qn^on se don?te pour lui. It came all to nothing ; and in the meanwhile Philippe's money, they say, is gone ! Could he refuse a little cash to the gifted Patriot, in want only of that ; he himself in want of all bi/t that? Not a pamphlet can be printed without cash ; or indeed written, without food purchasable by cash. Without cash your hopcfullest Projector cannot stir from the spot : individual patriotic or other Projects require cash : how much more do wide-spread Intrigues, which live and exist by cash ; lying widespread, with dragon-appetite for cash ; fit to swallow Princedoms ! And so Prince Philippe, amid his Sillerys, Lacloses, and confused Sons Night, has rolled along: the centre of the strangest cloudy | coil ; out of which has *'isibly come, as we often say, an Epic i Preternatural Machinery of SUSPICION ; and within which there lias dwelt and worked, —what specialties of treason, stratagem, , aimed or aimless endeavour towards mischief, no party living (if it | be not the Presiding (ienius of it, Prince of the Power of the Air) I has now any chance to know. Camille\s conjecture is the likeliest;! nnor Philippe did mount up, a little way, in treasonable i Carnille'sjournal (in Hist, Pari. ix. 366-85). ] i SWOIW IN HAND. 83 loeculation, as he mounted formerly in one of the eariiest Bal- 00ns ; but, frightened at the new position he was getting into, had ,oon turned the cock again, and come down. More fool than he •ose ! To create Preternatural Suspicion, this was his function m he Revolutionary Epos. But now if he have lost his cornucopia )f ready-money, what else had he to lose? In thick darkness, n-wd and outward, he must welter and flounder on, m that jiteous death-element, the hapless man. Once, or even twice, we ^hall still behold him emerged ; strugghng out of the thick death- element : in vain. For one moment, it is the last moment, he starts aloft, or is flung aloft, even 'into clearness and a kind of memorability,— to sink then for evermore ! The CoU Droit persists no less ; nay with more animation than ever, though hope has now well nigh fled. Tough Abbe Maury, when the obscure country Royahst grasps his hand with transport of thanks, answers, rolling his indomitable brazen head : " Helas, Monsieur, all that I do here is as good as simply nothingP Gallant Faussigny, visible this one time in History, advances frantic, into the middle of the Hall, exclaiming : " There is but one way of deahng with it, and that is to fall sword in hand on those gentry there, sabre a la main 'sur ces gaillards la,''^ franticly indicating our chosen Thirty on the extreme tip of the Left ! Whereupon is clangour and clamour, debate, repentance,— evaporation. Things ripen towards downright incompatibihty, and what is called ' scission : ' that fierce theoretic onslaught of Faussigny's was in August, 1790 '; next August will not have come, till a famed I vvo Hundred and Ninety-two, the chosen of Royal- ism, make solemn final ' scission' from an Assembly given up to faction ; and depart, shaking the dust off their feet. Connected with this matter of sword in hand, there is yet another thing to be noted. Of duels we have sometimes spoken : how, in all parts of France, innumerable duels were fought ; and argumentative men and messmates, flinging down the wme-cup and weapons of reason and repartee, met in the measured field ; to part bleeding ; or perhaps not to part, but to fall mutually - skewered through with iron, their wrath and life alike ending, — and die as fools die. Long has this lasted, and still lasts. But now it would seem as if in an august Assembly itself, traitorous Royalism, in its despair, had taken to a new course : that of cut- ting off Patriotism by systematic duel 1 Bully-swordsmen, • ' Spadassins ' of that party, go swaggering ; or indeed they can be . had for a trifle of money. 'Twelve Spadassins' were seen, by the yellow eye of Journalism, * arriving recently out of Switzerland ; ' also 'a considerable number of Assassins, no7nb7'e considerable ■ ^ d' assassins, exercising in fencing-schools and at pistol-targets. i Any Patriot Deputy of mark can be called out ; let him escape one time, or ten times, a time there necessarily is when he must fall, and France mourn. How many cartels has Mirabeau had; , especially ivhile he was the People's champion! Cartels by the j * Moniteit}\ Seance du 21 AoCit, 1790. 84 THE TUILERIES. hundred : which he, since the Constitution must be made first and his time is precious, answers now always with a kind of stereotype formula : " Monsieur, you are put upon my List ; but I warn you that it is long, and I grant no preferences." Then, in Autumn, had we not the Duel of Cazales and Bar- nave ; the two chief masters of tongue-shot meeting now to ex= change pistol-shot? For Cazales, chief of the Royalists, whom we call Blacks or Noirs^ said, in a moment of passion, " the Patriots were sheer Brigands," nay in so speaking, he darted, or seemed to dart, a fire-glance specially at Barnave ; who thereupon could not but reply by fire-glances —by adjournment to the Bois- de-Boulogne. Barnave's second shot took effect : on Cazales's hat. The ' front nook' of a triangular Felt, such as mortals th^^n wore, deadened the ball ; and saved that fine brow from more than temporary injury. But how easily might the lot have fallen the other way, and Barnave's hat not been so good ! Patriotism raises its loud denunciation of Duelhng in general ; petitions an august Assembly to stop such Feudal barbarism by law. Barbarism and solecism : for will it convince or convict any man to blow half an ounce of lead through the head of him ? Surely not —Barnave was received at the Jacobins with embraces, yet with rebukes. Mindful of which, and also that his reputation in America was that of headlong foolhardiness rather, and want of brain not of heart, Charles Lameth does, on the eleventh day of November, with httle emotion, decline attending some hot young Gentlemen from Artois, come expressly to challenge him : nay indeed he first coldly engages to attend ; then coldly permits two Friends to attend instead of him, and shame the young Gentleman out of it, which they successfully do. A cold procedure ; satisfactory to the two Friends, to Lameth and the hot young Gentleman ; whereby, one might have fancied, the whole matter was cooled down. N ot so, however : Lameth, proceeding to his senatorial duties, in the decline of the day, is met in those Assembly corridors by nothing but Royalist brocards j sniffs, huffs, and open insults. Human patience has its limits : Monsieur," said Lameth, breaking silence to one Lautrec, a man with hunchback, or natural deformity, but sharp of tongue, and a Black of the deepest tint, " Monsieur, if you were a man to be fought with !" 1 am one," cries the young Duke de Castries. F^ast as fire- fiash Lameth replies, Tojit d Vhcurc, On the instant, then!" And so, as the shades of dusk thicken in that Bois-de-Boulogne, we behold two men with lion-look, with alert attitude, side fore- most, right foot advanced ; flourishing and thrusting, stoccado and passado, in tierce and quart ; intent to skewer one another. See, with most skewering purpose, headlong Lameth, with his whole weight, makes a furious lunge ; but deft Castries whisks aside : Lameth skewers only the air,~and slits deep and far, on Castries' sword's-point, his own extended* left arm ! Whereupon with bleeding, pallor, surgcon's-lint, and formalities, the Duel iS considered satisfactorily done. . SWORD IN HAND. 85 But will there be no end, then ? Beloved Lameth lies deep-slit, not out of danger. Black traitorous Aristocrats kill the People's defenders, cut up not with arguments, but with rapier-slits. And the Twelve Spadassins out of Switzerland, and the considerable number of Assassins exercising at the pistol-target ? So meditates and ejaculates hurt Patriotism, with ever-deepening ever-widening fervour, for the space of six and thirty hours. The thirty-six hours past, on Saturday the 13th, one beholds a new spectacle : The Rue de Varennes, and neighbouring Boule- vard des Invalides, covered with a mixed flowing multitude : the Castries Hotel gone distracted, devil-ridden, belching from ever\ window, ' beds with clothes and curtains,' plate of silver and gold with filigree, mirrors, pictures, images, commodes, chiffoniers, and endless crockery and jingle : amid steady popular cheers, abso- lutely without theft ; for there goes a cry, " He shall be hanged that steals a nail!" It I's, 2.' Plebiscittim^ ox \xiioxm2X iconoclastic Decree of the Common People, in the course of being executed ! — The Municipality sit tremulous ; deliberating whether they will hang out the Di^apeau Rotige and Martial Law : National Assembly, part in loud wail, part in hardly suppressed applause : Abbe Maury unable to decide whether the iconoclastic Plebs amount to forty thousand or to two hundred thousand. Deputations, swift messengers, for it is at a distance over the River, come and go. Lafayette and National Guardes, though without Drapeaii Roiige^ get under way ; apparently in no hot haste. Nay, arrived on the scene, Lafayette salutes with doffed hat, before .ordering to fix bayonets. What avails it? The Plebeian ' Court of Cassation^ as. Camille might punningly name it, has done its work ; steps forth, with unbuttoned vest, with pockets turned inside out : sack, and just ravage, not plunder ! With inexhaustible patience, the Hero of two Worlds remon- strates ; persuasively, with a kind of sweet constraint, though also with fixed bayonets, dissipates, hushes down : on the morrow it is once more all as usual. Considering which things, however, Duke Castries may justly 'write to the President,' justly transport himself across the Marches ; to raise a corps, or do what else is in him. Royalism totally abandons that Bobadilian method of contest, and the Twelve Spadassins return to Switzerland, — or even to Dreamland through the Horn-gate, whichsoever their true home is. Nay Editor Prudhomme is authorised to publish a curious thing : ' We *are authorised to publish,' says he, dull-blustering Publisher, 'that M. Boyer, champion of good Patriots, is at the head of * Fifty Spadassinicides or ^wViy- killers. His address is : Passage du * Bois-de-Boulonge, Faubourg St. Denis. '"^ One of the strangest Institutes, this of Champion Boyer and the Bully-killers ! Whose services, however, are not wanted ; Royalism having abandoned the rapier-method as plainly impracticable. * Rdvolutions de Paris {in Hist. Pari. viii. 440), 86 THE TUILERIES, CHAPTER IV. TO FLY OR NOT TO FLY. The truth is Royalism sees itself verging towards sad extremities ; nearer and nearer daily. From over the Rhine.it comes asserted that the King in his Tuileries i : not free : this the poor King may contradict, with the oflicial mouth, but in his heart feels often to be undeniable. Civil Constitution of the Clergy ; Decree of eject- ment against Dissidents from it : not even to this latter, though almost his conscience rebels, can he say ' Nay ; but, after two months' hesitating, signs this also. It was on January 2ist,' of this 1790, that he signed it ; to the sorrow of his poor heart yet, on anot^ Twenty-hrst of January ! Whereby come Dissident ejected rrier ts ; unr -nquerable Martyrs according to some, in- curable chicaning Traitors according to others. And so there has arrived what we once foreshadowed : with Religion, or with the Cant and Echo of Religion, all France is rent asunder in a new rupture of continuity ; complicating, embittering all the older ; — • to be cured only, by stern surgery, in ' l Vendee ! U::^iq:p'; Royalty, unhappy Majesty, Hereditary (Represen- tative), IZdp7'esc7itant H c? editairc, or however they can name him; of whom much is expected, to whom little is given ! Blue National^ Guards encircle that Tuileries ; a Lafayette, thin constitutional Pedant ; clear, thin, inflexible, as water, turned to thin ice ; whom no Queen's heart can love. National Assembly, its pavilion spread where we know, sits near by, keeping continual hubbub. From without nothing but Nanci Revolts, sack of Castries Hotels, riots and seditions ; riots, N: rth and South, at Aix, at Douai, at Befort, Usez, Perpignan, at Nismes, and that incurable Avignon of the Pope's : a continual crackling and sputtering of riots from the whole face of France ;— testifying how electric it grows. Add only the hard winter, the famished strikes of operatives ; that con- tinual running-bass of Scarcity, ground-tone and basis of all other Discords ! The plan of Royalty, so far as it can be said to have any hxed plan, is still, as ever, that of Hying towards the frontiers. In very truth, the only plan of the smallest promise for it ! Fly to Bouille; bristle yourself round with cannon, served by your * forty-thousand ' undebauched (Germans :' summon the National Assembly to follow you, summon what of it is Royalist, Constitutional, gainable by money ; dissolve the rest, by grapeshot if need be. Let Jacobinism and Revolt, with one wild wail, fly into Infinite Space ; driven by grapeshot. Thunder over France with the cannon's mouth ; commanding, not entreating, that this riot cease. And then to rule afterwards with utmost possible Constitutionahty : doing justice, ]o\ing mercy ; bcmg Shepherd of this indigent People, TO FLY OR NOT TO FLY. 87 not Shearer merely, and Shepherd's-similitude ! All this, if ye dare. If ye dare not, then in Heaven^s name go to sleep : other handsome alternative seems none. Nay, it were perhaps possible ; with a man to do it. For if such inexpressible whirlpool of Babylonish confusions (which our Era is) cannot be stilled by man, but only by Time and men, a man may moderate its paroxysyms, may balance and sway, and keep himself unswallowed on the top of it, — as several men and Kings in these days do. Much is possible for a man ; men will obey a man that kens and cans^ and name him reverently their Ken-ning or King. Did not Charlemagne rule ? Consider too whether he had smooth times of it ; hanging ' thirty-thousand Saxons over ^the Weser-Bridge,' at one dread swoop ! So likewise, who knows but, in this same distracted fanatic France, the right man may verily exist 1 An olive-complexioned taciturn man ; for the present. Lieutenant in the Artillery-service, who once sat studying Mathe- matics at Brienne The same who walked in the morning to correct proof-sheets at Dole, and enjoyed a frugal breakfast with M. Joly Such a one is gone, whither also famed General Paoli his friend is gone, in these very days, to see old scenes in native Corsica, and what Democratic good can be done there. Royalty never executes the evasion-plan, yet never abandons it ; living in variable hope ; undecisive, till fortune shall decide. In utmost secresy, a brisk Correspondence goes on with Bouille ; there is also a plot, which emerges more than once, for carrying the King to Rouen :^ plot after plot, emerging and submerging, like ' igites fatui in foul weather, which lead no whither. About 'ten o'clock at night,' the Hereditary Representative, m par tie quarreey with the Queen, with Brother Monsieur, and Madame, sits playing ' wisk^ or whist. Usher Campan enters mysteriously, with a message he only half comprehends : How a certain Compte d'Inisdal waits anxious in the outer antechamber ; National Colonel, Captain of the watch for this night, is gained over ; post-horses ready all the way ; party of Noblesse sitting armed, determined ; will His Majesty, before midnight, consent to go? Profound silence ; Campan waiting with upturned ear. " Did your Majesty hear v/hat Campan oaid 1 " asks the Queen, " Yes, I heard," answers Majesty, and plays on. " 'Twas a pretty couplet, that of Campan's," hints Monsieur, who at times showed a pleasant wit : Majesty, still unresponsive, plays wisk. " After all, one must say something to Campan," remarks the Queen. " Tell M. dTnisdal," said the King, and the Queen puts an emphasis on it, " that the King cannot ^r^^^^i-^/^/ to be forced away." — " I see ! " said d'Inisdal, whisking round, peaking himself into flame of irritancy : " we have the risk ; we are to have all the blame if it fail,"t— and vanishes, he and his plot, as will~o'-wisps do. The Queen sat till far in the night, packing jewels : but it came to nothing ; in that peaked frame of irritancy the Will-o'-wisp had gone out * Hist. Pari. vii. 316; Bertrand-Moleville» &c. f Campan, ii. 105. 88 THE TUILERIES, Little hope there is in all this. Alas, with whom to fly ? Our loyal Gardes-du-Corps ^ ever since the Insurrection of Women, are disbanded ; gone to their homes ; gone, many of them, across the Rhine towards Cobleniz and Exiled Princes : brave Miomandre and brave Tardivet, these faithful Two, have received, in nocturnal , interview with both Majesties, their viaticitm of gold louis, of;, heartfelt thanks from a Queen's hps, though unluckily 'his; 'Majesty stood, back to fire, not speaking ; and do now dine- through the Provinces ; recounting hairsbreadth escapes, in-' surrectionary horrors. Great borrows ; to be swallowed yet of greater. But on the whole what a falling off from the old splendour ^ of Versailles ! Here in this poor Tuileries, a National Brewer- Colonel, sonorous Santerre, parades officially behind her Majesty's chair. Our high dignitaries, all fled over the Rhine : nothing now to be gained at Court ; but hopes, for which life itself must be ' risked ! Obscure busy men frequent the back stairs ; with hear- ' says, wind projects, unfrnitful fanfaronades. Young Royalists, at ' the Theatre de Vaudeville, ' sing couplets ; ' if that could do anyj thing. Royalists enough. Captains on furlough, burnt-out Seigneurs, , may likewise be met with, 'in the Cafe de Valois, and at Meotj ' the Restaurateur's.' There they fan one another into high loyal | glow ; drink, in such wine as can be procured, confusion to Sans-^ culottism ; shew purchased dirks, of an improved structure, made to order ; and, greatly daring, dine.f It is in these places, in these months, that the epithet Sansculotte first gets applied to indigent Patriotism ; in the last age we had Gilbert Sansculotte^ the indigent Poet.J Destitute-of-Breeches : a mournful Destitu- tion ; which however, if Twenty millions share it, may become more effective than most Possessions ! Meanwhile, amid this vague dim whirl of fanfaronades, wind- projects, poniards made to order, there does disclose itself one punctu7n-s aliens of life and feasibility : the finger of Mirabeau ! Mirabeau and the Queen of France have met ; have parted with mutual trust ! It is'' strange ; secret as the Mysteries ; but it is in- dubitable. Mirabeau took horse, one evening ; and rode west- ward, unattended,— to see Friend Claviere in that country house of his ? Before getting to Claviere's, the much-musing horseman struck aside to a back gate of the Garden of Saint- Cloud : some Duke d'Aremberg. or the like, v/as there to introduce him ; the Queen was not far : on a ' round knoll, rondpoiitt, the highest of 'the Garden of Saint-Cloud,' he beheld the Queen's face ; spake with her, alone, under the void canopy of Night. What an inter- view ; fateful secret for us, after all searching ; like the colloquies of the gods !§ She called him ' a Mirabeau :' elsewhere we read that she ' was charmed with him,' the wild submitted Titan ; as indeed it is among the honorable tokens of this high ill-fated heart that no mind of any endowment, no Mirabeau, nay no Barnave, no Dumouricz, ever came face to face with her but, in siMtc of all prepossessions, she was forced to recognise it, to dmW * C'ampan, ii. 109-11. t Dmnpmai^in, ii 129. J Mercicr^ Nouveuu Paris, iii. 204. § Campan, ii. q. ly. TO FLY OR NOT TO FLY. 89 nigh to it, with trust. High imperial heart ; with the instinctive attraction towards all that had any height ! You know not the ^ueen," said Mirabeau once in confidence ; "her force ot mind is prodigious ; she is a man for courage/^"^ — And so, under the void Night, on the crown of that knoll, she has spoken with a Mirabeau : he has kissed loyally the queenly hand, and said with enthusiasm : " Madame, the Monarchy is saved ! " — Possible ? The Foreign Powers, mysteriously sounded, gave favourable guarded response ;t Bouille is at Metz, and could find forty-thousand sure Germans. With a Mirabeau for head, and a Bouille for hand, something verily is possible, — if Fate intervene not. But figure under what thousandfold wrappages, and cloaks of darkness. Royalty, meditating these things, must involve itself There are men with ' Tickets of Entrance ; ' there are chivalrous consultings, mysterious plottings. Consider also whether, involve as it like, plotting Royalty can escape the glance of Patriotism ; lynx-eyes, by the ten thousand fixed on it, which see in the dark ! Patriotism knows much : know the dirks made to order, and can specify the shops ; knows Sieur Motier's legions of 7noiichards j the Tickets of Entree^ and men in black ; and how plan of evasion succeeds plan, — or may be supposed to succeed it. Then conceive the couplets chanted at the Theatre de Vaudeville j or Vv'orse, the whispers, significant nods of traitors in moustaches. Conceive, on the other hand, the loud cry of alarm that came through the Hundred-and-Thirty Journals ; the Dionysius'-Ear of each of the Forty-eight Sections, wakeful night and day. Patriotism is patient of much ; not patient of all. The Cafe de Procope has sent, visibly along the streets, a Deputation of Patriots, ' to expostulate with bad Editors,' by trustful word of mouth : singular to see and hear. The bad Editors promise to amend, but do not. Deputations for change of Ministry were many ; Mayor Bailly joining even with Cordelier Danton in such : and they have prevailed. With what profit Of Quacks, willing or constrained to be Quacks, the race is everlasting : Ministers Duportail and Dutertre will have to manage much as Ministers Latour-du-Pin and Cice did. So welters the confused world. But now, beaten on for ever by such inextricable contradictory influences and evidences, what is the indigent French Patriot, in these unhappy days, to beheve, and walk by ? Uncertainty all ; except that he is wretched, indigent ; that a glorious Revolution, the wonder of the Universe, has hitherto brought neither Bread nor Peace ; being marred by traitors, difficult to discover. Traitors that dwell in the dark, invisible there ;— or seen for moments, in pallid dubious twilight, stealthily vanishing thither ! Preternatural Suspicion once more rules the minds of men. * Nobody here,' writes Carra of the Amiales Patriotiques, so early as the first of February, ^ can entertain a doubt of the con- I stant obstinate project these people have on foot to get the Kin^ away ; or of the perpetual succession of manoeuvres they empLpj * Dumont, p. 2ci. t Correspondance Secreic (in Hist. Pari. viii. 169-73). go THE TUILERIES. ^ for that.' Nobody : the watchful Mother of Patriotism depute? two Members to her Daughter at Versailles, to examine how tb matter looked there. Well, and there ? Patriotic Carra continues * The Report of these two deputies we ah heard with our own eai'i ' last Saturday. They went with others of Versailles, to inspec *the King's Stables, also the stables of the whilom Gardes di ' Corfis J they found there from seven to eight hundred horse! ^ standing always saddled and bridled, ready for the road at : ' moment's notice. The same deputies, moreover, saw with their ow)' ' two eyes several Royal Carriages, which mien were even then bus} ' loading with large well-stuffed luggage-bags,' leather cows, as wi call them, ' 7>aches de adr j the Royal Arms on the panels almosi ' entirely effaced.' Momentous enough ! Also, ' on the same day tht Svhole Marechaiissee^ or Cavalry Police, did assemble with arms 'horses and' baggage,' — and disperse again. They want the Kin^ over the marches, that so Emperor Leopold and the Germar Princes, whose troops are ready, may have a pretext for beginning ' this,' adds Carra, ' is the word of the riddle : this ^ is the reasoi ' why our fugitive Aristocrats are now making levies of men on th;;' ^ frontiers ; expecting that, one of these mornings, the Executive ^ Chief Magistrate will be brought over to them, and the civil wai ^ commerce.' \ If indeed the Executive Chief Magistrate, bagged, say in one oi these leather coivs, were once brought safe over to them ! But the strangest thing of all is that Patriotism, whether barking at ? venture, or guided by some instinct of preternatural sagacity, is actually barking aright this time ; at something, not at nothing. Bouille's Secret Correspondence, since made public, testifies as much. Nay, it is undeniable, visible to all, that Mesdames the King*£ Aunts are taking steps for departure : asking passports of the Ministry, safe-conducts of the Municipality ; which Marat v/arns all men to beware of^ They will carry gold with them, ' these old * Beguines ;^ nay they will carry the little Dauphin, ' having nursed *a changeling, for some time, to leave in his stead !' Besides, they are as some light substance flung up, to shew how the wind sits ; a kind of proof-kite you fly off to ascertain whether the grandi paper-kite. Evasion of the King, may mount ! j In these alarming circumstances, Patriotism is not wanting to| itself. Municipality deputes to the King ; Sections depute to t] • Municipality ; a National Assembly will soon stir. Meanwb behold, on the 19th of February 1791, Mesdames, quitting Belle \ and Versailles with all privacy, are off! Towards Rome, sec ingly ; or one knows not whither. They are not without Kin passports, countersigned ; and what is more to the purpose, serviceable l-'.scort. The f^ntriotic A];iyor or Mayorlet of \ Village of Moret tried to detain them ; but brisk Louis dc N bonne, of the Escort, dashed olV at hnnd-gallop ; returned S( with thirty dragoons, and victoriou ly nit tlicm out. And so 1 poor ancient women go their way ; to the terror of F.rance * Carra's Newspaper, ist Pcb, 1791 [niHist. Fart. i.x. 39). TO FLY OR NOT TO FLY. 91 Paris, whose nervous excitability is become extreme. Who qlse would hinder poor Loque and Graillc, now grown so old, and fallen into such unexpected circumstances, when gossip itself turning only on terrors and horrors is no longer pleasant to the mind, and you cannot get so much as an orthodox confessor in peace, — from going what way soever the hope of any solacement might lead them ? They go, poor ancient dames, — w^hom the heart were hard that does not pity : they go ; with palpitations, with unmelodious sup- pressed screechings ; all France, screeching and cackling, in loud ^^;2suppressed terror,, behind and on both hands of them : such mutual suspicion is among men. At Arnay le Due, above half- way to the frontiers, a Patriotic Municipality and Populace again takes courage to stop them : Louis Narbonne must now back to Paris, must consult the National Assembly. National Assembly answers, not without an effort, that Mesdames may go. Where- upon Paris rises worse than ever, screeching half-distracted. Tuil- eries and precincts are fdled with women and men, while the National Assembly debates this question of questions ; Lafayette is needed at night for dispersing them, and the streets are to be illuminated. Commiandant Berthier, a Berthier before whom are great things unknown, lies for the present under blockade at Belle- vue in Versailles. By no tactics could he get Mesdames' Luggage stirred from the Courts there ; frantic Versaillese women came screaming about him ; his very troops cut the waggon-traces ; he retired to the interior, waiting better times. Nay, in these same hours, while Mesdames hardly cut out from Moret by the sabre's edge, are driving rapidly, to foreign parts, and not yet stopped at Arnay, their august Nephew poor Mon- sieur, at Paris has dived deep into his cellars of the Luxembourg for shelter ; and a^.cording to Montgaillard can hardly be per- suaded up again. Screeching multitudes environ that Luxembourg of his : drawn thither by report of his departure : but, at sight and sound of Monsieur, they become crowing multitudes ; and escort Madame and him to the Tuileries with vivats.f It is a state of nervous excitability such as few Nations know. CHAPTER V. THE DAY OF PONIARDS. Or, again, what means this visible reparation of the Castle of |Vincennes? Other Jails being all crowded with prisoners, new j space is wanted here : that is the Municipal account. For in such I changing of Judicatures, Parlements being abolished, and N««.' I * Campan, ii. 132. I t Montgaillard. H. 282; D^tx Amis, vi. c. i. 92 THE TUILltRIES, Courts but just set up, prisoners have accumulated. Not to say ; that in these times of discord and club-law, offences and com- ; mittals are, at any rate, more numerous. Which Municipal ac» | count, does it not sufficiently explain the phenomenon ? Surely, to repair the Castle of Vincennes was of all enterprises than an ' enlightened Municipahty could undertake, the most innocent. . Not so however does neighbouring Saint- Antoine look on it:: Saint- Antoine to whom these peaked turrets and grim donjons, ail- too near her own dark dwelling, are of themselves an offence. Was not Vincennes a kind of minor Bastille.^ Great Diderot andi Philosophes have lain in durancQ here ; great Mirabeau, in^ disastrous echpse, for forty-two months. And now when the old Bastille has become a dancing-ground (had any one the mirth to dance), and its stones are getting built into the Pont Louis-Seize, does this minor, comparative insignificance of a Bastille flank itself with fresh-hewn mullions, spread out tyrannous wings ; menacing Patriotism? New space for prisoners: and what-' prisoners? A d'Orleans, with the chief Patriots on the tip of the; Left ? It is said, there runs ' a subterranean passage ' all the way; from the Tuileries hither. Who knows? Paris, mined with, quarries and catacombs, does hang wondrous over the abyss;; Paris was once to be blown up,— though the powder, when we went • to look, had got withdrawn. A Tuileries, sold to Austria and ; Coblentz, should have no subterranean passage. Out of which might nor Coblentz or Austria issue, some morning ; and, with cannon o( long range, ' foudroyer^ bethunder a patriotic Saint- Antoine into smoulder and ruin ! So meditates the benighted soul of Saint-Antoine, as it sees the aproned workmen, in early spring, busy on these towers. An official-speaking Municipahty, a Sieur Motier with his legions of inouchards, deserve no trust at all. Were Patriot Santerre, in- deed. Commander ! But the sonorous Brewer commands only our own Battalion : of such secrets he can explain nothing, knows nothing, perhaps suspects much. And so the work goes on ; and afflicted benighted Saint-Antoine hears rattle of hammers, sees stones suspended in air.* Saint-Antoine prostrated the first great Bastille : will it falter over this comparative insignificance of a Bastille ? Friends, what if we took pikes, firelocks, sledgehammers; and helped our- selves ! — Speedier is no remedy ; nor so certain. On the 28ih day of February, Saint-Antoine turns out, as it has now often done ; and, apparently with little superfluous tumuh, moves east- ward to that eye-sorrow of Vincennes. With grave voice of authority, no need of bullying and shouting, Saint-Antoine signi- fies to parties concerned there that its purpose is. To have this suspicious Stronghold razed level with the general soil of the country. Remonstrance may be proffered, with zeal : but it avails not. The outer gate goes up, drawbridges tumble ; iron window- stanchions, smitten out with sledgehammers, become iron-crow- bars : it rains furniture, stone-masses, slates : with chaotic clatter * Montijuillard, ii. 285. j THE DA V OF PONIARDS. 93 and rattle, Demolition clatters down. And now hasty expresses rush through the agitated streets, to warn Lafayette, and the Municipal and Departmental Authorities ; Rumour warns a National Assembly, a Royal Tuileries, and all men who care to hear it : That Saint- Antoine is up ; that Vincennes, and pro- bably the last remaining Institution of the Country, is coming down."^ Quick, then ! Let Lafayette roll his drums and fly eastward ; for to all Constitutional Patriots this is again bad news. And you, ye Friends of Royalty, snatch your poniards of improved structure, made to order; your sword-canes, secret arms, and tickets of entry ; quick, by backstairs passages, rally round the Son of Sixty Kings. An effervescence probably got up by d'Or- leans and Company, for the overthrow of Throne and Altar : it is said her Majesty shall be put in prison, put out of the way ; what then will his Majesty be ? Clay for the Sansculottic Potter ! Or were it impossible to" fly this day ; a brave Noblesse suddenly all rahying? Peril threatens, hope invites : Dukes de Villequier, de Duras, Gentlemen of the Chamber give tickets and admittance ; a brave Noblesse is suddenly all rallying. Now were the time to * fall sword in hand on those gentry there,' cotild it be done with effect. The Hero of two Worlds is on his white charger ; blue Nationals, horse and foot, hurrying eastward : Santerre, with the Saint-Antoine Battalion, is already there,— apparently indisposed to act. Heavy-laden Hero of two Worlds, what tasks are these ! The jeerings, provocative gambolhngs of that Patricvc Suburb, which is all out on the streets now, are hard to endure ; unwashed Patriots jeering in sulky sport ; one unwashed Patriot 'seizing the * General by the boot ' to unhorse him. Santerre, ordered to fire, makes answer obhquely, "These are the men that took the Bastille ; " and not a trigger stirs ! Neither dare the Vincennes Magistracy give warrant of arrestment, or the smallest counte- nance : wherefore the General ' will take it on himself to arrest. By promptiude, by cheerful adroitness, patience and brisk valour ' without hmits, the riot may be again bloodlessly appeased. Meanwhile, the rest of Paris, with more or less unconcern, may mind the rest of its business : for what is this but an efferves- ; cence, of which there are now so many The National Assembly, ; in one of its stormiest moods, is debating a Law against Emigra- I tion ; Mirabeau declaring aloud, " I swear beforehand that I ^vill i not obey it." Mirabeau is often at the Tribune this day ; with ! endless impediments from without ; with the old unabated energy from within. What can murmurs and clamours, from Left or : from Right, do to this man ; like Teneriffe or Adas unremoved ? i With clear thought ; with strong bass-voice, though at first low, :! uncertain, he claims audience, sways the storm of men : anon the ; sound of him waxes, softens ; he rises into far-sounding melody ii of strength, triumphant, v/hich subdues all hearts ; his rude- I seamed face, desolate fire-scathed, becomes fire-lit, and radiates : I * Deux Amis ^ vi. 11-15; Newspapers (in HisL Pari, ix. 111-17). rilE TUILERIES. once again men feel, in these beggarly ages, what is the potency and omnipotency of man's word on the souls of men. " I wiU triumph or be torn in fragments " he was once heard to say. " Silence," he cries now, in strong w^ord of command, in imperial consciousness of strength, " Silence, the thirty voices. Silence aux trente voix I " — and Robespierre and the Thirty Voices die into mutterings ; and the Law is once more as Mirabeau would have it How different, at the same instant, is General Lafayette's street eloquence ; wrangling with sonorous Brewers, with an urigram- matical Saint- Antoine \ Most difterent, again, from both is the , Cafe-de-Valois eloquence, and suppressed fanfaronade, of this ; multitude of men with Tickets of Entry ; who are are now inun- dating the Corridors of the 'l uileries. Such things can go on simultaneously in one City. How much more in one Country ; in one Planet with its discrepancies, every Day a mere crackling in- finitude of discrepancies—which nevertheless do yield some coherent net-product, though an infinitesimally small one ! ^ : Be this as it may, Lafayette has saved Vincennes ; and is marching homewards with some dozen of arrested demolitionists. ^ Royalty is not yet saved ;— nor indeed specially endangered. But to the King's Constitutional Guard, to these old Gardes Frangaises, or Centre Grenadiers, as it chanced to be, this affluence of men with Tickets of Entry is becoming more and more unintelligible. Is his Majesty verily for Metz, then ; to be carried off by these men, on the spur of the instant ? That revolt of Saint- Antoine got up by traitor Royalists for a stalking-horse ? Keep a sharp outlook, ye Centre Grenadiers on duty here : good never came from the ' men in black.' Nay they have cloaks, redingotes ; some of them leather-breeches, boots,— as if for instant riding ! Or what is this that sticks visible from the lapelle of Chevalier de Court t ^ Too like the handle of some cutting or stabbing instru- ment ! He glides and goes ; and still the dudgeon sticks from his left lapelle. " Hold, Monsieur ! "—a Centre Grenadier clutches him ; clutches the protrusive dudgeon, whisks it out in the face of the world : by Heaven, a very dagger ; hunting-knife, or whatso- ever you call it ; fit to drink the life of Patriotism ! So fared it with Chevalier de Court, early in the day ; not with- out noise ; not without commentaries. And now this continually increasing multitude at nightfall ? Have they daggers too ? Alas, with fhem too, after angry parleyings, there has begun a gropmg and a rummaging ; all men in black, spite of their Tickets of Entry, are clutched by the collar, and groped. Scandalous to think of ; for always, as the dirk, sword-cane, pistol, or were it but tailor's bodkin, is found on him, and with loud scorn drawn forth from him, he, the hapless man in black, is flung all too rapidly down stairs. Flung ; and ignominiously descends, head foremost ; accelerated by ignominious shovings from sentry after sentry ; nay, ,s is written, by smitings, twitchings,— spurnings, a posteriori, not to be named. In this accelerated way, emerges, uncertain ♦ Weber, ii. 286. THE DAY OF PONIARDS, 95 which end uppermost, man after man in black, through all issues, into the Tuileries Garden. Emerges, alas, into the arms of an in- dignant multitude, now gathered and gathering there, in the hour of dusk, to see what is toward, and whether the Hereditary Repre- sentative is carried oft' or not. Hapless men in black ; at last convicted of poniards made to order ; convicted ' Chevaliers of the Poniard ! ' Within is as the burning ship ; without is ^s the deep sea. Within is no help ; his Majesty, looking forth, one moment, from his interior sanctuaries, coldly bids all visitors ' give up their Sveapons ; ' and shuts the door again. The weapons given up form a heap : the convicted Chevaliers of the Poniard 1veep de- scending pcllmell, with impetuous velocit)- ; and at the bottom of all staircases, the mixed multitude receives them, hustles, buffets, chases and disperses them.* Such sight meets Lafayette, in the dusk of the evening, as he returns, successful with difficulty at Vincennes : Sansculotte Scylia hardly weathered, here is Aristocrat Charybdis gurgling under his lee ! The patient Plero of two Worlds almost loses temper. He accelerates, does not retard, the flying Chevaliers ; delivers, indeed, this or the other hunted Loyalist of quality, but rates him in bitter words, such as the hour suggested ; such as no saloon could pardon. Hero ill- basted ; hanging, so to speak, in mid-air; hateful to Rich divin.ities above; hateful to Indio^ent mortals below ! Duke de Villequier, Gentleman of the Cham'ber, gets such contumelious rating, in presence of all people there, that he may see good first to exculpate himself in the Nevv'spapers ; then, that not prospering, to retire over the Frontiers, and begin plottmg at B/ussels.t His Apartment will stand vacant ; usefuller, as we may find, than when it stood occupied. So fly the Chevaliers of the Poniard ; hunted of Patriotic men shamefully in the thickening dusk. A dim miserable business ; born of darkness ; dying away there in the thickening dusk and dimness ! In the midst of which, however, let the readei' discern clearly one figure running for its life : Crispin- Cataliue d'Espre- 'menil,— for the last time, or the last but one. It is not yc' three I years since these same Centre Grenadiers, Gardes Francaises I then, marched him towards the Calypso Isles, in the gray of the jMay morning; and he and they have got • thus far Bufteted, beaten down, delivered by popular Petion, he might well answer bitterly : " And I too. Monsieur, have been carried on the People's shoulders.^J A fact which popular Petion, if he like, can meditate, But happily, one way and another, the speedv night covers up this Ignominious Day of Poniards ; and the Chevaliers escape though maltreated, with torn coat-skirts and heaw hearts, to their respective dwelling-houses. Riot twofold is quelled ; and httle blood shed, if it be not insignificant blood from the nose : Vin- cennes stands undemolished, reparable : and the Hereditary Kepresentative has not been stolen, nor the Queen smus^gled into rnson. A Day long remembered : commented on with loud i I ^39-48. f Mont£;aiUard, ii. 286. I J See Mercier, li. 40, 203. 96 THE TUILKRIES, hahas and deep grumblings ; with bitter scornfiilness of triumph, bitter rancour of defeat Reyalism, as usual, imputes it to d'Orleans and the Anarchists intent on insulting Majesty: Patriotism, as usual, to Royahsts, and even Constitutionalists, intent on stealing Majesty to Metz : we, also as usual to Preter- natural Suspicion, and Phcebus Apollo having made himself hke the Night. Thus however has the reader seen, in an unexpected arena, on this last day of February the Three long-contending elements of French Society, dashed forth into singular comico- tragical collision ; acting and reacting openly to the eye. Con- stitutionahsm, at once quelUng Sansculottic not at Vmcennes, and Royahst treachery from the Tuileries, is great, this day, and prevails As for poor Royalism, tossed to and fro m that manner, its dao-eers all left in a heap, what can one think of it ? Every do^ the Adage says, has its day : has it ; has had it ; or will have it For the present, the day is Lafayette's and the Constitution s. Nevertheless Hunger and Jacobinism, fast growing fanatical, still work • their-day, were they once fanatical, will come. Hitherto, in all tempests, Lafayette, like some divine Sea-ruler, raises his serene head : the upper .^olus' blasts fly back to their caves, like foolish unbidden winds : the under sea-billows they had vexed into froth allay themselves. But if, as we often write, the i-^/^marme Titanic Fire-powers came into play, the Ocean bed from beneath beino- burst ^ If they hurled Poseidon Lafayette and his Constitu- tion "out of Space ; and, in the Titanic melee, sea were mixed with sky ? CHAPTER VI. MIRABEAU. The smrit of France waxes ever more acrid, fever- sick: towards the final outburst of dissolution and delirium. Suspicion rules ah minds : contending parties cannot now commingle ; stand sepa- rated sheer asunder, eying one another, in most agmsh mood, ot cold terror or hot rage. Counter-Revolution, Days of Poniards, Castries Duels; Flight of Mesdames, of Monsieqr and Koya ty ! Tonrnalism shrills ever louder its cry of alarm The sleepless Dionysius's Ear of the Forty-eight Sections, how feverishly quick has it grown ; convulsing with strange pangs the who e sick body, as in such sleeplessness and sickness, the ear will do ! Since Royalists get J^oniards made to order, and a Sieur Motiei is no better than he should be, shall not Patriotism too, even of the indigent sort, have I >ikcs, secondhand Firelocks, in readiness for the worst? The anvils ring, during this March —^^^^^^^^ hammering of Pikes. A Constitutional Municipality promulgateKJ MIRABEAV, 93r its Placard, that no citizen except the 'active or cash-citizen ' was entitled to have arms ; but there rose, instantly responsive, such a tempest of astonishment from Club and Section, that the Constitu- tional Placard, almost next morning, had to cover itself up, and die away into inanity, in a second improved edition.-^ So the hammering continues'; as all that it betokens does. ^ Mark, again, how the extreme tip of the Left is mounting in favour, if not in its own National Hall, yet with the Nation, espe- cially with Paris. For in such universal panic of doubt, the opinion that is sure of itself, as the meagrest opinion may the soonest be, is the one to which all n>en will rally. Great is Belief, were it never so meagre ; and leads captive the doubting heart ! Incor- ruptible Robespierre has been elected Public Accuser in our new Courts of Judicature ; virtuous Petion, it is thought, may rise to be Mayor. Cordelier Danton, called also by triumphant nriajori- ties, sits at the Departmental Council-table ; colleague there of Mirabeau. Of incorruptible Robespierre it was long ago predicted that he might go far,' mean meagre mortal though he was ; for Doubt dwelt not in him. Under which circumstances ought not Royalty likewise to cease doubting, and begin deciding and acting ? Royalty has always that sure trump-card in its hand : Flight out of Paris. Which sure trump-card. Royalty, as we see, keeps ever and anon clutching at, grasping ; and swashes it forth tentatively ; yet never tables it, still puts it back again. Play it, O Royalty ! If there be a chance left, this seems it, and verily the last chance ; and now every hour is rendering this a doubtfuller. Alas, one would so fain both fly and not fly ; plav one's card and have it to play. Royalty, in all human likehhood, will not play its trump-card till the honours, one after one, be mainly lost ; and such trumping of it prove to be the sudden finish of the game ! Here accordingly a question always arises ; of the prophetic sort ; which cannot now be answered. Suppose Mirabeau, with whom Royalty takes deep counsel, as with a Prime Minister that cannot yet legally avow himself as such*, had got his arrangements completed? Arrangements he has ; far-stretching plans that dawn fitfully on us, by fragments, in the confused darkness. Thirty De- partments ready to sign loyal Addresses, of prescribed tenor: King carried out of Paris, but only to Compiegne and Rouen, hardly to Metz, since, once for all, no Emigrant rabble shall take the lead in it : National Assembly consenting, by dint of loyal Addresses, by management, by force of Bouille, to hear reason, and follow thither !t Was it so, on these terms, that Jacobinism and Mira- beau were then to grapple, in their Hercules- and-Typhon duel ; death inevitable for the one or the other ? The duel itself is deter- mined on, and sure : but on what terms ; much more, with what issue, we in vain guess. It is vague darkness all : unknown what is to be ; unknown even what has already been. The giant Mira- * Ordonnance du 17 Mars 179T {Hist. Pari, ix. 257). t See Fih Ad opt if, vii. I. 6 ; Dumont, c. 11, 12, 14, VOL. 11. B 98 THE TUILERIES. beau walks in darkness, as we said ; companionless, on wild ways: what his jthoughts during these months were, no record of Biogra- pher, no)( vague Fils Adopt if, will now ever disclose. To us/ endeavouring to cast his horoscope, it of course remains doubly vague. There- is one Herculean man ; in internecine duel with him, there is Monster after Monster. Emigrant Noblesse return, sword on thigh, vaunting of their Loyalty never sullied ; desicending from the air, like Harpy- swarms with ferocity, with obscene greed. Earthward there is the Typhon of Anarchy, Political, Religious ; sprawling hundred-headed, say with Twenty- five million heads ; wide as the area of France ; fierce as Frenzy ; strong in very Hunger. With these shall the Serpent queller do battle continually, and expect no rest. As for the King, he as usual will go wavering chameleonlike ; changing colour and purpose with the colour of his environment ; — good for no Kingly use. On one royal person, on the Queen only, can Mirabeau perhaps place dependance. It is possible, the greatness of this man, not unskilled too in blandishments, cour- tiership, and graceful adroitness, might, with most legitimate sor- cery, fascinate the volatile Queen, and fix her to him. She has courage for all noble daring ; an eye and a heart : the soul of Theresa's Daughter. ' Faut-il-donc^ Is it fated then,' she passiorn- ately writes to her Brother, ' that I with the blood 1 am come of, ' with the sentiments I have, must live and die among such mor- *tals.^'^ Alas, poor Princess, Yes. 'She is the only as Mirabeau observes, ' whom his Majesty has about him.' Of one other man Mirabeau is still surer : of himself. There lies his re- sources ; sufficient or insufficient. Dim and great to the eye of Prophecy looks that future ! A perpetual life-and-death battle ; contusion from above and from below ; — mere confused darkness for us ; with here and there some streak of faint lurid hght. We see King perhaps laid aside ; not tonsured, tonsuring is out of fashion now ; but say, sent away any whither, with handsome annual allowance, and stock of smith- tools. We see a Queen and Dauphin, Regent and Minor; a Queen ' mounted on horseback,' in the din of battles, with Mo7iainur pro rege nostro ! * Such a day,' Mirabeau writes, ^ may come.' Din of battles, wars more than civil, confusion frOm above and from below : in such environment the eye of Prophecy sees Comte de Mirabeau, like some Cardinal de Retz, stormfully maintain him- self ; with head all-devising, heart all-daring, if not victorious, yet unvanquished, while life is left him. The specialties and issues of it, no eye of Prophecy can guess at : it is clouds, we repeat, and tempestuous night ; and jn the middle of it, now visible, far dart- ing, now labouring in eclipse, is Mirabeau indomitably struggling to be Cloud- Com poller ! — One can say that, had Mirabeau lived, the History of France and of the World had been different. Further, that the man would have needed, as few men ever didj the whole compass of that same 'Art of Daring, /^'C^j-^r,' which he so prized ; and likewise that he, above all men then living, * FiU Adopif^ ubi supr^. DEATH OF MIRABEAU, 99 would have practised and manifested it. Finally, thr.t some sub- stantiality, and no empty simulacrum of a formula would have been the result realised by him : a result you could have loved a result you could have hated ; by no likelihood, a result you could only have rejected with closed lips, and swept into quick forgettul- ness for ever. Had Mirabeau Uved one other year ! • CHAPTER Vn. DEATH OF MIRABEAU. But Mirabeau could not live another year, any more than he could live another thousand years. Men's years are numbered, and the tale of Mirabeau's was now complete. Important, or un- important ; to be mentioned in World- History for some centuries, or not to be mentioned there beyond a day or two,— it matters not to peremptory Fate. From amid the press of ruddy busy Life, the Pale Messenger beckons silently : wide-spreading interests, pro- jects, salvation of French Monarchies, what thing soever man has on hand, he must suddenly quit it all, and go. Wert thou saving French Monarchies ; wert thou blacking shoes on the Pont Neuf 1 The most important of men cannot stay ; did the World's History depend on an hour, that hour is not to be given. Whereby, indeed, it comes that these same woicld-havc-beens are mostly a vanity ; and the World's History could never in the least be what it would, or might, or should, by any manner of potentiality, but simply and altogether what it is. The fierce wear and tear of such an existence has wasted out the giant oaken strength of Mirabeau. A fret and fever that keeps heart and brain on tire : excess of effort, of excitement ; excess of all kinds : labour incessant, almost beyond credibility ! • If I had 'not hved with him,' says Dumont, ' I should never have known ' what a man can make of one day ; what things may be placed 'within the interval of twelve hours. A day for this man was 'more than a week or a month is for others : the mass ot things 'he guided on together was prodigious ; from the scheming to the * executing not a moment lost.' Monsieur le Comte," said his Secretary to him once, " what you require is impossible."—" Im- possible ! " answered he starting from his chair, J\e me dites mmais ce bete de mot, Never name to me that blockhead of a word.''-^ And then the social repasts ; the dinner v/hich he gives as Commandant of National Guards, which ' costs five hundred 'pounds;' alas, and 'the Syrens of the Opera;' and ail the ginger that is hot in the mouth :— down what a course is this man ' hurled ! Cannot Mirabeau stop ; cannot he fly, and save himself alive ? No i There is a Nessus' Shirt on this iiercules ; he must * Dumont, p. 311. E 2 loo THE TUILERIES, storm and bum there, without rest, till he be consumed. Human strength, never so Herculean, has its measure. . Herald shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau ; heralds of the pale repose. While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for him the issue of it will be swift deatli. In January last, you might see him as President of the Assembly ; * his neck wrapt in linen cloths, at the evening session : ' there was sick heat of the blood, alternate darkening and flashing in the eye- sight ; he had to apply leeches, after the morning labour, and preside bandaged. ' At parting he embraced me/ says Dumont, ' with an emotion I had never seen in him : " I am dying, my ' friend ; dying as by slow flre ; we shall perhaps not meet again. ^ When I am gone, they will know what the value of me was. The ' miseries I have held back will burst from all sides on France." '"^ Sickness gives louder warning ; but cannot be listened to. On the 27th day of March, proceeding towards the Assembly, he had to seek rest and help in Friend de Lamarck's, by the road ; and lay there, for an hour, half-fainted, stretched on a sofa. To the Assembly nevertheless he went, as if in spite of Destiny itself*, spoke, loud and eager, five several times ; then quitted the Tribune —for ever. He steps out, utterly exhausted, into the Tuileries Gardens ; many people press round him, as usual, with apphca- tions, memorials ; he says to the Friend who was with him : Take . me out of this ! And so, on the last day of March 1791, endless anxious multi- tudes beset the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin ; incessantly inquiring : within doors there, in that House numbered in our time '42/ the over wearied giant has fallen down, to die.f Crowds, of all parties and kinds ; of all ranks from the King to the meanest man ! The King sends publicly twice a-day to inquire ; privately besides : from the world at large there is no end of inquiring. ' A written ' bulletin is handed out every three hours,' is copied and circulated ; in the end, it is printed. The People spontaneously keep silence ; no carriage shall enter with its noise : there is crowding pressure ; but the Sister of Mirabeau is reverently recognised, and has free way made for her. The People stand mute, heart-stricken ; to all it seems as if a great calamity were nigh : as if the last man of France, who could have swayed these coming troubles, lay there at hand-grips with the unearthly Power. The silence of a whole People, the wakeful toil of Cabanis, Friend and Physician, skiUs not : on Saturday, the second day of April, Mirabeau feels that the last of the Days has risen for him ; that, on this day, he has to depart and be no more. His death is Titanic, as his life has been. Lit up, for the last time, in the glare of coming dissolution, the mind of the man is all glowing and burning ; utters itself in sayings, such as men long remember. Pie longs to live, yet acquiesces in death, argues not with the inexor- able. His speech is wild and wondrous : unearthly Phantasms dancing now their torch-dance round his soul ; the soul itself * Dumont. p. 267. f I' Us Adoptif, viii. 420-79. DEATH OF' MIRABEAU. lOI Dr. Petit, standing at the foot of the bea, says ^ Of such dancins-parties apparently but two came to light ana say with ittle exaigeration, all the People mourns for him three days?|ere is low wide ^^^-^^l^^: ^JZA Se^rS- wJh'la^ e silent auknce, P-Mn^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ) coachman whip fast, distracmeiy * Fils Adoptif. vhi. 450; 7—'^ -^-'^^'^ '''''' htau, par P. J. G. Cabanis (Pans. i8oq^. m THE TUILERIES. mg No-thmg. In the Restaurateur's of the Palais Royal, th<^ waiter remarks, " Fine weather. Monsieur Yes, my friend answers the ancient Man of Letters, "very fine : but Mirabeau is c^ \^ /hoarse rhythmic threnodies comes also from the throats of balladsmgers ; are sold on gray-white paper at a sou each * But of Portraits, engraved, painted, * hewn, and written; of Biographies, nay Vaudevilles, Dramas and Melodramas, m all Provinces of France, there will, throucdi these coming months, be the due immeasurable crop ; thick as the leaves of Sprmg.^ Nor, that a tincture of burlesque might be in K, IS Gobel s Episcopal Mandeme7it wanting ; goose Gobel, who has just been made Constitutional Bishop of Paris. A Mandement wherein ca ira^ alternates very strangely with Nomine Domini, and you are with a grave countenance, inx'ited to ' rejoice at pos- sessing m the midst of you a bodv of Prelates created by Mira- ^ bean, zealous followers of his doctrine, faithful imitators of hii virtues.f ^ So speaks, and cackles manifold, the SorroNV of France^ waihng articulately, inarticulatelv, as it can, that a Sovereio-n M?^ IS snatclied away. In the National Assembly, when difficult que-> tions are astir all eyes will ' turn mechanically to the place whe^'- Mirabeau sat,'— and Mirabeau is absent now. On the third evening of the lamentation, the fourth of y\priL there is solemn Public Funeral ; such as deceased mortal seldom had. Procession of a league in length ; of mourners reckoned loosely at a hundred thousand ! All roofs are thronged with on- lookers, all windows, lamp-irons, branches of trees. ' Sadnr^ss is painted on every countenance ; manv persons weep.' There is double hedge of National Guards ;' there is National Assembly m a body ; Jacobin Society, and Societies ; Kim^'s Ministers, Municipals, and all Notabilities, Patriot or Aristocrat Bouille is noticeable there, 'with his hat on ; ' sav, hai drawn over his brow, hiding many thoughts ! Slow-wendirg, in religious silence, the Procession of a league in length, under the level sun- rays, tor it is five o'clock, moves and marches with its sable plumes ; Itself in a religious silence ; but, by fits, with the muffled roil ot drums, by fi^ ; with some long-drawn wail of music, and strange new clangour of trombones, and metallic dirge-voice ; amid the infinite hum of men. In the Church of Saint-Eustache, tnere IS funeral oration by Cerutti ; and discharge of fire-arms' wnich brings down pieces of the plaster.' Thence, forward again to the Church of Sainte-Genevicve ; which has been consecrated, ; by supreme decree, on the spur of this time, into a Pantheon for ^ the (,reat Men of the Fatherland, Aux Grands ITommcs la Palric 7rconnatssanie, Hardly at midnight is the business done ; and .Viirabeau left in his dark dwelling : first tenant of that Father- land's Pntheon Tenant, alas, who inhabits but at will, and shall be cast out ! i'or, m these days of convulsion and disjection, not even the dust * Flh Adopt!/, viii. [66-402). t HisL Pari. ix. 405. ^66-^2) ^^''* ^' ^'^^^■sP''^pcrs and K.xccrpts (in Hist. ParL ix. DEATH OF MIR ABE All. 103 of the dead is permitted to rest. Voltaire's bones are, by ancl bv to be carried from their stolen grave in the Abbey of ocei- liires, to an eager stealing grave, in Paris his birth-city : all mortals processioning and perorating there ; cars drawn by eight white horses, croadsters in classical costume, with hllets and wheat-ears enough t-though the weather is of the wettest.^ Evangehst Jean Jacques, too, as is most proper, must be dug up from Ermenonville and processioned, with pomp, with sensibility, to the Pantheon ot the Fatherland.t He and others : while again Mirabeau, we say, is cast forth from it, happily incapable of being r^p aced ; and rests now, irrecognisable,reburied hastily at dead of night, m the central * part of the Churchyard Sainte- Catherine, in the Suburb bamt- * Marceau,' to be disturbed no further. , , t So blazes out, farseen, a Man's Life, and becomes ashes and a caput mortuum, in this World-Pyre, which we name French Revo- lution : not the first that consumed itself there ; nor, by thousands and many millions, the last ! A man who ^had swallowed all ' formulas who, in these strange times and circumstances, telt called to live Titanically, and alsa to die so. As he, for his part had swallowed all formulas, what Formula is there, never so com- prehensive, that will express truly the plus and the mi7i2is, give us the accurate net-result of him? There is hitherto none such. Moralities not a few must shriek condemnatory over this Mirabeau ; the Morality by which he could be judged has not yet got uttered in the speech of men. We will say this of him, again ; That he is a Reality, and no Simulacrum : a living son of Nature our general Mother ; not a hollow Artfice, and mechanism of Conventionalities, son of nothing, brother to nothing. In which little word, let tne earnest man, walking sorrowful in a world mostly of ^ Stuhed * Clothes-suits,' that chatter and grin meaningless on him, quite ghastly to the earnest soul,— think what significance there is 1 Of men who, in such sense, are alive, and see with eyes, the number is now not great : it may be well, if in this huge French Revolution itself, with its all-developing fury, we find some fhree. Mortals driven rabid we find ; sputtering the acridest logic ; baring . their breast to the batde-hail, their neck to the guillotine ; of whom it is so painful to say that they too are still, in good part, manu- factured Formahties, not Facts but Hearsays ! rHonour to the strong man, in these ages, who has shaken him- feelf loose of shams, and is something. For in the way of being {worthy, the first condition surely is that one be. Let Cant cease, fat all risks and at all costs : till Cant cease, nothing else can begin. Of human Criminals, in these centuries, writes the Moralist, 1 find but one unforgivable : the Quack. ' Hateful to dod, as divine Dante sings, ' and to the Enemies of God, ' A Dio spiacente ed a nemici sui /' But whoever will, with sympathy, which is the first essential to- wards insight, look at this questionable Mirabeau, may find that * MoniUur, du 13 Juillet 1791. t ibid, du" 18 Septembre, 1794. See also du go Aout, &c. 1791. I04 THE TUILERIES. there lay verily in him, as the basis of all, a Sincerity, a great free Earnestness ; nay call it Honesty, for the man did before all things see, with that clear flashing vision, into what was, into what ex- - isted as fact ; and did, with his wild heart, follow that and no ; other. Whereby on what ways soever he travels and struggles^ often enough falling, he is still a brother man. Hate him not;' thou canst not hate him ! Shining through such soil and tarnish,: and now victorious effulgent, and oftenest struggling echpsed, the: light of genius itself is in this man ; which was never yet Ijase and hateful : but at worst was lamentable, loveable with pity. They say that he was ambitious, that he wanted to be Minister. It is! most true ; and was he not simply Jthe one man in France who ■ could have done any good as Minister ? Not vanity alone, not pride alone ; far from that ! Wild burstings of affection were in . this great heart; of fierce lightning, and soft dew of pity. So. sunk, bemired in wretchedest defacements, it may be said of him, like the Magdalen of old, that he loved muchj: his Father the harshest of old crabbed men he loved witKuarmth, with! veneration. •: Be it that his falls and follies are manifold,— as himself often \ lamented even with tears."^ Alas, is not the Life of every such nel de Choiseul is privately in Paris ; having come ' to see his ' children.' Also that Fersen has got a stupendous new Coach built, of the kind named Berline ; done by the first artists ; accord- ing to a model : they bring it home to him, in ChoiseuFs presence; the two friends take a proof-drive in it, along the streets ; in meditative mood ; then send it up to ' Madame Sullivan's, in the * Rue de Clichy,' far North, to wait there till wanted. Apparently a certain Russian Baroness de Korff, with Waiting-woman, Valet, and two Children, will travel homewards with some state : in whom these young military gentlemen take interest ? A Passport has been procured for her ; and much assistance shewn, with Coach-builders and such like ; — so helpful polite are young military- men. Fersen has likewise purchased a Chaise fit for two, at least for two waiting-maids ; further, certain necessary horses : one would say, he is himself quitting France, not without outlay ? We observe finally that their Majesties, Heaven willing, will assist at Corpiis-Christi Day, this blessed Summer Solstice, in Assumption Church, here at Paris, to the joy of all the world. For which same day, moreover, brave Bouille, at Metz, as we find, has invited a party of friends to dinner ; but indeed is gone from home, in the interim, over to Montmedi. These are of the Phenomena, or visual Appearances, of this wide-working terrestrial world : which truly is all phenomenal, what they call spectral ; and never rests at any moment ; one never at any moment can know why. On Monday night, the Twentieth of June 1791, about eleven o'clock, there is many a hackney-coach, and glass-coach {carrosse de remise), still rumbling, or at rest, on the streets of Paris. But of all Glass-coaches, we recommend this to thee, O Reader, which stands drawn up, in the Rue de FEchelle, hard by the Carrousel and outgate of the Tuileries ; in the Rue de TEchelle that then was ; ' opposite Ronsin the saddler's door,' as if waiting for a fare there ! Not long does it wait : a hooded Dame, with two hooded Children has issued from Villequier's door, where no sentry walks, into the Tuileries Court-of-Princes ; into the Carrousel ; into the Rue de I'Echelle ; where the Glass-coachman readily admits them; and again waits. Not long ; another Dame, likewise hooded or shrouded, leaning on a servant, issues in the same manner ; bids the servant good night ; and is, in the same manner, by the Glass- coachman, cheerfully admitted. Whither go, so many Dames? 'Tis His Majesty's Couchee, Majesty just gone to bed, and all the Palace-world is retiring home. But the (jlass-coachman still waits; his fare seemingly incomplete. By and by, we note a thickset Individual, in round hat and peruke, arm-and-arm with some servant, seemingly of the Runner or Courier sort ; he also issues through Villequier's door ; starts a shoebuckle as he passes one of the sentries, stoops down to clasp it again ; is however, by the Glass-coachman, still more clieerfully admitted. And //^w, is his fare complete ? Not yet; the Glass- coachman still waits.— Alas ! and the false Chambermaid has 114 VARENNES. warned Gouvion that she thinks the Royal Family will fly this very night ; and Gouvion distrusting his own glazed eyes, has sent express for Lafayette ; and Lafayette's Carriage, flaring with lights, l"olls this moment through the inner Arch of the Carrousel,— where a Lady shaded in broad gypsy-hat, and leaning on the arm of a servant, also of the Runner or Courier sort, stands aside to let it pass, and has even the whim to touch a spoke of it with her badhie^ ; — light little magic rod which she calls badi7te^ such as the Beauti- ful then wore. The flare of Lafayette's Carriage, rolls past : all is \ found quiet in the Court-of-Princes ; sentries at their post ; Majesties' Apartments closed in smooth rest. Your false Cham- bermaid must have been mistaken Watch thou, Gouvion, with \ Argus' vigilance ; for, of a truth, treachery is within these walls. But where is the Lady that stood aside in gypsy hat, and touched the wheel-spoke with her badine f O Reader, that Lady that touched the wheel-spoke was the Queen of France 1 She has issued safe through that inner Arch, into the Carrousel itself ; but not into the Rue de I'Echelle. Flurried by the rattle and ren- counter, she took the right hand not the left ; neither she nor her Courier knows Paris ; he indeed is no Courier, but a loyal stupid cz-devanl Bodyguard disguised as one. They are off, quite wrong, over the Pont Royal and River ; roaming disconsolate in the Rue du Bac ; far from the Glass-coachman, who still waits. Waits, with flutter of heart ; with thoughts — which he must button close up, under his jarvie surtout ! Midnight clangs from all the City - steeples ; one precious hour has been spent so ; most mortals are asleep. The Glass- coachman waifs ; and what mood ! A brother jarvie drives up, enters into conversation ; is answered cheerfully in jarvie dialect : the brothers of the whip exchange a pinch of snuff decline drinking together ; and part with good night. Be the Heavens blest ! here at length is the Oueen-lady, in gypsy-hat ; safe after perils ; who has had to inquire her way. She too is admitted ; her Courier jumps aloft, as the other, who is also a disguised Bodyguard, has done : and now, O Glass-coachman of a thousand, — Count Fersen, for the Reader sees it is thou, — drive ! Dust shall not stick to the hoofs of Fersen : crack ! crack ! the Glass-coach rattles, and every soul breathes lighter. But is Fersen on the right road ? Northeastward, to the Barrier of Saint-Martin and Metz Highway, thither were we bound : and lo, he drives right Northward ! The royal Individual, in round hat and peruke, sits astonished ; but right or wrong, there is no remedy. Crack, crack, we go incessant, through the slumbering City. Seldom, since J^aris rose out of mud, or the Longhaired Kings went in Bullock-carts, was there such a drive. Mortals on each hand of you, close by, stretched out horizontal, donrmnt; and we alive and quaking ! Crack, crack, through the Rue de (jrammont ; across the Boulevard ; up the Rue de la Chauss(fe d'Antin, — these windows, all silent, of Number 42, were Mira- * Weber, ii. 340-2 ; Choiseul, p. 44-56. COUNT fersen: 115 beau's. Towards the Barrier not of Saint- Martin, but of Clichy on the utmost North ! Patience, ye royal Individuals ; Fersen understands what he is about. Passing up the Rue de CHchy, he alights for one moment at Madame Sullivan's : " Did Count Fersen's Coachman get the Baroness de Korff's new Bcrline?" — *^ Gone wqth it an hour-and-half ago," grumbles responsive the drowsy Porter.—" Cest bienP Yes, it is well ;— though had not such hour-and half been lost, it were still better. Forth therefore, O Fersen, fast, by the Barrier de Clichy ; then Eastward along the Outward Boulevard, what horses and whipcord can do ! Thus Fersen drives, through the ambrosial night. Sleeping Paris is now all on the right hand of him ; silent except for some snoring hum ; and now he is Eastward as far as the Carrier de Saint- Martin ; looking earnestly for Baroness de Korff's Berhne. ^ This Heaven's Berline he at length does descry, drawn up with its six horses, his own German Coachman waiting on the box. Right, thou good German : now haste, whither thou knowest !— And as for us of the Glass-coach, haste too, O haste; much time is already lost ! The august Glass-coach fare, six Insides, hastily packs itself into the new Berline ; two Bodyguard Couriers behind. The Glass-coach itself is turned adrift, its head towards the City ; to wander whither it lists,— and be found next morning tumbled in a ditch, But Fersen is on the new box, with its brave new hammer-cloths ; flourishing his whip ; he bolts forward towards Bondy. There a third and final Bodyguard Courier of ours ought surely to be, with post-horses ready-ordered. There likewise ought that purchased Chaise, with the two Waiting-maids and their bandboxes to be ; whom also her Majesty could not travel without. Swift, thou deft Fersen, and may the Heavens turn it well ! Once more, by Heaven's blessing, it is all well. Here is the sleeping Hamlet of Bondy ; Chaise with Waiting-women ; horses all ready, and postillions with their churn boots, impatient in the dewy dawn. Brief harnessing done, the postillions with their churn-boots vault into the saddles ; brandish circularly their little noisy whips. Fersen, under his jarvie-surtout, bends in lowly silent reverence of adieu ; royal hands wave speechless inexpres- sible response ; Baroness de Korff's Berhne, with the Royalty of France, bounds off : for ever, as it proved. Deft Fersen dashes obliquely Northward, through the country, to^vards Bougret ; gains Bougret, finds his German Coachman and chariot waiting there ; cracks off, and drives undiscovered into unknown space. A deft active man, we say ; what he undertook to do is nimbly and successfully done. * And so the Royalty of France is actually fledj^ This precious night, the shortest of the year, it flies and drives ! Baroness de Korff is, at bottom, Dame de Tourzel, Governess of the Royal Children : she who came hooded with the two hooded little ones ; little Dauphin ; little Madame Royale, known long afterwards as Duchess d'AngoLileme. Baroness de KorfPs IVaithi^-maiU <-s the ii6 VARENNES, Oueen in gypsy-hat. The royal Individual in round hat and peruke, he is Valet, for the time being. That other hooded Dame, styled Travellmg-companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth ; she had sworn, long since, when the Insurrection of Women was, that only death should part her and them. And so they rush there, not too impetuously, through the Wood of Bondy :— over a Rubicon in ; their own and France's History. ^ ■ Great ; though the future is all vague ! If we reach Bouille? , If we do not reach him? O Louis ! and this all round thee is the great slumbering Earth (and overhead, the great watchful Heaven) ; the slumbering Wood of Bondy,— where Longhaired Childeric Donothing was struck through with iron not un- reasonably. These peaked stone-towers are Raincy ; towers of wicked d'Orleans. All slumbers save the multiplex rustle of our new Berhne. Loose-skirted scarecrow of an Herb-merchant, with his ass and early greens, toilsomely plodding, seems the only creature we meet. But right ahead the great North-East sends up evermore his gray brindled dawn : from dewy branch, birds here* and there, with 'short deep warble, salute the coming Sun. Stars fade out, and Galaxies ; Street-lamps of the City of God. The Universe, O my brothers, is flinging wide its portals for the Levee of the Great High King. Thou, poor King Louis, farest nevertheless, as mortals do, towards Orient lands of Hope ; and the Tuileries with its Levees, and France and the Earth itself, is but a larger kind of doghutch, — occasionally going rabid. CHAPTER IV. ATTITUDE. But in Paris, at six in the morning ; when some Patriot Deputy, warned by a billet, awoke Lafayette, and they went to the Tuil- eries ? — Imagination may paint, but words cannot, the surprise of Lafayette ; or with what bewilderment Helpless Gouvion rolled glassy Argus^ eyes, discerning now that his false Chambermaid had told true ! However, it is to be recorded that Paris, thanks to an august National Assembly, did, on this seeming doomsday, surpass itself. Never, according to Historian eye-witnesses, was there seen such an 'imposing attitude.'f Sections all ' in permanence ; ' our Townhalf, too, having first, about ten o'clock, tired three solemn alarm-canncns : above all, our I^ational Assembly ! National Assembly, hkewise permanent, decides what is needful ; with unanimous consent, for the Cote J)roit sits dumb, afraid of the Lanterne. Decides with a calm promptitude, which rises towards * Hdnault, Ahrdi^d Chroiwlogiqne, p. 36. - • f Deux Amis, vi. 67-178; I'oulongeon, ii. 1-38; Caniille, Prudhomme and Bkiitors /;n Hist. Fart. x. 240-4). ATTITUDE. "7 S^3lime. One must needs vote, for the thing .s self-ev den^ hat Maiesty has been abducted, or spirited away, .«/^. '^, by some person or persons unknown : in which case, what will the Constimdon have^us do ? Let us return to first principles, as we plwavs sav ; " revenons a2ix principes. • i ^ . By firs or bv second pnnciples, much is promptly decided Mi^ sters are sent for, instructed how to continue their functions , Lafovet e fs examined ; and Gouvion, who gives a most helpless t-^o mt the best he can. Letters are found written : one Lettei, immense mSi'tude ; all m his Majesty's hand and evident ly of his Maiesty's own composition ; addressed to the ^atlon.^l AssSb y -^ It details, with earnestness, with a childlike simplicity, whatToeshis Majes yhas suffered. Woes great and small : A Seeker seen applauded, a Maje then insurrection; want of due cash in Civil List ; general want of cash, iurniture and o d.r- anarchy everywhere f Deficit never yet m the smallest ^^Slk or .--wherefore in brief His Ma;,estyhas retired towards a Race of Liberty ; and, leaving Sanctions, Federation, and what Oaths there ma^ be, to shift for themse^^^^^^^^ refer-to what, thinks an august Assembly? Jl o tMt Dec.ara ' t on of the Twenty-third of June,' with ^X.^ ' Seul il fera, alone w U make his People happy." As if were not buried, deep enough, under two irrevocable Twelvemonths, and the wrecj^ and'^ruSbish of a whole Feud- World ! This strange autograp^ Letter the National Assembly decides on printing ; on transmit- ting to the Eighty-three Departments, with exegetic commentary, short but pithy. Commissioners , so shall go forth on all sides ; the People be exhorted ; the Armies be increased ; care takeii that the Commonweal suffer no damage.-And now, with a sub- lime air o_f^ calmness, nay of indifference, we 'pass to the order, of '^By'^such sublime calmness, the terror of the People is calmed. Thele gleaming Pike forests which bristled fateful m the early sun, disappear again; the far-sounding Street-orators cease o. spout milder. We are to have a civil war ; let us have it then The King is gone ; but National Assembly, but France and we remahi The People also takes a great attitude ; the People also I"; motionless as acouchant lion With but a fevv some waggings of the tail ; to shew what it will do ! Cazaks, lor instance, was beset by street- groups, and cries ^\^f}''V!ii.^^l National Patrols easily delivered him. Likewise all King s eftigies and statues, at least stucco ones, get abolished. Even Km s names ; the word Roi fades suddenly out of all shop- signs the Royal Bengal Tiger itself, on the Boulevards, becomes the National Bengal one, Tigre National* How great is a calm couchant People ! On the morrow, men will say to one another : " We have no King yet we slept sound enough." On the morrow, fervent Achille de Chatelet, and Thomas Paine the rebellious Needleman, shall have the walls of Pans pro- fasely plastered with their Placard ; announcing that there must * Waljioliana, ii8 ^ VARENNES. be a Republic /'^—IsQ.^di we add that Lafayette too, though at first menaced by Pikes, has taken a great attitude, or indeed the greatest of all ? Scouts and Aides-de-camp fly forth, vague, in quest and pursuit ; young Romoeuf towards Valenciennes, though with small hope. Thus Paris ; subhmely cahned, in its bereavement. But from the Messageries Roy ales ^'m aU Mail-bags, radiates forth far-darting the electric news : Our Hereditary Representative is flown. Laugh, black Royalists : yet be it in your sleeve only ; lest Patriotism notice, and waxing frantic, lower the Lanterne ! In Paris alone is a sublime National Assembly with its calmness ; truly, other places must take it as they can : with open mouth and eyes ; with panic cackling, with wrath, with conjecture. How each one of those dull leathern Diligences, with its leathern bag and ' The King is fled/ furrows up smooth France as it goes ; through town and hamlet, ruffles the smooth public mind into quivering agitation of death -terror ; then lumbers on, as if nothing •had happened ! Along all highways ; towards the utmost borders ; till all France is ruffled,— roughened up (metaphorically speaking) into one enormous^ desperate-minded, red- guggling Turkey Cock 1 For example, it is under cloud of night that the leathern Monster reaches Nantes ; deep sunk in sleep. The word spoken rouses all Patriot men : General Dumouriez, enveloped in roquelaures, has to descend from his bedroom ; flnds the street covered with ' four or ' five thousand citizens in their shirts.'t Here and there a faint farthing rushlight, hastily kindled ; and so many' swart-featured haggard faces, with nightcaps pushed back ; and the more or less flowing drapery of night-shirt : open-mouthed till the General say his word ! And overhead, as always, the Great Bear is turning so quiet round Bootes ; steady, indifl"erent as the leathern Diligence itself. Take comfort, ye men of Nantes : Bootes a'nd the steady Bear are turning ; ancient Atlantic still sends his brine, loud- billowing, up your Loire-stream ; brandy shall be hot in the stomach : this is not the Last of the Days, but one before the Last. —The fools ! If they knew what was doing, in these very instants, also by candle-light, in the far North-East ! Perhaps we may say the most terrified man in Paris or France is— who thinks the Reader ?- seagreen Robespierre. Double pale- ness, with the shadow of gibbets and halters, overcasts the sea- green features : it is too clear to him that there is to be *a Saint- ' Bartholomew of Patriots,' that in four-and-twenty hours he will not be in life. These horrid anticipations of the soul he is heard uttering at Pdtion's ; by a notable witness. By Madame Roland, namely ; her whom we saw, last year, radiant at the Lyons Fede- ration ! These four months, the Rolands have been in Pans ; arranging with Assembly Committees the Municip.d affau's of Lyons, affairs all sunk in debt -- communing, the while, as was most natural, with the best Patriots to be found here, with our Brissots, Pdtions, Buzots, Robespierres ; who were wont to come to us, says the fair Hostess, four evenings in the week. Ihej^^ * Dumont, c. i6. t Dumouriez, Mimoires, ii. 109. THE NEW BEREINE. running about, bus-ier than ever tM^day, would fain have comforted the seagreen man : spake of_AchilIe du Chatelet's Placard ; of a Journal to be called The Republican ; of preparing men's minds for a Republic. A Republic ? " said the Seagreen, with one of his dry husky ///^sportful laughs, " What is that ? " ^ O seagreen Incorruptible, thou shalt see ! CHAPTER V. THE NEW BERLINE. But scouts all this while and aide-de-camps, have flown forth faster than the leathern Diligences. Young Romoeuf, as we said^ was off early towards Valenciennes : distracted Villagers seize him, as a traitor with a finger of his own in the plot ; drag him back to the Townhall ; to the National Assembly, which speedily grants a new passport. Nay now, that same scarecrow of an Herb-merchant with his ass has bethought him of the grand new Berline seen in the Wood of Bondy ; and dehvered evidence of it :t Romoeuf, furnished with new passport, is sent forth with double speed on a hopefuller track ; by Bondy, Claye, and Cha- lons, towards Metz^ to track the new Berline ; and gallops a franc etrier. Miserable new Berline I V/hy could not Royalty go in some old Berline similar to that of other men ? Flying for life, one does not stickle about his vehicle. Monsieur, in a commonplace travelhng-carriage is off Northwards ; Madame, his Princess, in another, with variation of route : they cross one another while changing horses, without look of recognition ; and reach Flanders, no man questioning them. Precisely in the same manner, beauti- ful Princess de Lamballe set off, about the same hour ; and will reach England safe :— would she had continued there ! The beautiful, the good, but the unfortunate ; reserved for a frightful end ! All runs along, unmolested, speedy, except only the new Ber- line. Huge leathern vehicle ;— huge Argosy, let us say, or Aca- pulco-ship ; with its heavy stern-boat of Chaise-and-pair ; with its three yellow Pilot-boats of mounted Bodyguard Couriers, rockin,e aimless round it and ahead of it, to bewilder, not to guide Ii lumbers along, lurchin ^ly with stress, at a snail's pace'; noted oi all the world. The Bodyguard Couriers, in their yellow liveries, go prancing and clattering ; loyal but stupid ; unacquainted with all things. Stoppages occur ; and breakages to be repaired at Etoges. King Louis too will dismount, will walk up hills, and enjoy the blessed sunshine :— with eleven horses and double dnnlc money, and all furtherances of Nature and Art, it will be found * Madame Roland, ii. 70. t MonUcur, &c. (in Hist. Pari. x. 244-313). I20 VARENNES, that Royalty, flying for life, accomplishes Sixty-nine miles in Twenty-two incessant hours.* Slow Royalty ! And yet not a minute of these hours but is precious : on minutes hang the destinies of Royalty now. Readers, therefore, can judge in what humour Duke de Choiseul might stan'd waiting, in the Village of Pont-de-Sommevelle, some leagues beyond Chalons, hour after hour, now when the day bends visibly westward. Choiseul drove out of Paris, in all privity, ten hours before their Majesties' fixed time ; his Hussars, led by Engineer Goguelat, are here duly, come ' to escort a Treasure ' that is expected : ' but, hour after hour, is no Baroness de Korff's Berline. Indeed, over all that North-east Region, on the skirts of Chompagne and of Lorraine, where the Great Road runs, the agitation is considerable. For all along, from this Pont-de- Sommevelle Northeastward as far as Montmedi, at Post-villages and Towns, escorts of Hussars and Dragoons do lounge waiting : a train or chain of Military Escorts ; at the Montmedi end of it our brave Bouille : an electric thunder-chain ; which the invisible Bouille, like a Father Jove, holds in his hand — for wise pur- poses ! Brave Bouille has done what man could ; has spread out his electric thunder-chain of Military Escorts, onwards to the threshold of Chalons : it waits but for the new Korff Berline ; to receive it, escort it, and, if need be, bear it off in whirlwind of military fire. They lie and lounge there, we say, these fierce Troopers ; from Montmedi and Stenai, through Clermont, Sainte- Menehould to utmost Pont-de-Sommevelle, in all Post-villages ; for the route shall avoid Verdun and great Towns : they loiter im- patient ^ till the Treasure arrive.' Judge what a day this is for brave Bouille : perhaps the first day of a new glorious life ; surely the last day of the old ! Also, and indeed still more, what a day, beautiful and terrible, for your young full-blooded Captains : your Dandoins, Comte de Damas, Duke de Choiseul, Engineer Goguelat, and the like ; entrusted with the secret ! — Alas, the day bends ever more westward ; and no Korff Berline comes to sight. It is four hours beyond the time, and still no Berline. In all Village-streets, Royalist Captains go lounging, looking ofton Paris-ward ; with face of unconcern, with heart full of black care : rigorous Quartermasters can hardly keep the private dragoons from cafrs and dramshops."^ Dawn on our bewilderment, thou new I:>erlinc ; dawn on us, thou Sun- chariot of a new I>crhnc, with the destinies of France ! It was of His Majesty's ordering, this nfihtary array of Escorts ; a thing solacing the Royal imagination willi a look of security and rescue ; yet, in reality, creating only and where there was otherwise no danger, danger without end. For each Patriot, in these Post-villages, asks naturally : Tliis c latter of cavalry, and marching and lounging of troops, what means it ? To escort a Treasure ? Why escort, when no Patriot will steal from the Dddaration du Sietir La Cache du Rdgimcnt Royal-Dragoons -{^m Choi- seul, pp. 125-39). THE NEW BERLINE. 121 Nation ; or wh^re is your Treasure ? — There has been such marching and counter-marching : for it is another fataUty, tliat certain of these Mihtary Escorts came out so early as yesterday ; the Nineteenth not the Twentieth of the month being the day ^rst appointed, which her Majesty, for some necessity or other, saw good to alter. And now consider the suspicious nature of Patriotism ; suspicious, above all. of Boiiille the Aristocrat ; and how the sour doubting humour has had leave to accumulate and exacerbate for four-and-twenty hours ! At Pont-de-Sommevelle, these Forty foreign Hussars of Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are becoming an unspeakable mystery to all men. They lounged long enough, already, at Sainte-Menehould ; lounged and loitered till our National Volunteers there, all risen into hot wrath of doubt, ^ demanded three hundred fusils of their *Townhall,' and got them At which same moment too, as it chanced, our Captain Dandoins Was just coming in, from Clermont with his troop, at the other end of the Village. A fresh troop ; alarming enough ; though happily they are only Dragoons and French ! So that Goguelat with his Hussars had to ride, and even to do it fast ; till here at Pont-de-Sommevelle, where Choiseul lay waiting, he found resting-place. Resting-place, as on burning marie. For the rumour of him flies abroad ; and men run to and fro in fright and anger : Chalons sends forth exploratory pickets of National Volunteers towards this hand ; which meet exploratory pickets, coming from Sainte-M'enehold, on that. What is it, ye whiskered Hussars, men of foreign guttural speech ; in the name of Heaven, what is it that brings you A Treasure ? — exploratory pickets shake their heads. The hungry Peasants, however, know too well v/hat Treasu e it is : Military seizure for rents, feudalities ; which no Baihff could make us pay ! This they knovv ; — and set to jinghng their Parish-bell by way of tocsin ; with rapid effect ! Choiseul and Goguelat, if the whole country is not to take fire, must needs, be there Berline, be there no Berline, saddle and ride. They mount; and this Parish tocsin happily ceases. They ride slowly Eastward, towards Sainte-Menehould; still hoping the Sun-Chariot of a Berline may overtake them. Ah me, no Berline ! And near now is that Sainte-Menehould, which expelled us in the morning, with its ' three hundred National fusils ; ' which looks, belike, not too lovingly on Captain Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons, though only French ; — which, in a word, one dare not enter the second time, under pain of explosion ! With rather heavy heart, our Hussar Party strikes- off to the left ; through by- ways, through pathless hills and woods, they, avoiding Sainte- Menehould and all places which have seen them heretofore, will make direct for the distant Village of Varennes. It is probable they will have a rough evening-ride. This first military post, therefore, in the long thunder-chain, has gone off with no effect ; or with worse, and your chain threatens to entangle itself! — The Great Road, however, is gort I hushed again into a kind of ciuietude, though one of the wake- 122 VARENNES. fullest. Indolent Dragoons cannot, by any Quartermaster, be kept altogether from the dramshop ; \vhere Patriots drink, and will even treat, eager enough for news. Captains, in a state near < distraction, beat the dusky highway, with a face of indifference ; i and no Sun-Chariot appears. Why lingers it ? Incredible, that with eleven horsey, and such yellow Couriers and furtherances, : its rate should be under the weightiest dray-rate, some three miles ■ an hour ! Alas, one knows not whether it ever even got out of Paris ;— and yet also one knows not whether, this very moment, it is not at the Village-end 1 One's heart flutters on the verge of iinutterabilities. CHAPTER VI. OLD DRAGOON DROUET. In this manner, however, has the Day bent downwards. Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field-labour ; the village-artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village-street for a sweet mouthful of air and human news. Still summer-eventide everywhere ! The great Sun hangs flaming on the utmost North- West ; for it is his longest day this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will ere long be at their ruddiestj and blush Good-night. The thrush, in green dells, on long- shadow^ed leafy spray, pours gushing "his glad serenade, to the babble of brooks grown audibler ; silence is stealing over the Earth. Your dusty Mill of Valmy, as all other mills and drudgeries, may furl its canvass, and cease sv/ashing and circling. The swenkt grinders in this Treadmill of an Earth have ground out another Day ; and lounge there, as we say, in village-groups ; movable, or ranked on social stone-seats \ ^ their children, mischievous imps, sporting about their feet. Unnotable hum of sweet human gossip rises from this Village of Sainte-Menehould, as from all other villages. Gossip mostly sweet, unnotable ; for the very Dragoons are French and gallant ; nor as yet has the Paris-and-Verdun Diligence, with its leathern bag, rumbled in, to terrify the minds of men. One figure nevertheless we do note at the last door of the* Village : that figure in loose-flowing nightgown, of Jean Baptiste Drouct, Master of the Post here. An acrid choleric man, rather dangerous-looking ; stil] in the prime of life, though he has served, in his time as a Condc Dragoon. This day from an early hour, Drouet got his cholcr stirrecl, and has been kept fretting. Hussar Goguelat in the morning saw good, by way of thrift, to bargain with liis own Innkeeper, not witli Drouel regular Maitre de Poste^ about some gig-l)()rs(^ for tlie sending back of his gig ; which thing Drouet perccivini'; raine over in red ire, menacing the Inn- keeper, and would not be appeased. Wholly an unsatisfactory * Ratpori dc A/. K6my (in Choiseul, p. 143), OLD DRAGOON DROUET. 1^3 day. For Drouet is an acrid Patriot too, was at llie :ib'L of Pikes : and what do these Bouille Soldiers iiir;i,i. i liibsars, with their gig, and a vengeance to it ! — have h,i] criy ])ecn thrust out, when Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons cirrivc from Clermont, and stroll. For what purpose ? Choleric Drouet steps out and steps in, with long-flowing nightgown ; looking abroad, with that sharpness of facalty which stirred clioler gives to man. On the other hand, mark Captain Dandoins on the street of that same Village ; sauntering with a face of indiiTerence, a hearty eaten of black care ! For no Korff Rerline makes its appearance.* The great Sun flames broader towards setting : one's heart flutters on the verge of dread unutterabilities. By Heaven ! Here is the yellow Bodyguard Courier ; spurring fast, in the ruddy evening light ! Steady, O Dandoins, stand v/itli inscrutable indifferent face ; though the yellow blockhead spurs past the Post-house 1; inquires to find it; and stirs the Village, all delighted with his fine livery. — Lumbering along with its mountains of bandboxes, and Chaise behind, the Korff Berline rolls in ; huge Acapulco-ship witli its Cockboat, having got thus far. The eyes of the Villagers look enlightened, as such eyes do when a coach-transit, which is an event, occurs for them. Stroll- ing Dragoons respectfully, so fine are the yellow liveries, bring hand to helmet ; and a lady in gipsy-hat responds with a grace peculiar to her.^ Dandoins stands with folded arms, and what look of indifference and disdainful garrison-air a man can, while the heart is like leaping out of him. Curled disdainful mous- tachio ; careless glance, — which however surveys the Village - groups, and does not hke them. With his eye he bespeaks the yellow Courier. Be quick, be quick ! Thick-headed Yellow cannot understand the eye ; comes up mumbling, to ask in words : seen of the Village ! Nor is Post-master Drouet unobservant, all this while ; but steps out and steps in, with his long-flowing nightgown, in the level sunlight ; prying into several things. When a man's facul- ties, at the right time, are sharpened by choler, it may lead to much. That Lady in slouched gypsy-hat, though sitting back in the Carriage, does she not resemble some one we have seen, some time ;— at the Feast of Pikes, or elsewhere And this Grosse-Tete in round hat and peruke, which, looking rearward, pokes itself out from time to time, methinks there are features in it ? Quick, Sieur Guillaume, Clerk of the Directoire, bring me a new Assignat ! Drouet scans the new Assignat ; compares the Paper- money Picture with the Gross- Head in round hat there : by Day and Night ! you might say the one was an attempted Engraving of the other. And this mar.ch of Troops ; this sauntering and whispering, — I see it ! Drouet Post-master of this Village, hot Patriot, Old Dragoon of Conde, consider, therefc«e, what thou wilt do. And fast : for behold the new Berli|^,«^xpeditiously yoked, cracks whipcord, *■ Ddclaration dc la Gache (in C'hoiseul uhi supra). 124 VARENNES. and rolls away !— Drouet dare not, on the spur of the instant, clutch the bridles in his own two hands ; Dandoins, with broad- sword, might hew you off. Our poor Nationals, not one of them here, have three hundred fusils but then no powder ; besides one is not sure, only morally-certain. Drouet, as an adroit Old- Dragoon of Conde does what is advisablest : privily bespeaks Clerk Guillaume, Old- Dragoon of Conde he too ; privily, while Clerk Guillaume is saddhng two of the fleetest horses, slips over to the Townhall to whisper a word ; then mounts with Clerk Guillaume ; and the two bound eastward in pursuit, to see what can be done. They bound eastward, in sharp trot ; their moral-certainty permeating the Village, from the Townhall outwards, m busy whispers. Alas ! Captain Dandoins orders his Dragoons to mount ; but they, complaining of long fast, demand bread-and- cheese first ;— before which brief repast can be eaten, the w^ole Village is permeated ; not whispering now, but blustermg and shrieking ! ^ National Volunteers, in hurried m.uster, shriek for gunpowder ; Dragoons halt between Patriotism and Rule of the Service, between bread and cheese and fixed bayonets : Dandoms hands secretly his Pocket-book, with its secret despatches, to the rigorous Quartermaster : the very Ostlers have stable-forks and flails. The rigorous Quartermaster, half-saddled, cuts out his way with the sword's edge, amid levelled bayonets, amid Patriot vociferations, adjurations, flail-strokes; and rides frantic few or even none following him ; the rest, so sweetly constrained con- senting to stay there. And thus the new Berline rolls ; and Drouet and Guillaume gallop after it, and Dandoins's Troopers or Trooper gallops after them ; and Sainte-Menehould, with some leagues of the King s Highway, is in explosion ;— and your Military thunder.cham has gone off in a self-destructive manner ; one may fear with the frightfullest issues ! CHAPTER VII. THE NIGHT OF SPURS. This comes of mysterious Escorts, and a new Berline with eleven horses : ' he that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide that he has it to hide.* Your first Military Escort has ex- ploded self-destructive ; and all Military Escorts, and a suspicious Country will now be up, explosive ; comparable not to victorious thunder. Comparable, say rather, to the first stirring of an Alpine Avalanche ; which, once stir it, as here at Sainte-Menehould, will spread,— all round, and on and on, as far as Stenai ; thundering * D^laration dc I .a Cache (in Clioiscnil), p. 134. THE NIGHT OF SPURS. 125 with wild ruin, till Patriot Villagers, Peasantry, Military Escorts, new Berline and Royalty are down,— jumbling in the Abyss! . The thick shades of Night are falling. Postillions crack and whip : the Royal Berline is through Clermont, where Colonel Comte de Damas got a word whispered to it ; is safe through, to- wards Varennes ; rushing at the rate ^f double drink-money : an Unknown ' hiconiiu on horseback' shrieks earnestly some hoarse whisper, not audible, into the rushing Carriage-window, and vanishes, left in the night."^ August Travellers palpitate ; never- theless overwearied Nature sinks every one of them, into a kind of sleep. Alas, and Drouet and Clerk Guillaume spur ; taking side- roads, for shortness, for safety ; scattering abroad that moral- certainty of theirs ; which flies, a bird of the air carrying it ! And your rigorous Quartermaster spurs ; awakening hoarse trumpet-tone, as here at^Clermont, calling out Dragoons gone to bed. Brave Colonel de Damas has them mounted, in part, these Clermont men ; young Cornet Remy dashes off with a few. But the Patriot Magistracy is out here at Clermont too ; National Guards shrieking for ball-cartridges ; and the Village ' illuminates itself ; —deft Patriots springing out of bed ; alertly, in shirt or shift, striking a light ; sticking up each his farthing candle, or penurious oil-cruise, till all ghtters and ghmmxers ; so deft are they! A camisado, or shirt-tumult, every where : storm-bell set a-ringing ; village-drum beating furious gmerale^ as here at Clermont, under illumination ; distracted Patriots pleading and menacing ! Brave young Colonel de Dumas, in that uproar of distracted Patriotism, speaks some fire-sentences to what Troopers he has : " Comrades insulted at Sainte-Menehould ; King and Country caUing on the brave then gives the fire-word. Draw swords. Whereupon, alas, the Troopers only S7nite their sword-handles, driving them further home ! " To me, whoever is for the King I " cries Damas in despair ; and gallops, he with some poor loyal Two, of the sub- altern sort, into the bosom of the Night. f Night unexampled in the Clermontais ; shortest of the year , remarkablest of the century : Night deserving to be named of Spurs ! Cornet Remy, and those Few he dashed off with, has missed his road ; is galloping for hours towards Verdun ; then, for hours, across hedged country, through roused hamlets, towards Varennes. Unlucky Cornet Remy ; unluckier Colonel Damas, with whom there ride desperate only some loyal Two 1 More ride not of that Clermont Escort : of other Escorts, in other Villages, not even Two may ride ; but only all curvet and prance, — impeded by storm-bell and your. Village illuminating itself. And Drouet rides and Clerk Guillaume ; and the Country runs. — Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are plunging through morasses, . over cliffs, over stock and stone, in the shaggy woods of the Cler- montais ; by tracks ; or trackless, with guides ; Hussars tumbling into pitfalls, and lying ' swooned three quarters of an hour/ the * Campan, ii. 159. t ProUs-verbal du Directoire de Clermont (in Choiseul, p, 189-95). 126 VARENNES, rest refusing to march without them. What an t\eniri^ i ide Troni Pont-de-Sommerviiie ; what a thirty hours, since" Choiseul quitted Paris, with Oueen's-valet Leonard in the chaise by him ! Black Care sits behind the rider. Thus go they plunging ; rustle the owlet from his branchy nest ; champ, the sweet-scented forest- herb, queen- of -the-meadows spilling her spikenard ; and frighten the ear of Night. But hark ! towards twelve o'clock, as one guesses, for the very stars are gone out : sound of the tocsin from Varennes.f^ Checking bridle, the Hussar Officer listens: "Some fire undoubtedly ! " — yet rides on, with double breathlessness, to verify. Yes, gallant friends that do your utmost, it is a certain sort of fire : difficult to quench. — The Korff Beriine, fairly ahead of all this riding Avalanche, reached the littly paltry \ illage of Varennes about eleven o'clock ; hopeful, in spite of that hoarse-whispering Unknown. Do not all towns now lie -behind us ; Verdun avoided, on our right Within wind of Bouille himself, in a manner ; and the darkest of midsummer nights favouring us ! And so we halt on the hill-top at the South end of the Village ; expecting our relay ; which young Bouille, Bouille's own son, with his Escort of Hussars, was to have ready ; for in this Village is no Post. Dis- tracting to think of : neither horse nor Hussar is here ! Ah, and stout horses, a proper relay belongipg to Duke Choiseul, do stand at hay, but in the Upper Village over the Bridge ; and we know not of them. Plussars likewise do wait, but drinking in the taverns. For indeed it is six hours beyond the time ; young Bouille, silly striphng, thinking the matter over for this night, has retu-ed to bed. And so our yellow Couriers, inexperienced, must rove, groping, bungling, through a Village mostly asleep : Postil- lions will not, for any money, go on widi the tired horses ; not c^t least without refreshment ; not they, let the Valet in round hat argue as he likes. Miserable ! ' For five-and- thirty minutes ' by the King's watch, the lierline is at a dead stand; Round-hat arguing with Churnboots; tired horses sloblDcring their meal-and-water ; yeUow Couriers gro- ping, ()ungling ;— young Bouille asleep, all the while, in the Upper Viilage, and Choiseul's fine team standing there at hay. No help for it; not witha King's ransom : the horses deliberately slobber, Round- li.it argues, Bouille sleeps. And mark now, in the thick night, do not two Horsemen, with jaded trot, come clank-clanking; and start with half-pause, if one noticed them, at sight of this dim mass uf a Beriine, and its dull slobbering and arguing ; then prick off faster, into the Village .^^ It is Drouet, he and Clerk Guillaumel Still ahcaii, they two, of the whole riding hurlyburly ; unshot, though some brag of having chased them. Perilous is Drouet's errand also ; but he is an Old-Dragoon, with his wits shaken thoroughly awake. The Village of Varennes lies dark and slumberous ; a most un- ievel Village, of inverse saddle-shape, as men write. It sleeps; the rushing of the River Aire singing lullably to it. Neverthe- less from the Golden Arms, lh as cfOr Tavern, across that sloping THE NIGHT OF SPURS. 127 marketplace, there still comes shine of sociaUight ; comes voice of rude drovers, or the like, who have not yet taken the stirrup- cup ; Boniface Le Blanc, in white apron, serving them : cheerful to behold. To this Bras cfOr, Drouet enters, alacrity looking through his eyes :he nudges Boniface, in all privacy, " Cama^-ade, es-tu ban Patriote, Art thou a good Patriot 5/ je suisT' answers Boniface— "In that case," eagerly whispers Drouet—what whisper is needful, heard of Boniface alone * And now see Boniface Le Blanc bustling, as he never did for the joihest toper. See Drouet and Guiilaume, dexterous Old-Dragoons, instantly down blocking the Bridge, with a ' furniture waggon they ' find there,' with whatever waggons, tumbrils, barrels, barrows their hands can lay hold of ; — till no carriage can pass. Then swiftly, the Bridge once blocked, see them take station hard by, under Varennes Archway : joined by Le Blanc, Le Blanc's Brother, and one or two alert Patriots he has roused. Some half- dozen in all, with National Muskets, they stand close, waiting under the Archway, till that same Korff Berline rumble up. It rumbles up: Alte la I lanterns flash out from undercoat- skirts, bridles chuck in strong fists, two National Muskets level themselves fore and aft through the two Coach-doors : " Mesdames, your Passports ? " — Alas ! Alas ! Sieur Sausse, Procureur of the Township, Tallow-chandler also and Grocer is there, with official grocer-pohteness ; Drouet with fierce logic and ready wit : — The respected Travelling Party, be it Baroness de Korff's, or persons of still higher consequence, will perhaps please to rest itself in M. Sausse's till the dawn strike up ! O Louis ; O hapless Marie- Antoinette^ fated to pass thy fife with such men ! Phlegmatic Louis, art thou but lazy semi-animate phlegm then, to the centre of thee? King, Captain- General, Sovereign Frank ! if thy heart ever formed, since it began beating under the name of heart, any resolution at all, be it now then, or never in this world : "Violent nocturnal individuals, and if it were persons of high consequence.^ And if it were the King himself? Has the King not the power, which all beggars have, of travelling unmolested on his own Highway ? Yes : it is the King ; and tremble ye to know it ! The King has said, in this one small matter ; and in France, or under God's Throne, is no power that shall gainsay. Not the King shall ye stop here under this your miser- able Archway ; but his dead body only, and answer it to Heaven and Earth. To me. Bodyguards : PostiUions, en avant J^^—One fancies in tlmt case the pale paralysis of these two Le Blanc musketeers ; the drooping of Drouet's under-jaw ; and how Procureur Sausse had melted like tallow in furnace-heat : Louis faring on ; in some few steps awakening Young Bouille, awakening relays and hussars: triumphant entry, with cavalcading high-brandishing Escort, and Escorts, into Montmedi ; and the whole course of French History different ! Alas, it was not in the poor phlegmatic man. Had it been in him, French History had never come under this Varennes Arch- * Deux Amis, vi. 139-78. J28 ' VARENNES. way to decide itself.— He steps out; all stejD out. Procureur Sausse gives his grocer-arms to the Queen and Sister Elizabeth ; Majesty taking the two children by the hand. And thus they walk, coolly back, over the Marketplace, to Procureur Sausse's ; mount into his small upper story; where straightway his Majesty * demands refreshments.' Demands refreshments, as is written ; gets bread-and- cheese with a bottle of Burgundy ; and remarks, that it is the best Burgundy he ever drank ! Meanwhile, the Varennes Notables, and all men, ofhcial, and non-official, are hastily drawing on their breeches ; getting their fighting-gear. Mortals half-dressed tumble out barrels, lay felled trees ; scouts dart off to all the four winds,— the tocsin begins clanging, 'the Village illuminates itself Very singular: how these little Villages do manage, so adroit are they, when startled in midnight alarm of war. Like little adroit municipal rattle- snakes, suddenly awakened : for their storm-beil rattles and rings ; their eyes glisten luminous (with tallow-light), as m rattle-snake ire; and the Village will sting/ Old-Dragoon Drouet is our engineer and generahssimo ; vaUant as a Ruy Diaz :— Now or never, ye Patriots, for the Soldiery is coming; massacre by Austrians, by Aristocrats, wars more than civil, it all depends on you and the hour !— National Guards rank themselves, halt- buttoned : mortals, we say, still only in breeches, in under-petti- coat, tumble out barrels and lumber, lay felled trees for barricades : the Village will sting. Rabid Democracy, it would seem, is 7iot confined to Paris, then? Ah no, whatsoever Courtiers might talk ; too clearly no. This of dying for one's King is grcwn into a dying for one's self, against the King, if need be. And so our riding and running Avalanche and Hurlyburly has reached \hQ Ahyss, Korff Berline foremost; and may pour itseit thither, and jumble : endless ! For the next six hours need we ask if there was a clattering far and wide ? Clattermg-^and tocsining and hot tumult, over all the Clermontais, spreading through the Three Bishopricks : Dragoon and Hussar Iroops galloping on roads and no-roads ; National Guards arming and starting m t ie dead of night; tocsin after tocsin transmitting the alarm. In some forty miautes, Goguelat and Choiscul, with their wearied Hussars, reach Varennes, Ah, it is no fire then; or a l.rc difficuU to quench! They leap the trec-barncades, m spite of National serjeant ; they enlcr the village, Choiseul instructing his Troopers how the matter really is ; who respond mteiyectionally, in their guttural dialect, " JJcr Komg; die Kbniginn : and seem stanch. These now, in their stanch humour, will, for one thing, beset Procureur Sausse's house. Most benchcial : had not Drouet stormfuily ordered otherwise ; and even bellowed, m his extremitv Cannoneers to your guns ! -two old honey-combed iMcld-picr empty of all but cobwebs ; the rattle whereof, as the Cannoncc s with assured countenance, trundled them up, did neverHi^lc. abate the Hussar ardour, and produce a respectful er ranking iurther back. Jur^s of wine, handed over the rankS; for th$ THE NIGHT OF SPURS. 129 German throat too has sensibility, will complete the business. When Engineer Goguelat, some hour or so afterwards, steps forth, the response to him is— a hiccupping Vive la Nation ! What boots it ? Goguelat, Choiseul, now also Count Damas, and all the Varennes Officiality are with the, King ; and the King can give no order, form no opinion ; but sits there, as he has ever dene, like clay on pottei-'s wheel ; perhaps the absurdest of all pitiable and pardonable clay-figures that now circle under the Moon. He will go on, next morning, and take the National Guard with him ; Sausse permitting ! Hapless Queen : with her two children laid there on the mean bed, old Mother Sausse kneeling to Heaven, with tears and an audible prayer, to bless them ; imperial Marie- Antoinette near kneeling to Son Sausse and Wife Sausse, amid candle-boxes and treacle-barrels,— in vain ! There are Three-thousand National Guards got in ; before long they will count Ten-thousand ; tocsins spreading like fire on dry heath, or far faster. Young Bouille, roused by this Varennes tocsin, has taken horse, and— fled towards his Father. Jhitherward also rides, in an almost hysterically desperate manner, a certain Sieur Aubriot^ ChoiseuFs Orderly ; swimming dark rivers, our Bridge being blocked ; spurring as if the Hell-hunt were at his heels.* Through the village of Dun, he, galloping still on, scatters the alarm ; at Dun, brave Captain Deslons and his Escort of a Hundred, saddle and ride. Deslons too gets into Varennes ; leaving his Hundred outside, at the tree-barricade ; offers to cut King Louis out, if he will order it : but unfortunately the work will prove hot ; '* whereupon King Louis has " no orders to give.^f And so the tocsin clangs, and Dragoons gallop ; and can do nothing, having gallopped : National Guards stream in hke the gathering of ravens : your exploding Thunder-chain, falling Avalanche, or what else we liken it to, does play, with a vengeance, —up now as far as Stenai and Bouille himself.J Brave Bouille, son of the whirlwind, he saddles Royal Allemand ; speaks fire- words, kindling heart and eyes ; distributes twenty-five gold-louis a company: — Ride, Royal- Allemand. long-famed: no Tuileries Charge and Necker-Orleans Bust-Procession ; a very King made captive, and world all to win !— Such is the Night deserving to be named of Spurs. At six o^cIock two things have happened. Lafayette's Aide-de- camp, Romoeuf, riding a fra?ic ctricr, on that old Herb-merchant's route, quickened during the last stages, has got to Varennes; where the Ten thousand now furiously demand, with fury of panic terror, that Royalty shall forthwith return Paris-ward, that there be not infmite bloodshed. Also, on the other side, ' English Tom,' ChoiseuFs jokei, flying with that Choiseul relay, has met Bouille on the heights of Dun ; the adamantine brow flushed with dark * Rapport de M. Aubriot p. 150-7). t Rxtrait d U7i Rapport de M. Deslons (Choiseul, p. 164-7). j Bouill6, ii. 74-6. vol/ II. * ,3o VARENNES. thunder ; thunderous rattle of Royal Allemand at his heelr.. English Tom answers as he can the brief question, How it is .u Vafennes?— then asks in turn what he, English Fom, vyith M de Choiseul's horses, is -to do, and whither to ride ?-To the Bottomless Pool ' answers a thunder- voice ; then again speaking and spurring, orders Royal Allemand to the gallop; and vanishes, swearing- hirant)* 'Tis the last of our brave Bouille. Within sight ot Varennes, he having drawn bridle, calls a council of officers ; finds that it is in vain. King Louis has departed, consentu : am,d the clangour of universal storm-bell; amid the tramp of Ten thousand armed men, already arrived ; and say of Sixty thousand flocking thither. Brave Deslons, even without ' orders,' darted at the River Aire with his Hundred !t swam one branch of it, could not the other ; and stood there, dripping and panting, with mflatea nostril • the Ten thousand answering him with a shout of mockery, the new Berline lumbering Paris-ward its weary inevitable ^^■ay. No help, then in Earth ; nor in an age, not of miracles, m ^That"nio-ht ' Marquis de Bouille and twenty-one more of us rode ' over the Frontiers ; the Bernartline monks at Orval in Lnxemburg 'gave us supper and lodging.'! With little ^P^^P^^' Bo^^ f rides; with thoughts that do not brook speech. ^orth^^^xA towards uncertainty, and the Cimmerian Night : towar(^^3 Wes - Indian Isles, for with thin Emigrant delirium tne son ot the whirl- wind cannot act ; towards England, towards premature S oica death - not towards France any more. Honour to the Brave, who, be it in this quarrel or in that, is a substance and articulate- soeakinF piece of Human Valour, not a fanfaronadmg hollow Spectrum and squeaking and gibbering Shadow ! One of the few Royalist Chief-actors this Bouille, of whom so much can be said. The brave Bouille too, then, vanishes from the tissue of our Story Story and tissue, faint ineffectual Emblem of that grand Miraculous Tissue, and Living Tapestry named French Revoluhon, which did weave itself then in very f^ict, 'on the loud-soundmg 'Loom of Time!' The old Brave drop out from it, with hen strivings ; and new acrid Drouets, of new strivings and colour, come in :— as is the manner of that weaving. CHAPTER VHL THE RETURN. So then our grand Royalist Plot, of Flight to Metz, has ^;r«.«/^^^ itself. Long hovering in the background, as a dread royal nltima- tnm, it has nished forward in its terrors : verily to. some purpose. How many Royalist Plots and Projects, one after another, cun- * Dielaratioii du Sieur Thomas (m Choiseul, p. i88). t Weber, ii. 386. X Aubriot, nt supra, p. i.=;8. THE RETURN. ningly-devised, that were to explode like powder-mines and thun- derclaps ; not one solitary Plot of which has issued otherwise ! Powder-mine of a SeaJtce Royale on the Twenty-third of June 1789, which exploded as we then said/ through the touchhole;' which next, your wargod Broglie having ;^6'loaded it, brought a BastiUe about your ears. Then came fervent Opera-Repas% with flourishing of sabres, and O Richard, O my King; which, aided by Hunger, produces Insurrection of Women, and Pallas A.hene in the shape of Demoiselle Theroigne. Valour profits not ; neither has fortune smiled on Fanfaronade. The Bouille Armament ends as the Broglie one had done. Man after man spends himself in this cause, only to work it quicker ruin ; it seems a cause doomed, forsaken of Earth and Heaven. On the Sixth of October gone a year. King Louis, escorted by Demoiselle Theroigne and some two hundred thousand, made a Royal Progress and Entrance into Paris, such as man had never witnessed : we prophesied him Two more such ; and accordingly another of them, after this Flight to Metz, is now coming to pass. Theroigne will not escort here ; neither does Mirabeau now 'sit ' in one of the accompanying carriages.' Mirabeau lies dead, in thb Pantheon of Great Men. Theroigne lies living, in dark Austrian Prison ; having gone to Liege, professionally, and been seized there. Bemurmured now by the hoarse-flowing Danube ; the light of her Patriot Supper-Parties gone quite out ; so hes Theroigne : she shall speak with the Kaiser face to face, and re- turn. And France lies how ! Fleeting Time shears down thf great and the little ; and in two yeats akers many things. But at all events, here, we say, is a second Ignominious Roya\ Procession, though much altered ; to be witnessed also by its hun- dreds of thousands. Patience, ye Paris Patriots ; the Royal Ber- line is returning. Not till Saturday : for the Royal Berhne travels by slow stages ; amid such loud-voiced confluent sea of National Guards, sixty thousand as they count ; amid such tumult of all people. Three National-Assembly Commissioners, famed Bar- nave, famed Petion, generally-respectable Latour-Maubourg, have gone to meet it ; of whom the two former ride in the Berline it- self beside Majesty, day after day. Latour, as a mere respecta- bility, and man of whom all m.en speak well, can ride in the rear, with Dame Tourzel and the Soitbrettes. So on Saturday evening, about seven o'clock, Paris by hundreds of thousands is again drawn up : not now dancing the tricolor joy- dance of hope ; nor as yet dancing in fury-dance of hate and revenge ;'but in silence, with vague look of conjecture and curio- .«,ity mostly scientific. A Sainte-Antoine Placard has given notice this morning that 'whosoever insults Louis shall be caned, v/hoso- ' ever applauds him shall be hanged.' Behold then, at ia5t, Uiat ' wonderful New Berline ; encircled by blue National sea with fixed bnvonets, which flows slowly, floating it on, through the silent 'cmbJed hundreds of thousands. Three yellow Couriers sit atop undvvith ropes; Petion, Barnave, their Majesties, with Sister izabeth, and the Children of France, are withhi. F 2 132 VARENNES. Smile of embarrassment, or cloud of dull sourness, is on the broad phlegmatic face of his Majesty : who keeps declaring to the ; successive Official-persons, what is evident, " Eh bien^ me voila^ \ Well, here you have me ; and what is not evident, I do assure ^ you I did not mean to pass the frontiers ; " and so forth : speeches ; natural for that poor Royal Man ; which Decency would veil. 1 Silent is her Majesty, with a look of grief and scorn ; natural for i that Royal Woman. Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious \ Royal Procession, through many streets, amid a silent-gazing peo- '\ pie : comparable, Mercier thinks,"^ to some Procession de Roi de \ Bazoche ; or say, Procession of King Crispin, with his Dukes of i Sutor-mania and royal blazonry of Cordwainery. Except indeed i that this is not comic ; ah no, it is comico-tragic ; with bound \ Couriers, and a Doom hanging over it ; most fantastic, yet most i miserably real. Miserablest y^^//^ liidibrium oi tx. Pickleherring '] Tragedy ! It sweeps along there, in most ///^gorgeous pall, through j many streets, in the dusty summer evening ; gets itself at length ! wriggled out of sight ; vanishing in the Tuileries Palace — towards : its doom, of slow torture, peine forte et dure. Populace, it is true, seizes the three rope-bound yellow Couriers ; , will at least massacre them. But our august Assembly, which is sitting at this great moment, sends out Deputation of rescue ; and ;! the whole is got huddled up. Barnave, ' all dusty,^ is already there, in the National Hall ; making brief discreet address and report. As indeed, through the whole journey, this Barnave has been most discreet, sympathetic ; and has gained the ()ueen's trust, whose noble instinct teaches her always who is to be trusted. Very different from heavy Petion ; who, if Campan speak truth, ate his luncheon, comfortably filled his wine-glass, in the Royal Berline ; flung out his chicken-bones past the nose of Royalty itself ; and, on the King's saying " France cannot be a Republic," answered " No, it is not ripe yet." Barnave is henceforth a Queen's adviser; if advice could profit ; and her Majesty astonishes Dame Campan by signifying almost a regard for Barnave : and that, in a day of retribution and Royal triumph, Barnave shall not be exe- cuted.f On Monday night Royalty went ; on Saturday evening it re- turns : so much, within one short week, has Royalty accomplished for itself The Pickleherring Tragedy has vanished in the Tuile- ries Palace, towards * pain strong and hard.' Watched, fettered, and humbled, as Royalty never was. Watched even in its. sleep- ing-apartments and inmost recesses : for it has to sleep with door set ajar, blue National Argus watching, his eye fixed on the Queen's curtains ; nay, on one occasion, as the Queen cannot sleep, he offers to sit by her pillow, and converse a little !J * Nouveau Paris, ill. 22. f Campan, ii. c. i8. J Ibid. ii. 149, SHARP SHOT, 133 CHAPTER IX. c^ARP SHOT In reo-ard to all which, tnis most pressing question i^nses; What is to be done with it ? Depose it Irresolutely answer Robes- pierre and the thoroughgoing few. For truly, with a King who runs away, and need? to be watched in his very bedroom that he may stay and govern you, what other reasonable thing can be done ? Had Philippe d'Orleans not been a caput mortuum ! But of him, known as one defunct, no man now dreams. " Depose it not ; say that it is inviolable, that it was spirited away, v^^senleve; at any cost of sophistry and solecism, reestablish it ! " so answer with loud vehemence all m.anner of Constitutional Royalists ; as all your Pure Royahsts do naturally likewise, with low vehemence, and rage compressed by fear, still more passionately answer. Nay Barnave and the two Lameths, and what will followvthem, do like- wise answer so. Answer, with their whole might : terror-struck at the unknown Abysses on the verge of which, driven thither by themselves mainly, all now reels, ready to plunge. By mighty effort and combination this latter course, of reebcab- hsh it, is the course fixed on ; and it shaD b^; the strong arm, if not by the clearest logic, be made good. With the sacrifice of all their hard-earned popularity, this notable Triumvirate, says 1 ou- longeon, ' set the Throne up again, which they had so toiled to ' overturn : as one might set up an overturned pyramid, oa its ' vertex ; to stand so long as it is held: Unhappy France ; unhappy in King, Queen, and Constitution ; one knows not in which unhappiest ! Was the meariing of our so glorious French Revolution this, and no other. That when Shams and Delusions, long soul-kilhng, had become body-killing, and got the length of Bankruptcy and Inanition, a great People rose and, with one voice, said, in the Name of .iie Highest : Shams shall oe no 7nore ^ So many sorrows and bloody horrors, endured, and to be yet endured through dismal -oming centuries, were they not the heavy price paid and pa>cibl^ for this same : Total Destruc- tion of Shams from among men ? And now, O Barnave Triumvi- rate ' is it in such ^^/^^/^- distilled Delusion, and Sham even ot a Sham, that an Effort of this kind will rest acquiescent? Messieurs of the popular Triumvirate : Never 1 But, after all, what can poor popular Triumvirates and fallible august Senators do ? They can, 'vhen the Truth is all too-horrible, stick their heads ostrich-hke into what sheltering Fallacy is nearest: and wait \h^xQ, a posti- riori / Readers who saw the Clermontais and Three-Bishopricks gallop, in the Niprht of Spurs ; Diligences ruffiiug up all France into one terrific tenified Cock of India ; and the Town of Nantes in its m VARENNES. snirt,-~may fancy what an affair to settle this was. RobesDierre on the extreme Left, with perhaps Petion and lean old Goupil, for the very Triumvirate has defalcated, are shrieking hoarse ; drowned m Constitutional clamour. But the debate and arguing of a whole Nation ; the bellowings through all Journals, for and against • the reverberant voice of Danton ; the Hyperion-shafts of Camille'- the porcupme-quills of implacable Marat :— conceive all this Constitutionalists in a body, as we often predicted, do now recede irom the Mother Society, and become Feuillans j threatening her with manition the rank and respectability being mostly %one Petition after Petition, forwarded by Post, or borne in Deputation* comes praying for Judgment and Decheance, which is our name tor Deposition ; praying, at lowest, for Reference to the Eiehtv- three Departments of France. Hot Marseillese Deputation comes declaring among other things : " Our Phocean Ancestors fluna a Bar of Iron into the Bay at their first landing; this Bar will float again on the Mediterranean brine before we consent to be slaves " A 1 this for four weeks or more, while the matter still hangs doubt^ tul; Emigration streaming with double violence over the frontiers-^' France seething in fierce agitation of this question and prize-ques- tion : What is to be done with the fugitive Hereditary Represen- tative? ^ Finally, on Friday the 15th of July 1791, the National Assemblv decides ; m what negatory manner we know. Whereupon the Iheatres all close, the ^^//r;^^-stones and Portable-chairs begin spouting Municipal Placards flaming on the walls, and Proclama- tions published by sound of trumpet, ' invite to repose \' with small ehect. And so on Sunday the 17th, there shall be a thing seen, worthy of remembering. Scroll of a Petition, drawh up by Brissots Dantons, by Cordehers, Jacobins ; for the thing was infinitely shaken and manipulated, and many had a hand in it : such Scroll lies now visible, on the wooden framework of the Fatherland's Altaic for signature. Unworking Paris, male and female, is crowd- ing thither, all day, to sign or to see. Our fair Roland herself the eye of History can discern there, ' in the morning ; ' f not without interest. In few weeks the fair Patriot will quit Paris : yet perhaps only to return. w r r But, what with sorrow of baulked Patriotism, what with closed theatres, and Proclamations still publishing themselves by sound of trumpet, the fervour of men's minds, this day, is great. Na}' over and above, there has fallen out an incident, of the nature of l^ arce- Pragedy and Riddle ; enough to stimulate all creatures. Early in the day, a Patriot (or some say, it was a Patriotess, and indeed Truth is undiscoverable), while standing on the firm deal- board of Patherland's Altar, feels suddenly, with indescribable torpedo-shock of amazement, his bootsole pricked throueh from below ; he clutches up suddenly this electrified bootsole and foot ; discerns next instant— the point of a gimlet or brad-awl playing up, through the firm deal-board, and now hastily drawing itself back ! Mystery, perhaps Treason 1 The wooden frame-work is * Bouillc, ii. loi f Mjidame Roland, ii. 74. SHARP SHOT. 13j impetuously broken up ; and behold, verily a mystery ; never ex- plicable fully to the end of the world ! Two human individuals, of mean aspect, one of them with a wooden leg, lie ensconced there, gimlet in hand : they must have come in overnight ; they have a supply of provisions, — no ' barrel of gunpowder ' that one can see; they affect to be asleep ; look blank enough, and give the lamest account of themselves. " Mere curiosity ; they were boring up to "jet an eye-hole; to see, perhaps 'with lubricity/ whatsoever, from that new point of vision, could be seen : " — ^little that was edifying, one would think ! But indeed what stupidest thing may not human Dulness, Pruriency, Lubricity, Chance and the Devil, choosing Two out of Half-a-million idle human heads, tempt them to ? Sure enough, the two human individuals with their gimlet are there. Ill-starred pair of individuals ! Foi the result of it all is that Patriotism, fretting itself, in this state of nervous excitability, with hypotheses, suspicions and reports, keeps questioning these two distracted human individuals, and again questioning them ; claps them into the nearest Guardhouse, clutches them^ out again ; one hypothetic group snatching them from another : till finally, in such extreme state of nervous excitability, Patriotism hangs them as spies of Sieur Motier ; and the life and secret is choked out of them forevermore. Forevermore, alas ! Or is a day to be looked for when these two evidently mean individuals, who are human nevertheless, will become Historical Riddles ; and, like him of the Iron Maik (also a human individual, and evidently nothing more), —have their Dissertations ? To us this only is certain, that they had a gimlet, provisions and a wooden leg ,' and have died there on the Lanterne, as the unluckiest fools might die. And so the signature goes on, in a still more excited manner. And Chaumette, for Antiquarians possess the very Paper to this hour,t— has signed him.self 'in a flowing saucy hand slightly 'leaned and Hebert, detestable Pere Ditckine, as if 'an inked 'spider had dropped on the paper;' Usher Maillard also has. signed, and many Crosses, which cannot write. And Paris, through its thousand avenues, is welling to the Champ-de-Mars and from it, in the utmost excitability of humour ; central Fatherland a Altar quite heaped with signing Patriots and Patriotesses ; the Thirty-benches and whole internal Space crowded with onlookers, with comers and goers ; one regurgitating whirlpool of men and women in their Sunday clothes. All which a Constitutional Sieur Motier sees ; and Bailly, looking into it with his long visage made still longer. Auguring no good ; perhaps Dechcance and Deposi- tion after all ! Stop it, ye Constitutional Patriots ; fire itself is quenchable, yet only quenchable at first ! Stop it, truly : but how stop it ? Have not the first Free Peopie of the Universe a right to petition ?— Happily, if also unhappily, here is one proof of riot : these two human individuals, hanged at the Lanterne. Proof, O treacherous Sieur Motier? Were they not two human individuals sent thither by thee to be hanged ; to * Hist. Pari. xi. 104-7. t ^hid. xi. 113, &a 136 VARENNES, be a pretext for thy bloody Drapcau Range ? This question shall many a Patriot, one day, ask ; and answer affirmatively, strong in \ Preternatural Suspicion.^ Enough, towards half past seven in the evening, the mere natural \ eye can behold this thing : Sieur Metier, with Municipals in scarf, / with blue National Patroliotism, rank after rank, to the clang of \ drums ; wending resolutely to the Champ-de~Mars ; Mayor Bailly, \ with elongated visage, bearing, as in sad duty bound, the Drapeau ' Range ! \\o\n\ of angry derision rises in treble and bass from a hundred thousand throats, at the sight of Martial Law ; which nevertheless waving its Red sanguinary Plag, advances there, from the Gros-Caillou Entrance ; advances, drumming and waving, towards Altar of Fatherland. Amid still wilder howls, with objur- gation, obtestation ; with flights of pebbles and mud,^"^^'^ et fceces ; with crackle of a pistol-shot ; — finally with volley-fire of Patrol- otism ; levelled muskets ; roll of volley on volley ! Precisely after one year and three days, our sublime Federation Field is wetted, in this manner, with French blood. Some ' Twelve unfortunately shot,' reports Bailly, counting by units ; but Patriotism counts by tens and even by hundreds. Not to be forgotten, nor forgiven ! Patriotism flies, shrieking, execrating. Camille ceases Journahsing, this day ; great Danton with Camille and Freron have taken wing, for their life ; Marat burrows deep in the Earth, and is silent. Once more Patroliotism has triumphed : one other time ; but it is the last. This was the Royal Flight to Varennes. Thus was the Throne ' overturned thereby ; but thus also was it victoriously set up agaij? i —on its vertex ; and will stand while it can be hekl BOOK FIFTH. PARLIAMENT FIRSX CHAPTER 1. GRANDE ACCEPTATION. In the last nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is past, and grey September fades into brown October, why are the Champs Elysees illuminated ; why is Paris dancing, and flinging fire-works ? They are gala-nights, these last of September ; Paris may well dance, and the Universe : the Edifice of the Constitu- tion is completed! Completed; nay revised^ to see that there was nothing insufficient in it ; , solemnly proferred to his Majesty ; solemnly accepted by him, to, the sound of cannon-salvoes, on the fourteenth of the month. And now by such illumination, jubilee, dancing and fire-working, do we joyously handsel the new Social Edifice, and first raise heat and reek there, in the name ot Hope. The Revision, especially with a throne standing on its vertex, has been a work of difhculty, of delicacy. In the way of propping and buttressing, so indispensable now, something could be done ; and yet, as is feared, not enough. A repentant Barnave Trium- virate, our Rabauts, Duports, Thourets, and indeed all Constitu- ?;ional Deputies did strain every nerve : but the Extreme Left was so noisy ; the People were so suspicious, clamorous to have the work ended : and then the loyal Right Side sat feeble petulant all the while, and as it were, pouting and petting ; unable to help, had they even been wiUing. The Two Hundred and Ninety had solemnly made scission, before that : and departed, shaking the dust off their feet. To such transcendency of fret, and des- perate hope that worsening of the bad might the sooner end it and bring back the good, had our unfortunate loyal Right Side now come \^ However, one finds that this and the other httle prop has been added, where possibility allowed. Civil-list and Privy-purse were from of old well cared for. King's Constitutional Guard, Eighteen hundred loyal men from the Eighty- three Departments, under a loyal Duke de Brissac ; this, with trustworthy Swiss besides, is ot * Toulongeon, ii. 56, 59. itself something. The old loyal Bodyguards are indeed dissolved, in name as well as in fact ; and gone mostly towards Coblentz. But now also those Sansculottic violent Gardes Francaises, or Centre Grenadiers, shall have their mittimus : they do ere long, in the Journals, not without a hoarse pathos, publish their Fare- well ; ' wishing all Aristocrats the graves in Paris which to us are ' denied.'* They depart, these first Soldiers of the Revolution ; they hover very dimly in the distance for about another year ; till thev can be remodelled, new-named, and sent to fight the Aus- trians ; and then History beholds them no more. A most notable Corps of men ; which has its place in World-History though to us, so is History written, they remain mere rubrics of men ; name- less ; a shaggy Grenadier Mass, crossed with buff-belts. And yet might we not ask : What Argonauts, what Leonidas' Spartans had done such a work ? Think of their destiny : since that May morning, some three years ago, when they, unparticipating, trundled off d'Espremenil to the Calypso Isles ; since that July evening, some two years ago, when they, participating and sacre- ing with knit brows, poured a volley mto BesenvaFs Prince de Lambesc ! History waves them her mute adieu. So that the Sovereign Power, these Sansculottic Watchdogs, more like wolves, being leashed and led away from his Tuileries, breathes freer. The Sovereign Power is guarded henceforth by a loyal Eighteen hundred,— whom Contrivance, under various pre- texts, may gradually swell to Six thousand ; who will hinder no Journey to Saint-Cloud. The sad Varennes business has been soldered up ; cemented, even in the blood of the Cham_p-de-Mars, these two months and more ; and indeed ever since, as formerly, Majesty has had its privileges, its ' choice of residence,' though, for good reasons, the royal mind ' prefers continuing in Paris.' Poor royal mind, poor Paris ; that have to go mumming ; en- veloped in speciosities, in falsehood which knows itself false ; and to enact mutually your sorrowful farce-tragedy, being bound to it ; and on the whole, to hope always, in spite of hope Nay, now that his Majesty has accepted the Constitution, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, who would not hope ? Our good King was misguided but he meant well. Lafayette has moved for an Amnesty, for universal forgiving and forgetting of Revolution- ary faults ; and now surely the glorious Revolution cleared of itg rubbish, is complete ! Strange enough, and touching in severa» ways, the old cry of Vive le Rot once more rises round Kin^s Louis the Hereditary Representative. Their Majesties went t( tlic Opera ; gave money to the Poor : the Queen herself, now when the Constitution is accepted, hears voice of cheering. Bygone shall be bygone ; the New Era shall begin ! To and fro, amia those lamp-galaxies of the Elysian Fields, the Royal Carriage? slowly wends and rolls ; every where with vivats, from a multi- Uide striving to be glad. Louis looks out, mainly on the variegated lamps and gay human groups, with satisfaction enough for the hour. In her Majesty's face, * under that kind graceful sjnik> 'a * Hist. Pari. xiii. 73. GRANDE ACCEPTATION. . -139 'deed sadness is legible.'^ Brilliancies^ of valour and of wit, stroll here observant : a Dame de Stael, leaning most probably on the arm of her Narbonne. She meets Deputies ; who have built this Constitution ; who saunter here with vague communings, — net without thoughts whether it will stand. But as yet melodious fiddlcstrings twang and warble every where, with the rhythm of light fantastic feet ; long lamp-galaxies fling their coloured radi- ance ; and brass-lunged Hawkers elbow and bawl, " Grande Ac- c^ptatioii^ Co7istitution Monarchiqiie : it behoves the Son of Adam to hope. Have not Lafayette, Barnave, and all Constitu- tionalists set their shoulders handsomely to the inverted pyramid of a throne ? Feuillans, including almost the whole Constitutional Respectabilit}^ of France, perorate nightly from their tribune ; correspond through all Post-offices ; denouncing unquiet Jacobin- ism ; trusting well that its time is nigh done. Much is uncertain, quest :o::r,ble : but if the Hereditary Representative be wise and lucky, may one not, with a sanguine Gaelic temper, hope that he will g2t in motion better or worse ; that what is wanting to him will gradually be gained and added ? For the rest, as w^e must repeat, in this building of the Constitu- tional Fabric, especially in this Revision of it, nothing that one could think. of to give it new strength, especially to steady it, to give it permanence, and even eternity, has been forgotten. ' Bien- nial Parliament, to be called Legislative, Assembi^c Legislative; with Seven Hundred and Forty-five Members, chosen in a judi- cious manner by the ^active citizens' alone, and even by electing of elector:. stHl more active : this, with privileges of Parliament shall meet, self-authorized if need be, and self-dissolved ; shall grant money-supplies and talk ; watch over the administration and authorities ; uischarge for ever the functions of ^ Constitutional Great Council, Collective Wisdom, and National Palaver, — as the He-vens will enable. Our First biennial Parliament, which indeed has been a-choosing since early in August, is no . - as good as chosen. Nay it has mostly got to Paris : it arrived gradually - not without pathetic greeting to its .-enerablc Parent, the now moribund Constituent ; and sat there in the Galleries, reverently listening ; ready to begin, the instant the ground were clear. I'hen as to changes in the Constitution itself? This, impossible fbr any Legislative, or common biennial Parhament;, and possible solely for some resuscitated Constituent or National Convention^ —is evidently one of the most ticklish points. The august mori^ bund Assembly debated it for four entire days. Some t'.ought s change, or at least reviewal and new approval, might be admis'sible m thirty years ; some even went lower, down to twenty, nay to fifteen. The august Assembly had once decided for thirty years ; but it revoked that, on better thoughts ; a:^d did not fix nny date of time, but merely some vague outline of a posture of circum- stances, and Du the whole left the matter hanging.f Doubtless a Nation il Convention can be assembled even unihin the thirty * De Stael, Consideniiions, i. c. 23. t Olioix de Rapports, &.c. (Paris, 1825^ vi. 239-317, PARLIAMENT FIRST, years : yet one may hope, not ; but that Legislatives, biennial \ Parhaments of the common kind, with their hmited facuUy, and ; perhaps quiet successive additions thereto, may suffice, for gener^ \ ations, or indeed while computed Time runs. Furthermore, be it noted that no member of this Constituent ; has been, or could be, elected to the new Legislative. So noble i minded were these Law-makers ! cry some : and Solon-like would , banish themselves. So splenetic ! cry more : each grudging the other, none daring to be outdone in self-denial by the other. Sc unwise in either case ! answer all practical men. But consider ; this other self-denying ordinance. That none of us can be King's ? Minister, or accept the smallest Court Appointment, for the space i of four, or at lowest (and on long debate and Revision), for the space of two years ! So moves the incorruptible seagreen Robes I pierre ; with cheap magnanimity he ; and none dare be outdone 1 by him. It was such a law, not so superfluous then, that sent Mirabeau to the Gardens of Saint-Cloud, under cloak of dark- : ness, to that colloquy of the gods ; and thwarted many things. . Happily and unhappily there is no Mirabeau now to thwart. • Welcomer meanwhile, welcome surely to all right hearts, i? \ Lafayette's chivalrous Amnesty. Welcome too is that hard-wrun<: Union of Avignon ; which has cost us, first and last, ' thirty ses: ^ * sions of debate,' and so much else : may it at length prove lucky \ Rousseau's statue is decreed : virtuous Jean-Jacques, Evangehs: , of the Contrat Social. Not Drouet of Varennes ; nor worth) Lataille, master of the old world-famous Tennis Court in Ver ' sailles, is forgotten ; but each has his honourable mention, and due reward in money."^ Whereupon, things being all so neatl> ' winded up, and the Deputations, and Messages, and royal anci other Ceremonials having rustled by ; and the King having no\\- affectionately perorated about peace and tranquihsation, and mem \ bers having answered "Old/ otuf' with effusion, even witV ' tears,— President Thouret, he of the Law Reforms, rises, and with a strong voice, utters these memorable last-words : " Theii National Constituent Assembly declares that it has finished it< mission ; and that its sittings are all ended." Incorruptibk Robespierre, virtuous Petion are borne home on the shoulders o: the people ; with vivats heaven-high. The rest glide quietly t( their respective places of abode. It is the last afternoon o September, 1791 ; on the morrow morning the new Legislativt will begin. So, amid glitter of illuminated streets and Champs Elysees, anc crackle of fireworks and glad deray, has the first Nationa Assembly vanished ; dissolinnq;, as they well say, into blam Time ; and is no more. National Assembly is gone, its work re| maining ; as all P>odies of men go, and as man himself goes : ij had itsi beginning, and must likewise have its end. A Phantasmj Reality born of Time, as the rest of us are; flitting ever back| wards now on the tide of Time : to be long remembered of men * Moil it cur (in Hist. Pari. xi. 473). . | GRANDE ACCEPTATION. Verv strange Assemblages, Sanhedrims, Amphictyonics, Trades Unions, Ecumenic Councils, Parliaments and Congresses, have met together on this Planet, and dispersed again ; but a stranger Assemxblage than this august Constituent, or with a stranger mis- sion, perhaps never met there. Seen from the distance, this also will be a miracle. Twelve Hundred human individuals, with the Gospel of Jean-Jacqucs Rousseau in their pocket, congregating in the name of Twemv five Millions, with full assurance of faith, to ' make the Constitution : ' such sight, the acme and main pro- duct of the Eighteenth Century, our World can witness once only. For Time is rich in wonders, 'in monstrosities most rich ; and is observed never to repeat himself, or any of his Gospels .'—surely least, of all, this Gospel according to Jean-Jacques. Once it was right and indispensable, since such had become the Belief of men ; but once also is enough. They have made the Constitution, these Twelve Huadred Jean- Jacques Evangelists ; not without result. Near twenty-nine months they sat, with various fortune ; in various capacity ;— always, we may say, in that capacity of carborne Caroccio, and miraculous Standard of the Revolt of Men, as a Thing high and lilted up ; whereon whosoever looked might hope healing. They have seen much : cannons levelled on them ; then suddenly, by mterposition of the Powers, the cannons drawn back \ and a war- god Broglie vanishing, in thunder not his own, amid the dust and downrushing of a Bastille and Old Feudal France. They have suffered somewhat : Royal Session, with rain and Oath of the Tennis-Court ; Nights of Pentecost ; Insurrections of Women. Also have they not done somewhat ? Made the Constitution, and managed all things the while ; passed, m these twenty-nine months, * twenty-five hundred Decrees,' which on the average is some three for each day, including Sundays ! Brevity, one finds, is possible, at times : had not Moreau de St. Mery to give three thousand orders before rising from his seat ? —There was valour (or value) in these men ; and a kind of faith,— were it only faith in this. That cobwebs are not cloth ; that a Constitution could be made. Cob- webs and chimeras ought verily to disappear ; for a Pveality there is. Let formulas, soul-kilhng, and now grown body-killing, insup- portable, begone, in the name of Heaven and Earth I— Time, as we say, brought forth these Twelve Hundred ; Eternity was before them, Eternity behind : they worked, as we all do, in the conflu- ence of Two Eternities ; what work was given them. Say not that it was nothing they did. Consciously they did somewhat ; unconsciously how much ! They had their giants and their dwarfs, they accomplished their good and their evil ; they are gone, and return no more. Shall they not go with our blessing, in these circumstances ; with our mild farewell ? • By post, by diligence, on saddle or sole ; they are gone : ■ towards the four winds ! Not a few over the marches, to rank at Coblentz. Thither wended Maury, among others ; but in the end towards Rome,— to be clothed there in red Cardinal plush ; j in falsehood as in a garment ; pet son (her last-hoxn ?) of the 142 PARLIAMENT FIRST. Scarlet Woman. Talleyrand-Perigord, excommunicated Consti- tutional Bishop, will make his way to London ; to be Ambassador, spite of the Self-denying Law; brisk young Marquis Chauvelin acting as Ambassador's-Cloak. In London, too, one finds Petion the virtuous ; harangued and haranguing, pledging the wine-cup with Constitutional Reform Clubs, in solemn tavern-dinner. In corruptible Robespierre retires for a little to native Arras : seven short weeks of quiet ; the last appointed him in this world. Public Accuser in the Paris Department, acknowledged highpriest of the Jacobins ; the glass of incorruptible thin Patriotism, for his narrow emphasis is loved of all the narrow,— this man seems to be rising, somewhither.?* Resells his small heritage at Arras; accompa- nied by a Brother and a Sister, he returns, scheming out with resolute timidity a small sure destiny for himself and them, to his old lodging, at the Cabinet-maker's, in the Rue St. Honore : — O resolute-tremulous incorruptible seagreen man, towards what a destiny ! Lafayette, for his part, will lay down the command. He retire^ Cincinnatus-like to his hearth and farm ; but soon leaves then again. Our National Guard, however, shall henceforth have r. one Commandant ; but all Colonels shall command in successioi month about. Other Deputies we have met, or Dame de Stiu has met, 'sauntering in a thoughtful manner;' perhaps uncertai what to do. Some, as Barnave, the Lameths, and their Dupori, will continue here in Paris ; watching the new biennial Legislative, Parliament the First ; teaching it to walk, if so might be ; and the Court to lead it. Thus these : sauntering in a thoughtful manner; travelling by post or diligence, — whither Fate beckons. Giant Mirabeau slumbers in the Pantheon of Great Men : and France ? and Europe } — The brass-lunged Hawkers sing " Grand Acceptation, Monarchic Constitution " through these gay crowds : the Morrow, grandson of Yesterday, must be what it can, as To-day its father is. Our new biennial Legislative begins to constitute itself on the first of October, 1791. CHAPTER II. tmf: book of the law. If the august Constituent Assembly itself, fixing the regards of the Universe, could, at the present distance of time and place, gain comparatively small attention from us, how much less can this poor IvCgislativc ! It has its Right Side and its Left; the less l\'itriotic and the more, for Aristocrats exist not here or now : it spouts and speaks: hstens to Reports, reads liills and Laws; works in its vocation, for a season : but the History of. France, one finds, is seldom or never there. Unhappy Legislative, what THE BOOK OP THE LAW. Hi ran History do with it ; if not drop a tear over it, ahnost in silence ? First of the two-vear Parhaments of France, vyhich, if Paper Con^ stitution and oft^repeated National^ Oath could avau aught wcie to follow in softly-strong indissoluble sequence while limcian,- ^ had to vanish dolefully within one year; and there came no serond like it. Alas ! your biennial Parliaments m end^.s dissoluble sequence ; they, and aU that Consti..itional Fabnc, bulk wi^'. such explosive Federation Oaths, and its top-stone brcup-ht out with dancing and variegated radiance, went to piece., -ail crockerv, in the crash of things ; and already, m eleven ?r,onths, were in that Limbo near the Moon, with the ghosts oi o.her Chimeras. There, except for rare specific purposes, let them rest, in melancholy peace. On the whole, how unknown is a man to himself ; or a public Bodv of men to itself 1 ^sop's f.y sat on the chariot-wheel, ex- claiming, What a dust I do raise ! Great Governors, clad m pur- ple with fasces and insignia, are governed by their valets, by the pouting- of their women and children ; or, in Constitutional coun- tries by the paragraphs of their Able Editors. Say not, I am this or that ; 1 am doing this or that ! For thou knowest zt not, thou knowest only the name it as, yet goes by. A purple Nebu- chadnezzar rejoices to feel himself now verily Emperor of this great' Babylon which he has builded ; and is a nondescript biped- quadruped, on the eve of a seven-years course of grazing ! 1 hese Seven Hundred and Forty-five elected individuals doubt not but thev are the First biennial Parliament, come to govern France by parliamentary eloquence : and they are what ? And they have come to do what ? Things foolish and not wise ! . , , . It is much lamented bv manv that this First Biennial had no members of. the old Constituent in .it, with their experience or parties and parhamentary tactics ; that such was their foohsh belt- denvincT Law. Most surely, old members of the Constituent had been welcome to us here. But, on the other hand, what old or what new members of any Constituent under the Sun could have effectually profited ? There are First biennial Parliaments so pos- tured as to be, in a sense, beyond wisdom ; where wisdom and folly differ only in degree, and wreckage and dissolution are the appointed issue for both . . vi Old-Constituents, vour Barnaves, Lameths and the hke, tor ' liom a special Gallery has been set apart, where they may sit m. lour and listen, are in the habit of sneering at these new Legis- )rs but let not us ! The poor Seven Hundred and Forty-tive t too-ether by the active citizens of France, are what they could • dcTwhat is fated them. That they are of Patriot temper we a well understand. Aristocrat Noblesse had fled over the rches, or sat brooding silent in their iinburnt Chateaus ; small aspect had they in Primary Electoral Assemblies Whatwuti a >hts to Varennes, what with Davs of Poniards, with plot atter plot, the People are left to themselves ; the People mtist needs choose Defenders of the People, such as can be had. Choosing, * Dumouriez, ii. 150, &c. 144 PARLIAMENT FIRST. as they also will ever do, not the ablest man, yet the mait * ablest to be chosen ! ' Fervour of character, decided Patriof: 1 Constitutional feeling ; these are qualities : but free utterance ; mastership iri tongue-fence ; this is the quality of qualities. Ac cordingly one hnds^ with little astonishment, in this First Biennial : that as many as Four hundred Members are of the Advocate o » Attorney species. Men who can speak, if there be aught tv j speak : nay here are men also who can think, and even act. Can ; dour will say of this ill-fated First French Parliament that i wanted not its modicum of talent, its modicum of honesty ; tha it, neither in the one respect nor in the other, sank below th? . average of Parliaments, but rose above the average. Let averag< Parliaments, whom the world does net guillotine, and cast fort! ; to long infamy, be thankful not to themselves but to their stars ! France, as we say, has once more done what it could : ferviv : men have come together from wide separation*; for strange issues • Fiery Max Isnard is come, from the utmost South-East ; fier f Claude Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet Bishop of Calvados, from th{ i utmost North- West. No Mirabeau now sits here, who hav swallowed formulas : our only Mirabeau now is Danton, working I as yet out of doors ; whom some call ' Mirabeau of the Sanscu i lottes.' ^ ; Nevertheless we have our gifts,— especially of speech and logic i An eloquent Vergniaud we have ; most mellifluous yet most im \ petuous of public speakers ; from the region named Gironde, O; \ the Garonne : a man unfortunately of indolent habits ; w^ho wil \ sit playing with your children, when he ought to be scheming ami \ perorating. Sharp bustling Guadet ; considerate grave Gensonne | kind-sparkling mirthful young Ducos ; Valaze doomed to a sac, 1 end : all these likewise are of that Gironde, or Bourdeaux region \ men of fervid Constitutional principles ; of quick talent, irrefra \ gable logic, clear respectability ; who will have the Reign oi | Liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods. Round j whom others of like temper will gather ; known by and by a:- j Giro7tdins, to the sorrowing wonder of the world. Of which sort \ note Condorcet, Marquis and Philosopher ; who has worked at -i much, at Paris Municipal Constitution, Differential Calculus, . Newspaper Chroniqtte de Paris, Biography, Philosophy ; and now i sits here as two-years Senator : a notable Condorcet, wdth stoical ; Roman face, and fiery heart ; ^ volcano hid under snow styled j likewise, in irreverent language, ' mouUm enrage^' peaceablest of|| creatures bitten rabid ! Or note, lastly, Jean-Pierre Brissot ; whom Destiny, long working noisily with him, has hurled hither, say, to have done with him. A biennial Senator he too ; nay, for the pre- sent, the king of such. Restless, scheming, scribbling Brissot -, who took to himself the style dc Warville., heralds know not in the least why ; — unless it were that the father of him did, in an unexceptionable manner, perform Cookt^ry and, Vintnery in the Village of Ouarv\\\(^ ? A man of the windniill species, that grin^ always, turning towards all winds ; not in the steadiest manner. In all these men there is talent, faculty to work ; and they wiii i THE BOOK OF THE LA IV. Jo it ; working and shaping-, not without enect, though alas not in marble, only in quicksand !— But the highest faculty of them all remains yet to be mentioned ; or indeed has yet to unfold itself for mention : Captain Hippolyte Carnot, sent hither from the Pas ie Calais ; with his cold mxathem_atical head, and silent stubborn- ness of will : iron Carnot, far-planning, imperturbable, unconquer- ible ; who, in the hour of need, shall not be found wanting. His lair is yet black ; and it shall grow grey, under many kinds of for- :une, bright and troublous ; and with iron aspect this man shall ace them all. Nor is Cote Droit, and 'band of King's friends, wanting : Vau- Dlanc, Dumas, Jaucourt the honoured Chevalier ; who love Liberty, /et with Monarchy over it ; and speak fearlessly according to that "aith; — whom the thick-coming hurricanes will sweep away. With hem, let a new military Theodore Lameth be named \ — were it )nly for his two Brothers' sake, who look down on him, appro v- ngly there, from the Old- Constituents' Gallery. Frothy profess- ng Pastorets, honey-mouthed conciliatory Lamourettes, and peechless nameless individuals sit plentiful, as Moderates, in the niddle. Still less is a Cote Gattche wanting : extreme Left ; sitting >n the topmost benches, as if aloft on its speculatory Height or Mountain, which will become a practical fulminatory Height, and aake the name of Mountain famous-infamous to all times and mds. , Honour waits not on this Mountain ; nor as yet even loud dis- I lOnour. Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; ' olely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the : Carth and the Heavens. Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio : i ot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys both ; Chabot, ; isfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio. Lawyer Lacroix, who wore i nee as subaltern the single epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry i eart. There too is Couthon, little dreaming what he is ; — whom I sad chance has paralysed in the lower extremities. For, it seems, ■ e sat once a whole night, not warm ii his true love's bov/er (who ideed was by law another's), but sunken to the middle in a cold eat-bog, being hunted out ; quaking for his life, in the cold quak- ■ig morass and goes now on crutches to the end.^ Cambon like^ • •ise, in whom slumbers undeveloped such a finance-talent for Tinting of Assignats ; Father of Paper-money ; who, in the hour ; f menace, shall utter this stern sentence, ' War to the i\Ianor- bouse, peace to the Hut, Guerre aux Chateaux, palx aux \ Chaumieres I ' t Lecointre, the " intrepid Draper of Versailles, is l elcome here ; known since the Opera-Repast and Insurrection if Women. Thuriot too; Elector Thuriot, who stood in the I mbrasures of the Bastille, and saw Saint- Antoine rising in mass ; j ho has many other things to see. Last and grimmest of all note Id Ruhl, with his brown dusky face and long white hair ; of Isatian Lutheran breed; a man whom age and book-learning ave not taught ; who, haranguing the old men of Rheims, shall old up the Sacred A^npulla (Heaven-sent, wherefrom Clovis and * bumouriez, ii. 370, f Choix dc Rapports ^ xi. 25. 146 PARLIAMENT FIRST. all Kings have been anointed) as a mere worthless oil-bottle, an dash it to sherds on the pavement there; who, alas, shall dasi| much to sherds, and hnally his own wild head, by pistol-shot, anci so end it. Such lava welters redhot in the bowels of this Mountain ; un known to the world and to itself I A mere commonplace Mountain \ hitherto ; distinguished from the Plain chiefly by its superio y barrenness, its baldness of look : at the utmost it may, to the rno . observant, perceptibly sjnoke. For as yet all lies so solid, peace able ; and doubts not, as was said, that it will endure while Tin runs. Do not all 'ove Liberty and the Constitution ? All heartilv —and yet with degrees. Some, as Chevaher Jaucourt and h'( Right Side, may love JLiberty less than Royalty, were the tri.t . made ; others, as Brissot and his Left Side, may love it moretha.' Royaky. Nay again of these latter some may love Liberty mor. than Law itself ; others not more. Parties will unfold themselvc: no mortal as yet knows how. Forces work within these men ar without : dissidence grows opposition ; ever widening ; waxin, into incompatibility and internecine feud: till the strong f' abolished by a stronger ; himself in his turn by a stj ongest Who can help it.^ Jaucourt and his Monarchists, Feuiilans, u - Moderates; Brissot and his Brissotins, Jacobins, or Girondins these, witli the Cordelier Trio, and all men, must work what i . appointed them and in the way appointed them. And to think what fate these poor Seven Hundred and Forty five are assembled, most unwittingly, to meet ! Let no heart be hard as not to pity them. Their soul's wish was to live and woi 1' ■ as the First of the French Parliaments : and make the Constiti;' tion march. Did they not, at their very instalment, go throng;, the most affecting Constitutional ceremony, almost with tears ' The Tweh'e Eldest are sent solemnly to fetch the Constitution itself, the printed Book of the Law. Archivist Camus, an Oki Constituent appointed Archivist^ he and the Ancient Twelve, amii blare of military pomp and clangour, enter, bearing the divint Book : and President and all Legislative Senators, laying tlieir hand on the same, successively take the Oath, with cheers an ' heart-effusion, universal three-times-three."^ In this manner tl begin their Session. Unhappy mortals ! For, that same day, i Majesty having received their Deputation of welcome,, as seemed rather drily, the Deputation cannot but feel ' slighted, cannot bin lament such slight : and thereupon our cheering swearing Parliament sees itself, on the morrow, obliged to explode into fici retaliatory sputter, of anti-royal Enactment as to how they, . their part, will receive Majesty ; and how Majesty shall not called Sire any more, except they please : and then, on the foll( ing day, to rccal this Enactment of theirs, as too hasty, and a m< sputter thougli not unprovoked. An effervescent well-intentioned set of Senators ; too co; bustible, where continual sparks are flying ! Their History i ^ Moniicur, Seance du 4 Octobrc 1791, THE BOOK OF THE LAW, 147 series of sputters and quarrels ; true desire to do their function, fatal impossibility to do it. Denunciations, reprimandings of King's Ministers, of traitors supposed and real ; hot rage and fulmination against fulminating Emigrants ; terror of Austrian Kaiser, of ' Austrian Committee ' in the Tuileries itself : rage and haunting terror, haste and dim desperate Jjewilderment ! — Haste, we say ; and yet the Constitution had provided against haste. No Bill can be passed till \i have been printed, till it have been thrice read, with intervals of eight days ;— ^ unless the Assembly shall * beforehand decree that there is urgency.' Which, accordingly, the Assembly, scrupulous of the Constitution, never omits to do : Considering this, and also cohsidering that, and then that other, the Assembly decrees sXvf Siys ' qu'zl y a urgencej' and thereupon *the Assembly, having decreed that there is urgence/ is free to decree— what indispensable distracted thing seems best to it. Two thousand and odd decrees, as men reckon, within Eleven months ! ^ The haste of the Constituent seemed great ; but this is treble-quick. For the time itself is rushing treble-quick ; and they have to keep pace with that. Unhappy Seven Hundred and Forty-five: true-patriotic, but so combustible; being fired, they must needs fling fire : Senate of touchwood and rockets, in a world of smoke-storm, with sparks wind-driven continually flying ! Or think, on the other hand, looking forward some months, of that scene they call Baiser de Lainourette ! The dangers of the country are now grown imminent, immeasurable; National Assem- bly, hope of France, is divided against itself. In such extreme circumstances, honey-mouthed Abbe 'Lamourette, new Bishop of Lyons, rises, whose name, ra^nourette^ signifies the sweetheart^ or Delilah doxy,— he rises, and, with pathetic honied eloquence, calls on all august Senators to forget mutual griefs and grudges, to swear a new oath, and unite aa brothers. Whereupon they all, with viyats, embrace and swear ; Left Side confounding itself with Right ; barren Mountain rushing down to fruitful Plain, Pastoret into the arms of Condorcet, injured to the breast of injurer, with tears ; ai>d all swearing that whosoever wishes either .l^euillant Two-Chamber Monarchy or Extreme-Jacobin Republic, or any thing but the Constitution and that only, shall be anathem.a ma- rantha.t Touching to behold ! For, literally on the morrow norning, they must again quarrel, driven by Fate ; 'and their sublime recon- ^ cilement is called derisively Baiser de L amourette, or Delilah Kiss. !^ Like fated Eteocles-Polynices Brothers, embracing, though in pVain ; weeping that they must not love, that they must hate onlv, : and die by each other's hands! Or say, like doomed Familiar Spirits; ordered, by Art Magic under penalties, to do a harder than twist ropes of sand : 'to make the Constitution march. If the Constitution would but march ! Alas, the Constitution will not stir. ' It falls on its face; they tremblingly lift it on end again: march, thou gold Constitution ! The Constitution will not march.—" He shall march, by ! " said kind Uncle Toby, and even swore. The Cor- poral answered mournfully: " He will never march in this world." |; • Montgaillard, iii. i, 237. f Moniicur, .Seance du 6 Juillet 179a. 148 PARLIAMENT FIRST. A constitution, as we often : ay, will march when it images, if I not the old Habits and Beliefs of the Constituted ; then accurately \ their Rights, or better indeed, their Mights for these two, well- \ understood, are they not one and the same ? . The old Habits of ■ France are gone : her new Rights and Mights are not yet ascer-^ tained, except in Paperitheorem ; nor can be, in any sort, till she ^ have tried. Till she have measured herself, in fe'l death-grip, and vvere it in utmost preternatural spasm of madness, with Principali ties and Powers, with the upper and the under, internal and ex- ternal ; with the Earth and Tophet and the very Heaven ! Then will she knowo — Three things bode ill for the marching of this French Constitution : the French People ; the French King ; thirdly the French Noblesse and an assembled European World. * CHAPTER III. AVIGNON. But quitting generalities, what strange Fact is this, in the far South-West, towards which the eyes of all men do now^ in the end of October, bend themselves? A tragical combustion, Ion smoking and smouldering unluminous, has now burst into flan; there. Hot is that Southern Proyengal blood - pLis, collisions, as was once said, must occur in a career of Freedom ; different direction will produce such ; nay different velocities in the came dircctio will ! To much that went on there History, busied elsev/here, would not specially give heed ? to troubles of Uzez, troublc3 ol N ismes, Protestant and Catholic, Patriot and Aristocrat; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpelier, Aries : to Aristocrat Camp of Jales, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity, now fading pale-dim, then always again glowing forth deep-hued (in the Imagination mainly);— omin- ous magical, ' an Aristocrat picture of v/ar done naturally i ' All this was a tragical deadly *^combustion, with plot and riot, tumult by night and by day ; but a dark combustion, not luminous, not noticed ; which now, however, one cannot help noticing. Above all places, the unluminous combustion i i Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin was fierce. Papal Avignon, with ks Castle rising sheer over the Rhono-stream ; beautifullcst Tovin, v/ith its j purple vines and -o] i- orange groves : why must foolish old rhym- ing Rene, the last Sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and Gold Tiara, not rather to Louis Eleventh with the Leaden Virgin in his hatband? For good and fcr evil I Popes, /nti- popes, with their pomp, have dwelt in that Castle of Avignon rising I sheer over the Rhone-stream : there Laura dc Sade \yent to hear \ mass ; her Petrarch twanging and singing by the Fountain of | Vauchisc hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner. This wai \ va the old days. \ AVIGNON. 149 And now in these new days, such issues do come from a squirt of the pen by some foolish rhyming Rene, after centuries, this is what we have : Jourdan Coupc-tete^ leading to siege and warfare an Army, from three to hfteen thousand strong, called the Brigands of Avig- non ; which title they themselves accept, with the addition of an epithet, ' The b?'ave Brigands of Avignon !^ It is even so. Jourdan the Headsman fled hither from that Chatelet Inquest, from that Insurrection of Women ; and began dealing in madder ; but the scene was rife in other than dye-stuffs ; so Jourdan shut his madder shop, and has risen, for he was the man to do it. The tile-beard of Jourdan is shaven off ; his fat visage ' las got coppered and studded with black caj'buncles : the Silenus trunk k swollen with drink and high living : he wears blue National uniform with epaulettes, ^ an ' enormous sabre, two horse-pistols crossed in his belt, and other * two smaller, sticking from his pockets ; ' styles himself General, and is the tyrant of men."^ Consider this one fact, O Reader ; and what sort of facts must have preceded it, must accompany it ! Such things come of old Rene ; and of the question which has risen. Whether Avignon cannot now cease wholly to be Papal and become French and free ? For some twenty-five months the confusion has lasted. Say three months of arguing ; then seven of raging ; then finally some fifteen months now of fighting, and even of hanging. For already in February 1790, the Papal Aristocrats had set up four gibbets, for a sign \ but the People rose in June, in retributive frenzy ; and, forcing the public Hangman to act, hanged four Aristocrats, on each Papal gibbet a Papal Haman. Then were Avignon Emigra- tions, Papal Aristocrats emigrating over the Rhone River ; demis- sion of Papal Consul, flight, victory : je-entrance of Papal Legate, truce, and new onslaught ; and the various turns of war. Peti- tions there were to Na.'onal Assembly ; Congresses of ToAvn- ships ; three-score and odd Townships voting for French Reunion, and the blessings of Liberty ; while some twelve of the smaller, manipulated by Aristocrats, gave vote the other way : with shrieks and discord ! Township against Township, Town against Town : Carpentras, long jealous of Avigno", is now turned out in open war with it ; — and Jourdan Coupe-teie^ your first General being killed in mutiny, closes his dye-shop ; and does there visibly, with siege-artillery, above all with bluster and tumult, with the ' bra\ne ' Brigands of Avignon,^ beleaguer the rival Town, for two months, ^in the face of the world ! I Pleats were done, doubt it not, far-famed in Parish History ; ibut to Universal History unknown. Gibbets we see rise, on the one side and on the other ; and wretched carcasses swinging there, a dozen in the row ; wretched Mayor of Vaison buried before dead.t The fruitful seedfield, lie unreaped, the vineyards trampled down ; there is red cruelty, madness of universal choler and gall. Havoc and anarchy everywhere ; a combustion most j fierce, but ?/^lucent, not to be noticed here ! — Finally, as we saw, I * Dampmartin, Evtucmcjis, i. 267. f Barbaroux, Mhnoires, p. 26. I 150 PARLIAMENT FIRST, on the 14th of September last, the National Constituent Assembly, ; having sent Commissioners and heard them ;* having heard Petitions, held Debates, month after month ever since August ' 1789 ; and on the whole ^ spent thirty sittings' on this matter, did ' solemnly decree that Avignon and the Comtat were incorporated \ with France, and His Holiness the Pope should have what \ indemnity w as reasonable. : And so hereby all is amnestied and finished ? Alas, w^hen \ madness of choler has gone through the blood of men, and gibbets ^ have swung on this side and on that, what will a parchment \ Decree and Lafayette Amnesty do ? Oblivious Lethe Hows not i above ground ! Papal Aristocrats and Patriot Brigands are still \ an eye-sorrow to each other ; suspected, suspicious, in what they 1 do and .forbear. The august Constituent xAssembly is gone but a ^ fortnight, when, on Sunday the vSixteenth morning of October ■{ 1791, the unquenched combustion suddenly becomes luminous ! 1 For Anti-constitutional Placards are up, and the Statue of the I Virgir is said to have shed tears, and grown red.f Wherefore, ^ on that morning. Patriot FEscuyer, one of our ^ six leading \ ^ Patriots,' having taken counsel with his brethren and General Jourdan, determines on going to Church, in company with a friend or tw^o : not to hear mass, w^hich he values little ; but to meet all the ! Papalists there in a body, nay to meet that same weeping Virgin, for it is the Cordeliers Church ; and give them a word of admoni- tion. Adventurous errand ; which has the fatallest issue ! What L'Escuyer's w^ord of admonition might be no History records ; but j the answer to it w^as a shrieking howl from the Aristocrat Papal j worshippers, many of them women. A thousand-voiced shriek j and menace ; which as L'Escuy(5r did not fly, became a thousand- I handed hustle and jostle ; a thousand-footed kick, with tumblings and tramplings, with the pricking of semstresses stilettos, scissors, and female j^ointed instruments. Horrible to behold ; the ancient Dead, and Petrarchan Laura, sleeping round it there ; J high Altar and burning tapers looking down on it ; the Virgin quite tearless, and of the natural stone-colour ! — L'Escuyer's friend or two rush off, like Job's Messengers, for Jourdan and the National Force. But heavy Jourdan will seize the Town-Gates first ; does not run treble-fast, as he might : on arriving at the Cordeliers Church, the Church is silent, vacant; L'Escuyer, all alone, lies there, swim^ming in his blood, at the foot of the high Altar ; pricked with scissors ; trodden, massacred ; — gives one dumb sob, and gasps out his miserable life for evermore. Sight to stir tlic heart of any man ; much more of many men, self-styled Brigands of Avignon ! The corpse of L'Escuyci stretched on a bier, the ghastly head girt with laurel, is bon through the streets ; with many- voiced unmelodious Neuia Lcscenc I)(»smaisons : Com pie midu d V Assemblde Nationale, 10 Sep tembre 1791 [(-hoix dcs Rapporls, vii. 273-93). \ Proces-vcrbal dc la (\>mnnine d' Avignon , Sec. (in ///.y/. Par/, xii. 419-23). j Ugo Foscolo, /Lssaj oa Petrarch, p. 35. A VIGNON. funeral-wail still deeper than it is loud ! The copper-face of Jourdan, of bereft Patriotism, has grown black. Patriot Munici- pality despatches official Narrative and tidings to Paris ; orders numerous or innumerable arrestments for inquest and perquisition. Aristocrats male and female are haled to the Castle ; lie crowded in subterranean dungeons there, bemoaned by the hoarse rushing of the Rhone ; cut out from help. ^ So He they ; waiting inquest and perquisition. Alas ! with a Jourdan Headsman for Generalissimo, with his copper-face grown black, and armed Brigand Patriots chanting their Nenia, the inquest is likely to be brief On the next day and the next, let Municipality consent or not, a Brigand Court-Martial estabhshes itself in the subterranean stories of the Castle of Avignon ; Brigand Executioners, with naked sabre, waiting at the door^ for a Brigand verdict. Short judgment, no appeal ! There is' Brigand wrath and vengeance ; not unrefreshed by brandy. Close by is the Dungeon of the Glaciere^ or Ice-Tower : there may be deeds done — ? For which language has no name 1 — Darkness and the shadow of horrid cruelty envelopes these Castle Dungeons, that Glaciere Tower : clear only that many have entered, that few have returned. Jourdan and the Brigands, supreme now over Municipals, over all Authorities Patriot or Papal, reign in Avignon, waited on by Terror and Silence. The result of all which is that, on the 15th of November 1791, we behold Friend Dampmartin, and subalterns beneath him, and General Choisi above him, with Infantry and Cavalry, and proper cannon-carriages rattling in front, with spread banners, to the sound of fife and drum, wend, in a deliberate formidable manner, towards that sheer Casde Rock, towards those broad Gates of Avignon ; three new National-Assembly Commissioners following at safe distance in the rear."^ Avignon, summoned in the name of Assembly and Law, flings its Gates wide open ; Choisi with the rest, Dampmartin and the Bons Enfans, ' Good * Boys of Baufremont; so they name these brave Constitutional Dragoons, known to them of old —do enter, amid shouts and scat- tered flowers. To the joy of all honest persons ; to the terror onlv of Jourdan Headsman and the Brigands. Nay next we behold carbuncled swollen Jourdan himself shew copper-face, with sabre and four pistols ; affecting to talk high : engaging, meanwhile, to surrender the Castle that instant. So the Chisi Grenadiers enter ; with him there. They start and stop, passing that Glaciere, snuf- I fing its horrible breath ; with wild yell, with cries of " Cut the j Butcher down ! "—and Jourdan has to whisk himself through secret ; passages, and instantaneously vanish. Be the mystery of iniquity laid bare then ! A Hundred and Thirty Corpses, of men, nay of women and even children (for the trembling mother, hastily seized, could not leave her infant), lie heaped in that Glaciere ; putrid, under putridities : the horror of the world. For three days there is mournful lifting out, and recog- nition ; amid the cries and movements of a passionate Southern * Dampmartin, i. 251-94, PARLIAMENT FIRST. people, now kneeling in prayer^ now storming in wild pity and rage: lastly there is solemn sepulture, with muffled drums, religious re- quiem, and all the people's wail and tears. Their Massacred rest now in holy ground ; buried in one grave. And Jourdan Coitpe-tete f Kim also we behold again, after a day or two : in flight, through the most romantic Petrarchan hill- country ; vehemently spurring his nag; young Ligonnet, a brisk youth of Avignon, with Choisi Dragoons, close in his rear ! With such swollen mass of a rider no nag can run to advantage. The tired nag, spur-driven, does take the River Sorgue ; but sticks in the middle of it ; firm on that chiaro fondo di Sorga; and will , proceed no further for spurring ! Young Ligonnet dashes up ; the Copper-face menaces and bellows, draws pistol, perhaps even snaps \ it ; is nevertheless seized by the collar ; is tied firm, ancles under ' horse's belly, and ridden back to Avignon, hardly to be saved from \ massacre on the streets there.* ^ \ Such is the combustion of Avignon and the South- West, when it ' becomes luminous ! Long loud debate is in the august Legislative, \ in the Mother- Society as to what now shall be done with it' Amnesty, cry eloquent Vergniaud and all Patriots : let there be mutual pardon and repentance, restoration, pacification, and, if so might any how be, an end ! Which vote ultimately prevails. So , the South- West smoulders and welters again in an "^Amnesty,' or Non-remembrance, which alas cannot but remember, no Lethe flowing above ground ! Jourdan himself remains unchanged ; gets loose again as one not yet gallows-ripe ; nay, as we transciently , discern from the distance, is ^ carried m triumph through the cities ; of the South.'f What things men carry ! ; With which transient glimpse, of a Copper-faced Portent faring in this manner through the cities of the South, we must quit these regions ; — and let them smoulder. They want not their Aristocrats; proud old Nobles, not yet emigrated. Aries has its ' Chiffonne'^^ so, in symbolical cant, they name that Aristocrat Secret^ Association ; Aries has its pavements piled up, by and by, into Aristocrat barri- cades. Against which Rebecqui, the hot-clear Patriot, must lead Marseilles with cannon. The Bar of Iron has not yet risen to the top in the Lay of Marseilles ; neither have these hot Sons of the Phoceans submitted to be slaves. By clear management and hot instance, Rebecqui dissipates that Chijfo/me, without bloodshed ; restores the pavement of Aries. He sails in Coast-barks, this Re- becqui, scrutinising suspicious Martello-towcrs, with the keen eye of Patriotism ; marches overland with despatch, singly, or in force; to City after City ; dim scouring far and wide ; J— argues, and if it must be, fights. ' For there is much to do ; Jales itself is looKing suspicious. So that Legislator Fauchet, after debate on it, has to propose Commissioners and a. Camp on the Plain of Beaucaife * ! with or without result. * 13ampmartin, ubi supra. t Deux Amis vii. (Paris, 1797), pp. 59-71' X l'>,irb;uQux, p. hi ; jll.sL /'arl. \\\\. 421-4. A VIGNON. Of all which, and much else, let us note only this small conse- quence, that young Barbaroux, Advocate, Town- Clerk of Marseilles, being charged to have these things remedied, arrived at Paris in the month of February 1792. The beautiful and brave : young Spartan, ripe in energy, not ripe in wisdom ; over whose black doom^ there shall flit nevertheless a certain ruddy fervour, streaks of bright Southern tint, not wholly swallowed of Death ! Note also that the Rolands of Lyons arc again in Paris ; for the second an:.: final time. King's Inspectorship is abrogated at Lyons, as else- where : Roland has his retiring-pension to claim, if attainable ; has Patriot friends to commune r/ith ; at lowest, has a book to publish. That young Barbaroux and the Rolands came together ; that elderly Spartan Roland liked, or even loved the young Spartan, and was loved by him, one can fancy : and Madame — ? Breathe not, thou poison-breath. Evil-speech \ That soul is taintless, clear, as the mirror-sea. And yet if they too did look into each other's eyes, and each, in silence, in tragical renunciance, did find that the other was all too lovely? Honi soit ! She calls him ^ beautiful as ' Antinous : ' he ' will speak :"'sev7here of that astonishing woman. —A Madame d'Udon (or some such name, for Dumont does not recollect quite clearly) gives copious Breakfast to the Brissotin Deputies and us Friends of Freedom, at her house in the Place Vendome ; "vith temporary celebrity, with graces and wreathed smiles ; not without cost. There, amid wide babble and jingle, lour plan of Legislative Debate is settled for the day, and much counselling held. Strict Roland is seen there, but does not eo ■ CHAPTER IV. W NO SUGAR. SxTCH are our inward troubles ; seen in the Cities of the South ; Jxtant, seen or unseen, in all cities and district^-, North as well as 1 South. For in all are Aristocrats, more or less molig-nant ; watched Dy Patriotism ; which again^ being of various shades, from light Fayettist-Feuillant down to deep-sombre Jacobin, has to watch Mselfl . Directories of Departments, what we call County Magistracies, being chosen by Citizens of a too ' active ' class, are found to pull Dne way; Municipahties, Town Magistracies, to pull the other lyay. In all places too are Dissident Priests ; whom the Legisla- tive will have to deal with : contumacious individuals, working on that angriest of passions ; plotting, enlisting for Coblentz ; or i] suspected of plotting: fuel of a universal unconstitutional heat. ; What to do with them? They may be conscientious as well as I :ontumacious : gently they should be dealt with, and yet it must i)e speedily. In unilluminated La Vendee the simple are like to * DumcnU, Souvmirs, p. 374. 254 PARLIAMENT FIRST, be seduced by them ; many a simple peasant, a Cathelineau the wool-dealer wayfaring meditative with his wool-packs, in these hamlets, dubiously shakes his head ! Two Assembly Com- missioners went thither last Autumn ; considerate Gensonne, not yet called to be a Senator ; Gallois, an editorial man. These Two, consulting with General Dumouriez, spake and worked, softly, with judgment ; . they have hushed down the irritation, and produced a soft Report,— for the time. The General himself doubts not in the least but he can keep peace there ; being an able man. He passes these frosty months among the pleasant people of Niort, occupies 'tolerably handsome * apartments in the Castle of Niort,' and tempers the minds of men."^ Why is there but one Dumouriez Elsewhere you find South or North, nothing but untempered obscure jarring ; which breaks forth ever and anon into open clangour of riot. Southern Perpignan has its tocsin, by torch light ; with rushing and onslaught : Northern Caen not less, by daylight ; with Aristocrats ranged in arms at Places of Worship ; Departmental compromise proving impossible ; breaking into musketry and a Plot dis- covered ! t Add Hunger too : for Bread, always dear, is getting dearer : not so much as Sugar can be had ; for good reasons. Poor Simoneau, Mayor of Etampes, in this Northern region, hanging out his Red Flag in some riot of grains, is trampled to death by a hungry exasperated People. What a trade this of Mayor, in these times ! Mayor of Saint-Denis hung at the Lanterne, by Suspicion and Dyspepsia, as we saw long since ; Mayor of Vaison, as we saw lately, buried before dead ; and now this poor Simoneau, the Tanner, of Etampes, — whom legal Con- -stitutionalism will not forget. W^ith factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily what they call dechire, torn asunder this poor country : France and all that is French. For, over seas too come bad news. In black Saint-Domingo, before that variegated Ghtter in the Champs Elysees was lit for an Accepted Constitution, there had risen, and was burning contemporary with it, quite another variegated Glitter and nocturnal Fulgor, had we known it : of molasses and ardent-spirits ; of sugar-lDoileries, plantations, furni- ture, cattle and m.en : sky high ; the Plain of Cap Francais one huge whirl of smoke and flame ! What a change here, in these two years ; since that first ^ Box "of Tricolor Cockades' got through the Custom-house, and atrabiliar Creoles too rejoiced that there was a levelling of Bastilles ! Levelling is comfortable, as we often say : levelling, yet only down to oneself. Your pale-white Creoles, have their grievances : — and your yellow Ouarteroons ? And your dark- yellow Mulattoes? And your Slaves soot-black.^ Ouarteroon Og(*, Friend of our Pai isian lirissotin F?'iends of the Blacks, iV ti, for his share too, that Insurrection v/as the. most sacred of diilics. So the tricolor Cockades had fluttered and swashed only souie three months on the Creole hat, when ^Jge s signal-conflagrations * Duiiiouncz, ii. 129. f IllU. Pari, 131, 141; xiii. 114, 417, NO SUGAR. went aloft ; with the voice of rage and terror. Repressed, doomed to die, he toojv black powder or seedgrains in the hollow of his hand, this Oge ; sprinkled a film of white ones on the top, and said to his Judges, *^ Behold they are white;" — then shook his hand, and said, " Where are the Whites, On sont les B/aJtcs So now, in the Autumn of 1791, looking from the sky- windows of Cap Fran^ais, thick clouds of smoke girdle our horizon, smoke in the day, in the night fire ; preceded by fugitive shrieking white women, by Terror and Rumour. Black demonised squadrons are massacring and harrying, with nameless cruelty. They fight and fire ^ from behind thickets and coverts,' for the Black man loves the Bush ; they rush to the attack, thousands strong, with bran- dished cutlasses and fusils, with caperings, shoutings and vocifera- tion, — which, if the White Volunteer Company stands hrm, dwindle into staggering s, into quick gabblement, into panic flight at the first volley, perhaps before it. Poor Oge could be broken on the wheel ; this fire-whirlwind too can be abated, driven up into the Mountains : but Saint-Domingo is shaken^ as Oge's seedgrains v/ere ; shaking, writhing in long horrid death- throes, it is Black without remedy ; and remains, as African Haiti, a monition to the world. O my Parisian Friends, is not this, as well as Regraters and Feuillant Plotters, one cause of the astonishing dearth of Sugar ! The Grocer, palpitant, with drooping lip, sees his Sugar tax^j weighed out by Female Patriotism, in instant retail, at the inade- quate rate of twenty-five sous, or thirteen pence a pound. "Abstain from it Yes, ye Patriot Sections, all ye Jacobins, abstain ! Louvet and Collot-dTierbois so advise ; resolute to make the sacrifice : though ^'how shall literary men do without coffee?'^ Abstain, with an oath ; that is the surest If Also, for like reason, must not Brest and the Shipping Interest languish ? Poor Brest languishes, sorrowing, not without spleen ; denounces an Aristocrat Bertrand-Moleville traitorous Aristocrat Marine-Minister. Do not her Ships and King's Ships lie rotting piecemeal in harbour ; Naval Officers mostly fled, and on furlough too, with pay 1 Little stirring there ; if it be not the Brest Gallics , whip-driven, with their Galley- Slaves, — alas, with some Forty or our hapless Swiss Soldiers of Chateau-Vieux, among others ! These Forty Swiss, too min'dful of Nanci, do now, in their red wool caps, tug sorrowfully at the oar ; looking into the Atlantic brine, which reflects only their own sorrowful shaggy faces ; and seem forgotten of Hope. But, on the v/hole, may we not say, in figurative language, that the French Constitution which shall march is very rheumatic, full of shooting internal pains, in joint and muscle ; and will not march without difficulty ? * Deux Amis, x. 157. t Dibats des Jacobms, &c. [Hist. Pari. xiii. 171, 92-98)* 156 PARLIAMENT FIRST. CHAPTER V. KINGS AND EMIGRANTS. Extremely rheumatic Constitutions have been known to march, and keep on their feet, though in a staggering sprawhng manner, for long periods, in virtue of one thing only : that the Head were healthy. But this Head of the French Constitution ! What King Louis is and cannot help being, Readers already know. A King who cannot take the Constitution, nor reject the Constitution : nor do anything at all, but miserably ask. What shall I do ? A King environed with endless confusions ; in whose own mind is no germ of order. Haughty implacable remnants of Noblesse struggling with humiliated repentant Bar nave- Lameths : struggling in that obscure element of fetchers and carriers, of Half-pay braggarts from the Cafe Valois, of Chambermaids, whisperers, and subaltern officious persons ; fierce Patriotism looking on all the while, more and more suspicious, from without : what, in such struggle, can they do ? At best, cancel one another, and produce zero. Poor King ! Barnave and your Senatorial Jaucourts speak earnestly into this ear ; Bertrand-Moleville, and Messengers from Coblentz, speak earnestly into that : the poor Rayal head turns to the one side and to the other side ; can turn itself fixedly to no side. Let Decency drop a veil over it : sorrier misery was seldom en- acted in the world. This one small fact, does it not throw the saddest light on much ? The Queen is lamenting to Madam Campan : " What am I do to ? When they, these Barnaves, get us advised to any step which the Noblesse do not like, then I am pouted at ; nobody comes to my card table ; the King's Couchee is solitary.""^ In such a case of dubiety, what is one to do 1 Go inevitably to the ground ! The King has accepted this Constitution, knowing beforehand that it will not serve : he studies it, and executes it in the hope mainly that it will be found inexecutable. King^s Ships lie rotting in harbour, their officers gone ; the Armies disorganised ; robbers scour the highways, which wear down unrepaired ; all Public Service lies slack and waste : the Executive makes no effort, or an effort only to throw the blame on the Constitution. Shamming death, le inort!^ What Constitution, use it in this manner, can march ^ Grow to disgust the Nation' it will truly,t — unless yott first grow to disgust the Nation ! It is Ber~ trand de Moleville's plan, and his Majesty's ; the best they can form. Or if, after all, this best-plan proved too slow ; proved a failure? Provident of that too, the Queen, shrouded in deepest mystery, * writes all day, in cipher, day after day, to Coblentz ; ' Engineer Goguelat, he of the Night of Sp7i7's, whom the Lafayette Amnesty * Campan, ii. 177, 20^. f Bertrand-Moleville, i. c. 4. KINGS AND EMIGRANTS. has deliverod from Prison, rides and runs. Now and then, on fit occasion, a Royal familiar visit can be paid to that Salle de Manege, an affecting encouraging Royal Speech (sincere, doubt it not, for the moment) can be delivered there, and the Senators all cheer and almost weep ;— at the same time Mallet du Pan has visibly ceased editing, and invisibly bears abroad a King's Auto- graph, soliciting help from the Foreign Potentates * Unhappy Louis, do this thing or else that other, — if thou couldst ! The thing which the King's Government did do was to stagger distractedly from contradiction to contradiction ; and wedding Fire to Water, envelope itself in hissing, and ashy steam I Dan"^ ton and needy corruptible Patriots are sopped with presents of cash : they accept the sop : they rise refreshed by it, and travel their own way.f Nay, the King's Government did likewise hire Hand-clappers, or claqueurs, persons to applaud. Subterranean Rivarol has Fifteen Hundred men in King's pay, at the rate of some ^10,000 sterling, per month; what he calls 'a staff of 'genius :' Paragraph-writers, Placard-Journalists ; 'two hundred ^ and eighty Applauders, at three shillings a day : ' one of the strangest Staffs ever commanded by man. The muster-rolls and account-books of which still exist.J Bertrand-Moleville himself, in a way he thinks very dexterous, contrives to pack the Galleries of the Legislative ; gets Sansculottes hued to go thither, and applaud at a signal given, they fancying it was Petion that bid them: a device which was not detected for almost a week. Dexterous enough ; as if a man finding the Day fast decline should determine on altering the Clockhands : that is a thing possible for him. Here too let us note an unexpected apparition of Philippe d'Orleans at Court : his last at the Levee of any King. D'Orleans, sometime in the winter months seemingly, has been appointed to that old first-coveted rank of Admiral,— though only over ships rotting in port. The wished-for comes too late ! However, he waits on Bertrand-Moleville to give thanks : nay to state that he would willingly thank his Majesty in person ; that, in spite of all the horrible things men have said and sung, he is far from being his Majesty's enemy ; at bottom, how far ! Bertrand delivers the message, brings about the royal Interview, which does pass to the satisfaction of his Majesty ; d'Orleans seeming clearly repentant- determined to turn over a new leaf. And yet, next Sunday, what do we see ? ' Next Sunday,' says Bertrand, ' he came to the King's * Levee ; but the Courtiers ignorant of what had passed, the crowd 'of Royalists who were accustomed to resort thither on that day ' specially to pay their court, gave him the most humiliating recep- *tion. They came pressing round him; managing, as if by 'mistake, to tread on his toes, to elbow him towards the door, and 'not let him enter again. He went downstairs to her Majesty's * Apartments, where cover was laid ; so soon as he shewed face, ^ sounds rose on all sides, " Messieurs, take care of the dishes',' as ' if he had carried poison in his pockets. The insults which his 'presence every where excited forced him to retire without having * Moleville. i. 370. f Ibid. i. c. 17. J ISrontgaillard, iii. 41. 158 PARLIAMENT FIRST. * seen the Royal Family : the crowd followed him to the Queen's ' Starircase ; in descending, he received a spitting {crackat) on the * head, and some others, on his clothes. Rage and spite were seen * visibly painted on his face : as indeed how could they miss to be? He imputes it all to the King and Queen, who know nothing of it, who are even much grieved at it ; and so descends, to his Chaos again. Bertrand was there at the Chateau that day himself, and an eye-witness to these things. For the rest, Non-jurant Priests, and the repression of them, will distract the King's conscience ; Emigrant Princes and No- blesse will force him to double-dealing : th^remusthQ veto onveto j amid the ever-waxing indignation of men. For Patriotism, as we said, looks o:"^ from without, more and more suspicious. WaxiHg tempest, blast after blast, of Patriot indignation, from without ; dim inorganic whirl of Intrigues, Fatuities, within ! Inorganic, fatuous ; from which the eye turns away. De Stael intrigues for her so gallant Narbonne, to get him made War- Minister ; and ceases not^ Ziavinggot him made. The King shall fly to Rouen ; she il there, with the gallant Narbonne, properly ' modify the Con- * stitution.' This is the same brisk Narbonne, who, last year, cut out from their entanglement, by force of dragoons, those poor fugitive Royal Aunts men say he is at bottom their Brother, or even more, so scandalous is scandal. He drives now, with his de Stael, rapidly to the Armies, to the Frontier Towns ; produces rose- coloured Reports, not too credible ; perorates, gesticulates ; wavers poising himself the top, lOr a moment, seen of men; then tumbles, dismissed, washed away by the Time-flood. Also the fair Princess C.z Lamballe intrigues, booom friend of her Majesty : to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate, why did she ever return from England ? Her small silver-voice, what can it. profit in that piping of the black World-tormado.'* Which will whirl her, poor fragile Bird of Paradise, against grim rocks. Lamballe r.nd do Stael intrigue visibly, apart or together : but who shall reckon how many others, and in what infinite ways, invisibly ! Is tTiere .^ ot what one may call an * Austrian Com- mittee,' sitting ini/isible in the Tuileries ; centre of an invisible Anti-National Spiderweb, which, for we sleep among mysteries, stretches its threads the ends of the Earth ? Journalist Carra has now the clearest cn tainty of it : to Brissotin Patriotism, and France generally, it is growing more and more probable. O Reader, hast thou no pity for this Constitution ? Rheumatic shooting pains in its members ; pressure of hydrocephale and hysteric vapours on its Brain : r. Constitution divided against itself ; which will never march, hardly even stagger .^^ Why were not Drouet and Procureur Sausse in their beds, that unblessed Varennes Night ! Why did they not, in the name of Heaven, let the Korff Berline go whither i'. listed I Nameless incoherency, incompatibility, per- haps prodigies at which the world still shudders, had been spared. But now comes the third thing tliat bodes ill for the marching of " Bertrand-Moleville, i. 177. 159 this French Constitution : besides the French People, and the French King, there is thirdly— the assembled European world ? it has become necessary now to look at that also. Fair France is so luminous : and round and round it, is troublous Cimmerian Night. Calonnes, Breteuils hover dim, far-flown : overnetting Europe with intrigues. From Turin to Vienna ; to Berlin, and ^ utmost Petersburg in the frozen North ! Great Burke has raised his great voice long ago ; eloquently demonstrating that the end ot an Epoch is come, to all appearance the end of Civilised Time. Him many answer : Camille Desmouhns, Clootz Speaker of Man- kind, Paine the rebellious Needleman, and honourable Gallic Vindicators in that country and in this : but the great Burke remains unanswerable ; ' the Age of Chivalry is gone,' and could not but go, having now produced the still more indomitable Age of Hunger. Altars enough, of the Dubois-Rohan sort, changing to the Gobel-and-Talleyrand sort, are faring by rapid transmutation to, shall we say, the right Proprietor of them } French Game and French Game- Preservers did alight on the Cliffs of Dover, with cries of distress. Who will say that the end of much is not come.^ A set of mortals has risen, who believe that Truth is not a printed Speculation, but a practical Fact ; that Freedom and Brotherhood are possible in this Earth, supposed always to be Belial's, which *tlie Supreme Quack' was to inherit ! Who will say that Church, State, Throne, Altar are not in danger ; that the sacred Strong- box itself, last Palladium of effete Humanity, may not be blas- phemously blown upon, and its padlocks undone ? The poor Constituent Assembly might act with what delicacy and diplomacy it would ; declare that it abjured meddling with its neighbours, foreign conquest, and so forth ; but from the first this thing was to be predicted : that old Europe and new France could not subsist together. A Glorious Revolution, oversetting State-Prisons and Feudalism ; publishing, with outburst of Fede- rative Cannon, in face of all the Earth, that Appearance is not Reahty, how shall it subsist amid Governments which, if Appear- ance is not Reality, are— one knows not what ? In death-feud, and internecine wrestle and battle, it shall subsist with them ; not otherwise. Rights of Man, printed on Cotton Handkerchiefs, in various dialects of human speech, pass over to the Frankfort Fair.^ What say we, Frankfort Fair They have crossed Euphrates and the fabulous Hydaspes ; wafted themselves beyond the Ural, Altai, Himmalayah : struck off from wood stereotypes, in angular Picture-writing, they are jabbered and jingled of in China and Japan. Where will it stop Kien-Lung smells mischief ; not the remotest Dalai-Lama shall now knead his dough-pills in peace.— Hateful to us ; as is the Night ! Bestir yourselves, ye Defenders of Order! They do bestir themselves :'ail Kings and Kinglets, with their spiritual temporal array, are astir ; their brows clouded with menace. Diplomatic emissaries fly swift ; Conventions, privy Conclaves assemble ; and wise w^igs wag, taking what counsel they can. * Toulongeon, i, 256. i6o PARLIAMENT FIRST. Also, as we said, the Pamphleteer draws pen, on this side and that: zealous fists beat the Pulpit-drum. Not without issue! Did not iron Birmingham, shouting ' Church and King,' itself knew not why, burst out, last July, into rage, drunkenness, and hre ; and your Priestleys, and the like, dining there on that Bastille day, get the maddest singeing : scandalous to consider ! In which same days, as we can remark, high Potentates, Austrian and Prussian, with Emigrants, were faring towards Pilnitz in Saxony ; there, on the 27th of August, they, keeping to themselves what further ' secret Treaty ' there might or might not be, did pubhsh their hopes and their threatenings, their Declaration that it was ' the common cause of Kings/ Where a will to quarrel is, there is a way. Our readers remember that Pentecost-Night, Fourth of August 1789, when Feudalism fell in a few hours ? The National Assembly, in abolishing Feudahsm, promised that ' compensation ' should be given ; and did endeavour to give it. Nevertheless the Austrian Kaiser answers that his German Princes, for their part, cannot be unfeudahsed ; that they have Possessions in French Alsace, and F^eudal Rights secured to them, for which no conceivable comipen- sation wih suffice. So this of the Possessioned Princes, ' Princes ' Possessiones ' is bandied from Court to Court ; covers acres of diplomatic paper at, this day : a weariness to the world. Kaumtz argues from Vienna ; Delessart responds from Paris, though perhaps not sharply enough. The Kaiser and his Possessioned Princes will too evidently come and take compensation— so nmch as they can get. Nay might one not partition France, as we have done Poland, and are doing ; and so pacify it with a ven- geance ? From South to North 1 For actually it is ' the common cause ^of Kings.' Swedish Gustav, sworn Knight of the Queen of France, will lead Coalised Armies ;— had not Ankarstrom treason- ously shot him ; for, indeed, there were griefs nearer home.^ Austria and Prussia speak at Pilnitz ; all men intensely hstening : Imperial Rescripts have gone out from Turin ; there will be secret Convention at Vienna. Catherine of Russia beckons approvingly ; will help, were she ready. Spanish Bourbon stirs amid his pillows ; from him too, even from him, shall there come help. Lean Pitt, ' the Minister of Preparatives,' looks out from his watch-tower in Saint-James's, in a suspicious manner. Coun- cillors plotting, Calonnes dim-hovering ; alas, Serjeants rub-a- duVjbing openly through all manner of (German market-towns, collecting ragged valour !t Pook where you will, immeasurable Obscurantism is girdling this fair France : which, again, will not be girdled 1)y it. ' luiro])c is in travail ; pang after pang ; what a shriek was tiiat of J^ilnitz ! The birth will be : War. Nay the worst feature of the business is this last, still to be named ; the Emigrants at Coblentz, So many thousands ranking there, in bitter hate and menace : King's Brothers, all Princes of ■'^ 30th Miircli 1792 [Annual Register, p. ii). f Toulongeon, ii. 100-117. KINGS AND EMIGRANTS. i6i thQ Blood except wicked d'Orleans ; your duelling de Castries, your eloquent Cazales ; bull-headed Malseignes, awargod Broglie; Distaff Seigneurs, insulted Officers, all that have ridden across the Rhine-stream ;~d'Artois welcoming Abbe Maury with a kiss, and clasping him publicly to his own royal heart ! Emigration, flow- ing over the Frontiers, now in drops, now in streams, in various humours of fear, of petulance, rage and hope, ever since those hrst Bastille days when d'Artois went, ' to shame the citizens of * Paris,'— has swollen to the size of a Phenomenon of the world. Coblentz is become a small extra-national Versailles ; a Versailles m partibus : briguing, intriguing, favouritism, strumpetocracv itselt, they say, goes on there ; all the old activities, on a small scale, quickened by hungry Revenge. Enthusiasm, of loyalty, of hatred and hope, has risen to a high pitch ; as, in any Coblentz tavern, you may hear, in speech, and in smgmg. Maury assists in the interior Council ; much is decided on : for one thing, they keep lists of the dates of your emigrating ; a month sooner, or a month later determines your greater or your less right to the coming Division of the Spoil. Cazales himself, because he had occasionally spoken with a Con- stitutional tone, was looked on coldly at first : so pure are our principles.-^ And arms are a-hammering at Liege ; ' three ' thousand herses ' ambling hitherward from the Fairs of Ger- many : Cavalry enrolling ; likewise Foot-soldiers, ' in blue coat, red waistcoat, and nankeen trousers ! 'f They have their secret domestic correspondences, as their open foreign : with disaffected Crypto-Aristocrats, with contumacious Priests, with Austrian Committee in the Tuileries. Deserters are spirited over by assiduous crimps ; Royal- Allemand is gone almost wholly. Their route of march, towards France and the Division of the Spoil, is marked out, were the Kaiser once ready. " It is said, they mean to poison the sources ; but,'' adds Patriotism making Report of it, they will not poison the source of Liberty," where- at 'on applaudit,' we cannot but applaud. Also they have manufactories of False Assignats ; and men that circulate in the mterior distributing and disbursing the same ; one of these we denounce now to Legislative Patriotism : ' a man Lebrun by * name ; about thirty years of age, with blonde hair and in \ quantity ; has,' only for the time being surely, ' a black-eye, ceil "poche; goes m a wiski a black horse,'t— always keeping his Gig ! Unhappy Emigrants, it was their lot, and the lot of France ! They are ignorant of much that thev should know : of them- selves, of what IS around them. A Political Party that knows no when It IS beateit, may become one of the fatallist of things, to Itself, and to all. Nothing will convince these men that they can not scatter the French Revolution at the first blast of their war- * Montgaillard, iii. 517; Toulongeon, [^ubi supra). t See Hist. Pari. xiii. 11-38, 41-61, 358, &c. J Moniteur, Stance du 2 Novembre lyoj iHist. Pari. xii. 212) VOL.11. . _ ^ a 152 PARLIAMENT FIRST, trumpet ; that the French Revolution is other than a blustering Effervescence, of brawlers and spouters, which, at the flash chivalrous broadswords, at the rustle of gallows-ropes, will burrow itself, in dens the deeper the welcomer. But, alas, what man does know and measure himself, and the things that are round him ; — else where were the need of physical fighting at all ? Never, till they are cleft asunder, can these heads believe that a Sansculottic arm has any vigour in it : cleft asunder, it will be too late to believe. One may say, without spleen against his poor erring brothers of any side^ that above all other mischiefs, this of the Emigrant Nobles acted fatally on France. Could they have known, could they have understood ! In the beginning of 1789, a splendour and a terror still surrounded them : the Conflagration of their Chateaus, kindled by montlis of obstinacy, went out after the Fourth of August ; and might have continued out, had they at all known what to defend, what to relinquish as indefensible. They were still a graduated Hierarchy of Authorities, or the accredited Similitude of such : they sat there, uniting King with Com- monalty ; transmitting and translating gradually, from degree to degree, the command of the one into the obedience of the other ; rendering com_mand and obedience still possible. Had they understood their place, and what to do in it, this French Revolu- tion, which went forth explosively in years and in months, might have spread itself over generations ; and not a torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been provided for many things. But they were proud and high, these men ; they were not wise to consider. They spurned all from them ; in disdainful hate, they drew the svv^ord and flung away the, scabbard. France has not only no Hierarchy of Authorities, to translate command into obedience ; its Hierarchy of Authorities has fled to the enemies of France ; calls loudly on the enemies of France to interfere armed, who v/ant but a pretext to do that. Jealous Kings and Kaisers might have looked on long, meditating interference, yet afraid and ashamed to interfere : but now do not the King's Brothers, and all French Nobles, Dignitaries and Authorities that are free to speak, which the King himself is not, — passionately invite us, in the name of Right and of Might Ranked at Coblentz, from Fifteen to Twenty thousand stand now brandishing their weapons, with the cry : On, on ! Yes, Messieurs, you shall on ; — and divide the spoil according to your dates of emigrating. Of all which things a poor Legislative Assembly, and Patriot France, is informed : by denunciant friend, by triumphant foe. Sulleau's Pamphlets, of the Rivarol Staff of ( renins, circulate; Ivjrald- ing supreme hope. Durosoy's IMacards tapestry the walls ; Chant du Coq crows day, pecked at by 7'allien's dcs CUoyem, King's- Friend, Royou, Ami du Roi, can name, in exact arithmetical ciphers, the contingents of the various Invading Potentates ; in all. Four hundred and nineteen thousand Foreign fighting men, with Fifteen thousand Emig^rants, Not to reckon these youf BRIGANDS AND J ALES. daily and houriy desertions, which an Editor must daily record, of whole Companies, and even Regiments, crying Vive le Roi^ vive la Reiite., and marching over with banners spread :^ — lies all, and wind ; yet to Patriotism not wind ; nor, alas, one day, to Royou ! Patriotism, therefore, may brawl and babble yet a little while : but its hours are numbered : Europe is coming with Four hundred and nineteen thousand and the Chivalry of France ; the gallows, one may hope, will get its own. CHAPTER VI. BRIGANDS AND JALES. We shall have War, then ; and on what terms ! With an Executive ' pretending,' really with less and less deceptiveness now, * to be dead ; ' casting even a wishful eye towards the enemy : on such terms we shall have War. Public Functionary in vigorous action there is none ; if it be not Rivarol with his Staff of Genius and Two hundred and eighty Applauders. The Public Service lies waste : the very tax- gatherer has forgotten his cunning : in this and the other Pro- vincial Bosrd of Management {pirectoire de Depart?nente) it is found advisible to retain what Taxes you can gather, to pay your ov/n inevitable expenditures. Our Revenue is Assignats ; emission on emission of Paper-money. And the Army ; our Three grand Armies, of Rochambeau, of Liickner, of Lafayette 1 Lean, dis- consolate hover these Three grand Armies, watching the Frontiers there ; three Flights of long-necked Cranes in moulting time ; — wrecked, disobedient, disorganised ; who never saw fire ; the old Generals and Officers gone across the Rhine. War-minister Narbonne, he of the rose-coloured Reports, solicits recruitments, equipments, money, always money ; threatens, since he can get none, to 'take his sword/ which belongs to himself, and go serve his country with that.t The question of questions is : What shall be done ? Shall we, with a desperate detiance which Fortune sometimes favours, d' aw the sword at once, in the face of this in-ru.shing world of Emigra- tion and Obscurantism ; or wait, and temporise and diplomatise, till, if possible, our resources mature themselves a little ? And yet again are our resources growing towards maturity ; or grov>'ing the other ^^yl Dubious : the ablest Patriots are divided ; Brissot and his Brissotins, or Girondins, in the Legislative, cry aloud for the former defiant plan ; Robespierre, in the Jacobins, pleads as loud for the latter dilatory one : with responses, even with mutual reprimands ; distracting the Mother of Patriotism. Con- Ami du Roi Newspaper (in Hist. Pari. xiii. 175). i Monifeur, du 23 Janvier, 1792; Biographie dcj Ministres Nar^ me. G 2 l64 PARLIAMENT FIRST. sider also what agitated Breakfasts there may be at Madame d'Udon's in the Place V^endoine ! The alarm of all men is great. Help, ye Patriots ; and O at least agree ; for the hour presses. Frost was not yet gone, when in that ' tolerably handsome apart- ^ ment of the Castle of Niort,' there arrived a Letter : General Dumouriez must to Pans. It is War-minister Narbonne that writes ; the General shall give counsel about many things."^ In the month of February 1792, Brissotin friends welcome then Dumouriez Poly metis., — comparable really to an antique Ulysses in modern costume ; quick, elastic, shifty, insuppressible, a 'many-counselled man.' Let the Reader fancy tiiis fair France with a whole Cimmerian Europe girdling her, rolling in on her ; black, to burst in red thunder of War ; fair France herself hand-shackled and foot- shackled in the weltering complexities of this Social Clothing, or Constitution, which they have m.ade for her ; a France that, in \ such Constitution, cannot march I And Hunger too ; and plotting < Aristocrats, and excommunicating Dissident Priests : ' the man \ 'Lebrun by name' urging his black wiski, visible to the eye : and, still more terrible in his invisibility, Engineer Goguelat, with ^ Queen's cipher, riding and running ! The excommunicatory Priests give new trouble in the Maine ; and Loire ; La Vendee, nor Cathelineau the wool-dealer, has not ^ ceased grumbling and rumbling. . Nay behold J ales itself once ; more : how often does that real-imaginary Camp of the Fiend | require to be extinguished ! For near two years now, it has \ waned faint and again waxed bright, in the bewildered soul of < Patriotism : actually, if Patriotism knew it, one of the miOst sur- ^ prising products of Nature working with Art. Royalist Seigneurs, ' under this or the other pretext, assemble the simple people of these Cevennes Mountains ; men not unused to revolt, and with heart for fighting, could their poor heads be got persuaded. The Royalist Seigneur harangues ; harping mainly on the religious string : "True Priests maltreated, false Priests intruded, Protestants (once dragooned) now triumphing, things sacred given to the dogs ; " and so produces, from the pious Mountaineer throat, rough growlings. " Shall we not tei:tify, then, ye brave hearts of the Cevennes ; march to the rescue ? Holy Rehgion ; duty to God and King ? " " Si fait, si fait, Just so, just so," answer the brave hearts" always : " Mais il y a de bieii bojines chases dans hi Revolution, But there are main good things in the Revolution too ! " — And so the matter, cajole as we may, will only turn on its axis, not stir from the spot, and remains theatrical merely.+ Nevertheless deepen your cajolery, harp quick and quicker, ye Royalist Seigneurs ; with a dead-lift effort you may bring it to that. In the month of June next, tliis Camp of Jales will step forth as a tlieatricality suddenly become real ; Two thousand strong, and with the boast that it is Seventy thousand : most Strange to see ; with flags flying, bayonets fixed; with Proclama-' * Ehirnouricz, ii. c. 6. f l^ampmartin, i. 201. CONSTITUTION WILL NOT MARCH, 165 tion, and d'Artois Commission of civil war ! Let some Rebecqui, or other the Hke hot-clear Patriot ; let some ' Lieutenant- Colonel *Aubry,' if Rebecqui is busy elsewhere, raise instantaneous National Guards, and disperse and dissolve it ; and blow the Old Castle asunder,^ that so, if possible, we hear of it no more 1 In the Months of February and March, it is recorded, the terror, especially of rural France, had risen even to the transcendental pitch: not far from madness. In Town and Hamlet is rumour; of war, massacre : that Austrians, Aristocrats, above all, that The Brlga7tds -axQ close by. Men quit their houses and huts ; rush fugitive, shrieking, with wife and child, they knew what whither. Such a terror, the eye-witnesses say, never fell on a Nation ; nor shall again fall, even in Reigns of Terror expressly so-called. The Countries of the Loire, all the Central and South-East regions, start up distracted, ' simultaneously as by an electric shock ; '—for indeed grain too gets scarcer and scarcer. ' The people barricade * the entrances of Towns, pile stones in the upper stories, the ' women prepare boihng water ; from moment to moixient. expect- ing the attack. In the Country, the alarm-bell rings incessant: 'troops of peasants, gathered by it, scour the highways, seeking an 'imaginary enemy. They are armed mostly with scythes stuck m ' wood ; and, arriving in wild troops at the barricaded Towns, are ' themselves sometimes taken for Brigands.'f • So rushes old France : old France is rushing down. What the end will be is known to no mortal ; that the end is near all mortals may know. CHAPTER VII. CONSTITUTION WILL NOT MARCH. To all which our poor Legislative, tied up by an unmarching Constitution, can oppose nothing, by way of remedy, but mere bursts of parliamentary eloquence ! They go on, debating, de- nouncing, objurgating : loud weltering Chaos, which devours itself. But their two thousand and odd Decrees? Reader, these happily concern not thee, nor me. Mere Occasional Decrees, foolish and not foolish ; sufficient for that day was its own evil : Of the whole two thousand there are not, now half a score, and these mostly blighted in the bud by royal Veto, that will profit or disprofit us. On the 17th of January, the Legislative, for one thing, jrot its High Court, its Haute Coiir, set up at Orleans. The theory had been*^given by the Constituent, in May last, but this is the reality • a Court for the trial of Political Offences ; a Court which cannot want work. To this it was decreed that there needed no r^yal Acceptance, therefore iIkU tliere could be no Veto. Also Priests can now be married ; e\ er since last October. A patriotic ♦ Mo7iiteiir, Seance du 15 fuillet 1792. f Newspapers, i&c. (in hist. Pari. xiii. 323). l66 PARLIAMENT FIRST, adventurous Priest had made bold to marry himself then ; and not thmkmg this enough, came to the bar with his new spouse • that the whole world might hold honey-moon with him, and a Law be obtamed. Less joyful are the Laws against Refractory Priests ; and yet not less needful ! Decrees on Priests and Decrees on Emigrants • these are the two brief Series of Decrees, worked out with endless debate, and then cancelled by Veto, which mainly concern us here. For an august National Assembly must needs conquer these Refractories, Clerical or Laic, and thumbscrew them into obedi- ence ; yet, behold, always as you tun: your legislative thumbscrew and will press and even crush till Refractories give way — King s Veto steps in, with magical paralysis ; and your thumbscrew, hardly squeezing, much less crushing, does not act ' Truly a melancholy Set of Decrees, a pair of Sets ; paralysed by Veto/ First, under date the 28th of October 1791, we have Legislative Proclamation, issued by herald and bill-stickc' • mvitmg Monsieur, the King's Brother to return within two months', under penalties. To which invitation Monsieur rephes nothino- • or indeed ^replies by Newspaper Parody, inviting the aurust Legislative ' to return to common sense within two months ' under penalties. Whereupon the Legislative must take stronger measures. So, on the 9th of November, we declare all Emio-rants to be * suspect of conspiracy ; ' and, in brief, to be ' outlawed ' if they have not returned at Newyear s-day :— Will the King say Veto? That ' triple impost ' shall be levied on these men's Pro- perties, or even their Properties be ' put in sequestration,' one can understand. But further, on Newyear's-day itself, not an indivi- dual having ' returned,' we declare, and with fresh emphasis some fortnight later again declare. That Monsieur is dechu, forfeited of his eventual Heirship to the Crown ; nay more that Conde Calonne, and a considerable List of others are accused of hi^^h treason ; and shall be judged by our High Court of Orleans : K^/^? ./—Then again as to Nonjurant Priests: it was decreed in November last, that they should forfeit what Pensions they had • be ' put under inspection, under surveillance,' and, if need were' be banished : Veto / A still sharper turn is coming : but to thi^ also the answer will be, Veto. F^/^ after Veto; your thumbscrew paralysed! Gods and men may see that the Legislative is in a false position. As, alas who IS in a true one ? Voices already murmur for a ' National 'Con- vention '* This poor Legislative, spurred and stung into action by a whole Prance and a whole Europe, cannot act; can only objurgate and perorate ; with stormy ' motions,' and motion in which is no : with effervescence, with noise and fuliginous fury ' • I'f, ^^^"^^ ^^^^ National Hall ! President jingling his inaudible bell ; or, as utmost signal of distress, clapping on his hat; the tumult subsiding in twenty minutes,' and this or the other indiscreet Member sent to Abbaye Prison for three days ! Suspected Persons must he sununoncd and questioned • Dcccfiib;. CONSTITUTION WILL NOT MARCH. 167 old M. de Sombreuil of the Invalides has to give account of him- self, and why he leaves his Gates open. Unusual smoke rose from the Sevres Pottery, indicating conspiracy ; the Potters ex- plained that it was Necklace- Lam otte's Me?noirs^ bought up by her Majesty, which they were endeavouring to suppress by fijre *— which nevertheless he that runs may still read. Again, it would seem, Duke de Brissac and the King's ConstL tutional-Guard are * making cartridges secretly in the cellars ; ' a set of Royahsts, pure and impure ; black cut-throats many of them, picked out of gaming houses and sinks ; in all Six thousand in- stead of Eighteen hundred ; who evidently gloom on us every time we enter the Chateau. t Wherefore, with infinite debate, let Brissac and King's Guard be disbanded. Disbanded accordingly they are ; after only two months of existence, for they did not get on foot till March of this same year. So ends briefly the King's new Constitutional MaisoJt MiUtaire j he must now be guarded by mere Swiss and blue Nationals again. It seems the lot of Consti- tutional things. New Constitutional Maison Civile he woulrissot's head, they say, is getting giddy, in this sudden height : as feeble heads do. Envious men insinuate that the Wife Roland is Minister, and not the Husband : it is happily the worst they have to charge her with. For the rest, let whose head soever be getting giddy, it is not this brave woman's. Serene and queenly here, as she was of old iji her own hired garret of the UrsuHnes Convent ! She who has quietly shelled French-beans lor her dinner ; being led to * Dumont, c. 20, ai. t Madame Roland, ii. 80-115. MINISTER ROLAND, 173 that, as a young maiden, by quiet insight and computation ; and knowing what that was, and what she was : such a one will also look quietly on or-moulu and veneering, not ignorant of these either. Calonne did the veneering : he gave dinners here, old Besenval diplomatically whispering to him ; and was great : yet Calonne we saw at last walk with long strides.' Necker next ; and where now is Necker ? Us also a swift change has brought hither; a swift change will send us hence. Not a Palace but a Caravansera 1 So wags and wavers this unrestful World, day after day, moiim after month. The Streets of Paris, and all Cities, roll daily theif oscillatory flood of men ; which flood does, nightly, disappear, and lie hidden horizontal in beds and trucklebeds ; and awakes on the morrow to new perpendicularity and movement. Men go their roads, foolish or wise ;— Engineer Goguelat to and fro, bear- ing Queen's cipher. A Madame de Stael is busy ; cannot clutch her Narbonne from the Time-flood : a Princess de Lamballe is busy ; cannot help her Queen. Barnave, seeing the Feuillants dispersed, and Coblentz so brisk, begs by way of final recompence to kiss her Majesty's hand ; augurs not well of her new course ; and retires home to Grenoble, to wed an heiress there. The Cafe Valois and Meet the Pvcstaurateur's hear daily gasconade ; loud babble of Half-pay Royalists, with or without Poniards. Remnants of Aristocrat saloons call the new Ministry Ministere- Sa?isculotte. A Louvet, of the Romance Faublas, is busy in the Jacobins. A Cazotte, of the Romance Diable Amojireux, is busy elsewhere : better wert thou quiet, old Cazotte ; it is a world, this, of magic become real / All men are busy ; doing they only half guess what :— flinging seeds, of tares mostly, into the Seed-field I of Time :' this, by and by, will declare wholly what, i But Social Explosions have in them something dread.^and as it I were mad and magical : which indeed Life always secretly has ; ! thus the dumb Earth (says Fable), if you pull her mandrake-roots, i will give a daemonic mad-making 7?ioan. These Explosions and ! Revolts ripen, break forth like dumb dread Forces of Nature ; I and yet they are Men's forces ; and yet we are part of them : the i Daemonic that is in man's life has burst out on us, will sweep us too away ! — One day here is like another, and yet it is not like but difl"erent. How much is growing, silently resistless, at all naoments ! Thoughts are growing ; forms of Speech are growing, and Customs and even Costumes ; still more visibly are actions and transactions growing, and that doomed Strife, of France with herself and with the whole world. The word Liberty is never named now except in conjunction with another ; Liberty and Equality. In like manner, what, in a reign of Liberty and Equality, can these words, ' Sir,' ' obedient ; 'Servant,' ' H:>nour to be,' and such hke, signify? Tatters and \ fibres of old Feudality ; which, were it only in the Grammatical province, ought to be rooted out ! The Mother Society has long i since had proposals to that effect : these she could not entertain PARLIAMENT FIRST, not, at the moment. Note too how the Jacobin Brethren are i mounting new symbohcal headgear : the Woollen Cap or Night- '\ cap, bonnet de laine^ better known as bonnet rouge, the colour being red. A thing one wears not only by way of Phrygian Cap- | of- Liberty, but also for convenience' sake, and then also in com- \ pliment to the Lower-class Patriots and Bastille-Heroes ; for the Red Nightcap combines all the three properties. Nay cockades : themselves begin to be made of wool, of tricolor yarn : the riband-cockade, as a symptom of Feuillant Upper-class temper, is ! becoming suspicious. Signs of the times. Still more, note the travail- throes of Europe: or. rather, note \ the birth she brings ; for the successive throes and shrieks, of Austrian and Prussian Alliance, of Kaunitz Anti-jacobin Despatch, : of French Ambassadors cast out, and so forth, were long to note. . Dumouriez corresponds with Kaunitz, Metternich, or Cobentzel, in \ another style that Delessarts did. Strict becomes stricter ; cate- j gorical answer, as to this Coblentz work and much else, shall be ; given. Failing which ? Faihng which, on the 20th day of April' 1792, King and Ministers step over to the Salle de Manege ; ' promulgate how the matter stands; and poor Louis, 'with tears 'in his eyes,' proposes that the Assembly do now decree War. : After due eloquence. War is decreed that night. ; War, indeed ! Paris came all crowding, full of expectancy, to i the morning, and still more to the evening session. D'Orleans lj with his two sons, is there ; looks on, wide-eyed, from the oppo-' j site Gallery.^ Thou canst look, O Philippe : it is a War big with :j issues, for thee and for all men. Cimmerian Obscurantism and'|| this thrice glorious Revolution shall wrestle for it, then : some |i Four-and- twenty years ; in immeasurable Briareus' wrestle ; ] trampling ,and tearing ; before they can come to any, not agree- 1^ meant, but compromise, and approximate ascertainm.ent each of what is in the other. Let our Three Generals on the Frontiers look to it, therefore ; and poor Chevalier de Grave, the Warminister, consider what he will do. What is in the three Generals and Armies we may guess. As for poor Chevalier de Grave, he, in this whirl of things all coming to a press and pinch upon him, loses head, and merely whirls with them, in a totally distracted manner ; signing himself at last, • De Grave, Mayor of Paris : ' whereupon he demits, re- turns over the Channel, to ^valk in Kensington Gardens ;t and austere Servan, the able Engineer-Officer, is elevated in his stead. To the post of Honour ? To that of Difficulty, at least. CHAPTER X. PETION-NA'J lONAL-PIQUE. And yet, how, on dark bottomless Cataracts there plays the ioolishest fantastic-coloured spray and shadow ; hiding the Abyssl * Deux A?nLs, vii. 146-66. t Dumont, c. 19, 21. PETION-NA TIONAL-PIQUE. I7S mder vapoury rainbows ! ' Alongside of this discussion as to Aus- rian- Prussian War, there goes on not less but more vehemently a liscussion, Whether the Forty or Two-and-forty Swiss of Ch^teau- ^ieux shall be liberated from the Brest Galhes ? And then, Whether, being liberated, they shall have a public Festival, or only private ones ? , i tt Theroi^me, as we saw, spoke ; and Collot took up the tale. Mas not Bouiile's final displav of himself, in that final Night of Spurs, ctamped vour so-called^ ' Revolt of Nanci ' into a ' Massacre of * Nanci,' for all Patriot judgments? Hateful is that massacre; hateful the Lafavette-Feuillant ' public thanks ' given for it ! t or indeed. Jacobin 'Patriotism and dispersed Feuillantism are now at death-grios ; and do fight with all weapons, even with scenic shows. The \v:ills of Paris, accordingly, are covered with Placard and Counter-Placard, on the subject of Forty Swiss blockheads. Journal responds to Journal ; Player Collot to Poetaster Roucher ; Joseph Chenier the Jacobin, squire of Theroigne, to his Brother Andre the Feuillant ; Mayor Petion to Dupont de Nemours : and for the space of two months, there is nowhere peace for the thought of man,— till this thing be settled. Gloria in excelsis ! The Forty Swiss are at last got amnestied Rejoice ye Forty : doff your greasy wool Bonnets, which shall become Caps of Liberty. The Brest Daughter-Society welcomes you from on board, with kisses on each cheek : your iron Hand- cuffs are disputed as Rehcs of Saints ; the Brest Society indeed can have one portion, which it will beat into Pikes, a sort of Sacred Pikes ; but the other portion must belong to Paris, and be sus- pended from the dome there, along with the Flags of the Three Free Peoples ! Such a goose is man ; and cackles over plush- velvet Grand Monarques and woollen Galley-slaves ; over every- thing and over nothing,- and will cackle with his whole soul merely if others cackle ! . i i 1 1 j On the ninth morning of April, these Forty Swiss blockheads arrive. From Versailles ; with vivats heaven-high ; with the afflu- ence of men and women. To the Townhall we conduct them ; nay to the Legislative itself, though not without difficulty. They are harangued, bedinnered, begifted,— the very Court, not for con- science' sake, contributing something ; and their Pubhc Festival shall be next Sunday. Next Sunday accordingly it is."^ They are mounted into a ' triumphal Car resembling a ship ; ' are carted over Paris, with the clang of cymbals and drums, all mortals assist- ing applausive; carted to the Champ-de-Mars and Fatherlands Altar ; and finally carted, for Time always brings tleliverance,— into invisibilitv for evermore. Whereupon dispersed Feuillantism, or that Party which loves Liberty yet not more than Monarchy, will likewise have its Festi- val : Festival of Simonneau, unfortunate Mayor of Etampes, who died for the Law ; most surely for the Law, though Jacobinism disputes ; being trampled down with his Red Flag in the not about * Newspapers of February, March, April, 1792 ; lambe d' Andre Chenier wrla Fete des Suisses : &c.,'&c. (in Hist. Pari. xiii. xiv.)> 176 PARLIAMENT FIRST. grains. At which Festival the Public again assists, ?ut of each Canton ; picked Patriots, for Roland has charge of the Interior : they shall assemble here in Paris ; and be for a defence, :unningly devised, against foreign Austrians and domestic Aus- trian Committee alike. So much can a Patriot Ministry and Legislative do. Reasonable and cunningly devised as such Camp may, to Servan md Patriotism, appear, it appears not so to Feuillantism ; to that Feuillant-Aristocrat Staff of the Paris Guard ; a Staff, one would jay again, which will need to be dissolved. These men see, in :his proposed Camp of Servants, an offence ; and even, as they pretend to say, an insult. Petitions there come, in consequence, from blue Feuillants in epaulletes ; ill received. Nay, in the end, .here comes one Petition, called ' of the Eight Thousand National Guards : ' so many names are on it ; including women and :hildren. Which famed Petition of the Eight Thousand is indeed -eceived : and the Petitioners, all under arms, are admitted to the lonours of the sitting,— if honours or even if sitting there be ; for he instant their bayonets appear at the one door, the Assembly adjourns,' and begins to flow out at the other.''^ ^ Also, in theie same days, it is lamentable to see how National juards, escorting Fete Dieu or Co7'pus-Christi ceremonial, do :ollar and smite down any Patriot that does not uncover as the H:ostie passes. They clap their bayonets to the breast of Cattle- )utcher Legendre, a known Patriot ever since the Bastille days ; md threaten to butcher him ; though he sat quite respectfully, he •ays, in his Gig, at a distance of fifty paces, waiting till the thing vere by. Nay, orthodox females were shrieking to have down the Lanterne on him.f To such height has Feuillantism gone in this Corps. For indeed, ire not their Officers creatures of the chief Feuillant, Lafayette.^ The Court too has, very naturally, been tampering with them ; dressing them, ever since that dissolution of the so-called Con- titutional Guard. ^ Some Battalions are altogether ' petris, kneaded full ' of Feuillantism, mere Aristocrats at bottom : for instance, he Battalion of the Filles-Saint- Thomas^ made up of your Bankers, * Monitaur^ Seance du lo Jiiin 1792. t Dibats des jacobins (in Hist. Part, xi>. 429). I7S PARLIAMENT FIRST. Stockbrokers, and other Full -purses of the Rue Vivienne. On , worthy old F^riend Weber, Queen's Foster-brother Weber, carrie \ a musket in that Battalion, — one may judge with what degree c ^ Patriotic intention. Heedless of all which, or rather heedful of all which, the Legi; i lative, backed by Patriot France and the feeling of Necessity \ decrees this Camp of Twenty thousand. Decisive though cond , tional Banishment of malign Priests, it has already decreed. ^ It will now be seen, therefcie, Whether the Hereditai] Representative is for us or against us ? Whethei- or not, to all oti other woes, this intolerablest one is to be added ; which renders u not a* menaced Nation in extreme jeopardy and need, but , paralytic Solecism of a Nation ; sitting wrapped as in dea cerements, of a Constitutional- Vesture that w^ere no other than winding-sheet ; our right hand glued to our left : to wait there writhing and wriggling, unable to stir from the spot, till in Prussia; rope we mount to the gallows ? Let the Hereditary Represent? tive consider it well : The Decree of Priests ? The Camp c' Twenty Thousand ? — By Heaven, he answers. Veto I Veto /- Strict Roland hands in his Letter to the King; or rather it wa Madame's Letter, who wrote it all at a sitting ; one of the plainest spoken Letters ever handed in to any King. This plain-spoke Letter King Louis has the benefit of reading overnight. He read; inwardly digests ; and next morning, the whole Patriot Ministr finds itself turned out. It is the 13th of June 1792.^ Dumouriez the many counselled, he, with one Duranthon, callc; Minister of Justice, does indeed linger for a day or two ; in rathe suspicious circumstances ; speaks with the Queen, almost weep' with her : but in the end, he too sets off for the Army ; leaving what Un-Patriot or Semi-Patriot Ministry and Ministries can no> accept the helm, to accept it. Name them not : new quick-chang ing Phantasms, which shift like magic-lantern figures ; mor spectral than ever \ Unhappy Queen, unhappy. Louis ! The two Vetos were %\ natural : are not the Priests martyrs ; also friends t This Cam] of Twenty Thousand, could it be other than of stormfullest Sans culottes.^ Natural; and yet, to France, unendurable. Priest that co-operate with Coblentz must go elsewhither with thei martyrdom : stormful Sansculottes, these and no other kind 0 creatures, will drive back the Austrians. If thou, prefer th( Austrians, then for the love of Heaven go join them. If not, ji'ii frnnkly with what will oppose them to the death. Middle course 1 none. 0\\ alas, what extreme course was tlierc left now, for a man In Louis Underhand Royalists, Ex-Minister Bertrand-Molevi ICx-Constituent Mrilouet, and all manner of tmhelpful individu advise and advise. With face of hope turned now on the Li kuive Assembly, ond now on Austria and Coblentz, and roi generally on the Chaj)tcr of Chances, an ancient Kingsliii' reeling and spinning, one knows not whitherwai'd^ on the flooc ^ings. * Madame Roland, ii. 115. PROCESSION OF THE BLACK BREECHES. 173 CHAPTER XII. PROCESSION OF THE BLACK BREECHES. j But is there a thinking man in France who, in these circum° stances, can persuade himself that the Constitution will march ? Brunswick is stirring ; he, in few days now, will march. Shall France sit still, wrapped in dead cerements and grave-clothes, its right hand glued to its left, till the Brunswick vSaint-Kartholomew arrive ; till France be as Poland, and its Rights of Man become a ! Prussian Gibbet ? ! Verily, it is a moment frightful for all men. National Death ; or else some preternatural convulsive outburst of National Life ; — that same, dcEmonic outburst ! Patriots whose audacity has limits had, in truth, better retire like Bar- nave ; court private fehcity at Grenoble. Patriots, whose audacity has no limits must sink down into the obscure ; and, daring and defying all things, seek salvation in stratagem, in Plot of Insurrection. Roland and young Barbaroux have spread i out the Map of France before them, Barbaroux says ^ with tears ^bov consider what Rivers, what Mountain ranges are in it : they retire behind this Loire-stream, defend these Auvergne stone- .11) rinths ; save some little sacred Territory of the Free ; die at » least in their last ditch. Lafayette indites his emphatic Letter to the Legislative against Jacobinism which emphatic Letter will not heal the unhealable. Forward, ye Patriots whose audacity has no limits ; it is 3^ou [ now that must either do or die ! The Sections of Paris sit in deep ; counsel; send out Deputation after Deputation to the Salle de Manege, to petition and denounce. Great is their ire against ty- rannous Veto^ Ajtstrian Cominittee, and the combined Cimmerian Kings. What boots it ? Legislative listens to the ^ tocsin in our I * hearts grants us honours of the sitting, sees us defile with ! jingle and fanfaronade ; but the Camp of Twenty Thousand, the I Priest- Decree, be- vetoed by Majesty, are become impossible fcr i Legislative. Fiery Isnard says, " We will have Equality, should f' we descend for it to the tomb." Vergniaud utters, hypothetically, his stern Ezekiel-visions of the fate of Anti-national Kings. But the question is : Will hypothetic prophecies, will jingle and fan- faronade demolish the Veto ; or will the Veto, secure in its Tui- 'S Chateau, remain undemolishable by these? Barbaroux, ling away his tears, writes to the Marseilles Municipalitv, that ■ y must send him * Six hundred men who know how to die, qui ' Sir,' cut 77wurir.''\ No wet-eyed message this, but a fire-eyed one; —which will be obeyed ! Meanwhile the Twentieth of June is nigh, anniversary of that world-famous Oath of the Tennis-Court : on which day, it is said, * Monitetir, Seance du 18 Juin 1792. 5 t Barbaroux, p. 40. 1: ' 38o PARLIAMENT FIRST. certain citizens have in view to plant a Mai or Tree of Liberty, in ^ the Tuileries Terrace of the Feuillants ; perhaps also to petition \ the Legislative and Hereditary Representative about these Vetos ; j ■ — with such demonstration, jingle and evolution, as may seem | profitable and practicable. Sections have gone singly, and jingled \ and evolved : but if they all went, or great part of them, and there , planting their Mai in these alarming circumstances, sounded the \ tocsin in their hearts ? Among King's Friends there can be but one 'opinion as to such \ a step : among Nation's Friends there may be two. On the one ' hand, might it not by possibility scare away these unblessed Vetos ? ; Private Patriots and even Legislative Deputies may have each his own opinion, or own no- opinion : but the hardest task falls evi- dently on Mayor Petion and the Municipals, at once Patriots and . Guardians of the public Tranquillity. Hushing the matter down, with the one hand ; tickling it up with the other ! Mayor Petion \ and Municipality may lean this way ; Department-Directory with \ Procureur- Syndic Roederer having a Feuillant tendency, may lean , that. On the whole, each man must act according to his one , opinion or to his two opinions ; and all manner of influences, : official representations cross one another in the foolishest way. i Perhaps after all, the Project, desirable and yet not desirable, will dissipate itself, being run athwart by so many complexities ; and coming to nothing Not so : on the Twentieth morning of June, a large Tree ol Liberty, Lombardy Poplar by kind, lies visibly tied on its car, in the Suburb- Antoine. Suburb Saint-Marceau too, in the uttermo South-East, and all that remote Oriental region, Pikemen Pikewomen, National Guards, and the unarmed curious are gathei ing, — with the peaceablest intentions in the world. A tricolor Municipal arrives ; speaks. Tush, it is all peaceable, we tell thee, in the way of Law : are not Petitions allowable, and the Patriotism of Mais? The tricolor Municipal returns without effect : your Sansculottic rills continue flowing, combining into brooks : towards noontide, led by tall Santerre in blue uniform, by tall Saint- Huruge i in white hat, it moves Westward, a respectable river, or complica- tion of still-swelling rivers. \ What Processions have we not seen: Corptis-C hristi :}iXid Le-i gendre waiting in Gig; Bones of Voltaire with bullock-chariots, and goadsmen in Roman Costume ; Feasts of Chateau- Vieux and Simonneau ; Gouvion Funcrnls, Rosseau Sham- Funerals, and the Baptism of P^tion-National-Pike ! Nevertheless this Procession has a character of its own. Tricolor ribands streaming aloft from pike-heads; ironshod batons; and emblems not a few; among w:hich, see specially these two, of the tragic and the untragic sort : a Bull's Heart transfixed with iron, bearing this epigraph, ' Coeiir ^ d^Aristocrate^ JKu'rXvtQVAX!':^ Heart;' and, more striking still, pro- ^ perly the stiindard of the host, a i)air of old Black Breeches (silk,: they say), extended on cross-staff high overhead, with these j memorable words: Trcinhles lyrans, voild les Sansculottes^^ * Tremble tyrants, here are the Sans-indispensables ! ' Also, the Procession trails two cannons. PROCESSION OF THE BLACK BREECHES, i8t Scarfed tricolor Municipals do now again meet it, in the Oiiai Saint-Bernard ; and plead earnestly, having called halt. Peaceable, ye virtuous tricolor Municipals, peaceable are we as the sucking dove. Behold our Tennis-Court Mai. Petition is legal ; and as for arms, did not an august Legislative receive the so-called Eight i Thousand in arms, Feuillants though they were.^ Our Pikes, are they not of National iron ? Law is our father and mother, whom I we will not dishonour ; but Patriotism is our own soul. Peaceable, i virtuous Municipals ;— and on the whole, hmited as to tim.e ! ' Stop we cannot ; march ye with us. — The Black Breeches agitate themselves, impatient ; the cannon-wheels grumble : the many- footed Host tramps on. How it reached the Salle de Manege, like an ever-waxing river ; got admittance, after debate ; read its Address ; and defiled, dancing and ca-ira-'mg, led by tall sonorous Santerre and tall : sonorous Saint- Lluruge : how it flowed, not now a waxing river but a shut Caspian lake, round all Precincts of the Tuileries ; the front Patriot squeezed by the rearward, against barred iron Grates, \ like to have the life squeezed out of him, and looking too into the ; dread thro;nt of cannon, for National Battahons stand ranked within : how tricolor Municipals ran assiduous, and Royalists with Tickets of Entry ; and both Majesties sat in the interior surrounded by men in black : all this the human mind shall fancy ; for itself, or read in old Newspapers, and Syndic Roederer's Chronicle of Fifty Days. I Our Mai is planted ; if not in the Feuillants Terrace, w^hither ' is no ingate, then in the Garden of the Capuchins, as near as we could get. National Assembly has adjourned till the Evening Session : perhaps this shut lake, finding no ingate, will retire to its sources again ; and disappear in peace? Alas, not yet : rear- ward still presses on ; rearward knows little what pressure is in the front. One would wish at all events, were it possible, to have a word with his Majesty first ! The shadows fall longer, eastward ; it is four o'clock : will his Majesty not come out ? Hardly he ! In that case, Commandant Santerre, Cattle-butcher Legendre, Patriot Huguenin with the tocsin in his heart ; they, and others of authority, will enter i7i, ' Petition and request to wearied uncertain National Guard ; louder and louder petition; backed by the rattle of our tw^o cannons ! The reluctant Grate opens : endless Sansculottic multitudes flood the stairs ; knock at the wooden guardian of your privacy. Knocks, in such case, grow strokes, grow smashings the wooden guardian flies in shivers. And now ensues a Scene over which the world has long wailed ; and not unjustly ; for a sorrier spectacle, of Incongruity fronting Incongruity, and as it were recognising themselves incongruous, and staring stupidly in each other's face, the world seldom saw. King Louis, his door being beaten on, opens it ; stands with free bosom; asking, "What do you want?" The Sansculottic flood recoils awestruck ; returns however, the rear pressing on the front, with cries of "Veto! Patriot Ministers ! Remove Veto!" ^ ^-^4^61, &c. &c. (in Hist, Pari, xv. 98-194). l82 PARLIAM''^:!' riRST, —which things, Louis valiantly ,.i ^ this is not the time to do, nor this the way to ask him to do. Honour what virtue is in a man. Louis does not want courage : he has even the higher kind called moral courage, though only the passive half of that. His few National Grenadiers shuffle back with him, into the embrasure of a window : there he stands, with unimpeachable passivity, amid the shouldering and the braying ; a spectacle to men. They hand him a Red Cap of Liberty ; he sets it quietly on his head, forgets it there. He complains of thirst ; half-drunk Rascality offers him a bottle, he drinks of it. " Sire, do not fear,'' says one of his Gre- nadiers. "Fear?" answers Louis : " feel then," putting the man's hand on his heart. So stands Majesty in Red woollen Cap ; black Sansculottism weltering round him, far and wide, aimless, with in-articulate dissonance, with cries of Veto ! Patriot Ministers ! " For the space of three hours or more ! The National Assembly is adjourned ; tricolor Municipals avail almost nothing : Mayor Petion tarries absent ; Authority is none. The Queen with her Children and Sister Elizabeth, in tears and terror not for them- selves only, are sitting behind barricaded tables and Grenadiers in an inner room. The Men in Black have all wisely disappeared. Blmd lake of Sansculottism. welters stagnant through the King's Chateau, for the space of three hours. Nevertheless all things do end. Vergniaud arrives with Legis- lative Deputation, the Evening Session having now opened. Mayor Petion has arrived; is haranguing, 'lifted on the shoulders 'of two Grenadiers.' In this uneasy attitude and in others, at various places without and within. Mayor Petion harangues ; many men harangue : finally Commandant Santerre defiles ; passes out, with his Sansculottism, by the opposite side of the Chateau. Passing through the room where the Queen, with an air of dignity and sorrowful resignation, sat among the tables and Grenadiers, a woman offers her too a Red Cap ; she holds it in her hand, even puts it on the little Prince Royal. "Madame," said Santerre, "this People loves you more than you think."*-— About eight o'clock the Royal Family fall into each other's arms amid ' torrents of tears.' Unhappy Family ! Who would not weep for it, were there not a whole world to be wept for Thus has the Age of Chivalry gone, and that of Hunger come. Thus does all-needing Sansculottism look in the face of its AW, Regulator, King or Ableman ; and find that he has nothing to give it. Thus do tl.o two Parties, brouglU face to face after loni centuries, stare stupidly at one another, This ain I; but^ Good IIeave?iy is that thou ? — and depart, not knowing what to make oi it. And yet, Incongruities having recognised themselves to bu incongruous, something must be made of it. The Fates know v/hai. This is the world-famous Twentieth of June, more worthy to be called the Procession of the Black Ih'ceches, With which, what we had to say of this First French l^iennial Parliament, and iU uroducts and activities, may perhaps fitly enough terminate. * Toulongeon, ii. ^^3; Canipan, ii. c. 20. BOOK SIXTH. THE MARSEILLESE. CHAPTER I. EXECUTIVE THAT DOES NOT ACT. How could your paralytic National Executive be put 'in action/ In any measure, by such a Twentieth of June as this ? Quite con- trariwise : a large sympathy for Majesty so insulted arises every where ; expresses itself in Addresses, Petitions, ' Petition of the 'Twenty Thousand inhabitants of Paris,' and such like, among all Constitutional persons ; a decided rallying round the Throne. Of which rallying it was thought King Louis might have made something. However, he does make nothing of it, or attempt to make ; for mdeed his views are lifted beyond domestic sympathy and rallying, over to Coblentz mainly : neither in itself is the same sympathy worth much. It is sympathy of men who believe still that the Constitution can march. Wherefore the old discord and, ferment, of Feuillant sympathy for Royalty, and Jacobin sympathy for Fatherland, acting against each other from within ; with terror of Coblentz and Brunswick acting from without : — this discord and ferment must hold on its course, till a catastrophe do ripen and come. One would think, especially as Brunswick is near marching, such catastrophe cannot now be distant. Busy, ye Twenty-fi^^e French Millions ; ye i"oreign Potentates, miniitory Emigrants, German drill-serjeants ; each do what his hand findeth ! Thou, O Reader, at such safe distance, wilt see what they make of it among them. Consider therefore this pitiable Twentieth of June as a futility ; no catastrophe, rather a calasJasis, or heightening. Do not its Black Breeches wave there, in the Historical Imagination, like a melancholy flag of distress ; soliciting help, which no mortal can give ? Soliciting pity, which thou wert hard-hearted not to give freely, to one and ail ! Other such flags, or what are called Occurrences, and black or bright symbolic Phenomena; will flii through the Historical Imagination : these, one after one, let us note, with extreme brevity. The first phenomenon is that of Lafayette at the Bar of thQ i84 THE MARSEILLESE. Assembly ; after a week and day. Promptly, on hearing of this scandalous Twentieth of June, Lafayette has quitted his Command on the North Frontier, in better or worse order ; and got hither, on the 28th, to repress the Jacobins : not by Letter now ; but by oral Petition, and weight of character, face to face. The august Assembly finds the step questionable ; invites him meanwhile to the honours of the sitting.^ Other honour, or advantage, there unhappily came almost none ; the Galleries- all growling ; fiery Isnard glooming ; sharp Guadet not wanting in sarcasms. And out of doors, when the sitting is over, Sieur Resson, keeper of the Patriot Cafe in these regions, hears in the street a hurly- burly ; steps forth to look, he and his Patriot customers : it is Lafayette's carriage, with a tumultuous escort of blue Grenadiers, Cannoneers, even Officers of the Line, hurrahing and capering round it. They make a pause opposite Sieur Resson's door ; wag their plumes at him ; nay shake their fists, bellowing A bas les Jacobins J but happily pass on without onslaught. They pass on, to plant a Mai before the GeneraFs door, and bully considerably. All which the Sieur Resson cannot but report with sorrow, that night, in the Mother Society.t But what no Sieur Resson nor Mother Society can do more than guess is this. That a council of rank Feuillants, your unabolished Staff of the Guard and who else has status and weight, is in these very moments privily de- liberating at the General's : Can we not put down the Jacobins by force Next day, a Review shall be held, in the Tuileries Garden, of such as will turn out, and try. Alas, says Toulongeon, hardly a hundred turned out. Put it off till to-morrow, then, to give better warning. On the morrow, which is Saturday, there turn out ^some thirty ; ' and depart shrugging their shoulders ! J Lafayette promptly takes carriage again ; returns musing on many things. The dust of Paris is hardly off his wheels, the summer Sunday is still young, when Cordeliers Jn deputation pluck up that Mai of his : before sunset, Patriots have burnt him in effigy. Louder doubt and louder rises, in Section, in National Assembly, as to the legality of such unbidden Anti-jacobin visit on the part of a General : doubt swelling and spreading all over France, for six weeks or so : with endless talk about usurping soldiers, about English Monk, nay about Cromwell : O thou poor GrandisoU' Cromwell ! — What boots it? King Louis himself looked coldly on the enterprize : colossal Hero of two Worlds, having weighed him- self in the balance, finds that he is become a gossamer Colossus, only some thirty turning out. In a like sense, and with a like issue, works our Department- Directory here at l^aris ; who, on the 6th of July, take upon them to suspend Mayor Petion nnd IVocurcur Manuel from all civic functions, for their conduct, replete, as is alleged, with omissions * Moniteur, Seance dii 28 Jiiin 1792. f Ddbats des yacubi us {H/sL ParL xv. 235). j Toulongeon, ii. 180. hieealso Dampraartin, ii. i6i. EXECUTIVE THAT DOES NOT ACT. 185 tnd commissions, on that delicate Twentieth of June. Virtuous Petion see himself a kind of martyr, or pseudo-martyr, threatened with several things ; drawls out due heroical lamentation ; to which Patriot Paris and Patriot Legislative duly respond. King Louis >. and Mayor Petion have already had an interview on that business of the Twentieth ; an interview and dialogue, distinguished by frankness on both sides ending on King Louis's side with the words, " Taisez-voiis, Hold your peace." For the rest, this of suspending our Mayor does seem a mistimed measure. By ill chance, it came out precisely on the day of that famxous Baiser de r amourette^ or miraculous reconciliatory Delilah- Kiss, which we spoke of long ago. Which Delilah-Kiss was thereby quite hindered of effect. For now his Majesty has to write, almost that same night, asking a reconciled Assembly for advice ! The reconciled Assembly will not advise ; will not interfere. The King confirms the suspension ; then perhaps, but not till then will the Assembly interfere, the noise of Patriot Paris getting loud. Whereby your Delilah- Kiss, such was the destiny of Parliament First, becomes a Philistine Battle ! Nay there goes a word that as many as Thirty of our chief Patriot Senators are to be clapped in prison, by mittimus and in- dictment of Feuillant Justices, y^/^^i- de Paix j who here in Paris were well capable of such a thing. It was but in May last that Juge de Paix Lariviere, on complaint of Bertrand-Moleville touching that Austrian Committee^ made bold to launch his mit- timus against three heads of the Mountain, Deputies Bazire, Chabot, Merlin, the Cordelier Trio ; summoning them to appear before him^ and shew where that Austrian Committee was, or else suffer the consequences. Which mittimus the Trio, on their side, made bold to fling in the fire : and valiantly pleaded privilege of Parliament. So that, for his zeal without knowledge, poor Jus- tice Lariviere now sits in the prison of Orleans, waiting trial from the Haute Cotir there. Whose example, may it not deter other rash Justices ; and so this word of the Thirty arrestments continue a word merely ' But on the whole, though Lafayette weighed so light, and has had his Mai plucked up. Official Feuillantism falters not a whit ; vbut carries its head high, strong in the letter of the Law. Feuil- lants all of these men : a Feuillant Directory ; founding on high character, and such hke ; with Duke de la Rochefoucault for President, — a thing which may prove dangerous for him ! Dim now is the once bright Anglomania of these admired Noblemen. Duke de Liancourt offers, out of Normandy where he is Lord- Lieutenant, not only to receive his Majesty, thinking of flight thither, but to lend him money to enormous amounts. Sire, it iS not a Revolt, it is a Revolution ; and truly no rose-water one I Worthier Noblemen were not in France nor' in Europe than those two : but the Time is crooked, quick-shifting, perverse ; what Straightest course will lead to any goal, in it? Another phasis which we note, in these early July days, is tha* i86 THE MARSEILLESE. of certain thin streaks of Federate National Volunteers wending from various points towards Paris, to hold a new Federation- Festival, or Feast of Pikes, on the Fourteenth there. So has the ^ National Assembly wished it, so has the Nation willed it. In this way, perhaps, may we still have our Patriot Camp in spite of Veto, For cannot these Federes. having celebrated their Feast of Pikes, march on to Soissons ; and, there being drilled and regimented, rush to the Frontiers, or whither we like 1 Thus were the one Veto cunningly eluded ! As indeed the other Veto^ about Priests, is also like to be eluded ; and without much cunning. For Provincial Assemblies, in Calvados as one instance, are proceeding on their own strength to judge and banish Antinational Priests. Or still worse without Provincial Assembly, a desperate People, as at Bourdeaux, can ' hang two of them on the Lanterne,' on the way towards judg- ment.^ Pity for the spoken Veto^ when it cannot become an acted one ! It is true, some ghost of a War-minister, or Home-minister, for the time being, ghost whom we do not name, does write to Muni- cipalities and King's Commanders, that they shall, by all con- ceivable methods, obstruct this Federation, and even turn back the Federes by force of arms : a message which scatters mere doubt, paralysis and confusion ; irritates the poor Legislature ; reduces the Federes as we see, to thin streaks. But being ques- tioned, this ghost and the other ghosts, What it is then that they propose to do for saving the country 1 — they answer. That they cannot tell ; that indeed they for their part have, this morning, resigned in a body ; and do now merely respectfully take leave of the helm altogether. With which words they rapidly walk out of the Hall, sortent drusque7nent de la salle, the ' Galleries cheering ^loudly,' the poor Legislature sitting ^for a good while in * silence ! Thus do Cabinet-ministers themselves, in extreme cases, strike work ; one of the strangest omens. Other complete Cabinet-ministry there will not be ; only fragments, and these changeful, which never get completed ; spectral Apparitions that cannot so much as appear ! King Louis writes that he now views this Federation Feast with approval ; and will himself have the pleasure to take part in the same. And so these thin streaks of Federes wend Parisward through a paralytic France. Thin grim streaks ; not thick joyful ranks, as of old to the first Feast of Pikes ! No : these poor Federates march now towards Austria and Austrian Committee, towards jeopardy and forlorn hope ; men of hard fortune and temper, not rich in the world's goods. Municipalities, paralyzed by War-min- isters, arc shy of affording cash : it may be, your poor Federates cannot arm themselves, cannot march, till the Daughter- ^Society of the place open her pocket, and subscribe. There will not haye arrived, at the set day, Three thousand of them in all. And yet, thin and feeble as these streaks of Federates seem, they are the only thing one discerns moving with any clearness of aim, in this * Hist, Pari. xvi. 259. f Moniteur, Stance du Juiliot 179a* EXECUTIVE THAT DOES NOT ACT, 187 strange scene. Angry buz and simmer ; uncr.sy tossing and moaning of a huge France, all enchanted, spell-bound by _un- marching Constitution, into frightful consciv)us and unconscious Magnetic-sleep; which frightful Magnci ic-sleep must now issue soon in one of two things : Death or Madness ! The Federes carry mostly in their pocket some earnest cry and Petition, to have the ' National Executive put in action ; ' or a? a step towards that, to have the King's Decheance, King's Forfeiture, or at least his Suspension, pronounced. They shall be welcome to the Legislative, to the Mother of Patriotism ; and Paris will provide for their lodging. Decheance, indeed : and, what next ? A France spell-free, a Revolution saved ; and any thing, and all things next ! so answer grimly Danton and the unlimited Patriots, down deep in their subterranean region of Plot, whither they have now dived. De- cheance^ answers Brissot with the limited : And if next the little Prince Royal were crowned, and some Regency of Girondins and recalled Patriot Ministry set over him ? Alas, poor Brissot ; look- ing, as indeed poor man does always, on the nearest morrow as his peaceable promised land ; deciding what must reach to the world's end, yet with an insight that reaches not beyond his own nose ! Wiser are the unlimited subterranean Patriots, who with light for the hour itself, leave the rest to the gods. Or were it not, as we now stand, the probablest issue of all, that Brunswick, in Coblentz, just gathering his huge limbs towards him to rise, might arrive first ; and stop both Decheance^ and theorizing on it ? Brunswick is on the eve of marching ; with Eighty Thousand, they say ; fell Prussians, Hessians, feller Emi- grants : a General of the Great Frederick, with such an Army. And our Armies ? And our Generals ? As for Lafayette, on whose late visit a Committee is sitting and all France is jarring and cen- suring, he seems readier to fight tis than fight Brunswick. Liick- ner and Lafayette pretend to be interchanging corps, and are making movements ; which Patriotism cannot understand. This only is very cl^ar, that their corps go marching and shuttling, in the interior of the country ; much nearer Paris than formerly ! Liickner has ordered Dumouriez down to him ; down from Maulde, and the Fortified Camp there. Which order the many-counselled Dumouriez, with the Austrians hanging close on him, he busy meanwhile training a few thousands to stand fire and be soldiers, declares that, come of it what will, he cannot obey.^ Will a poor Legislative, therefore, sanction Dumouriez ; who applies to it, ' not knowing whether there is any War-ministry 1 ' Or sanction Liickner and these Lafayette movements ? The poor Legislative knows not what to do. It decrees, how- ever, that the Staff of the Paris Guard, and indeed all such Staffs, for they are Feuillants mostly, shall be broken and replaced. It decrees earnestly in what manner one can declare that the Country is in Da7iger. And finally, on the nth of July, the morrow of that day when the Ministry struck work, it decrees that the Country be^ * Dumouriez, ii. i, 5. |88 THE MARSEILLESB. with all despatch, declared in Danger. Whereupon let the King sanction ; let the Municipality take measures : if such Declaration will do service, need not fail. In Danger, truly, if ever Country was 1 Arise, O Country ; OE be trodden down to ignominious ruin ! Nay, are not the chances a hundred to one that no rising of the Country will save it \ Brunswick, the Emigrants^ and Feudal Europe drawing nigh ? CHAPTER II. LET US MARCH. But to our minds the notablest of all these moving pheno* mena, is that of Barbaroux's ^ Six Hundred Marseiltese who know 'how to die.' Prompt to the request of Barbaroux, the Marseilles Munici- pality has got these men together : on the fifth morning of July, the Townhall says, "Marches, abates le Tyran, March, strike down the Tyrant ; "^and they, with grim appropriate " Marchons^^ are marching. Long journey, doubtful errand ; Enfans de la Fatrie, may a good genius guide you ! Their own wild heart and what faith it has w411 guide them : and is not that the monition of some genius, better or worse ? Five Hundred and Seventeen able men, with Captains of fifties and tens ; well armed all, musket on shoulder sabre on thigh : nay they drive three pieces of cannon ; for who knows what obstacles may occur ? Municipahties there are, paralyzed by War-minister ; Commandants with orders to stop even Federation Volunteers ; good, when sour.d arguments will not open a Town-gate, if you ha\'e a petard to shi\'er it ! They have left their sunny Phocean City and Sea-haven, with its bustle and its bloom : the thronging Course, with higli-frondent Avenues, pitchy dockyards, almond and olive groves, orange trees on house-tops, and white glittering bastides that crown the hills, are all behind them. They wend on their wild way, from the ex- tremity of French land, through unknown cities, toward an un- known destiny ; with a purpose that they know. Much wondering at this phenomenon, and how, in a peaceable trading City, so many householders or hearth-holders do severally fling down their crafts and industrial tools ; gird themselves with weapons of war, and set out on a journey of six hundred miles to 'strike down the tyrant,— you search in all Historical Books, Pamphlets, and Newspapers, for some light on it : unhappily with- out effect. Rumour and Terror precede this march ; which still echo on you ; the march itself an unknown thing. Weber, in the back-stairs of the Tuilcries, has understood that they were (ialley-slaves and mere scoundrels, these Marseillese ; that, as they marched through Lyons, the people shut their shops also * Danipmartiii, ii. 183. LET US MARCH. that the number of them was some Four Thousand. Equally vague is Blanc Gilli, who likewise murmurs about Formats and danger of plunder."^ Forqats they were not ; neither was there plunder, or danger of it. Men of regular life, or of the best- filled purse, they could hardly be ; the one thing needful in them was that they ' knew how to die/ Friend Dampmartin saw them, with his own eyes, march ' gradually ' through his quarters at Villefranche in the Beaujolais : but saw in the vaguest manner; being indeed preoccupied, and himself minded for marching just then — across the Rhine. Deep was his astonishment to think of such a march, without appointment or arrangement, station or ration : for the rest it was ' the same men he had seen formerly ' in the troubles of the South ; ' perfectly civil ; ' though his soldiers could not be kept from talking a little with them.t So vague are all these ; Mo7iiteury Histoire Parlementaire are as good as silent : garrulous History, as is too usual, will say nothing where you most wish her to speak ! If enlightened Curiosity ever get sight of the Marseilles Council-Books^ will it not perhaps explore this strangest of Municipal procedures ; and feel called to fish up what of the Biographies, creditable or dis- creditable, of these Five Hundred and Seventeen, the stream of Time has not yet irrevocably swallowed ? As it is, these Marseillese remain inarticulate, undistinguishable in feature ; a blackbrowed Mass, full of grim fire, who wend there, in the hot sultry weather : very singular to contemplate. They wend ; amid the infinitude of doubt and dim peril ; they not doubtful : Fate and Feiidal Europe, having decided, come girdling in from without : they, having also decided, do march within. Dusty of face, with frugal refreshment, they plod onwards ; un- weariable, not to be turned aside. Such march will become famous. The Thought, which works voiceless in this blackbrowed mass, an inspired Tyrtccan Colonel, Rouget de Lille whom the Earth still holds, J has translated into grim melody and rhythm ; into his Hymn or March of the Marseillese : luckiest musical- composition ever promulgated. The soynd of which will make the blood tingle in men's veins ; and whole Armies and Assem- blages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of Death, Despot and Devil. One sees well, these Marseillese will be too late for the Federa- tion Feast. In fact, it is not Champ-de-Mars Oaths that they have in view. They have quite another feat to do : a paralytic National Executive to set in action. They must ' strike down ' whatsoever * Tyrant,' or Martyr- Faineant, there may be who paralyzes it ; strike and be struck ; and on the whole prosper and know how to die. * See B^rbaroux, Mimoires (Note in p. 40, 41). f Dampmartin, ubi suprdi. X 1836. X90 THE MARSEILLESE. CHAPTER III. SOME CONSOLATION TO MANKIND. Of the Federation Feast itself we shall say almost nothing. There are Tents pitched in the Champ-de-Mars ; tent for National Assembly ; tent for Hereditary Representative,— who indeed is there too early, and has to wait long in it. There are Eighty-three symbolical Departmental Trees-of- Liberty ; trees and niais^now'^ : beautifullest of all these is one huge mat] hung round with effete Scutcheons, Emblazonries and Genealogy-books ; nay better still, with Lawyers'-bags, ' sacs de p?'ocedure : ' which shall be burnt. The Thirty seat-rows of that famed Slope are again full ; we have a bright Sun ; and all is marching, streamering and blaring : but ■what avails it Virtuous Mayor Petion, whom Feuillantism had suspended, was reinstated only last night, by 'Decree of the Assembly. Men's humour is of the sourest. Men's hats have on them, written in chalk, ' Vive Petion and even. ' Petion or Death, ' Petion ou la MortJ Poor Louis, who has waited till five o'clock before the Assembly would arrive, swears the National Oath this time, with a quilted cuirass under his waistcoat which will turn pistol-bullets.* Madame de Stael, from that Royal Tent, stretches out the neck in a kind of agony, lest the waving multitudes which receive him may not render him back alive. No cry of Vive le Roi salutes the ear ; cries only of Vive Petionj Petion ou la Mort. The National Solemnity is as it were huddled by ; each cowering off ahnost before the evolutions are gone through. The very Mai with its Scutcheons and Lawyers'-bags is forgotten, stands unburnt ; till ' certain Patriot Deputies,' called by the people, set a torcii to it, by way of voluntary after-piece. Sadder Feast of Pikes no man ever saw. Mayor Petion, named on hats, is at his zenith in this Federa- tion ; Lafayette again is close upon his nadir. Why dees the storm bell of Saint-Rocli speak out, next Saturday ; why do the citizens shut their shops ?t It is Sections defihng, it is fear of effervescence. LegisLative Committee, long deliberating on Lafay- ette and that Anti-jacobin Visit of his, reports, this day, that there is ' 7iot ground for Accusation ! ' Peace, ye Patriots, nevertheless ; and let that tocsin cease : the Debate is not finished, nor the Report accepted ; but Brissot, Isnard and tlie Mountain will sift it, and resift it, perhaps for some three weeks longer. So many bells, stormbells and noises do ring ;— -scarcely audible ; one drowning the other. For example : in this same Lafayette tocsin, of Saturday, was there not withal some faint bob-minor, * CAmpan, ii. c. 20; De Staiil, ii. c. ^. f Moniteur, Stance du 21 Juillet 1792. SOME CONSOLATION TO MANKIND, 191 and Deputation of Legislative, ringing the Chevalier Paul Jones to his long rest ; tocsin or dirge now all one to him ! Not ten days hence Patriot Brissot, beshouted this day by the Patriot Galleries, shall find himself begroaned by them, on account of his limited Patriotism ; nay pelted at while perorating, and ^ hit with *two prunes.' It is a distracted empty-sounding world ; of bob- minors and bob-majors, of triumph and terror, of rise and fall ! The more touching is this other Solemnity, which happens on the morrow of the Lafayette tocsin : Proclamation that the Country is in Danger, Not till the present Sunday could such Solemnity be. The Legislative decreed it almost a fortnight ago ; but Royalty and the ghost of a Ministry held back as they could. Now however, on this Sunday, 22nd day of July 1792, it will hold back no longer ; and the Solemnity in very deed is. Touching to behold ! Municipality and Mayor have on their scarfs ; cannon- salvo booms alarm from the Pont-Neuf, and single-gun at intervals all day. Guards are mounted, scarfed Notabilities, Halberdiers, and a Cavalcade ; with streamers, emblematic flags ; especially with one huge Flag, flapping mournfully : Citoyens, la Patrie est en Danger, They roll through the streets, with stern-sounding music, and slow rattle of hoofs : pausing at set stations, and with doleful blast of trumpet, singing out through Herald's throat, what the Flag says to the eye : " Citizens, the Country is in Danger ! Is there a man's heart that hears it without a thrill ? The many- voiced responsive hum or bellow of these multitudes is not of triumph ; and yet it is a sound deeper than triumph. But when the long Cavalcade and' Proclamation ended ; and our huge Flag was fixed on the Pont Neuf, another nice it on the H6tel-de-Ville, to wave there till better days ; and each Municipal sat in the centre of his Section, in a Tent raised in some open square, Tent surmounted with flags of Patrie en danger^ and topmost of all a Pike and Bonnet Rouge ; and, on two drums in front of him^ there lay a plank-table, and on this an open Book, and a Clerk sat, like recording-angel, ready to write the Lists, or as we say to enlist ! O, then, it seems, the very gods might have looked down on it. Young Patriotism, Culottic and Sansculottic, rushes forward emulous : That is my name ; name, blood, and life, is all my Country's ; why have I nothing more ! Youths of short stature weep that they are below size. Old men come forward, a son in each hand. Mothers themselves will grant the son of their travail ; send him, though with tears. And the multitude bellows Vive la Patrie^ far reverberating. And fire flashes in the eyes of men ; — and at eventide, your Municipal returns to the Townhall, followed by his long train of volunteer Valour ; hands in his List : says proudly, looking round. This is my day's hai-vest.t They will march, on the morrow, to Soissons ; small bundle holding all their chattels. So, with Vive la Patrie^ Vive la Liberie^ stone Paris rever- berates like Ocean in his caves ; day after day, Municipals enlist- * Hist. Pari. xvi. 185. + Tabhau dela RdvoluUon, § Patrie en Danger. THE MARSEILLESE. ing in tricolor Tent ; the Flag flapping on Pont Neuf and Townhall, Citoyens, la Patrie est en Dajtger, Some Ten thousand fighters, without discipline but full of heart, are on march m few days. The like is doing in every Town of France.— Consider therefore whether the Country will want defenders, had we but a National Executive ? Let the Sections and Primary Assemblies, at any rate, become Permanent, and sit continually in Paris, and over France, by Legislative Decree dated Wednesday the 25th.^ Mark contrariwise how, in these very hours, dated the 25th, Brunswick shakes himself ' s'ebranle^ in Coblentz ; and takes the road ! Shakes himself indeed ; one spoken word becomes such a shaking. Successive, simultaneous dirl of thirty thousand muskets shouldered ; prance and jingle of ten-thousand horse- men, fanfaronading Emigrants in the van ; drum, ketde-drum ; noise of weeping, swearing ; and the immeasurable lumbering clank of baggage-waggons and camp-kettles that groan into motion : all this is Brunswick shaking himself ; not without all this does the one man march, ' covering a space of forty miles.' Still less without his Manifesto, dated, as we say, the 25th ; a State-Paper worthy of attention ! By this Document, it would seem great things are in store for France. The universal French People shall now have permission to rally round Brunswick and his Emigrant Seigneurs ; tyranny of a Jacobin Faction shall oppress them no more ; but they shall return, and find favour with their own good King ; who, by Royal Declaration (three years ago) of the Twenty-third of June, said that he would himself make them happy. As for National Assembly, and other Bodies of Men invested with some temporary shadow of authority, they are charged to maintain the King's Cities and Strong Places intact, till Brunswick arrive to take delivery of them. Indeed, quick submission may extenuate many things ; but to this end it must be quick. Any National Guard or other unmilitary person found resisting in arms shall be ' treated ' as a traitor ; ' that is to shy, hanged with promptitude. For the rest, if Paris, before Brunswick gets thitker, offer any insult to the King : or, for exam.ple, suffer a faction to carry the King away elsewhither ; in that case Paris shall be blasted asunder with cannon-shot and ' military execution.' Likewise all other Cities, which may witness, and not resist to the uttermost, such forced- march of his Majesty, shall be blasted asunder ; and Paris and every City of them, starting-place, course and goal of said sacrile- gious forced-march, shall, as rubbish and smoking ruin, lie therfl for a sign. Such vengeance were indeed signal, ' an msigne vc7u * geance: — -O Brunswick, what words thou writest and blusterest ! In this Paris, as in old Nineveh, are so many score thousands that know not the right hand from the left, and also much cattle. Shall the very milk-cows, hard-living cadgcrs'-asscs, and poor little canary-birds die ? Nor is Royal and Imperial Prussian- Austrian Declaration * MonUcur, Seance du 25 Juillet 1792. SUB TERRANEAN. 193 wanting : setting forth, in the amplest manner, their Sanssouci- Schonbrunn version of this whole French Revolution, since the first beginning of it ; and with what grief these high heads have seen such things done under the Sun : however, ' as some small * consolation to mankind/"^ they do now despatch Brunswick ; regardless of expense, as one might say, of sacrifices on their own part ; for is it not the first duty to console men ? Serene Highnesses, who sit there protocolhng and manifesto- ing, and consohng mankind ! how were it if, for once in the thousand years, your parchments, formularies, and reasons of state were blown to the four winds ; and Reality Sans-indis- pensables stared you, even you, in the face ; and Mankind said for itself what the thing was that would console it ? — CHAPTER IV. SUBTERRANEAN. But judge if there was comfort in this to the Sections all sitting permanent; deliberating how a National Executive could be put m action ! High rises the response, not of cackhng terror, but of crowing counter-defiance, and Vive la Nation; young Valour streaming towards the Frontiers ; Patrie en Danger mutely beckoning on the Pont Neuf Sections are busy, in their permanent Deep ; and down, lower still, works unlimited Patriotism, seeking salvation in plot. Insurrection, you would say, becomes once more the sacredest of duties ? Committee, self-chosen, is sitting at the Sign of the Golden Sun : Journalist Carra, Camille Desmoulins, Aisatian Westermann f!-iend of Danton, American Fournier of Martinique ; — a Committee not unknown to Mayor Petion, who, as an official person, must sleep with one eye open. Not unknown to Procureur Manuel ; least of ail to Procureur- Substitute Danton ! He. wrapped in darkness, being also official, bears it on his giant shoulder ; cloudy invisible Atlas of the whole. Much is invisible ; the very Jacobins have their reticences. In- surrection is to be : but when ? This only we can discern, that such Federes as are not yet gone to Soissons, as indeed are not inchned to go yet, " for reasons,'' says the Jacobin President, " which it may be interesting not to state," have got a Central Com7nittee sitting close by, under the roof of the Mother Society herself. Also, what in such ferment and danger of ettervescence is surely proper, the Forty-eight Sections have got their Central Com- mittee ; intended ' for prompt communication.' To which Central Committee the Municipality, anxious to have it at hand, could not refuse an Apartment in the Hotel-de-Vilie. Singular City ! For overhead of all this, there is the customary * Annual Registe)' (1792), p. 236. VOL. II. H X94 THE MARSEILLESE. baking and brewing ; Labour hammers and grinds. Frilled pro- menaders saunter under the trees ; white-muslin promenaderess. in green parasol, leaning on your arm. Dogs dance, and shoeblacks pohsh, on that Pont Neuf itself, where Fatherland is in danger. So much goes its course ; and yet the course of all things is nigh altering and ending. Look at that Tuileries and Tuileries Garden. Silent all as Sahara ; none entering save by ticket ! They shut their Gates, after the Day of the Black Breeches ; a thing they had the liberty to do. However, the National Assembly grumbled something about Terrace of the Feuillants, how said Terrace lay contiguous to the back entrance to their Salle, and was partly NationtU Pro- perty ; and so now National Justice has stretched a Tricolor Riband athwart it, by way of boundary-line, respected with sple- netic strictness by all Patriots. It hangs there that Tricolor boundary-line ; carries ' satirical inscriptions on cards/ generally in verse ; and all beyond this is called Coble^itz, and remains vacant; silent, as a fateful Golgotha ; sunshine and umbrage alter- nating on it in vain. Fateful Circuit ; what hope can dwell m it ? Mysterious Tickets of Entry introduce themselves ; speak of In- surrection very imminent. "Rivarol's Staff of Genius had better purchase blunderbusses ; Grenadier bonnets, red Swiss uniforms may be useful. Insurrection will come ; but likewise will it not be met ? Staved off, one may hope, till Brunswick arrive ? But consider withal if the Bourne-stones and Portable chairs remain silent ; if the Herald's College of Bill-- Stickers sleep ! Louvet's Sentinel warns gratis on all walls ; Sulleau is busy : People' s-FriendM.2iX^.\. and King s - Friend 'Roy om croakand counter- croak. For the man Marat, though long hidden since that Champ- de-Mars Massacre, is still ahve. He has lain, who knows m what Cellars ; perhaps in Legendre's ; fed by a steak of Legendre s killing : but, since April, the bull-frog voice of him sounds again ; hoarsest of earthly cries. For the present, black terror haunts him : O brave Barbaroux wilt thou not smuggle me to Marseilles, ' disguised as a jockey? ' ^ In Palais-Royal and all pubhc places, as we read, there is sharp activity ; private individuals harangumg that Valour may enlist : haranguing that the Executive may be put in action. Royalist journals ought to be solemnly burnt : argument thereupon ; debates which generally end in single-stick, coups de cannes.i Or think of this; the hour midnight; place Salle de Man^^e ; august Assembly just adjournmg : ' Citi7.ens ot both sexes enter in a rush exclaiming, Ven(^eance : they are pot son- ino: our Brothers f—h'^Vmz brayed-glass among their bread at Soissons ! Vergniaud has to speak soothing words, How Com- missioners are already sent to investigate this brayed-glass and do what is needful therein : till the rush of Citizens makes pro- found silence and goes home to its bed. Such is Paris ; the heart of a France like to it. Preternatural suspicion, doubt, disquietude, nameless anticipation, from shore to f Ncwspapers^Na^^^^ and Documents [llisi. Purl xv. 240; xvi. 399). AT DINNER. 195 sj^oj-e :— and those black-browed Marseillese, marching, dusty, unwearied, through the midst of it ; not doubtful they. Marching to the grim music of their hearts, they consume continually the lono- road, these three weeks and more ; heralded by Terror and Rumour. The Brest Federes arrive on the 26th ; through hurrahing streets. Determined men are these also, bearing or not bearing the Sacred Pikes of Chateau-Vieux ; and on the whole decidedly disinclined for Soissons as yet. Surely the Marseillese Brethren do draw nigher all days. CHAPTER V. AT DINNER. It was a bright day for Charenton, that 29th of the month, when the Marseillese Brethren actually came m sight. Bar- baroux, Santerre and Patriots have gone out to meet the grim Wayfarers. Patriot clasps dusty Patriot to his bosom ; there is footwashing and refection : ' dinner of twelve hundred covers at ' the Blue Dial, Cadran Bleu ; ' and deep interior consultation, that one wots not of."^ Consultation indeed which comes to little ; for Santerre, with an open purse, with a loud voice, has almost no head. Here however v/e repose this night : on the morrow is public entry into Paris. Of which pubhc entry the Day-Historians, Dturnahsts, or Journalists as they call themselves, have preserved record enough. How Saint-Antoine male and female, and Pans generally, gave brotherly welcome, with bravo and hand-clapping,^ m crowded streets ; and all passed in the peaceablest manner -—except it might be our Marseillese pointed out here and there a riband- cockade, and beckoned that it should be snatched away, and exchanged for a wool one ; which was done. How the Mother Society in a body has come as far as the BastiUe-ground, to embrace you. How you then wend onwards, triumphant, to the Townhall, to be embraced by Mayor Petion ; to put down your muskets in the Barracks of Nouvelle France, not far off ;—then towards the appointed Tavern in the Champs Elysees to enjoy a frugal Patriot repast.f r^- ^ c Of all which the indignant Tuileries may, by its Tickets ot Entry, have warning. Red Swiss look doubly sharp to tneir Chateau-Grates though surely there is no danger? Blue Grenadiers of the Filles-Saint- Thomas Section are on duty there this day : men of Agio, as we have seen ; with stuffed purses, riband-cockades ; among whorii serves Weber. A party ot these latter, with Captains, with sundry Feuillant Notabilities, Moreau de Saint-Mery of the three thousand orders, and others, have been dining, much more respectably, in a Tavern hard by. They haviff * Deux Amis, viii. 90-101. •fc. Hist, Pari, xvi. 196. See Barbaroux, p. 51-5. H 2 196 THE MARSEILLESE. dined, and are now drinking Loyal- Patriotic toasts ; while the Marseillese, A'^//,^?;^^?/- Patriotic merely, are about sitting down to their frugal covers of delf. How it happened remains to this day undemonstrable : but the external fact is, certain of these Filles- Saint-Thomas Grenadiers do issue from their Tavern ; perhaps touched, surely not yet muddled with any liquor they have had ; — issue in the professed intention of testifying to the Marseillese, or to the multitude of Paris Patriots who stroll in these spaces, That they, the Filles-Saint-Thomas men, if well seen into, are not a whit less Patriotic than any other class of men whatever. It was a rash errand! For how can the strolling multitudes credit such a thing ; or do other indeed than hoot at it, provoking, and provoked ; — till Grenadier sabres stir in the scabbard, and a sharp shriek rises: ''A nous Marseillais, Help Marseillese!" Quick ^ as lightning, for the frugal repast is not yet served, that Marseillese Tavern flings itself open : by door, by window ; running, bounding, vault ^ rth the Five hundred and Seventeen undined Pa- ots ; and, sabre flashing from thigh, are on the scene of controversy. Will ye parley, ye Grenadier Captains and official Persons ; ' with faces grown suddenly pale,' the Deponents say ?^ Advisabler were instant moderately swift retreat ! The Filles-Saint-Thomas retreat, back foremost ; then, alas, face fore- most, at treble- uick time ; the Marseillese, according to a Deponent, " clearing the :ences and ditches after them like lions : Messieurs, it was an imposing spectacle." Thus they retreat, the Marseillese following. Swift and swifter, towards the Tuileries : where the Drawbridge receives the bulk of the fugitives ; and, then suddenly drawn up, saves them ; or el*se the green mud of the Ditch does it. The bulk of them ; not all ; ah, no ! Moreau de Saint-Mery for example, being too fat, could not fly fast ; he got a stroke, y7<:z/-stroke only, over the shoulder- blades, and fell prone ; — and disappears there from the History of the Revolution. Cuts also there were, pricks in the posterior fleshy parts ; much rending ot skirts, and other discrepant waste. But poor Sub-lieutenant Duhamel, innocent Change-broker, what a lot for him ! Fie turned on his pursuer, or pursuers, with a pistol ; he fired and missed ; drew a second pistol, and again fired and missed ; then ran : unhappily in vain. In the Rue Saint- Florentin, they clutched him ; thrust him through, in red rage ; that was the end of the New Era, and of all Eras, to poor Duhamel. Pacific readers can fancy what sort of grace-before-meat this was to frugal Patriotism, Also how the Battalion of the Filles- Saint-Thomas * drew out in arms,' luckily without further result ; how there was accusation at the Bar of the Assembly, and counter-accusation and defence ; Marseillese challenging the sen- tence of free jury court, — which never got to a decision. We ask rather. What the upshot of all these distracted wildly accumula- ting things may, by probability, be 1 Some upshot ; and the time draws nigh ! Busy are Central Committees, of F^ddr^s at the * Moniieur^ Seances du 30, du 31 Juillot 1792 [IlisL Pari. xvi. 197-310). AT DINNER. 197 Jacobins Church, of Sections at the Townhall ; Reunion of Carra, Camille and Company at the Golden Sun. Busy : hke submarine deities, or call them mud-gods, working there in the deep murk of waters : till the thing be ready. And how your National Assembly, like a ship water-logged, helmless, lies tumbling ; the Galleries, of shrill Women, of Federes with sabres, bellowing down on it, not unfrightful ; — and waits where the waves of chance may please to strand it ; suspicious, nay on the Left side, conscious, what submarine Explosion is meanwhile a-charging ! Petition for King's Forfeiture rises often there : Petition from 'Paris Section, from Provincial Patriot Towns ; From Alengon, Briangon, and ' the Traders at the Fair *of Beaucaire.' Or what of these On the 3rd of August, Mayor Petion and the Municipality come petitioning for Forfeiture : they openly, in their tricolor Municipal scarfs. Forfeiture is what all Patriots now want and expect. All Brissotins want Forfeiture ; with the little Prince Royal for King, and us for Protector ove^ him. Emphatic Federes asks the Legislature : " Can you save us, or not ? " Forty-seven Seconds have agreed to Forfeiture ; only that of the Filles-Saint-Thomas pretending to disagree. Nay Section Mauconseil declares Forfeiture to be, properly speaking, come ; Mauconseil for one ' does from this day,' the last of July, ' cease allegiance to Louis,^ and take minute of the same before all men. A thing blamed aloud ; but which will be praised aloud ; and the name Mauconseil, of Ill-counsel, be thenceforth changed to Bonconseil^ of Good-counsel. President Danton, in the Cordeliers Section, does another thing : invites all Passive Citizens to take place among the Active in Section-business, one peril threatening ail. Thus he, though an official person ; cloudy Atlas of the whole. Likewise he man- ages to have that blackbrowed Battalion of Marseillese shifted to new Barracks, in his own region ot the remote South-East. Sleek Chaumette, cruel Billaud, Deputy Chabot the Disfrocked, Hugue- nin with the tocsin in his heart, will welcome them there. Where- fore, again and again : " O Legislators, can you save us or not ? Poor Legislators ; with their Legislature water-logged, volcanic Explosion charging under it ! Forfeiture shall be debated on the ninth day of August ; that miserable business of Lafayette may be expected to terminate on the eighth. Or will the humane Reader glance into the Levee-day of Sun- day the fifth ? The last Levee ! Not for a long time, ' never,' says Bertrand-Moleville, had a Levee been so brilliant, at least so crowded. A sad presaging interest sat on every face ; Bertrand's own eyes were filled with tears. For, indeed, outside of that Tricolor Riband on the Feuillants Terrace, Legislature is debating, Sections are defiling, all Paris is astir this very Sunday, demand- ing Decheance.'^ Here, however, within the riband, a grand proposal is on foot, for the hundredth time, of carrying his Majesty to Rouen and the Castle of Gaillon. Swiss at Courbe- voye are in readiness ; much is ready ; Majesty himself seems * Hist, ParL xvi. 337-9. 198 THE MARSEILLESE. almost ready. Nevertheless, for the hundredth time, Majesty, when near the pomt of action, draws back ; writes, after one has waited, palpitating, an endless summer day, that ' he has reason 'to believe the Insurrection is not so ripe as you suppose* Whereat Bertrand-Moleville breaks forth ' into extremity at one *of spleen and despair, d'humeur et de desespoir.'* CHAPTER VI. THE STEEPLES AT MIDNIGHT. For, in truth, the Insurrection is just about ripe. Thursday is the ninth of the month August ; if Forfeiture be not pronounced by the Legislature that day, we must pronounce it ourselves. Legislature ? A poor water-logged Legislature can pronounce nothmg. On Wednesday the eighth, after endless oratory once again, they cannot even pronounce Accusation again Lafayette • but absolve him,— hear it, Patrotism !— by a majority of two to one. Patriotism hears it ; Patriotism, hounded on by Prussian Terror, by Preternatural Suspicion, roars tumultuous round the Salle de Manege, all day ; ins.Jts many leading Deputies, of the absolvent Right-side ; nay chases them, collars them with loud menace : Deputy Vaublanc, and others of the like, are glad to take refuge in Guardhouses, d escape by the back window. And so, next day, there is infinite co laint ; Letter after Letter from insulted Deputy ; mere complaint, ^ebate and self-cancelling jargon : the sun of Thursday sets like the others, and no For- feiture pronounced. Wherefore in fine. To your tents, O Israel ! The Mother-Socie^., ceases speaking ; groups cease haranguing: Patriots, with closed lips now, ' take one another's arm walk off, m rows, two and two, at a brisk business-pace ; and vanish afar m the obscure places of the East f Santerre is ready ; or we will make him ready. Forty-seven of the Forty-eight Sections arp ready ; nay Filles-Saint-Thomas itself turns up the Jacobin side of it, turns down llie Feuillant side of it, and is ready too. Let the unlimited Patriot look to his weapon, be it pike, be it fire- lock ; and the Brest brethren, above all, the blackbrowed Marseil- lese prepare themselves for the extreme hour ! Syndic Roederer knows, and laments or not as the issue may turn, that ' five thou- ' sand ball-cartridges, within these few days, have been distributed 'to Feder^s, at the H6tel-de-Ville.'J And ye likewise, gallant gentlemen, defenders of Royalty, crowd ye on your side to the 1 uileries. Not to a Levee : no, to a Couchee ; where much will be put to bed. Your Tickets of Entry are needful ; ncedfiillcr your blunderbusses !— iliey come and crowd, like gallant men who also know how to die : old Mailld the * Bertrand-Moleville, Mdmoircs, ii. 129. t Deux Amis, viii. 129-88. j Roederer ^ la Barre (Stance du 9 h and universal thunder, like the Crack of Doom, began to rattle ! . Honourable Members start to their feet ; stray bullets singing epicedium even here, shivering in with window-glass and jingle. . " No, this is our post ; let us die here !" They sit therefore, like stone Legislators. But may not the Lodge of the Logographc be forced from bdiind ? ' Tear down the railing that divides it from the enclianted Constitutional Circuit ! l.^shers tear and tug ; h'i: Majesty himself aiding from within : the railing gives way : Majesty and Legislative are united in place, unknown Destin> hovering over both. Rattle, and again rattle, w^ent the thunder ; one breathless wide- eyed messenger rushing in after another : King's orders to the Swiss went out. It was a fearful thunder; but, as we know, ic ended. Breathless messengers, fugitive Swiss, denunciatory Patriots, trepidation ; finally tripudiation !— Before four o'clock much has come and gone. The New Municipals have come and gone ; with Three Flags, Liberie^ Egaliie, Patrie, and the clang of vivats. Vergniaud, he who as President few hours ago talked of Dying for Constituted Authorities, has moved, p Committee-Reporter, that the Heredi- tary Representatve be suspended; that a National Convention. ^ do forthwith assemble to say what further! An able Report • whix:h the President must have had ready in his pocket ? A Pre-; sident, in such cases, must have much ready, and yet not ready and Janus-like look before and after. \ King Louis listens to all; retires about midnight * to three Mittle rooms on the upper floor ; ' till the Luxembourg be prepared for him, and ' the safeguard of the Nation.' Safer if Brunswick were once here ! Or, alas, not so safe ? Ye hapless discrowned heads ! Crowds came, next morning, to catch a gfimpse of them, in their three upper rooms. Montgaillard says the august Cap- tives wore an air of cheerfulness, even of gaiety ; that the Que and Princess Lamballe, who had joined her over night, looked o of the open window, ^ shook powder from their hair on the people . * below, and laugi^ed.'* He is an acrid distorted man. For the rest, one may guess that the Legislative, above all that the New Municipality continues busy. Messengers, Municipal or Legislative, and swift despatches rush off to all corners of France ; full of triumph, blended with indignant wail, for Twelve hundred have fallen. France sends up its blended shout responsive ; the Tenth of August shall be as the Fourteenth of July, only bloodier and greater. The Court has conspired t Foot Court : the Con has l)cen vanquished ; nnd will have both the scath to bear ai the scorn. How the Statues of Kings do now all fall! Bron/- Henri himself, though he wore a cockade once, jingles down froiii the Pont Neuf, where Patrie floats m Dtuiger. Much more does Louis Fourteenth, from the Place Vend6me, jingle down ; and i * Montgaillard. ii. 135-167. 1 CONSTITUTION BURST IN PIECES. 211 even breaks in falling. The curious can remark, written on his horse's shoe : ' 12 AoM 1692 ; ' a Century and a Day. The Tenth of August was Friday. The week is not done, when our old Patriot Ministry is recalled, what of it can be got : strict Roland, Genevese Claviere ; add heavy Monge the Mathema- tician, once a stone-hewer ; and, for Minister of Justice, — Danton ' led hither,' as himself says, in one of his gigantic figures, * through * the breach of Patriot cannon ! ' These, under Legislative Com- mittees, must rule the wreck as they can: confusedly enough 5 with an old Legislative water-logged, with a New Municipality so brisk. But National Convention will get itself together ; and then ! Without delay, however, let a New Jury-Court and Crimi- nal Tribunal be set up in Paris, to try the crimes and conspiracies of the Tenth. High Court of Orleans is distant, slow : the blood of the Twelve hundred Patriots, whatever become of other blood, shall be inquired after. Tremble, ye Criminals and Conspirators ; the Minister of Justice is Danton ! Robespierre too, after the victory, sits in the New Municipality; insurrectionary 'impro- ' vised Municipality,' which calls itself Council General of the Commune. For three days now, Louis and his Family have heard the Legis- lative Debates in the Lodge of the Logographe j and retired nightly to their small upper rooms. The Luxembourg and safe- guard of the Nation could not be got ready : nay, it seems the Luxembourg has too many cellars and issues ; no Municipality can undertake to watch it. The compact Prison of the Temple, not so elegant indeed, were mucTi safer. To the Temple, therefore ! On Monday, 13th day of August 1792, in Mayor Petion's carriage, Louis and his sad suspended Household, fare thither ; all Paris out to look at them. As they pass through the Place Vendome Louis Fourteenth's Statue lies broken on the ground. Petion is afraid tlie Queen's looks may be thought scornful, and produce provocation ; she casts down her eyes, and does not look at all. The ^ press is prodigious,' but quiet : here and there, it shouts Vive la Nation; but for most part gazes in silence. French Royalty' vanishes within the gates of the Temple : these old peaked Towers, like peaked Extinguisher or Bonsoir^ do cover it up ; — from which same Towers, poor Jacques Molay and his Templars were burnt out,, by French Royalty, five centuries since. Such are the turns of Fate below. Foreign Ambassadors, English Lord Gower have all demanded passports ; are driving indignantly towards their respective homes. So, then, the Constitution is over ? For ever and a day ! Gone is that wonder of the Universe ; First biennial Parliament, water- logged, waits only till the Convention come ; and will then sink to endless depths. One can guess the silent rage of Old-Constituents, Constitution- builders, extinct Feuillants, men who thought the Constitution would march ! Lafayette rises to the altitude of the situation ; at the head of his Army. Legislative Commissioners are posting THE MARSEILLESE, towards him and it, on the Northern Frontier, to congratulate and perorate : he orders the MunicipaHty of Sedan to arrest these Commissioners, and keep them strictly in ward as Rebels, till he say further. The Sedan Municipals obey. The Sedan Municipals obey : but the Soldiers of the Lafayette Army The Soldiers of the Lafayette Army have, as all Soldiers have, a kind of dim feeling that they themselves are Sansculottes in buff belts ; that the victory of the Tenth of Aug^ust is also a victory for them. They will not rise and follow Lafayette to Paris ; they will rise and send him thither ! On the i8th, which is but next Saturday, Lafayette, with some two or three indignant Staff- officers, one of whom is Old- Constituent Alexandre de Lameth, having first put his Lines in v/hat order he could, — rides swiftly over the Marches, towards Holland. Rides, alas, swiftly into the claws of Austrians ' He, long-wavering, trembling on the verga of the horizon, has set, in Olmutz Dungeons ; this History knows^ him no more. Adieu, thou Hero of two worlds ; thinnest, but com- pact honour- worthy man ! Through long rough night of captivity, through other tumults, triumphs and changes, thou wilt swing well, ^fast-anchored to the Washington Formula;' and be the Hero and Perfect-character, were it only of one idea. The Sedan Municipals repent and protest ; the Soldiers shout Vzve la Nation. Dumouriez Polymetis, from his Camp at Maulde^ sees himself made Commander in Chief. And, O Brunswick ! what sort of ^ military execution ' wiH Paris merit now 1 Forward, ye well-drilled exterminatory men ; with your artillery- waggons, and camp- kettles jingling. Forward,, tall chivalrous King of Prussia ; fanfaronading Emigra nts and war-god Broglie, ^ for some consolation to mankind/ which verily is not without need of some. END OF THE SECOND VOLUME, THE GUILLOTINE %xt\^^ii^'^'^po\kl fie mvm mh tmmer auiuiber ; ^iafur fud)te \)od} nur ^eber am ©nbe fixr jt^. SBtaft bu ^tele befret'n, jo t^ag' e§ ^ielen bienen. SKie gefa^rli^ ba§ jet; U)Ulft bu e§ tt)tffen? ^erjuc^'§ I © 0 e t ^ e. CONTENTS OF VOL m. BOOK I September. CHAP. I. The Improvised Commune II. Danton ..... III. Dumouriez . ^ . IV. September in Paris V. A Trilogy .... VI. The Circular .... VII. September in Argonne VIIT. Exeunt . o . . . S 13 16 IQ 25 30 36 43 I. The Deliberative . II. The Executive.- III. Discrowned IV. The Lose pays V. Stretching of Formulas VI. At the Bar ^"11. The Tf£ree Votings . III. Place de la Revolution BOOK II. Regicide, 49 61 63 67 72 77 BOOK III. The Girondins. I. Cau/se and Effect . II. CuIottic and Sansculottic III. Ge owing shrill IV. Faifherland in Danger . V. Sa^ SCULOTTISM ACCOUTRED TiA Traitor INj^^ ight VI. II. ■ill IX, InTi )eath-Grips E>; U'nct , 82 86 90 93 99 102 105 107 III 4 CONTENTS. BOOK IV. Terror. I. Charlotte Corday no II. In Civil War 122 III. Retreat of the Eleven 124 IV. O Nature "-^ V. Sword of Sharpness , . . • • • Lii VI. Risen against Tyrants . . . . • • ' VII. Marie- Antoinette 130 VIII. The Twenty-two ^ 139 BOOK V. Terror the Oeder of the Day. I. Rushing down . II. Death III. Destruction IV. Carmagnole complete V. Like a Thunder-Cloud VI. Do THY Duty , VII. Flame-Picture . 142 H5 150 156 161 164 16$ BOOK VI. Thermidor. I. The Gods are athirst . II. Danton, No weakness . III. The Tumbrils .... IV. MUMBO-JUMBO .... V. The Pr'isons .... VI. To finish the Terror . VII. Go down to ... • BOOK VII. VENDIilMI Al RE. I. Decadent . II. La Cap.arus III. QUIBEKON . IV. Lion not dead . V. Lion sprawling its last VI. Grilled Herrings . VIL The Whiff of Grapeshot THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Vol. III.— The Guillotine. BOOK FIRST. SEPTEMBER. CHAPTER I. THE TTVIPROVISED COMMUNE. Yf. liave roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world ; France is roused ; Long have ye been lecturing and tutor- ing this poor Nation, like cruel uncalled-for pedagogues, shaking over her your ferulas of fire and steel : it is long that ye have pricked and fillipped and affirighted her, there as she sat helpless in her dead cerements of a Constitution, you gathering in on her from all lands, with your armaments and plots, your invadings and truculent bullvings ;— and lo now, ye have pricked her to the quick, and she is up, and her blood is up. The dead cerementQ are rent into cobwebs, and she fronts you in that terrible strength of Nature, which no man has measured, which goes dovm to ; Madness and Tophet : see now how ye will deal with her ! This month of September, 1792, which has become one of the memorable months of History, presents itself under two most diverse aspects ; all of black on the one side, all of bright on the . other. Whatsoever is cruel in the panic frenzy of Twenty-five million men, whatsoever is great in the simultaneous death-, defiance of Twenty-five million men, stand here in abrupt contrast, near by one another. As indeed is usual when a man, how much more when a Nation of men, is hurled suddenly beyond the hmits. For Nature, as green as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations, were we farther down ; and Pan, to whose music the Nymphs dance, has a cr}' in him that can ckive all men distracted. Very frightful it is when a Nation, rending asunder its Constitti* 6 SEPTEMBER. tions and Regulations which were grown dead cerements for it, I becomes /r^/^i^cendental ; and must now seek its wild way through j the New, Chaotic, — where Force is not yet distinguished into \ Bidden and Forbidden, but Crime and Virtue welter unseparated, i —in that domain of what is called the Passions ; of what we call ! the Miracles and the Portents ! It is thus that, for some three \ years to come, we are lo contemplate France, in this final Third ^ Volume of our History. Sansculottism reigning in all its grandeur • and in all its hideousness : the Gospel (Go'''s-Message) of Man's ' Rights, Man's mights or strengths, once more preached irrefragably ! abroad ; along with this, and still louder for the time, the fear- fullest Devil's-Message of Man's weaknesses and sins ;— and all ; on such a scale, and under such aspect : cloudy ' death-birth of a \ ^ world ; ' huge smoke-cloud, streaked with rays as of heaven on one side ; girt on the other as with hell-fire ! Flistory tells us . many things : but for the last thousand years and nore, what \ thing has she told us of a sor^ hke this ? Wind: therefore let us > two,'0 Reader, dwell on willingly, for a little ; and from its endless significance endeavour to extract what may, in present circum- stances, be adapted for us. ^ , It is unfortunate, though very natural, that the history of this . Period has so generally been written in hysterics. Exaggeration ^ abounds, execration, wailing ; and, on the v/hole, darkness. But thus too, wher foul old Rome had to be swept from the Earth, and \ those Northmen, and other horrid sons of N tare, came in, < 'swallowing formulas' as the French now do, foul old Rome , screamed execrativel her loudest ; so that, the true shape of ; many things is lost for us. Attila's Huns had arms of such length \ that they could lift i stone without stooping. Into the body of the poor Tatars execrativc Roman Histor. intercalated an alphabetic I letter ; and so they con Inue ^artars, of fell Tartarean nature, to . this day. Here, in like manner, search as we wiil in these multi- form innumerable French Records, darkness too frequently covers, \ or sheer distraction bewilders. One finds it difficult to imagine that the Sun shone in this September month, as he docs in others. Nevertheless it is an indisput ble lact that the Sun did shine; and there was weather and work,— nay, as to that, very bad weather for harvest work I An unlucky Editor may do his utmost ; arid after all, require allowances. He had been a wise Frenchman, who, looking, close at hand, on this waste aspect of a France all stirring and whirling, in wnys new, 4mtried, had been able to discern where the cardinal movement lay ; which tendency it was that had the rule and primary direc- tion of it then 1 But at forty-four years' distance, it is different. To all men now, two cardinal movements or grand tendencies, in »hc September whirl, have become discernible enough : that stormfiil effluence towards the Fionncrs ; that frantic crowding towards Townhouses and Council-ball--, in the interior. Wih' France dashes, in desperate death-defiance, towards the P>ontier: to defend itself from foreign Despots \ crowds towards Townhall THU IMPROVISED COMMUNE. and Election Committee- rooms, to defend itself from domestic Aristocrats. Let the Reader conceive well these two cardinal movements ; and what side-currents and endless vortexes might depend on these. He shall judge too, whether m such sudden wreckage of all old Authorities, such a pair of cardinal move- ments, half-frantic in th-nselves, could be of soft nature? As m dry Sahara, when the winc> waken, and lift and winnow the im- mensity of sand ! The air itself (Travellers say) is a dim sand-air; and dimloomini? through it, the wonderfuilest uncertain colonnades of Sand-PiUars" rush whirling from this side and from that, like so many mad Spinning-Dervishes, of a hundred feet in stature ; and dance their huge Desert- waltz th^re !— ■. u Nevertheless in ail human movements, were they but a aay old, there is order, or the beginning of order. Consider two things in this Sahara- waltz of the French Twenty-five millions ; or rather one thing, and one hope of a thing : the Commune (Municipality) of Paris; which is already here ; the xNational Convention, which shall in few weeks be h<:re. The Insurrectionary Commune, which improvising itself on the eve of the Tenth of August, worked this ever-memorable Deliverance by explosion, must needs rule over it —till the Convention meet. This Commune, which they may well call a spontaneous or ' improvised' Comm.une, is, tor the present, sovereign of France. The Legislative, deriving its authority from the Old, how can it now have authority when the Old is exploded by insurrectio n. ? As a floating piece of wreck, certain things, persons ana interests may still cleave to it ; volun- teer defenders, riflemen " pikemen in green uniform, or red night- cap (of bonnet mige).. defile before it daily, just on the wing towards Brunswick ; with the brandishing ot arms ; a ways wth \ some touch of Leonidas-eloquence, often with a fire of daring that threatens to outherod Herod, - the Galleries, ' especially he ' Ladies, never done with applaudmg.'* Addresses of this or the like sort can be received and answered, m the hearing ot all France ■ the Salle de Manege is still useful as a place of proclama- tion For which use, indeed, it now chiefly serves. Vergniaud delivers spirit-stirring orations ; bin always ^i'^^.f P^P'^^^'^^^f only, looking towards the coming Convention. Le o'^-r me^OTV perish," cries Vergniaud, " but let France be free! "-whereupon they ail start to their feet, shouting responsive : ' Yes, 3^^ A . notre mdnioire, pourvu que la Irancc soit libre ! t Uistiockea Chabot abjures Heaven that at least we may "have done « .th Kings;" and fast as powder under spark, we all blaze up once more, and with waved hats shout and swear : "Yes, ^^'^^.^'^"^ plus de roi! " X All which, as a method of proclamation, is very '^"For'the rest, that our busy Brissots, rigorous Rolands, men who once had authority and now have less and less : men who love law, and will have even an Explosion explode itseli, as tar a» possible, according to rule, do find this state of matters most un- official unsatisfactory,— is not to be demea. Complaints .are * Moore's Journal, i. 85. t J^"'' '''^''l- 467- * ""d. xvu. 437. SEPTEMBER, made ; attempts are made : but without effect. The attempts even recoil ; and must be desisted from, for fear of worse : the sceptre is departed from this Legislative once and always. A poor Legislative, so hard was fate, had let itself be hand-gyved, nailed to the rock like an Andromeda, and could only wail there to the Earth and Heavens ; miraculously a wmged Perseus (or Improvised Commune) has dawned out of the void Blue, and cut her loose : but whether now is it she, with her softness and musical speech, or is it he, with his hardness and sharp falchion and cegis, that shall have casting-vote? Melodious agreeineiit of vote ; this were the rule ! But if otherwise, and votes diverge, then surely Andromeda's part is to weep —if possible, tears of gratitude alone. . ^ Be content, O France, with this Improvised Commune, such as It is 1 It has the implements, and has the hands : the time is not long On Sunday the twenty- sixth of August, our Primary Assembhes shall meet, begin electing of Electors ; on Sunday the second of September (may the day prove lucky !) the Electors shall begin electing Deputies ; and so an all-heahng National Convention will come together. No 7narc d' argent, or distinction of Active and Passive, now insults the French Patriot : but there is universal suffrage, unlimited liberty to choose. Old-constituents, Present-Legislators, all France is ehgible. Nay, it may be said, the flower of all the Universe {de rUnivers) is eligible; for in these very days we, by act of Assembly, ' naturalise ' the chief Foreign Friends of humanity : Priestley, burnt out for us in Birmingham ; Klopstock, a genius of all countries ; Jeremy Bentham, useful Jurisconsult ; distinguished Pame, the reDelhous Needleman ;— some of whom may be chosen. As is most fit ; for a Convention of this kind. In a word. Seven Hundred and Forty five unshackled sovereigns, admired of the universe, shall reolace ^ this hapless impotency of a Legislative,— out of which, it is likely, ^ the best members, and the Mountain in mass, may be re-elected. Roland is getting ready the Salle des Cent Suisses, as preliminary rendezvous for them : in that void Palace of the Tuileries, now- void and National, and not a Palace, but a Caravansera. As for the Spontaneous Commune, one may say that there never was on Earth a stranger Town- Council. Administration, not of a , ^>-reat City but of a great Kingdom in a state of revolt and frenzy, this is the task that has fallen to it. Enrolhng, provisioning, judging ; devising, deciding, doing, endeavouring to do : one won- ders the human brain did not give way under all this, and reel. But happily human brains have such a talent of taking up simply what they can carry, and ignoring all the rest ; leaving all the rest, as if it were not there ! Whereby somewhat is verily shifted for ; and much shifts for itself. This Improvised Commune walks along, nothing doubting ; promptly making front, without fear or flurry, at what moment soever, to the wants of the moment. Were the world on fire, one improvised tricolor Municipal has but oik life to lose. They are the elixir and chosen-men ot Sansculotte Patriotism ; promoted to the forlorn-hope ; unspeakable victor. THE IMPROVISED COMMUNE. 9 or a high gallows, this is their meed. They sit there, in the Town- hall, these astonishing tricolor Municipals ; in Council General ; in Committee of Watchfulness {dc Surveillance, which will even become de Salut Public, of Public Salvation), or what other Com- mittees and Sub-committees are needful managing infinite Cor- respondence ; passing infinite Decrees : one hears of a Decree being ' the ninety-eighth of the day/ Ready 1 is the word. They carry loaded pistols in their pocket ; also some improvised lun- cheon by way of meal. Or indeed, by and by, traiieurs contract for the supply of repasts, to be eaten on the spot,— too lavishly, as it was afterwards grumbled. Thus they : girt in their tricolor sashes ; Municipal note-paper in the one hand, fire-arms in the other. They have their Agents out all over France ; speaking in townhouses, market-places, highways and byways ; agitating, urging to arm ; ail hearts tingling to hear. Great is the fire of Anti-Aristocrat eloquence : nay some, as Bibliopolic Momoro, seem to hint afar off at something which smells of Agrarian Lav7, and a surgery of the overswoln dropsical ^ strong-box itself ; — whereat indeed the bold Bookseller runs risk of being hanged, and Ex-Constituent Buzot has to smuggle him off.^ Governing Persons, were they never so insignificant intrinsic- ally, hnve for most part plenty of Memoir-writers ; ar_d the curious, in r iter-times,, can learn minutely their goings out and comings in : which, as men always Icve to know their fellow-men in singular situations, is a comfort, of its kind. Not so, with these Govern- ing Persons, now in the Townhall ! And yet what most original fellow-man, of the Governing sort, high-chancellor, king, kaiser, secretary of the home or the foreign department, ever shewed such a phr.sis as Clerk Tallien, Procureur Manuel, future Procu- reur Chaumette, here in this Sand-waltz of the Twenty-five mil- lions, now do ? O brother mortals, — thou Advocate Panis, friend ot Danton, kinsman of Santerre ; Engraver Sergent, since called Agate Sergent ; thou Huguenin, with the tocsin in thy heart ! But, as Horace says, they wanted the sacred memoir- writer {sacra vate) ; and we know them not. Men bragged of August and its doings, publishing them in high places ; but of this September none now or afterwards would brag. The September world re- mains dark, fulig mous, as J-