#ah. a young king whose eyes are always cold and whose heart has grown even colder | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fairiesherefairiesthere · 4 years

Note

Hi. If the writing requests are still open, could you maybe do something with flirting freed and blushing Laxus. Thanks :)

Hello. I mentioned Laxus blushing maybe twice and got totally of track with this au. I’m awfully sorry and I hope u still accept this offer lmao

Short summary: Au where Laxus works for a rich family. Their son is cursed to freeze the people he loves, so he has to keep a distance from them. Truly, A Very Not Good Time

WC: 5548 words

Fic under the cut!

With a slight tremour in his hand, Laxus looks up at the pristine white walls looming over him. Sighing deeply, he clutches the handle of his suitcase tighter and the servant next to him blisfully ignores him. "The Lord and Lady are awaiting you in the pavilion in the garden. You can leave your luggage here, someone will come and pick them up for you. If you'd follow me."

Without waiting for an answer, the stiff man turns around, striding away and Laxus awkwardly falls in tempo beside him. After a short walk that luckily doesn't leave him sweating, he is deposited in front of two people whose handkerchiefs look like they cost more than Laxus' entire outfit. It's now that he realises how out of his depth he is.

He clears his throat, but the servant stops him from going any further by stepping none too delicately on his foot. "Quiet", he hisses, "The Lord and Lady will speak to you as and when they see fit."

"Oh Charles, don't be like that", the Lord smiles and the servant bows hastily. Unsure of what to do, Laxus gives the man something between a bow and a firm nod. "You are dismissed", the man addresses the servant before beckoning Laxus to come closer. "Come hither young man, I've heard wonderful things about you." Laxus does as he's told and when the Lord offers him a chair, he accepts it. "Are you nervous?" his wife asks, eyes deep blue and sparkling with a barely hidden misschief.

Is he nervous? It's a wonder that she doesn't seem to ask it as a rhetorical question, instead she seems to be genuinely wondering about it. Of course he is. The two people in front of him own the land he's lived on all his life and then some. They're powerful, some say even on par with the king and with power does of course come an obscene amount of money.

Normally, Laxus doesn't care for the amount of cash one has or how many carriages they'll be able to buy in one lifetime. He'd gladly tell them to get hit by those carriages if he thought they'd deserve it. But now he can't afford to do that and somewhere, it does bother him. He's always been a man of simple pleasures and being brutally honest had been one of those things.

Being honest however, is something he can't do now. This job they've offered him pays more than any other in town and more importantly, he would be given a housing. With this job he could finally pay for his grandpa's medicine and he could give the old man a proper place to stay. No matter how these people will be treating him in the future, he'll have to shove his pride aside to keep this job.

"A little bit. But I don't think it'll affect my work and should it do so anything, you are free to claim it was artistic whims that made your garden look so avant-garde." The lady hums and spares him a little smile. "I am fond of whimsical things. It's why I married him", she jokes and moves her head into the direction of her husband. Laxus can't help but let a laugh escape.

Lord Justine raises a brow at that and Laxus quickly shuts his mouth again. Would you look at that, he's already overstepped his boundaries. The Lord's face clears up at that and he waves Laxus' worries away. "Young man, we've offered you to maintain our garden because we admire your work. You are an official part of our staff now, so don't be afraid to be frank. Life gets awfully boring when people trip over themselves to bend to your will without thinking. Do me a favour and don't be like that, okay?"

"Yes sir!" Laxus yells, bending to the man's will without thinking. Catching up to his own actions, he colours red. Ah damn. The couple doesn't seem to mind though, as they just brush it off with a laugh. "You are dismissed, change this garden as you see fit. It is your domain now."

"Ah dear", Lady Justine interrupts, "Let the young man settle in a bit first. Laxus right? We have honoured your request and have brought your grandfather over. He now resides in the room next to yours. Pardon me for asking though, but does he need a doctor? The man has a sickly glow about him." Concern colours her soft facial features and Laxus hesitates to answer. Then he remembers their command to be frank with them.

"I would really appreciate it if you did that. Thank you for your kindness. I'll try to pay you back in any way that I can." Lady Justine shakes her head, but the Lord gives him a once-over. "Say Laxus, can you hold your own in a fight? You are quite a big guy, I bet you could."

"I've had no formal training, but I have grown up around bar and streetfights", Laxus admits and the man hums in consideration. "We have a single child", he says and Lady Justine sighs: "And what a child it is."

"The boy has been cursed since birth by a witch who felt wronged by the both of us. This curse makes it so that our boy is very, very cold to any and all potential suitors. Cold to a painful degree for the opposing party and everyone who happens to watch the scene. Now if he were to be a bit of an ugly duckling, it wouldn't have been a problem. But unfortunately", Lord Justine moves his hand between his wife and himself and it hits Laxus just how stunning these two creatures are. "That's not exactly the case. Without meaning to, our son starts quite a lot of fights. He's a capable fighter, but if you happen to be around him, could you try to persuade him from instigating it? It would make the both of us very, very happy."

"I'll try?" Laxus says, unsure of how exactly he's supposed to keep a brat with blue who seems to be keen on starting fights in line. He's unsure whether it's really a curse or just a case of rotten personality. "That's all we could ask for", Lady Justine says before the couple lets him go.

The garden's magnificent and the fact that he's been given free reign over it makes his experience there so much better. It's all very pleasing to begin with, but there's so much unused lawn and after a moment of hesitation, he plants some fruits trees. After Lady Justine had commented on how nice they were, he had thrown his caution out of the window and had gone wild with the fruits and vegetables. He was a practical man at heart after all.

It's a few months into his work that he meets the young lord known as Freed Justine. No amount of warning had been able to prepare him for actually laying eyes upon the man in question.

He's dressed in a loose, light blue tunic. The fabric conceals some of his figure, but it does reveal a slight sliver of smooth skin and contrasting sharp collarbones and Laxus can barely draw his away from it. When his gaze travels upwards he lays eyes upon the softest looking pink lips in the world and he briefly wonders how they would feel against his own. After dismissing that thought, he spots the man's eyes, an impossible shade of blue that pops against the pale background of his skin. A beauty mark graces his left eye, making him look even more elegant. The finisher is his hair, looking like silk draped over one shoulder, moving softly as the stubborn wind tries to make a mess out of it. That doesn't happen though.

In front of the angelic looking man is another man, kneeling with his forehead against the ground. "Lord Freed!" the man in question yells, "Please accept my undying love and affection for you!"

"No. No, I don't think I will. Please leave." The object of the man's desires dryly says before turning his gaze towards Laxus. When his uncovered eye fully meets Laxus' eyes, he gets why people call the man in front of him cold. He's never once met someone who could relay complete and utter boredom that well with a single gaze. In a single eye. It's actually quite impressive.

"Are you a guard?" Laxus winces a bit at the sharp tone. "No, I'm the gardener."

"You lug wood around? Would you dispose of this for me?" Laxus has half the mind to tell him to dispose of the now crying lad himself, but then he remembers the request of Freed's parents. He promised them to try to keep their son out of fights, so he can't exactly tell him to start one. With a sigh he clamps the sobbing, love-struck fool under his arm and throws a salute. "I'll be putting him outside the gate."

"Have fun with that", Freed tells him and re-enters the home without sparing Laxus another glance. Somewhere within him, he wishes the man had looked back at him.

As soon as Freed's out of sight, it's like the man under his arm snaps out of a trance. "That fucking bitch", he rages as he trashes against Laxus' hold. "I'll kill him! Who does he think he is? He thinks he can go around stomping on people's hearts, just because he happens to be pretty and rich?"

"To be fair", Laxus starts, "He has every right to say no to people. You know that right?"

"He'll never get anyone better than me. At least I'm not only pursuing him for his money. He should be grateful. In fact, he should be the one begging for my attention!" Throughout his spiel, Laxus has taken the chance to take a proper look at the man he has trapped. "No offence, but aren't you a few decades older than him? Shouldn't you be a bit ashamed of chasing a young man in such a dishonourable manner?"

The old man now redirects his attention towards Laxus, but before he can voice his opinions, Laxus throws him over the fence. "Goodbye filthy geezer. Please don't come back."

God, Laxus wishes that old man would come back. Well, not really but the quality of men and women that have come in pursuit of Freed has only been declining since then. Although they're absolutely starstruck when meeting the young man, it doesn't conceal their greed and their particular brand of lewdness. The things Laxus has heard are absolutely disgusting and he wonders how Freed hasn't blown his own eardrums out yet, to save him from the comments directed his way. Laxus gladly disposes of them for him. Freed always leaves without sparing him a second glance.

One day, there's a change in routine. While Laxus is tending to his trees one morning, he hears soft footsteps and when he turns around, he sees Freed sitting down on the steps of the pavilion. "There are chairs in the shed, you know. I could get one for you if you want?" he offers and Freed jumps a little. Apparently the man hadn't noticed him yet.

The man gives a timid little shake of the head. "It's quite alright", he says and in the peaceful morning, Laxus can pay attention to the specifics of his voice. He's surprisingly soft spoken, but Laxus wouldn't call him shy. He has a velvety smooth and deep voice and talks in a calm manner, as though he knows that he'll be listened to without having to raise his voice.

For a while Laxus feels the man studying him. "Is there any reason you're here?" he decides to ask, unwilling to bear the silence any longer. "Peace, mostly", the younger man admits. "Also, they told me there was a big chance of meeting you out here."

"Oh."

"I don't think I've formally introduced to you. I am Freed Justine", he says and offers Laxus his hand. "I gathered that", Laxus answers as he shakes the hand. Freed's grip is surprisingly strong. "Jee, I wonder where you gathered that information from. Surely it wasn't from the string of admirers moaning it everyday."

Laxus snorts at the joke, but the facial expression of the young man in front of him doesn't change so Laxus quickly stops. "Please don't do that. This", Freed waves his hand in front of his stony expression, "doesn't ever change. I prefer it that way, it adds a bit of mystery to my character I think."

"You don't want people to know your thoughts", Laxus guesses and Freed gives him a nod. "I'd rather not. My life's bothersome enough as is, imagine how much more troublesome it would be if people could read my thoughts on my face instead of feeling them on their skin."

Seeing the puzzled expression on Laxus' face, Freed offers him both of his hands and Laxus tentatively takes them. The first thing he notices is the roughness of his palms and he wonders what Freed likes to do in his spare time. The second thing he notices is that they're unusually chilly and the longer he holds onto them, the colder they get. After a while it gets painful to hold onto them, so he lets go with an apologetic wince.

"The more I like a person, the colder I get. I think you're quite alright and I'd even say I like you a bit. But I have no deep attachments to you, so you are able to touch me for a little while. If I were to love you more than myself, you wouldn't even be able to be near me, you'd freeze into a fun statue of pure ice. If I felt completely neutral towards you, you would not be affected by the curse at all."

Laxus frowns at that. "That does not sound like a fun situation. How do you deal with it?" Freed gives him a mirthless smile. "I simply avoid getting close to people. It's easier than you think it is, mister Dreyar." He turns around after that, not telling Laxus goodbye and once again, he doesn't look back. Laxus, however keeps staring at the spot the young man had stood in. How awful it must be, to be close to no one. To not be able to feel the touch of someone who truly loves you.

After that particular conversation, Freed appears more often during Laxus' work. He never joins him in planting new plants or weeding though, he simply watches or reads a book in Laxus' vicinity. It's peaceful and every now and then they have other small talks. It's during those talks that Laxus learns that Freed does in fact have friends, he just doesn't meet up with them anymore after an incident he refuses to tell Laxus more about. When spotting his sad expression, Freed reaches over to smooth Laxus' worry-wrinkles out and Laxus notices that his hand feels colder than before. "Don't be saddened, we still write each other. Nothing's lost, it has only changed."

During one of Freed's visit, Laxus tells him he might as well get his hands dirty if he keeps distracting him from his work. He offers Freed a little sapling with a smile and quickly that smile withers as the plant in Freed's hands does the same. "My apologies", Freed says as though he had done something wrong instead of Laxus. "I fear I simply do not have the green fingers needed for this type of work. I'll leave it to the master of the garden instead." With an even colder finger, Freed briefly pokes him in the cheek and Laxus knows he isn't mad at him.

Freed's appearances are now a constant in his life and something Laxus constantly looks forward to. From what little hints Freed gives him, the man feels the same way. Freed still tries to keep a lather large distance between them, but more often than not he forgets himself and scoots closer to ask Laxus about the flowers he's planting or tell him about the all the poisons one could make with those flowers. He doesn't know why Freed knows such an alarming amount of poisons, but it's a quirk he doesn't dislike.

Freed likes to ramble, Laxus comes to find out. It's surprising how much he knows about various topics and how clearly he can explain things. Freed's face is the most open when he's ranting about one of the books he's read that day and Laxus finds himself fascinated. Besides talking, Freed's also really good at listening. When Laxus tells him about his past, the man lets his guard down completely to show his compassion from quite a distance away. Freed explains that his curse can temporarily rise up when he's feeling something very passionately.

It's on a sunny day, where the bees are buzzing and the heath is turning the atmosphere languid and the good kind of lazy, that Laxus offers Freed a hug.

Here's the story. Laxus, although brought up in a household where declarations of affection weren't the norm, knows what it feels like to receive positive bodily affection. A pat on his back, a ruffle through his hair, a loving shoulderbump, he has received them all. Freed hasn't. Not regularly and Laxus guesses, not ever.

He's seen the Justine parents interact with their son and although it hadn't been malicious, their interactions had been anything but warm and friendly. There was an obvious mutual respect, but the parents held their son at an arms' length. Laxus' heart ached when he had laid eyes on the spectacle and that had been the beginning of his desire to provide for Freed emotionally in some way, shape or form. God knows he himself is quite clumsy when it comes to being affectionate (quite clumsy doesn't start to begin to describe it, actually), but he wants to at least do something.

"Hey Freed", he calls out the man laying next to him on the picnic blanket. "Hm?" the man says, not opening his eyes at all, but still signifying that he's paying attention to Laxus. "Would you like a hug? I know you don't like touching people because of your accident, but we're not all that close, I think. It should be pretty safe, want to try it out?"

That does make Freed's eye snap open and he rolls on his side to face Laxus. "Why?" he asks and Laxus shrugs. "I thought it'd be nice, that's all."

"Do you pity me?" Freed asks, voice dangerously low and blue eyes glaring daggers. Despite the sunny weather, Laxus shivers underneath that stern glare. "No, but I sort of sympathise. There was a period in my life where I didn't receive any form of affection at all and it had quite the impact on me. Not a good one, mind you. I remember receiving my first hug after that period and I broke down and cried like a baby. It was a sight."

Freed smiles at that. "I bet it was." The fondness of his smile makes way for a particular brand of shrewdness that Laxus has come to associate with Freed. With a quick movement, the man has positioned himself above Laxus. He's not seated on his lap, which Laxus both mourns and doesn't. He doesn't mourn it because he can't embarass himself but he does mourn it because now he can see the muscles of Freed's legs working to keep him upright as he's kneeling above Laxus and dear lord, the sight of those could be the death of him.

With a rough hand, but a gentle manner, Freed tilts his chin up, forcing Laxus to meet his eyes and he dryly swallows as he sees the barely concealed heath in those deep blues. "Are you sure it's just that, mister Dreyar? Merely sympathy?" he asks, voice husky and Laxus colours a deep, deep shade of red in response. "Oh darling", Freed croons at that, "You have such an open face. You should really learn how to conceal your intentions."

"What if I don't want to?" That shuts Freed up and for a moment the man is quiet. Laxus wonders if he's screwed this up, but then Freed shakes his head and moves back away again. "Alright, give me a hug. It better be good. One of my eyes may be covered, but I am still plenty able to see those thick arms of yours. If I don't feel like the life is being squeezed out of me, I will consider this a failure."

Grinning, Laxus flexes his arms. "Don't you worry for even a second. I'll crush your ribcage." Freed snorts. "Charming." The process of getting into the hug is a bit awkward, but once there, it's alright. Of course, Laxus starts the whole thing by absolutely crushing Freed's ribcage. The man laughs it off like it's nothing and that prompts a bit of a squabble.

After a while and a lot of shifting though, Laxus has Freed in his lap, his head tucked underneath Laxus chin, back resting against Laxus' chest. Feeling brave, Laxus moves his own head from the top of Freed's head to Freed's shoulder, angling himself so he's nuzzling the man's neck. "See, this is nice."

"It is", Freed agrees before fully relaxing against Laxus chest with a content little sigh.

The moment is soon broken though, as frost creeps along Laxus' body. At first he ignores it, because Freed himself doesn't seem to notice the effect he's having on Laxus. Then, it starts getting uncomfortable and so he tries to gets the man's attention. He finds himself unable to move any part of his body though and the cold numbs his mouth as well. The thin layer of ice keeps getting thicker and the creaking of the frost is what attracts Freed's attention.

With a brusque movement, the man tears himself away from Laxus. He reaches out to Laxus, before stopping himself and running off, shouting something Laxus can't hear. It's so, so very cold. He curls into himself to gather more warmth and he finds it. He should go to sleep, he thinks as he feels his eyelids get heavy. He doesn't fight his instinct to do so.

When he wakes up, he's in his own room. Looking around he sees only one other person in the room. With a wave, his grandfather greets him. "You sure live an interesting life huh?" Ignoring his remark, Laxus asks him where Freed's at. "The young Justine? He's been fretting all day, but he has not come to visit you because he's started freezing up the hallways whenever he came too close to you. I think it's fair to say the young man likes you quite a bit."

Laxus should be elated to hear that someone loves him, but his worry for Freed overpowers that notion. "I bet he's lonely again." His grandfather nods. "With a curse like that, I imagine it's hard not to be."

It's unfair. It's unfair that Freed will live his life void of companionship. He'll never be able to be surrounded by true friends and he's constantly preyed upon by people for his status and money. The saddest part is that those kind of people are the only ones Freed will be able to live his life with, as all other will be turned to statues of ice. It's unfair that an innocent young man is punished for his parents' crimes like that. Passionately, Laxus relays those thoughts and many more to his grandfather, who patiently listens to him.

"So what are you going to do about it?" he asks and because it's his grandfather talking, Laxus knows there's no malice behind the words. "I don't know. Do you know any witches that could help lift the curse?" Although it had been more of a joke than an actual question, Makarov strokes his beard as though he's mulling over Laxus' question. "No, because proper witch etiquette states that a witch should absolutely not undo another witch's curse. I do however, have an inkling who the witch might be that cursed this young man. I can tell you where to find her, but be prepared my boy. She's not a very reasonable lady."

"That's what many people say about me as well. I don't care, please tell me where to find her." After his grandfather tells him the whereabouts of this particular witch, Laxus prepares for his journey. He starts with writing Freed a letter, one where he explains that he does not blame Freed for what happened and asks for his forgiveness, as well as for the man to wait for him. That he's looking for a way for them to be together. After delivering that letter, he sets off.

This Porlyusica lady really seemed intent on ticking off all the "witch"-boxes. Unreasonable? Check. Old? Check, since his grandpa knew of her. Living in big, dark, nearly impenetrable woods? Abso-fucking-lutely. It's a bother honestly, whacking his way through all the branches and thorns. But he perseveres because he has to.

Finally, he reaches her house and before he can even knock on the door, she opens her window and tells him to get lost. "Leave me alone, I've seen enough of you humans for another hundred years!" Determined, he yells back a loud "No thanks! Please let me talk to you!" She doesn't open the door for him.

So he waits in front of her door, unwilling to move an inch even if she yells at him. After three days she's finally had enough and lets him in. "You're so annoying. That particular brand of mulishness can only be attributed to one family. You're a Dreyar, aren't you?"

Sheepishly he nods and she rolls her eyes. "Of course you are. Spit out why you're here and if I'm unable to help you, leave or I'll curse you to hell and back." She's got a spine made of pure diamond, but Laxus isn't easily intimidated. "It's about that topic actually. You've cursed a man called Freed Justine."

The woman lets out a bitter, little laugh out at that. "I most certainly did not. I cursed his parents, but gave them the option to relay it someone near to them. It was only me, them and their unborn son in the room where it happened. They chose to curse their boy. Don't put that on me."

That's certainly a revelation...Laxus wonders whether he should tell Freed about it. He fears that it might shatter the already frail bond he shares with his parents and it's not as though Freed's got bonds to spare. Deciding to tackle that topic at a later moment, he turns back to Porlyusica. "Can you reverse the spell? It's ruining an innocent man's life."

She strokes her chin and gives him a squinting look. "How far are you willing to go for your goal? Do you really want this curse to be lifted or are you trying to achieve another goal by doing this?"

He shakes his head vehemently. "I'd like for him to be able to smile near his loved ones, that's all. I promise." After scrutinising him a bit more, she shrugs. "Alright then, it's not like I've got something against the young man himself. Here's the two steps to breaking the spell: 1. You're the Justine family's gardener aren't you? Here's a list of a couple of herbs I'd like you to grow there. They are only able to grow on that particular patch of land and since they stole it from me, I had to buy them. It's a financial pain in the ass, you know. 2.", she looks Laxus straight in the eyes, "Confess your honest love to him." Laxus chokes on his spit at those words. "Oh don't be like that, you're so obvious. Do that and he'll be fine."

While Laxus is still gathering his wits, she pushes the list with instructions for the herbs and some packets with seeds into his hands and manhandles him out of the door. "There you go loverboy, good luck and all that. Now scram, I've had enough human interaction to last me another three lifetimes." And with the list with herbs and a head full of confused thoughts, Laxus returns to the Justine mansion.

Part one of the counterspell is as easy as breathing. Laxus plants the herbs as soon as he comes home. He tends to them day after day, but sorely misses Freed's presence while doing so. He keeps looking out of the corner of his eyes in the hopes of laying eyes on the familiar see of green that is Freed's hair, but alas, he never comes. Sometimes Laxus thinks he can see glimpses of him through the window, but the moments are too fast and fleeting to fully conform this.

Once the saplings have fully grown, Laxus starts to work on part two of the plan. Or well, he starts to think about how he should even attempt to do such a task. He thinks, ponders and wonders a lot and ends up doing significantly less. It's embarassing, really.

A good thing though, is that recently Freed has been seeking him out again. Laxus wished they could've talked, but someone's always whisking either one of them away for something or other. It's infuriating and in those brief moments, Laxus can see that Freed thinks the exact same thing.

Finally, finally they can squeeze out of both their schedules and they find themselves in the garden, sitting on the steps of the pavilion. Before Laxus can try his hand at confessing (which probably would've gone disastrous), Freed grabs his hands with shining eyes and to Laxus' surprise, they're warm.

"It's like the curse inversed", Freed tells him excitedly, smiling brightly. "The cold isn't getting to other people anymore, it's confined to me solely." Now that he says it, Laxus can see the snowflakes on Freed's already pale skin connecting, forming a layer of frost. With lips that are turning blue, he smiles and Laxus wishes he wouldn't look that grateful. "I can be around people without hurting them now. Everything's alright now."

"It's not", Laxus blurts out, "Freed, it's really not." With a scowl, the man immediately pulls his hands back and defensively curls into himself. "Can't you be happy for me?" he spits out, "This is the best thing that's happened to me in years, it's fine if I turn into an icicle, I don't care. Just let me have this, please." Freed's anger reaches a boiling point, before he deflates and sighs so deeply and sadly. With fingers stiff from the cold, he reaches out and tilts Laxus' head just slightly so. "Do forgive me", he whispers in Laxus' ears, his cold breath sending chills down Laxus' spine. After that he gives Laxus the smallest, most innocent kiss Laxus has ever received in his lifetime. It's so, so very careful and after he pulls away, Freed cradles Laxus' hand to his cheek and whispers a quiet: "Thank you."

His eyes turn empty after that and the continuous creaking of ice stops, leaving only a horrible silence behind. Freed had been crying, Laxus realises as he touches the man's frozen face. He looks peaceful and a melancholy sort of happy. With a soft bump, Laxus brings their foreheads together and places his own hand on top of the one cradling his cheek.

"Hey Freed", he breathes, voice barely a whisper, "What I meant to say, is that you deserve more. You deserve to reconnect with those old friends of yours without freezing either them or yourself. You deserve to make friends without fearing you'll end up hurting them. You deserve the world and if I could, I'd give it to you. But honestly, I'd just like to spend more time with you." He pauses, closes his eyes and presses a kiss to Freed's hand. "I love you."

It's not like those words suddenly make the ice burst, splinters flying everywhere and impaling Laxus, killing him upon impact. Instead, he finds out that the ice had in fact been melting when Freed's hand softly strokes his cheek. Laxus' eyes snap back open and Freed gives him the most gorgeous little smile. "Well, aren't you mister dramatic. Waiting until the last moment, all fairy tale-esque", Freed teases and Laxus flushes till behind his ears. "Shut up", he murmurs and because it look like Freed does not plan to do that and instead make fun of him forever, Laxus traps him in a bearhug.

Freed squeezes back just as hard and they stay like that for a long, long time. By the time they disentangle themselves from each other, the sun's already setting. "Would you like to meet my friends?" Freed asks, "Since the inversion of the curse, they've been living here again. They are very important to me."

Taking Freed's hand, he says: "Of course. I'd love to meet the people important to you." He squeezes Freed's hand and the man smiles at that little touch. "Well then, let's go."

#fraxus #freed justine #laxus dreyar #fanfic #TheFairyWrites #ask

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the-tailor-retailored · 3 years

Text

The French Revolution: A History Volume 1 Excepts

it is a summing-up of Life; a final settling, and giving-in the “account of the deeds done in the body:” they are done now; and lie there unalterable, and do bear their fruits, long as Eternity shall last

that praying Duke of Orleans, Egalité’s grandfather, who honesty believed that there was no Death! He, if the Court Newsmen can be believed, started up once on a time, glowing with sulphurous contempt and indignation on his poor Secretary, who had stumbled on the words, feu roi d’Espagne (the late King of Spain): ‘Feu roi, Monsieur?' (the *late* king?) —‘Monseigneur,’ (My Lord) hastily answered the trembling but adroit man of business, ‘c’est une titre qu’ils prennent (’tis a title they take)

Man, “Symbol of Eternity imprisoned into Time!” it is not thy works, which are all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least, but only the Spirit thou workest in, that can have worth or continuance.

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.

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.

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. For 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 itself, 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!

Intelligence so abounds; irradiated by wit and the art of conversation. 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 all Bastilles, a coming millennium.

let the Absurd fly utterly forsaking this lower Earth for ever. It is Truth and Astræa Redux that (in the shape of Philosophism) henceforth reign. For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be “happy”? By victorious Analysis, and Progress of the Species, happiness enough now awaits him.

With the working people, again it is not so well. Unlucky! For there are twenty to twenty-five millions of them.

the masses consist 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.

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

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 forum, they have none that finds credence.

At rare intervals 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.

The Château 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

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 sinews and indignation.

governing; what by the spurt of your pen, in its cold dastard indifference, you will fancy you can starve always with impunity; always till the catastrophe come!—Ah Madame, such Government by Blindman’s-buff, stumbling along too far, will end in the General Overturn

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.

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.

—what unspeakable, nigh infinite Dishonesty ... 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.

Their King has become a King Popinjay; with his Maurepas Government, gyrating as the weather-cock does, blown about by every wind. Above them they see no God; or they even do not look above, except with astronomical glasses. The Church indeed still is; but in the most submissive state; quite tamed by Philosophism; in a singularly short time; for the hour was come.

Peace? O Philosophe-Sentimentalism, what hast thou to do with peace, when thy mother’s name is Jezebel? Foul Product of still fouler Corruption, thou with the corruption art doomed!

it is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided you do not handle it roughly.

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 worse than the beginning.

It has been well said: “Man is based on Hope; he has properly no other possession but Hope; this habitation of his is named the Place of Hope.”

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.

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.

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?

The name jokei (jockey) comes from the English; as the thing also fancies that it does. Our Anglomania, in fact , is grown considerable; prophetic 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 Liancourt, 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’Orléans or Egalité) flies to and fro across the Strait; importing English Fashions; this he, as hand-and-glove with an English Prince of Wales, is surely qualified to do. Carriages and saddles; top-boots and rédingotes, as we call riding-coats. Nay the very mode of riding: for now no man on a level with his age but will trot à l’Anglaise, rising in the stirrups; scornful of the old sitfast method, in which, according to Shakspeare, “butter and eggs” go to market.

Elf jokeis, we have seen; but see now real Yorkshire jockeys, and what they ride on, and train: English racers for French Races.

A problematic Chevalier d’Eon, now in petticoats, now in breeches, is no less problematic in London than 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,[43]—for whom also the too early gallows gapes.

Duke de Chartres was a young Prince of great promise, as young Princes often are; which promise unfortunately has belied itself. With the huge Orléans Property, with Duke de Penthievre for Father-in-law (and now the young Brother-in-law Lamballe killed by excesses),—he will one day be the richest man in France. 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: little 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 bewildering dazzlements; to obstreperous crotchets; to activities which you may call semi-delirious, or even semi-galvanic!

the circles of Beauty and Fashion, each circle a living circular Passion-Flower: expecting the magnetic afflatus, and new-manufactured Heaven-on-Earth. O women, O men, great is your infidel-faith!

under the strangest new vesture, the old great truth (since no vesture can hide it) begins again to be revealed: That man is what we call a miraculous creature, with miraculous power over men; and, on the whole, with such a Life in him, and such a World round him, as victorious Analysis, with her Physiologies, Nervous-systems, Physic and Metaphysic, will never completely name, to say nothing of explaining. Wherein also the Quack shall, in all ages, come in for his share.

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 Jacqueries, meal-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 me; but, Laissez faire, Leave me alone of your 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 Millions 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.

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 it, for thy logical digestion; be thankful, if skilfully planting down this and the other fixed pillar in the chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee.

Blessed also is Hope; and always from the beginning there was some Millennium prophesied; Millennium of Holiness; but (what is notable) never till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease and plentiful Supply.

Man is not what one calls a happy animal; his appetite 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 life is no cunningly-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.

let the theory of Perfectibility say what it will, discontents cannot be wanting: your promised Reformation is so indispensable; yet it comes not; who will begin it—with himself?

How, beneath this rose-coloured veil of Universal Benevolence and Astræa Redux, 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 whole 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!

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.

Shall we say, then: Wo to Philosophism, that it destroyed Religion, what it called “extinguishing the abomination (écraser l’infâme)”? Wo rather to those that made the Holy an abomination, and extinguishable; wo at 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 was 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 misdoing, 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.

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable. It is very notable, and touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the French Nation through all its wild destinies. For we shall still 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 sent 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.

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 vous êtes donné la peine de naître),’ all men must laugh: and a gay horse-racing Anglomaniac Noblesse loudest of all.

Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not inaccessible to the influences of their time; especially men whose life is business;

There are Duports of deep scheme; Fréteaus, Sabatiers, of incontinent tongue: all nursed more or less on the milk of the Contrat Social.

and now nothing but a solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull matter of fact, like 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!

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.’

Baron Besenval, with that frankness of speech which stamps the independent man, plainly assures her Majesty that it is frightful (affreux); ‘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 must “choke (combler) the Deficit,” or else it will swallow you!

Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do nothing with it; nothing but propose loans, which were tardily filled up; impose new taxes, unproductive of money, productive of clamour and discontent.

Vain seems human ingenuity.

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 circulation: 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 on; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank; and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in contact with reality, and can pass the cheat no further.

Observe nevertheless how, by a just compensating law, if the lie with its burden (in this confused whirlpool of Society) sinks and is shifted ever downwards, then in return the distress of it rises ever upwards and upwards. Whereby, after the long pining and demi-starvation of those Twenty Millions, a Duke de Coigny and his Majesty come also to have their “real quarrel.” Such is the law of just Nature; bringing, though at long intervals, and were it only by Bankruptcy, matters round again to the mark.

Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it.

anon, invites some dedicating Poet or Poetaster to sing “this Assembly of the Notables and the Revolution that is preparing.”[53] Preparing indeed; and a matter to be sung,—only not till we have seen it, and what the issue of it is.

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 illumination and insight, not even in conflagration; but, as was said, “in dull smoke and ashes of outburnt sensualities,” does he live and digest.

These Privileged Classes have been used to tax; levying toll, tribute and custom, at all hands, while a penny was left: but to be 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 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?

The force of private intrigue, and then also the force of public opinion, grows so dangerous, confused!

a Rustic is represented convoking the poultry of his barnyard, with this opening address: ‘Dear animals, I 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 écartez de la question).’

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.

Unhappy 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, Loménie beholds, not without astonishment, next to nothing but vacuity and possibility. 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 Turgot’s and Necker’s by compilation; shall become Loménie’s by adoption. Not in vain has Loménie studied the working of the British Constitution; for he professes to have some Anglomania, of a sort.

There are things, as we said, which should not be dwelt on with minute close scrutiny: over hot coals you cannot glide too fast.

‘Tithe, that free-will offering of the piety of Christians’—‘Tithe,’ interrupted Duke la Rochefoucault, 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.’

The unquietest humour possesses all men; ferments, seeks issue, in pamphleteering, caricaturing, 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 lowest dumb rank, the inevitable misery, as was predicted, has spread upwards. In every man is some obscure feeling 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.

Loménie’s first Edicts are mere soothing ones: creation of Provincial Assemblies, “for apportioning the imposts,” when we get any; suppression of Corvées 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.

The lower classes, in this duel of Authority with Authority, Greek throttling Greek, have ceased to respect the City-Watch: Police-satellites are marked on the back with chalk (the M signifies mouchard, spy); they are hustled, hunted like feræ naturæ. Subordinate rural Tribunals send messengers of congratulation, of adherence. Their Fountain of Justice is becoming a Fountain of Revolt.

What will not people bless; in their extreme need?

The evil is considerable; but can he not remove it, can he not attack it? At lowest, he can attack the symptom of it: these rebellious Parlements he can attack, and perhaps remove. Much is dim to Loménie, but two things are clear: that such Parlementary duel with Royalty is growing perilous, nay internecine; above all, that money must be had.

But apart from exile, or other violent methods, is there not one method, whereby all things are tamed, even lions? The method of hunger! What if the Parlement’s supplies were cut off; namely its Lawsuits!

In a victorious Parlement, Counsellor Goeslard de Monsabert even denounces that “levying of the Second Twentieth on strict valuation;” and gets decree that the valuation shall not be strict,—not on the privileged classes.

To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.

For the rest, in such circumstances, the Successive Loan, very naturally, remains unfilled; neither, indeed, can that impost of the Second Twentieth, at least not on “strict valuation,” be levied to good purpose: “Lenders,” says Weber, in his hysterical vehement manner, “are afraid of ruin; tax-gatherers of hanging.” The very Clergy turn away their face: convoked in Extraordinary Assembly, they afford no gratuitous gift (don gratuit),—if it be not that of advice; here too instead of cash is clamour for States-General.

During all that hatching of the Plenary Court, while Lamoignon looked so mysterious, Besenval had kept asking him one question: Whether they had cash? To which as Lamoignon always answered (on the faith of Loménie) that the cash was safe, judicious Besenval rejoined that then all was safe. Nevertheless, the melancholy fact is, that the royal coffers are almost getting literally void of coin. Indeed, apart from all other things this “invitation to thinkers,” and the great change now at hand are enough to “arrest the circulation of capital,” and forward only that of pamphlets. A few thousand gold louis are now all of money or money’s worth that remains in the King’s Treasury.

an Edict concerning Payments (such was the soft title Rivarol had contrived for it): all payments at the Royal Treasury shall be made henceforth, three-fifths in Cash, and the remaining two-fifths—in Paper bearing interest!

But the effect on Paris, on the world generally? From the dens of Stock-brokerage, from the heights of Political Economy, of Neckerism and Philosophism; from all articulate and inarticulate throats, rise hootings and howlings, such as ear had not yet heard. Sedition itself may be imminent!

Flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as weighty a mischief; to have a life as despicable-envied, an exit as frightful. Fired, as the phrase is, with ambition: blown, like a kindled rag, the sport of winds, not this way, not that way, but of all ways, straight towards such a powder-mine,—which he kindled! Let us pity the hapless Loménie; and forgive him; and, as soon as possible, forget him.

The City-watch can do nothing; hardly save its own skin: for the last twelve-month, as we have sometimes seen, it has been a kind of pastime to hunt the Watch. Besenval indeed is at hand with soldiers; but they have orders to avoid firing, and are not prompt to stir.

On Monday morning the explosion of petards began: and now it is near midnight of Wednesday; and the “wicker Mannequin” is to be buried,—apparently in the Antique fashion.

and there are soldiers come. Gloomy Lamoignon is not to die by conflagration, or this night; not yet for a year, and then by gunshot (suicidal or accidental is unknown).[105] Foiled Rascality burns its “Mannikin of osier,” under his windows; “tears up the sentry-box,” and rolls off: to try Brienne; to try Dubois Captain of the Watch. Now, however, all is bestirring itself; Gardes Françaises, Invalides, Horse-patrol: the Torch Procession is met with sharp shot, with the thrusting of bayonets, the slashing of sabres. Even Dubois makes a charge, with that Cavalry of his, and the cruelest charge of all: “there are a great many killed and wounded.” Not without clangour, complaint; subsequent criminal trials, and official persons dying of heartbreak![106] So, however, with steel-besom, Rascality is brushed back into its dim depths, and the streets are swept clear. Not for a century and half had Rascality ventured to step forth in this fashion; not for so long, showed its huge rude lineaments in the light of day. A Wonder and new Thing: as yet gamboling merely, in awkward Brobdingnag sport, not without quaintness; hardly in anger: yet in its huge half-vacant laugh lurks a shade of grimness,—which could unfold itself! However, the thinkers invited by Loménie are now far on with their pamphlets: States-General, on one plan or another, will infallibly meet; if not in January, as was once hoped, yet at latest in May. Old Duke de Richelieu, moribund in these autumn days, opens his eyes once more, murmuring, ‘What would Louis Fourteenth’ (whom he remembers) ‘have said!’—then closes them again, forever, before the evil time.

As good Archbishop Loménie was wont to say: ‘There are so many accidents; and it needs but one to save us.’—How many to destroy us?

What! To us also has hope reached; down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal? The bread we extorted from the rugged glebe, and, with the toil of our sinews, reaped and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not wholly for another, then; but we also shall eat of it, and be filled? Glorious news (answer the prudent elders), but all-too unlikely!

To which political phenomena add this economical one, that Trade is stagnant, and also Bread getting dear; for before the rigorous winter there was, as we said, a rigorous summer, with drought, and on the 13th of July with destructive hail. What a fearful day! all cried while that tempest fell. Alas, the next anniversary of it will be a worse.[118] Under such aspects is France electing National Representatives.

The incidents and specialties of these Elections belong not to Universal, but to Local or Parish History: for which reason let not the new troubles of Grenoble or Besancon; the bloodshed on the streets of Rennes, and consequent march thither of the Breton “Young Men” with Manifesto by their “Mothers, Sisters and Sweethearts;”[119] nor suchlike, detain us here. It is the same sad history everywhere; with superficial variations.

for the new popular force can use not only arguments but brickbats!

The plebeian heart too has red life in it, which changes not to paleness at glance even of you; and “the six hundred Breton gentlemen assembled in arms, for seventy-two hours, in the Cordeliers’ Cloister, at Rennes,”—have to come out again, wiser than they entered.

the Noblesse, with equal goodwill, finds it better to stick to Protests, to well-redacted “Cahiers of grievances,” and satirical writings and speeches.

“In all countries, in all times,” exclaims he departing, “the Aristocrats have implacably pursued every friend of the People; and with tenfold implacability, if such a one were himself born of the Aristocracy. It was thus that the last of the Gracchi perished, by the hands of the Patricians. But he, being struck with the mortal stab, flung dust towards heaven, and called on the Avenging Deities; and from this dust there was born Marius,—Marius not so illustrious for exterminating the Cimbri, as for overturning in Rome the tyranny of the Nobles.”[121] Casting up which new curious handful of dust (through the Printing-press), to breed what it can and may, Mirabeau stalks forth into the Third Estate.

But indeed, if Achilles, in the heroic ages, killed mutton, why should not Mirabeau, in the unheroic ones, measure broadcloth?

More authentic are his triumph-progresses through that disturbed district, with mob jubilee, flaming torches, “windows hired for two louis,” and voluntary guard of a hundred men... He has opened his far-sounding voice, the depths of his far-sounding soul; he can quell (such virtue is in a spoken word) the pride-tumults of the rich, the hunger-tumults of the poor; and wild multitudes move under him, as under the moon do billows of the sea: he has become a world compeller, and ruler over men.

Meanwhile such things, cheering as they are, tend little to cheer the national creditor, or indeed the creditor of any kind. In the midst of universal portentous doubt, what certainty can seem so certain as money in the purse, and the wisdom of keeping it there? Trading Speculation, Commerce of all kinds, has as far as possible come to a dead pause; and the hand of the industrious lies idle in his bosom. Frightful enough, when now the rigour of seasons has also done its part, and to scarcity of work is added scarcity of food!

actual existing quotity of persons: who, long reflected and reverberated through so many millions of heads, as in concave multiplying mirrors, become a whole Brigand World; and, like a kind of Supernatural Machinery wondrously move the Epos of the Revolution. The Brigands are here: the Brigands are there; the Brigands are coming! Not otherwise sounded the clang of Phoebus Apollo’s silver bow, scattering pestilence and pale terror; for this clang too was of the imagination; preternatural; and it too walked in formless immeasurability, having made itself like to the Night (νυκτὶ ἐοικώς.)!

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’Orléans, D’Artois, and enemies of the public weal.

the Brigands are clearly got to Paris, in considerable multitudes:[126] with sallow faces, lank hair (the true enthusiast 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 Guillotin’s Cahier, or any Cahier or Petition whatsoever, could they but write. Their enthusiast 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.

Or was he only thought, and believed, to be heard saying it? By this long chafing and friction it would appear the National temper has got electric.

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 of sevenpence halfpenny a-day. The City-watch cannot dissipate them; broils arise and bellowings; Réveillon, at his wits’ end, entreats the Populace, entreats the authorities. Besenval, now in active command, Commandant of Paris, does, towards evening, to Réveillon’s earnest prayer, send some thirty Gardes Françaises. These clear the street, happily without firing; and take post there for the night in hope that it may be all over.[127]

Not so: on the morrow it is far worse.

two cartloads of paving-stones, that happened to pass that way” have been seized as a visible godsend. Another detachment of Gardes Françaises 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 Françaises like it not, but have to persevere. All day it continues, slackening and rallying; the sun is sinking, and Saint-Antoine has not yielded. The City flies hither and thither: alas, the sound of that musket-volleying booms into the far dining-rooms of the Chaussée d’Antin; alters the tone of the dinner-gossip there. Captain Dampmartin leaves his wine; goes out with a friend or two, to see the fighting. Unwashed men growl on him, with murmurs of ‘À bas les Aristocrates (Down with the Aristocrats);’ and insult the cross of St. Louis? They elbow him, and hustle him; but do not pick his pocket;—as indeed at Réveillon’s too there was not the slightest stealing.[128]

At fall of night, as the thing will not end, Besenval takes his resolution: orders out the Gardes Suisses with two pieces of artillery. 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 disobeyed, fire,—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 Switzers, Saint-Antoine dissipates; hastily, in the shades of dusk. There is an encumbered street; there are “from four to five hundred” dead men. Unfortunate Réveillon has found shelter in the Bastille; does therefrom, safe behind stone bulwarks, issue, plaint, protestation, explanation, for the next month. Bold Besenval has thanks from all the respectable Parisian classes; but finds no special notice taken of him at Versailles,—a thing the man of true worth is used to.[

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 will level down to their own level, and no lower. Brigands, or whatever they might be, it was bitter earnest with them. They bury their dead with the title of Défenseurs de la Patrie, Martyrs of the good Cause.

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 blue Deep; and the memory of this day still be fresh.

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 Quackocracy; and a pestilential World be burnt up, and have begun to grow green and young again.

This day, sentence of death is pronounced on Shams; judgment of resuscitation, were it but far off, is pronounced on Realities. This day it is declared aloud, as with a Doom-trumpet, that a Lie is unbelievable. Believe 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.

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!

for is not every meanest Day “the conflux of two Eternities!”

A fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit, nay humour; one of the sprightliest clearest souls in all these millions. 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!

Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their king? For a king or leader they, as all 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.

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 unchain so much, and set it drifting,—which also shall be seen?

The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his; the man himself he can make his. ‘All reflex and echo (tout de reflet et de réverbère)!’ snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of all for him. In that forty-years “struggle against despotism,” he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union! This man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him: a born king of men!

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 logic-spectacles; but with an eye! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral 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 of 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 such formulas;—and even go bare, if need be, till she have found new ones.

Forty years of that smouldering, 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 Honoré, the greatest of them all: in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none like and none second to thee.

Shall we say, that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green.[132] That greenish-coloured (verdâtre) individual is an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre.

But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron, to let him depart thence, and resign in favour of a younger brother.

With a strict painful mind, an understanding 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.

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 whose 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?

His hair is grizzled, though he is still young: convictions, beliefs, placid-unalterable are in that man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself.

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?

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!

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 (vous fais sauter la tête) in a twinkling, and you have no pain;’—whereat they all laugh.[135] 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 Cæsar’s.

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 everlasting 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 Hippogriff 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;[136] and at least one Clergyman:

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.

The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished one pleased Sieyes

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 begging or stealing? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game!

There are Liancourt, and La Rochefoucault; the liberal Anglomaniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally; 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.

it is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (Barrel Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of strong liquor he contains.

There then walks our French Noblesse. All in the old pomp of chivalry: and yet, alas, how changed from the old position; drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these Chivalry Duces (Dukes, as they are still named) did actually lead the world,—were it only towards battle-spoil, where lay the world’s best wages then: moreover, being the 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!

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!

He will do and suffer strange things; and will become surely one of the strangest things ever seen, or like to be seen. A man living in falsehood, and on falsehood; yet not what you can call a false man: there is the specialty! It will be an enigma for future ages, one may hope: hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was possible only for this age of ours,—Age of Paper, and of the Burning of Paper.

has not this unfortunate Clergy also drifted in the Time-stream, far from its native latitude? An anomalous 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 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 redact; and none cries, God bless them.

Instead of Vive la Reine, voices insult her with Vive d’Orléans. Of her queenly beauty little remains except 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, desperation: all towards Eternity!

Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that ever met together on our Planet on such an errand.

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.

What further or better belief can be said to exist in these Twelve Hundred? 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; or worst of all, mere Macchiavellic pretence-of-belief,—in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless in that immeasurable Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of a New Life discernible: the deep fixed Determination to have done with Shams.

How has the Heaven’s light, oftentimes in this Earth, to clothe itself in thunder and electric murkiness; and descend as molten lightning, blasting, if purifying! Nay is it not rather the very murkiness, and atmospheric suffocation, that brings the lightning and the light? The new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the Destruction of a World?

We remark only that, as his Majesty, on finishing the speech, put on his plumed hat, and the Noblesse 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.[141] Thick buzz among them, between majority and minority of Couvrezvous, Décrouvrez-vous (Hats off, Hats on)! To which his Majesty puts end, by taking off his own royal hat again.

“France, in this same National Assembly of hers, has got something, nay something great, momentous, indispensable, cannot be doubted; yet still the question were: Specially what?

The States-General, created and conflated by the passionate effort of the whole nation, is there as a thing high and lifted up. Hope, jubilating, cries aloud that it will prove a miraculous Brazen Serpent 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 symbolic Banner; round which the exasperating complaining Twenty-Five Millions, otherwise 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 Italian Gonfalon, in its old Republican Carroccio); and shall tower up, car-borne, shining in the wind: and with iron tongue peal forth many a signal.

For what is Majesty but the Delegate of the Nation; delegated, and bargained with (even rather tightly),—in some very singular posture of affairs, which Jean Jacques has not fixed the date of?

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.

Double representation, and all 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 valid: it is the preliminary of all.

It must be resisted; wise was that maxim, Resist the beginnings! Nay were resistance unadvisable, even dangerous, 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.

For six weeks their history is of the kind named barren; which indeed, as Philosophy knows, is often the fruitfulest of all.

These were their still creation-days; wherein they sat incubating! In fact, what they did was to do nothing, in a judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body reassembles; regrets that they cannot get organisation, “verification of powers in common, and begin regenerating France. Headlong motions may be made, but let such be repressed; inertia alone is at once unpunishable and unconquerable.

Six Hundred inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit there, on their elliptic benches, longing passionately towards life; in painful durance; like souls waiting to be born.

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

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, longing to become organic. Letters arrive; but an inorganic body cannot open letters; they lie on the table unopened.

the poor man looks desolately towards a nameless lot. And this States-General, that 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 subscription, a kind of Wooden Tent (en planches de bois);[144]—most convenient; where select Patriotism can now redact resolutions, deliver harangues, with comfort, let the weather but as it will.

Lively is that Satan-at-Home! On his table, on his chair, in every café, 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.”

Finally, on the 27th day of May, Mirabeau, judging the time now nearly come, proposes that “the inertia 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.

This Third Estate will get in motion, with the force of all France in it; Clergy-machinery 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.

we meanwhile getting forward Swiss Regiments, and a “hundred pieces of field-artillery.” This is what the Œil-de-Bœuf, for its part, resolves on.

they have now, on this 17th day of June, determined that their name is not Third Estate, but—National Assembly!They, then, are the Nation? Triumvirate of Princes, Queen, refractory Noblesse and Clergy, what, then, are you? A most deep question;—scarcely answerable in living political dialects.

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 Broglie, 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 Brézé.

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 even to meet, or articulately lament,—till Majesty, with Séance Royale and new miracles, be ready! In this manner shall De Brézé, as Mercury ex machinâ, intervene;

Before supper, this night, he writes to President Bailly, a new Letter, to be delivered shortly after dawn tomorrow, 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.

It is shut, this Salle; occupied by Gardes Françaises. ‘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 Séance; 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.

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 two or three can get together, till they have made the Constitution. Made the Constitution, Friends! That is a long task.

Barndoor poultry fly cackling: but National Deputies turn round, lion-faced; and, with uplifted 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. Paris disembogues itself once more, to witness, “with grim looks,” the Séance Royale:[150] which, by a new felicity, 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 embracings, nay with tears;[151] for it is growing a life-and-death matter now.

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: ‘seul je ferai le bien de mes peuples,’—which being interpreted may signify, You, contentious Deputies of the States-General, have probably not long to be here!

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 completed.

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! Had not Gabriel Honoré 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 paleness, might very naturally, one after one, have glided off; 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?

Apparition of Mercurius de Brézé, muttering somewhat!—‘Speak out,’ cry several.—‘Messieurs,’ shrills De Brézé, 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 these 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!’

But what does the Œil-de-Bœuf, now when De Brézé shivers back thither? Despatch that same force of bayonets? Not so: the seas of people still hang multitudinous, intent on what is passing; nay rush and roll, loud-billowing, into the Courts of the Château itself; for a report has risen that Necker is to be dismissed. Worst of all, the Gardes Françaises seem indisposed to act: “two Companies of them do not fire when ordered!”[

Instead of soldiers, the Œil-de-Bœuf sends—carpenters, to take down the platform. Ineffectual shift! In few instants, the very carpenters cease wrenching and knocking at their platform; stand on it, hammer in hand, and listen open-mouthed.[157] The Third Estate is decreeing that it is, was, and will be, nothing but a National Assembly; and now, moreover, an inviolable one, all members of it inviolable: “infamous, traitorous, towards the Nation, and guilty of capital crime, is any person, body-corporate, 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.”[158] Which done, one can wind up with this comfortable reflection from Abbé Sieyes: ‘Messieurs, you are today what you were yesterday.’

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.”[159] The remaining Clergy, and likewise some Forty-eight Noblesse, D’Orléans among them, have now forthwith gone over to the victorious Commons; by whom, as is natural, they are received “with acclamation.”

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 Œil-de-Bœuf look to it. As for King Louis, he will swallow his injuries; will temporise, keep silence; will at all costs have present peace. 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’Espréménil 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 become National Assembly; and all France may sing Te Deum.

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 2nd 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.

Mercury descended in vain; now has the time come for Mars.

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?

Frightful enough to look upon; but what to hear of, reverberated through Twenty-five Millions of suspicious minds!

At Marseilles, many weeks ago, the 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?

Your National Assembly, stopped short in its Constitutional labours, may fatigue the royal ear with addresses and remonstrances: those cannon of ours stand duly levelled; those troops are here.

The Parisians resist? scornfully cry Messeigneurs. As a meal-mob may! They have sat quiet, these five generations, submitting to all. Their Mercier declared, in these very years, that a Parisian revolt was henceforth “impossible.”[162] 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 Patelins, Scribblers, factious Spouters,—brave Broglie, “with 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;

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,—

The soldier, who has seen his pay stolen by rapacious Foulons, his blood wasted by Soubises, Pompadours, and the gates of promotion shut inexorably 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.

Neither have the Gardes Françaises, the best regiment of the line, shown any promptitude for street-firing lately. They returned grumbling from Réveillon’s; and have not burnt a single cartridge since; nay, as we saw, not even when bid.

Consigned to their barracks, the Gardes Françaises 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 debauching, 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.”

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 “laid 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?

Pride, 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.

The twelfth July morning is Sunday; the streets are all placarded with an enormous-sized De par le Roi, “inviting peaceable citizens to remain within doors,” to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd.

Besenval is with them. Swiss Guards of his are already in the Champs Elysées, with four pieces of artillery.

Have the destroyers descended on us, then? From the Bridge of Sèvres 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 interjections, silent shakings of the head:

Are these troops verily come out “against Brigands”? Where are the Brigands? What mystery is in the wind?—Hark! a human voice reporting articulately the Job’s-news: Necker, People’s Minister, Saviour of France, is dismissed. Impossible; incredible! Treasonous to the public peace! Such a voice ought to be choked in the water-works;[171]—had not the news-bringer quickly fled

We have a new Ministry: Broglie the War-god; Aristocrat Bréteuil; Foulon who said the people might eat grass!

Rumour, therefore, shall arise; in the Palais Royal, and in 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 Café de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the Police 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 sheep 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-come! 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 great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter words,[172] does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this great moment.—Friends, continues Camille, some rallying sign! Cockades; green ones;—the colour of hope!—As with the flight of locusts, these green tree leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring 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.

France, so long shaken and wind-parched, is probably at the right inflammable point.—

In this manner march they, a mixed, continually increasing 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 guinguette tabernacles, it shall be a Sorcerer’s Sabbath; and Paris, gone rabid, dance,—with the Fiend for piper!

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.

Counsel dwells not under the plumed hat.

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 cruelest 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 Œil-de-Bœuf, 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.

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 flying,—headlong into the New Era.

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 hammering pikes;

“on les pendit, they hanged them.”[175] Brief is the word; not without significance, be it true or untrue!

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 quadruple that number: invincible, if we had only arms!

O poor mortals, how ye make this Earth bitter for each other; this fearful and wonderful Life fearful and horrible; and Satan has his place in all hearts! Such agonies and ragings and wailings ye have, and have had, in all times:—to be buried all, in so deep silence; and the salt sea is not swoln with your tears.

Great meanwhile is the moment, when tidings of Freedom reach us; when the long-enthralled soul, from amid its chains and squalid stagnancy, arises, were it still only in blindness and bewilderment, and swears by Him that made it, that it will be free! Free? Understand that well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be free. Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man’s struggles, toilings 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,—nay, something considerable, when the chains have grown corrosive, 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, corruption and the clam of death. Where ye are is no abiding.

Commandant Besenval, in the Champ-de-Mars, has worn out these sorrowful hours Insurrection 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: Colonels inform him, “weeping,” that they do not think their men will fight.

war-god Broglie sits yonder, inaccessible in his Olympus; does not descend terror-clad, does not produce his whiff of grapeshot; sends no orders.

Truly, in the Château of Versailles all seems mystery: in the Town of Versailles, were we there, all is rumour, alarm and indignation.

It has sent solemn Deputation over to the Château, 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!

with an eye too probably to the Salle des Menus,—were it not for the “grim-looking countenances” that crowd all avenues there.[177] Be firm, ye National Senators; the cynosure of a firm, grim-looking people!

He is the Brother of that Pompignan who meditated lamentably on the Book of Lamentations:

Saves-voux pourquoi Jérémie

Se lamentait toute sa vie?

C’est qu’il prévoyait

Que Pompignan le traduirait!

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.[178] 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!

hot old Marquis Mirabeau lies stricken down, at Argenteuil,—not within sound of these alarm-guns; for heproperly is not there, and only the body of him now lies, deaf and cold forever.

Upwards from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighbouring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry,—without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease from behind stone; hardly through portholes, shew the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make no impression!

Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted “Peruke-maker with two fiery torches” is for burning “the saltpetres of the Arsenal;”—had not a woman run screaming; had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful lady, seized escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought falsely to be de Launay’s daughter, shall be burnt in de Launay’s sight; she lies swooned on a paillasse: but again a Patriot, it is brave Aubin Bonnemere the old soldier, dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go up in white smoke: almost to the choking of Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart; and Reole the “gigantic haberdasher” another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of Babel; noise as of the Crack of Doom!

Blood flows, the aliment of new madness.

The Firemen are here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the Invalides’ cannon, to wet the touchholes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a “mixture of phosphorous and oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing pumps:” O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready? Every man his own engineer!

Hast thou considered how each man’s heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men; hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul; their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the Populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser: Bread! Bread! Great is the combined voice of men; the utterance of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows, which make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his footing some where beyond Time. De Launay could not do it.

As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlong; had not the Gardes Françaises, in their cool military way, “wheeled round with arms levelled,” it would have plunged suicidally, by the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.

Alas, already one poor Invalide has his right hand slashed off him; his maimed body dragged to the Place de Grève, and hanged there. This same right hand, it is said, turned back de Launay from the Powder-Magazine, and saved Paris.

And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing uncontrollable, firing from windows—on itself: in hot frenzy of triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain.

Through roarings and cursings; through hustlings, clutchings, and at last through strokes! Your escort is hustled aside, felled down; Hulin sinks exhausted on a heap of stones. Miserable de Launay! He shall never enter the Hotel de Ville: only his “bloody hair-queue, held up in a bloody hand;” that shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on the steps there; the head is off through the streets; ghastly, aloft on a pike.

Rigorous de Launay has died; crying out, ‘O friends, kill me fast!’

Your Place de Grève is become a Throat of the Tiger; full of mere fierce bellowings, and thirst of blood. One other officer is massacred; one other Invalide is hanged on the Lamp-iron: with difficulty, with generous perseverance, the Gardes Françaises will save the rest. Provost Flesselles stricken long since with the paleness of death, must descend from his seat, “to be judged at the Palais Royal:”—alas, to be shot dead, by an unknown hand, at the turning of the first street!—

O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out in the silent main;

It was the Titans warring with Olympus; and they scarcely crediting it, have conquered: 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.

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 Abbé “purchased his pipe for three francs,” and pitched it far.

Elie, in the grand Hall, Electoral Committee looking on, sits “with drawn sword bent in three places;” with battered helm, for he was of the Queen’s Regiment, Cavalry; with torn regimentals, face singed and soiled; comparable, some think, to “an antique warrior;”—judging the people; forming a list of Bastille 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! 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;

See also the Garde Françaises, in their steadfast military way, marching home to their barracks, with the Invalides and Swiss kindly enclosed in hollow square.

and now they have participated; and will participate. Not Gardes Françaises henceforth, but Centre Grenadiers of the National Guard: men of iron discipline and humour,—not without a kind of thought in them!

His Majesty, kept in happy ignorance, perhaps dreams of double-barrels and the Woods of Meudon. Late at night, the Duke de Liancourt, having official right of entrance, gains access to the Royal Apartments; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in his constitutional way, the Job’s-news. ‘Mais,’ said poor Louis, ‘c’est une révolte, Why, that is a revolt!’—‘Sire,’ answered Liancourt, ‘It is not a revolt, it is a revolution.’

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, reconcilement, 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.

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.

that in Henri Quatre’s case, the King had to make conquest of his People, but in this happier case, the People makes conquest of its King (a conquis son Roi). The King, so happily conquered, drives forward, slowly, through a steel people, all silent, or shouting only Vive la Nation;

[Louis] 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.

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;

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 in France, there do arrive, in these days of terror,—“men,” as men will arrive; nay, “men on horseback,” since Rumour 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 their further business, be what it might! Whereupon 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 France, for long months and even years, been chemically dealt with; brought below zero; and now, shaken by the Fall of a Bastille, it instantaneously congeals: into one crystallised mass, of sharp-cutting steel! Guai a chi la tocca; ’Ware who touches it!

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 Infamy; to Paris, to be judged at the Hôtel-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; the pitiablest, most unpitied of all old men.

Foulon must not only be judged righteously; but judged there where he stands, without any delay. Appoint seven judges, ye Municipals, or seventy-and-seven; name them yourselves, or we will name them: but judge him![193] Electoral rhetoric, eloquence of Mayor Bailly, is wasted explaining the beauty of the Law’s delay. Delay, and still delay! Behold, O Mayor of the People, the morning has worn itself into noon; and he is still unjudged!—Lafayette, pressingly 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? 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 of judging this man? Has he not been judged these thirty years?’ With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands: he is whirled across the Place de Grève, to the “Lanterne,” Lamp-iron which there is at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie; pleading bitterly for life,—to the deaf winds. Only 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 the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people.

Surely if Revenge is a “kind of Justice,” it is a “wild” kind!

Nevertheless, be the man’s conscience what it may, his nerves are of iron. At the Hôtel-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 Hôtel-de-Ville, they are clutched; 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 unnatural in Lands that had never known it.

The halcyon weather returns, though of a grayer complexion; of a character more and more evidently notsupernatural.

Thus, in any case, with what 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!

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;[197] the soul of it living, perhaps still longer, in the memories of men.

‘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! [198] Subscriptions are opened; Lists are formed, more accurate than Elie’s; harangues are delivered. A Body of Bastille 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 battlements;[199]

The Bastille Fortress, like the City of Jericho, was overturned by miraculous sound.

All things are in revolution; in change from moment to moment, which becomes sensible from epoch to epoch: in 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? 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.

Seeing which course of things, Messeigneurs of the Court Triumvirate, 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?

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 Emigration is not gone many miles, Prince Condé hardly across the Oise, when his Majesty, according to arrangement, for the Emigration also thought it might do good,—undertakes a rather daring enterprise: that of visiting Paris in person.

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 Roi and Vive la Nation; wearied but safe.

Surely a great Phenomenon: nay it is a transcendental one, overstepping all rules and experience; the crowning Phenomenon of our Modern Time. For here again, most unexpectedly, comes antique Fanaticism in new and newest vesture; miraculous, as all Fanaticism is. Call it the Fanaticism of “making away with formulas, de humer les formules.” The world of formulas, the formed regulated world, which all habitable world is,—must needs hate such Fanaticism like death; and be at deadly variance with it. The world of formulas must conquer it; or failing that, must die execrating it, anathematising it;—can nevertheless in nowise prevent its being and its having been. The Anathemas are there, and the miraculous Thing is there.

When the age of Miracles lay faded into the distance as an incredible tradition, and even the age of Conventionalities was now old; and Man’s Existence had for long generations rested on mere formulas which were grown hollow by course of time; and it seemed as if no Reality any longer existed but only Phantasms of realities, and God’s Universe were the work of the Tailor and Upholsterer mainly, and men were buckram masks that went about becking and grimacing there,—on a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and amid Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce brightness, rises SANSCULOTTISM, many-headed, fire-breathing, and asks: What think ye of me?

The age of Miracles has come back! “Behold the World-Phoenix, 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 blessing 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 exchange 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 beginning of much.

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, attempt not!

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

A Constitution can be built, Constitutions enough à la Sieyes: but the frightful difficulty is that of getting men to come and live in them!

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 Constitution, 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, capabilities they have there; which stands sanctioned therefore, by Necessity itself, if not by a seen Deity, then by an unseen one. Other laws, whereof there are always enough ready-made, are usurpations; which men do not obey, but rebel against, and abolish, by their earliest convenience.

Who is it that especially for rebellers and abolishers, can make a Constitution? He that can image forth the general Belief 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!

Or is it the nature of National Assemblies generally to do, with endless labour and clangour, Nothing? Are Representative Governments 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, cancel one another, like the fabulous Kilkenny Cats; and produce, for net-result, zero;—the country meanwhile governing 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.

One thing an elected Assembly of Twelve Hundred is fit for: Destroying. Which indeed is but a more decided exercise of its natural talent for Doing Nothing. Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.

It is the cynosure of revolutionary France, this National Assembly. All work of Government 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-five 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.

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 preternatural enthusiasm, will get through whole masses of work in one night.

Such night, unforeseen but for ever memorable, 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.

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;[200] President, appointed once a fortnight, raising many times no serene head above the waves.

There likewise sits seagreen Robespierre; throwing in his light weight, with decision, not yet with effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian; he would make away with formulas; yet lives, moves, and has his being, wholly in formulas, of another sort. “Peuple,” such according to Robespierre ought to be the Royal method of promulgating laws, “Peuple, this is the Law I have framed for thee; dost thou accept it?”—answered from Right Side, from Centre and Left, by inextinguishable laughter.[203] 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.’

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

Twelve Hundred brother men are there, in the centre of Twenty-five Millions; fighting so fiercely with Fate and with one another; struggling their lives out, as most sons of Adam do, for that which profiteth not.

But figure Twelve Hundred pamphleteers; droning forth perpetual pamphlets: and no man to gag them! Neither, as in the American 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 itself must be transacted in a low tone, with continual interruption: only “pencil Notes” circulate freely; “in incredible numbers to the foot of the very tribune.”[206]—Such work is it, regenerating a Nation; perfecting one’s Theory of Irregular Verbs!

Of the King’s Court, for the present, there is almost nothing whatever to be said. Silent, deserted are these halls; Royalty languishes forsaken of its war-god and all its hopes, till once the Œil-de-Bœuf rally again. The sceptre is departed from King Louis; is gone over to the Salles des Menus, to the Paris Townhall, or one knows not whither.

Poor King; for French Kings also are men!

The Queen sits weeping in her inner apartments, surrounded by weak women: she is “at the height of unpopularity;” universally regarded as the evil genius of France. Her friends and familiar counsellors have all fled; and fled, surely, on the foolishest errand.

That France should see her Nobles resist the Irresistible, Inevitable, with the face of angry men, was unhappy, not unexpected: but with the face and sense of pettish children? This was her peculiarity. They understood nothing; would understand nothing.

Volition, determination is not in this man: only innocence, indolence; dependence on all persons but himself, on all circumstances but the circumstances he were lord of. So troublous internally is our Versailles and its work.

So many millions of persons, all gyved, and nigh strangled, with formulas; whose Life nevertheless, at least the digestion and hunger of it, was real enough! Heaven has at length sent an abundant harvest; but what profits it the poor man, when Earth with her formulas interposes? Industry, in these times of Insurrection, must needs lie dormant; capital, as usual, not circulating, but stagnating timorously in nooks. The poor man is short of work, is therefore short of money; nay even had he money, bread is not to be bought for it. Were it plotting of Aristocrats, plotting of d’Orléans; were it Brigands, preternatural terror, and the clang of Phoebus Apollo’s silver bow,—enough, the markets are scarce of grain, plentiful only in tumult. Farmers seem lazy to thresh;—being either “bribed;” or needing no bribe, with prices ever rising, with perhaps rent itself no longer so pressing. Neither, what is singular, do municipal enactments, “That along with so many measures of wheat you shall sell so many of rye,” and other the like, much mend the matter. Dragoons with drawn swords stand ranked among the corn-sacks, often more dragoons than sacks.[211] Meal-mobs abound; growing into mobs of a still darker quality.

Starvation has been known among the French Commonalty before this; known and familiar. Did we not see them, in the year 1775, presenting, in sallow faces, in wretchedness and raggedness, their Petition of Grievances; and, for answer, getting a brand-new Gallows forty feet high? Hunger and Darkness, through long years! For look back on that earlier Paris Riot, when a Great Personage, worn out by debauchery, was believed to be in want of Blood-baths; and Mothers, in worn raiment, yet with living hearts under it, “filled the public places” with their wild Rachel-cries,—stilled also by the Gallows. Twenty years ago, the Friend of Men (preaching to the deaf) described the Limousin Peasants as wearing a pain-stricken (souffre-douleur) look, a look past complaint, “as if the oppression of the great were like the hail and the thunder, a thing irremediable, the ordinance of Nature.”[212] And now, if in some great hour, the shock of a falling Bastille should awaken you; and it were found to be the ordinance of Art merely; and remediable, reversible!

Or has the Reader forgotten that “flood of savages,” which, in sight of the same Friend of Men, descended from the mountains at Mont d’Or? Lank-haired haggard faces; shapes rawboned, in high sabots; in woollen jupes, with leather girdles studded with copper-nails! They rocked from foot to foot, and beat time with their elbows too, as the quarrel and battle which was not long in beginning went on; shouting fiercely; the lank faces distorted into the similitude of a cruel laugh. For they were darkened and hardened: long had they been the prey of excise-men and tax-men; of “clerks with the cold spurt of their pen.” It was the fixed prophecy of our old Marquis, which no man would listen to, that “such Government by Blind-man’s-buff, stumbling along too far, would end by the General Overturn, the Culbute Générale!”

No man would listen, each went his thoughtless way;—and Time and Destiny also travelled on. The Government by Blind-man’s-buff, stumbling along, has reached the precipice inevitable for it. Dull Drudgery, driven on, by clerks with the cold dastard spurt of their pen, has been driven—into a Communion of Drudges! For now, moreover, there have come the strangest confused tidings; by Paris Journals with their paper wings; or still more portentous, where no Journals are,[213] by rumour and conjecture: Oppression not inevitable; a Bastille prostrate, and the Constitution fast getting ready! Which Constitution, if it be something and not nothing, what can it be but bread to eat?

The harvest is reaped and garnered; yet still we have no bread. Urged by despair and by hope, what can Drudgery do, but rise, as predicted, and produce the General Overturn?

Fancy, then, some Five full-grown Millions of such gaunt figures, with their haggard faces (figures hâves); in woollen jupes, with copper-studded leather girths, and high sabots,—starting up to ask, as in forest-roarings, their washed Upper-Classes, after long unreviewed centuries, virtually this question: How have ye treated us; how have ye taught us, fed us, and led us, while we toiled for you? The answer can be read in flames, over the nightly summer sky. This is the feeding and leading we have had of you: EMPTINESS,—of pocket, of stomach, of head, and of heart. Behold there is nothing in us; nothing but what Nature gives her wild children of the desert: Ferocity and Appetite; Strength grounded on Hunger. Did ye mark among your Rights of Man, that man was not to die of starvation, while there was bread reaped by him? It is among the Mights of Man.

Where this will end? 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 born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven’s Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour.

To some it is a matter of wonder that the Seigneurs did not do something to help themselves; say, combine, and arm: for there were a “hundred and fifty thousand of them,” all violent enough. Unhappily, a hundred and fifty thousand, scattered over wide Provinces, divided by mutual ill-will, cannot combine. The 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 shillings, wherewith to buy a secondhand firelock.

The Seigneurs did what they could; enrolled in National Guards; fled, with shrieks, complaining to Heaven and Earth. One Seigneur, famed Memmay of Quincey, near Vesoul, invited all the rustics of his neighbourhood to a banquet; blew up his Château and them with gunpowder; and instantaneously vanished, no man yet knows whither.[218] Some half dozen years after, he came back; and demonstrated that it was by accident.

Unhappy country! How is the fair gold-and-green of the ripe bright Year defaced with horrid blackness: black ashes of Châteaus, 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 desperation.

But consider, while work itself is so scarce, how a man must not only 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!

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.[225] Busy are ye, Bailly, Brissot de Warville, Condorcet, and ye others!

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 you there?

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 impossible.”

Pamphleteering opens its abysmal throat wider and wider: never to close more. Our Philosophes, indeed, rather withdraw; after the manner of Marmontel, “retiring in disgust the first day.”

Camille Desmoulins has appointed himself Procureur-Général de la Lanterne, Attorney-General of the Lamp-iron; and pleads, not with atrocity, under an atrocious title; editing weekly his brilliant Revolutions 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, when no other’s is. Questionable Camille, how thou glitterest with a fallen, rebellious, 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!

Unhappy mortals: such tugging and lugging, and throttling of one another, to divide, in some not intolerable way, the joint Felicity of man in this Earth; when the whole lot to be divided is such a “feast of shells!”—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.

No, Friends, this Revolution is not of the consolidating kind. Do not fires, fevers, sown seeds, chemical mixtures, men, events; all embodiments of Force that work in this miraculous Complex of Forces, named Universe,—go on growing, through their natural phases and developments, each according to its kind; reach their height, reach their visible decline; finally sink under, vanishing, and what we call die? They all grow; there is nothing but what grows, and shoots forth into its special expansion,—once give it leave to spring.

Observe too that each grows with a rapidity proportioned, in general, to the madness and unhealthiness there is in it: slow regular growth, though this also ends in death, is what we name health and sanity.

Seventy-two Châteaus have flamed aloft in the Maconnais and Beaujolais alone: this seems the centre of the conflagration; but it has spread over Dauphiné, 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 armed 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.

Many things too, especially all diseased things, grow by shoots and fits.

Barriers and Customhouses burnt; the Tax-gatherer hunted, not hunting; his Majesty’s Exchequer all but empty. The remedy is a Loan of thirty millions; 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, what a glow of patriotism burns in many a heart; penetrating inwards to the very purse! So early as the 7th of August, a Don Patriotique, “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 listen to, flow in from far and near: in such number that the honourable mention can only be performed in “lists published at stated epochs.” Each gives what he can: the very cordwainers 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.”[227] The smell of all cash, as Vespasian thought, is good.

Beautiful, and yet inadequate!

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 back Despotism. If the King get this Veto, what is the use of National Assembly? We are slaves, all is done.’”[228] Friends, if the sky fall, there will be catching of larks! Mirabeau, adds Dumont, was eminent on such occasions: he answered vaguely, with a Patrician imperturbability, and bound himself to nothing.

To the Parisian common man, meanwhile, one thing remains inconceivable: that now when the Bastille is down, and French Liberty restored, grain should continue so dear. Our Rights of Man are voted, Feudalism and all Tyranny abolished; yet behold we stand in queue! Is it Aristocrat forestallers; a Court still bent on intrigues? Something is rotten, somewhere.

O much-suffering People, our glorious Revolution is evaporating 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.”[229] And our mouths, unfilled with bread, are to be shut, under penalties?

Hunger whets everything, especially Suspicion and Indignation. Realities themselves, in this Paris, have grown unreal: preternatural. 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.

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.

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 tonight (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-like, 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 mon Roi, l’univers t’abandonne (O Richard, O my King, and world is all forsaking thee)—could man do other than rise to height of pity, of loyal valour?

A natural Repast, in ordinary times, a harmless one: now 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.

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 perform, not at least by any known laws of fence; that he nevertheless 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 Major is actually drawing his implement) “they are parted,” and no weasands slit.[231]

But fancy what effect this Thyestes Repast and trampling on the National Cockade, must have had in the Salle des Menus; 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 Patrollotism; while bloodyminded Aristocrats, 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.

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.

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 is, when it grows empty, only house-mothers know. O women, wives of men that will only calculate and not act! Patrollotism is strong; but Death, by starvation and military 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.

If Voltaire once, in splenetic humour, asked his countrymen: ‘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.

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, consuming itself. With what phases, to what extent, with what results 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 wearisome? 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 artificial manner. 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 does History strive to represent; or even, in a husky way, to sing:—and she would omit or carelessly slur-over this one Insurrection of Women?

In squalid garret, on Monday morning, Maternity awakes, to hear children weeping for bread. Maternity must 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? Allons! Let us assemble. To the Hôtel-de-Ville; to Versailles; to the Lanterne!

All women gather and go; crowds storm all stairs, force out all women: the female Insurrectionary Force, according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal “Press of women.”

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 belfry, can they find poor Abbé Lefevre the Powder-distributor. Him, for want of a better, they suspend there; in the pale 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.

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 Hôtel-de-Ville which dates from the Fourth Henry, will, with all that it holds, be in flames!

#The French Revolution #Carlyle

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