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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF
Estate of the
Hev. Orville A. Petty

THOMAS CARLYLE.

THE

FRENCH REVOLUTION:

A HISTOET.

By THOMAS CARLYLE.

Meya 6 ay car e6zi, Beiov yap epyov vicip /SadiXeiai, vicip
tXevBepiaS, vicip evpoiai, vicip dzapa&aS. — Abkianus.
Aoyfia yap avztav zis fierafidiXXei; x°°P^ Si Soy/xdroov
IxerafioXrji, rt aXXo rj SovXeia dzevovzoov xai neiBe6Bai
tcpodicotov/ie'voov. — Antoninus.

IN TWO VOLUMES.— VOL L

NEW YORK:
A. L. BUKT, PUBLISHER.

' Diesem Ambos vergleich' lch das Land, den Hammer dem Herrscher;
Und dem Volke das Blech, das in der Mitte sich krummt.
Wehe dem armen Blech, wenn nur willkilrliche SchlSge
Ungewiss treffen, und nie fertig der Kessel erscneint ! " Goethe.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

Book I. Death of Louis XV.
CHAP. PAGE.
I. Louis the Well-beloved  1
II. Realized Ideals  5
III. Viaticum  14
IV. Louis the Unforgotten  17
Book II. The Paper Age.
( I. Astraea Redux  24
II. Petition in Hieroglyphs  29
III. Questionable  32
IV. Maurepas  35
V. Astraea Redux without Cash  39
VI. Windbags  42
VII. Contrat Social  '  46
VIIL Printed Paper  49
Book III. The Parlement of Paris.
I. Dishonored Bills  54
II. Controller Calonne  58
III. The Notables  61
IV. Lomenie's Edicts  ._  70
V. Lomenie's Thunderbolts  74
VI. Lomenie's Plots  78
VII. Internecine.. , . . ,  82
VIII. Lomenie's Death-throes  88
IX. Burial with Bonfire  98
Book IV. States-General.
I. The Notables Again  102
II. The Election  107
III. Grown Electric  113
IV. The Procession  116

iv CONTENTS
Book V. The Third Estate.
CHAP. PAGE.
I. Inertia  134
II. Mercury de Breze  142
III. Broglie the War-God  149
IV. To Arms!  154
V. Give Us Arms  ".  159
VI. Storm and Victory  165
VII. NotaRevolt  :  174
VIII. Conquering Your King  178
IX. TheLanterne  181
Book VI. Consolidation.
I. Make the Constitution  187
II. The Constituent Assembly  192
III. The General Overturn  198
IV. In Queue  206
V. The Fourth Estate  208
Book VII. The Insurrection of Women.
I. Patrollotism  212
II. Oh, Richard, Oh, My King  216
III. Black Cockades  220
IV. The Menads  222
V. Usher Maillard  225
VI. To Versailles  230
VII. At Versailles  234
VIII. The Equal Diet  238
IX. Lafayette  242
X. The Grand Entries  246
XI. From Versailles  251
Book VIII. The Feast of Pikes.
I. In the Tuileries  258
II. In the Salle de Manege  262
III. The Muster  273
IV. Journalism  279
V. Clubbism  283
VI. Je Le Jure  287
VII. Prodigies  291
VIII. Solemn League and Covenant  293

CONTENTS. v
CHAP. PAGE.
IX. Symbolic  299
X. Mankind  300
XI. As in the Age of Gold  805
XII. Sound and Smoke  811
Book IX. Nanci.
I. Bouillg  819
II. Arrears and Aristocrats  321
III. BomnS at Metz  827
IV. Arrears at Nanci  330
V. Inspector Malseigne  335
VI. Bouillgat Nanci  388
Book X. The Tuileries.
I. Epimenides  348
II. The Wakeful  352
III. Sword in Hand  358
IV. To Fly or Not to Fly  364
V. The Day of Poniards  371
VI. Mirabeau  378
VII. Death of Mirabeau  381
Book XI. Varennes.
I. Easter at Saint-Cloud  390
II. Easter at Paris  394
III. Count Fersen  397
IV. Attitude  404
V. The New Berlins  407
VI. Old Dragoon Drouet  411
VII. The Night of Spurs  414
VIII. TheReturn  422
IX. Sharp Shot  •• 425

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

THE BASTILLE.

BOOK FIRST.
DEATH OF LOUIS XV.

CHAPTEE I.
LOUIS THE WELL-BELOVED.
Peesident Henault, remarking on royal surnames of
honor how difficult it often is to ascertain not only why,
but even when, they were conferred, takes occasion, in his
sleek official way, to make a philosophical reflection.
"The surname of Bien aime (Well-beloved), which
Louis XV. bears, will not leave posterity in the same
doubt. This prince, in the year 1744, while hastening
from one end of his kingdom to the other, and suspend
ing his conquests in Flanders that he might fly to the
assistance of Alsace, was arrested at Metz by a malady
which threatened to cut short his days. At the news of
this, Paris, all in terror, seemed a city taken by storm:
the churches resounded with supplications and groans;
the prayers of priests and people were every moment inter
rupted by their sobs; and it was from an interest so dear
and tender that this surname of Bien aime fashioned itself,
a title higher still than all the rest which this great
prince has earned."*
* " AbregS Chronologique de 1' Histoire de France" (Paris, 1775),
p. 701.

2 TEE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
So stands it written ; in lasting memorial of that year
1744. Thirty other years have come and gone; and "this
great prince" again lies sick; but in how altered circum
stances now! Churches resound not with excessive groan-
ings ; Paris is stoically calm : sobs interrupt no prayers, for
indeed none are offered; except priest's litanies, read or
chanted at fixed money-rate per hour, which are not liable
to interruption. The shepherd of the people has been
carried home from Little Trianon, heavy of heart, and
been put to bed in his own chdteau of Versailles; the
flock knows it, and heeds it not. At most, in the immeas
urable tide of French speech (which ceases not day after
day, and only ebbs toward the short hours of night), may
this of the royal sickness emerge from time to time as an
article of news. Bets are doubtless depending; nay, some
people " express themselves loudly in the streets. " * But
for the rest, on green field and steepled city, the May sun
shines out, the May evening fades; and men ply their
useful or useless business as if no Louis lay in danger.
Dame Dubarry, indeed, might pray, if she had a talent
for it; Duke d'Aiguillon, too, Maupeou and the Parlement
Maupeou: these, as they sit in their high places, with
France harnessed under their feet, know well on what basis
they continue there. Look to it, D'Aiguillon; sharply as
thou didst, from the mill of St. Cast, on Quiberon and
the invading English; thou, "covered if not with glory
yet with meal!" Fortune was ever accounted inconstant:
and each dog has but his day.
Forlorn enough languished Duke d'Aiguillon, some years
ago; covered, as we said, with meal; nay with worse.
For La Chalotais, the Breton parlementeer, accused him
not-only of poltroonery and tyranny, but even of concussion
(official plunder of money) ; which accusations it was easier
to get "quashed" by backstairs influences than to get
answered ; neither could the thoughts, or even the tongues,
of men be tied. Thus, under disastrous eclipse, had this
grand-nephew of the great Richelieu to' glide about;
unworshiped by the world; resolute Choiseul, the abrupt
proud man, disdaining him, or even forgetting him.
Little prospect but to glide into Gascony, to rebuild
* " Memoires de M. le Baron Besenval " (Paris, 1805), ii. 59-90.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 3
chateaus there,* and die inglorious killing game! How
ever, in the year 1770, a certain young soldier, Dumouriez
by name, returning from Corsica, could see "with sorrow,
at Compiegne, the old king of France, on foot, with doffed
hat in sight of his army, at the side of a magnificent
phaeton, doing homage to the — Dubarry." f
Much lay therein! Thereby, for one thing, could
D'Aiguillon postpone the rebuilding of his chateau, and
rebuild his fortunes first. For stout Choiseul would dis
cern in the Dubarry nothing but a wonderfully dizened
scarlet- woman ; and go on his way as if she were not.
Intolerable: the source of sighs, tears, of pettings and
poutings; which would not end till "France" (La France,
as she named her royal valet) finally mustered heart to see
Choiseul; and with that "quivering in the chin (trem-
llement du menton)" natural in such case, \ faltered out a
dismissal: dismissal of his last substantial man, but pacifi
cation of his scarlet-ivoman. Thus D'Aiguillon rose
again, and culminated. And with him there rose Maupeou,
the banisher of parlements; who plants you a refractory
president "at Croe in Combrailles on the top of steep
rocks, inaccessible except by litters," there to consider
himself. Likewise there rose Abbe Terray, dissolute
financier, paying eight pence in the shilling — so that wits
exclaim in some press at the playhouse, " Where is Abbe
Terray, that he might reduce us to two-thirds !" And so have
these individuals (verily by black^art) built them a
Domdaniel, or enchanted Dubarrydom ; call it an Armida-
Palace, where they dwell pleasantly; Chancellor Maupeou
"playing blindman's-buff" with the scarlet enchantress;
or gallantly presenting her with dwarf negroes; and a
Most Christian King has unspeakable peace within doors,
whatever he may have without. "My chancellor is a
scoundrel; but I cannot do without him." §
Beautiful Armida-Palace, where the inmates live en
chanted lives; lapped in soft music of adulation; waited on
?Arthur Young, " Travels during the years 1787-88-89 " (Bury St.
Edmunds, 1792), i. 44.
f " La Vie et les Memoires du General Dumouriez " (Paris, 1822)
i. 141.|Besenval, " Memoires," ii. 21.
§ Dulaure, " Historie de Paris" (Paris, 1824), vii. 828.

4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
by the splendors of the world; which nevertheless hangs
wondrously as by a single hair. Should the most Chris
tian king die; or even get seriously afraid of dying! For,
alas, had not the fair haughty Chateauroux to fly, with
wet cheeks and flaming heart, from that fever-scene at
Metz, long since; driven forth by sour shavelings? She
hardly returned, when fever and shavelings were both
swept into the background. Pompadour too, when Damiens
wounded Royalty "slightly under the fifth rib," and our
drive to Trianon went off futile, in shrieks and madly
shaken torches, had to pack, and be in readiness; yet did
not go, the wound not proving poisoned. For his majesty
has religious faith ; believes, at least in a devil. And now
a third peril ; and who knows what may be in it ! For the
doctors look grave; ask privily. If his majesty had not
the small-pox long ago? and doubt it may have been a
false kind. Yes, Maupeou, pucker those sinister brows
of thine, and peer out on it with thy malign rat-eyes ; it is
a questionable case. Sure only that man is mortal; that
with the life of one mortal snaps irrevocably the wonder-
fulest talisman, and all Dubarrydom rushes off, with
tumult, into infinite space; and ye, as subterranean appari
tions are wont, vanished utterly, leaving only a smell of
sulphur !
These, and what holds of these may pray, to Beelzebub,
or whoever will hear them. But from the rest of
France there comes, as was said, no prayer; or one
of an opposite character, "expressed openly in the
streets." Chateau or hotel, where an enlightened
philosophism scrutinizes many things, is not given to
prayer: neither are Rossbach victories, Terray finances,
nor say only "sixty thousand Lettres de Cachet" (which is
Maupeou's share), persuasives toward that. Oh, Henault!
Prayers? From a France smitten (by black-art) with
plague after plague, and lying now, in shame and pain,
with a harlot's foot on its neck, what prayer can come?
Those lank scarecrows, that prowl hunger -stricken through
all highways and byways of French existence, will they
pray? The dull millions that, in the workshop or furrow-
field, grind foredone at the wheel of labor, like haltered
gin-horses, if blind so much the quieter? Or they that in
the Bicetre Hospital, "eight to a bed," lie waiting their
manumission? Dim are those heads of theirs, dull stag-

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 5
nant those hearts ; to them the great sovereign is known
mainly as the great regrater of bread. If they hear of his
sickness, they will answer with a dull, Tant pis pour luij
or with the question, Will he die?
Yes, will he die, that is now, for all France, the grand
question, and hope ; whereby alone the king's sickness has
still some interest.

CHAPTER II.
REALIZED IDEALS.
Such a changed France have we; and a changed Louis.
Changed, truly; and further than thou yet seest! To
the eye of history many things, in that sick room of Louis,
are now visible, which to the courtiers there present were
invisible. For indeed it is well said, "in every object
there is inexhaustible meaning ; the eye sees in it what the
eye brings means of seeing." To Newton and to New
ton's dog Diamond, what a different pair of universes;
while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most
likely, the same ! Let the reader here, in this sick room
of Louis, endeavor to look with the mind too.
Time was when men could (so to speak) of a given man,
by nourishing and decorating him with fit appliances, to
the due pitch, make themselves a king, almost as the bees
do; and what was still more to the purpose, loyally obey
him when made. The man so nourished and decorated,
thenceforth named royal, does verily bear rule; and is
said, and even thought to be, for example, "prosecuting
conquests in Flanders," when he lets himself like luggage
be carried thither :' and no light luggage; covering miles
of road. For he has his unblushing Chateauroux, with her
bandboxes and rouge-pots, at his side; so that, at every
new station, a wooden gallery must be run up between
their lodgings. He has not only his Maison-Bouche, and
Valetaille without end, but his very troop of players, with
their pasteboard coulisses, thunder-barrels, their kettles,
fiddles, stage wardrobes, portable larders (and chaffering
and quarreling enough) ; all mounted in wagons, tumbrils,
second-hand chaises, sufficient not to conquer Flanders,
but the patience of the world. With such a flood of loud

6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
jingling appurtenances does he lumber along, prosecuting
his conquests in Flanders: wonderful to behold. So never
theless it was and had been : to some solitary thinker it
might seem strange; but even to him inevitable, not
unnatural. For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most
fingent plastic of creatures. A world not fixable; not
fathomable ! An unfathomable somewhat, which is not we;
which we can work with, and live amidst, and model,
miraculously in our miraculous being, and name world.
But if the very rocks and rivers (as metaphysic teaches)
are, in strict language, made by those outward senses of
ours, how much more, by the inward sense, are all
phenomena of the spiritual kind: dignities, authorities,
holies, unholies! Which inward sense, moreover, is not
permanent like the outward ones, but forever growing and
changing. Does not the black African take of sticks and
old clothes (say, exported Monmouth Street cast-clothes)
what will suffice, and of these, cunningly combining them,
fabricate for himself an Eidolon (idol, or thing seen), and
name it Mumbo- Jumbo; which he can thenceforth pray to
with upturned awestruck eye, not without hope? The
white European mocks; but ought rather to consider;
and see whether he, at home, could not do the like a little
more wisely.
So it was, we say, in those conquests of Flanders, thirty
years ago; but so it no longer is. Alas, much more lies
sick than poor Louis : not the French king only, but the
French kingship ; this too, after long rough tear and wear,
is breaking down. The world is all so changed ; so much
that seemed vigorous has sunk decrepit, so much that was
not is beginning to be ! Borne over the Atlantic, to the
closing ear of Louis, king by the grace of God, what sounds
are these; muffled ominous, new in our centuries? Boston
harbor is black with unexpected tea : behold a Pennsyl-
vanian congress gather; and ere long, ofr Bunker Hill,
Democracy announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged,
under her star banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-doo,
that she is born, and, whirlwind-like will envelope the
whole world!
Sovereigns die and sovereignties ; how all dies, and is for
a time only; is a " Time-phantasm, yet reckons itself real!"
The Merovingian kings, slowly wending on their bullock-

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. f
carts through the streets of Paris, with their long hair
flowing, have all wended slowly on, into eternity. Char
lemagne sleeps at Salzburg, with truncheon grounded ; only
fable expecting that he will awaken. Charles the hammer,
pepin bow-legged, where now is their eye of menace, their
voice of command? Rollo and his shaggy northmen cover
not the Seine with ships; but have sailed off on a longer
voyage. The hair of Towhead ( Tete <f etoupes) now needs
no combing; Iron-cutter (Taillefer) cannot cut a cobweb;
shrill Fredegonda, shrill Brunhilda have had out their
hot life-scold, and lie silent, their hot life-frenzy cooled.
Neither from that black Tower de Nesle descends now
darkling the doomed gallant, in his sack, to the Seine
waters; plunging into night: for Dame de Nesle now cares
not for this world's gallantry, heeds not this world's
scandal; Dame de Nesle is herself gone into night. They
are all gone; sunk, down, down, with the tumult they
made; and the rolling and the trampling of ever new
generations passes over them ; and they hear it not any
more forever.
And yet withal has there not been realized somewhat?
Consider (to go no further) these strong stone-edifices,
and what they hold ! mud-town of the borderers (Lutetia
Parisiorum or Barisiorum) has paved itself, has spread
over all the Seine Islands, and far and wide on each bank,
and become city of Paris, sometimes boasting to be
"Athens of Europe," and even "Capital of the Universe."
Stone towers frown aloft ; long -lasting, grim with a thous
and years. Cathedrals are there, and a creed (or memory
of a creed) in them; palaces, and a state and law. Thou
seest the smoke-vapor; unextinguished breath as of a
thing living. Labor's thousand hammers ring on her
anvils: also a more miraculous labor works noiselessly, not
with the hand but with the thought. How have cunning
workmen in all crafts, with their cunning head and right
hand, tamed the four elements to be their ministers ; yoking
the winds to their sea-chariot, making the very stars their
nautical timepiece; and written and collected a"Biblio-
theque du Roi ;" among whose books is the Hebrew book !
A wondrous race of creatures; these have been realized,
and what of skill is in these: call not' the past time, with
all its confused wretchednesses, a lost one.
Observe, however, that of man's whole terrestrial posses-

8 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
sions and attainments, unspeakably the noblest are his
symbols, divine or divine-seeming; under which he marches
and fights, with victorious assurance, in this life-battle;
what we can call his realized ideals. Of which realized
ideals, omitting the rest, consider only these two; his
church or spiritual guidance; his kingship, or temporal
one. The church; what a word was there; richer than
Golconda, and the treasures of the world ! _ In the heart of
the remotest mountains rises the little kirk; the dead all
slumbering round it, under their white memorial-stones,
"in hope of a happy resurrection:" dull wert thou, 0
reader, if never in any hour (say of moaning midnight,
when such kirk hung spectral in the sky, and being was as
if swallowed up of darkness) it spoke to thee — things
unspeakable, that went into thy soul's soul. Strong was
he that had a church, what we can call a church : he stood
thereby, though "in the center of immensities, in the con
flux of eternities," yet manlike toward God and man; the
vague shoreless universe had become for him a firm city
and dwelling which he knew. Such virtue was in belief;
in these words, well spoken: I believe. Well might men
prize their Credo, and raise stateliest temples for it, and
reverend hierarchies, and give it the tithe of their sub
stance; it was worth living for and dying for.
Neither was that an inconsiderable moment when wild
armed men first raised their strongest aloft on the buckler-
throne, and, with clanging armor and hearts, said sol
emnly: Be thou our acknowledged strongest! In such
acknowledged strongest (well-named king, Kbn-ning,
Can-ning, or man that was able) what a symbol shone now
for them, significant with the destinies of the world ! A
symbol of true guidance in return for loving obedience;
properly, if he knew it, the prime want of man. A symbol
which might be called sacred; for is there not, in rever
ence for what is better than we, an indestructible sacred-
ness? On which ground, too, it was well said there lay in
the acknowledged strongest a divine right; as surely there
might in the strongest, whether acknowledged or not,
considering who it was that made him strong. And so, in
the midst of confusions and unutterable incongruities (as all
growth is confused), did this of royalty, with loyalty
environing it, spring up ; and grow mysteriously, subduing
and assimilating (for a principle of life wa<s in it) ; till it

THE FRENCH RE VOL UT10N. 9
also had grown world-great, and was among the main
facts of our modern existence. Such a fact, that Louis
XIV., for example, could answer the expostulatory magis
trate with his " & 'Etat c' 'est moi (The state? I am the
state) ;" and be replied to by silence and abashed looks. So
far had accident and forethought ; had your Louis Elevenths,
with the leaden Virgin in their hatband, and torture-
wheels and conical oubliettes (man-eating!) under their
feet; your Henri Fourths, with their prophesied social
millennium, " when every peasant should have his fowl in
the pot;" and on the whole, the fertility of this most fertile
existence (named of good and evil), brought it, in the mat
ter of the kingship. Wondrous ! Concerning which may
we not again say, that in the huge mass of evil-, as it rolls
and swells, there is ever some good working imprisoned ;
working toward deliverance and triumph?
How such ideals do realize themselves; and grow, won-
drously, from amid the incongruous ever-fluctuating chaos
of the acutal ; this is what world -history, if it teach any
thing, has to teach us. How they grow ; and after long
stormy growth, bloom out mature, supreme; then quickly
(for the blossom is brief) fall into decay; sorrowfully
dwindle; and crumble down, or rush down, noisily or
noiselessly disappearing. The blossom is so brief; as of
some centennial cactus-flower, which after a century of
waiting shines out for hours! Thus from the day when
rough Clovis, in the Champ de Mars, in sight of his whole
army, had to cleave retributively the head of that rough
Frank, with sudden battle-axe, and the fierce words, " It
was thus thou clavest the vase " (St. Remi's and mine) "at
Soissons," forward to Louis the Grand and his£' 'Etat c'est
moi, we count some twelve hundred years: and now this
the very next Louis is dying, and so much dying with
him! Nay, thus, too, if Catholicism, with and against
feudalism (but not against nature and her bounty), gave
us English a Shakespeare and era of Shakespeare, and so
produced a blossom of Catholicism — it was not till Cathol
icism itself, so far as law could abolish it, had been abol
ished here.
But of those decadent ages in which no ideal either
grows or blossoms? When belief and loyalty have passed
away, and only the cant and false echo of them remains;
and all solemnity has become pageantry; and the creed of

10 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
persons in authority has become one of two things : an im
becility or a Macchiavelism? Alas, of these ages world-his
tory can take no notice; they have to become compressed
more and more, and finally suppressed in the annals of
mankind; blotted out as spurious, which indeed they are.
Hapless ages : wherein, if ever in any, it is an unhappiness
to be born. To be born, and to learn only, by every tradi
tion and example, that God's universe is Belial's and a lie;
and " the supreme quack" the hierarch of men ! In which
mournf ulest faith, nevertheless, do we not see whole genera
tions (two and sometimes even three successively) live,
what they call living, and vanish, without chance of
reappearance? In such a decadent age, or one fast verging that way,
had our poor Louis been born. Grant also that if the
French kingship had not, by course of nature, long to live,
he of all men was the man to accelerate nature. The
blossom of French royalty, cactus-like, has accordingly
made an astonishing progress. In those Metz days, it was
still standing with all its petals, though bedimmed by
Orleans regents and roue ministers and cardinals; but
now, in 1774, we behold it bald, and the virtue nigh gone
out of it.
Disastrous indeed does it look with those same " realized
ideals," one and all! The church which in its palmy
season, seven hundred years ago, could make an emperor
wait barefoot, in penance-shirt, three days, in the snow,
has for centuries seen itself decaying; reduced even to
forget old purposes and enmities, and join interest with
the kingship; on this younger strength it would fain stay
its decrepitude; and these two will henceforth stand and
fall together. Alas, the Sorbonne still sits there, in its old
mansion; but mumbles only jargon of dotage, and no
longer leads the consciences of men; not the Sorbonne; it
is Encyclopedies, Philosophic, and who knows what name
less innumerable multitude of ready writers, profane
singers, romancers, players, disputators, and pamphleteers,
that now form the spiritual guidance of the world. The
world's practical guidance too is lost, or has glided into the
same miscellaneous hands. Who is it that the king (able-
•man, named also Boi, rex, or director) now guides? His
own huntsmen and prickers: when there is to be no hunt,
it is well said, " Le roi ne /era rien (To-day his majesty;

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. H
will do nothing)." * He lives and lingers there, because
he is living there, and none has yet laid hands on him.
The nobles, in like manner, have nearly ceased either to
guide or misguide; and are now, as their master is, little
more than ornamental figures. It is long since they have
done with butchering one another or their king: the
workers, protected, encouraged by majesty, have ages ago
built walled towns, and there ply their craft ; will permit
no robber baron to "live by the saddle," but maintain a
gallows to prevent it. Ever since that period of the
Fronde, the noble has changed his fighting sword into a
court rapier ; and now loyally attends his king as minister
ing satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and
murder, but by soliciting and finesse. These men call
themselves supports of the throne: singular gilt-paste
board caryatides in that singular edifice ! For the rest,
their privileges every way are now much curtailed. That
law authorizing a seigneur, as he returned from hunting
to kill not more than two serfs, and refresh his feet in
their warm blood and bowels, has fallen into perfect desue
tude, and even into incredibility; for if Deputy Lapoule
can believe in it, and call for the abrogation of it, so
cannot we.f No Charolois for these last fifty years,
though never so fond of shooting, has been in use to bring
down slaters and plumbers, and see them roll from their
roofs; \ but contents himself with partridges and grouse.
Close-viewed, their industry and function is that of dress
ing gracefully and eating sumptuously. As for their
debauchery and depravity, it is perhaps unexampled since
the era of Tiberius and Commodus. Nevertheless, one
has still partly a feeling with the lady marechale:
"Depend upon it, sir, God thinks twice before damning
a man of that quality." § These people, of old, surely had
virtues, uses; or they could not have been there. Nay,
one virtue they are still required to have (for mortal man
* "Memoires sur la Vie priv6e de Marie Antoinette," par Madame
Campan (Paris, 1820), i. 12.
+ " Histoire de la Revolution Francaise,'' par Deux Amis de la
Liberie (Paris, 1792), ii. 212.
I Lacretelle, "Histoire de France pendant le 18me Siecle " (Paris, -
1819), i. 271.
§ Dulaure, vii. 261,

12 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
cannot live without a conscience) : the virtue of perfect
readiness to fight duels.
Such are the shepherds of the people : and now how
fares it with the flock? With the flock, as is inevitable,
it fares ill, and ever worse. They are not tended, they are
only regularly shorn. They are sent for, to do statute-
labor, to pay statute-taxes ; to fatten battle-fields (named
"bed of honor") with their bodies,, in quarrels which are
not theirs; their hand and toil is in every possession of
man ; but for themselves they have little or no possession.
Untaught, uncomforted, unfed; to pine stagnantly in
thick obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction;
this is the lot of the millions ; peuple taillable et corvpable
a merci et misericorde. In Brittany they once rose in
revolt at the first introduction of pendulum clocks ; think
ing it had something to do with the Gabelle. Paris re
quires to be cleared out periodically by the police — and
the horde of hunger-stricken vagabonds to be sent wander
ing again over space — for a time. "During one such
periodical clearance," says Lacretelle, "in May 1750, the
police had presumed withal to carry off some reputable
people's children, in the hope of extorting ransoms for
them. The mothers fill the public places with cries of
despair; crowds gather, get excited; so many women in
distraction run about exaggerating the alarm : an absurd
and horrible fable rises among the people ; it is said that
the doctors have ordered a great person to take baths of
young human blood for the restoration of his own, all
spoiled by debaucheries. Some of the rioters," adds
Lacretelle, quite coolly, " were hanged on the following
days;" the police went on.* Oh, ye poor naked wretches!
and this, then, is your inarticulate cry to heaven, as of a
dumb tortured animal, crying from uttermost depths of
pain and debasement? Do these azure skies, like a dead
crystalline vault, only reverberate the echo of it on you?
Respond to it only by "hanging on the following days?"
Not so ; not forever ! Ye are heard in heaven. . And the
answer too will come, in a horror of great darkness, and
shakings of the world, and a cup of trembling which all
the nations shall drink.
Remark, meanwhile, how from amid the wrecks and dust
* Lacretelle iii. 175.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 13
of this universal decay new powers are fashioning them
selves, adapted to the new time and its destinies. Besides
the old noblesse, originally of fighters, there is a new recog
nized noblesse of lawyers; whose gala-day and proud battle-
day even now is. An unrecognized noblesse of commerce ;
powerful enough, with money in its pocket. Lastly,
powerfulest of all, least recognized of all, a noblesse of
literature; without steel on their thigh, without gold in
their purse, but with the "grand thaumaturgic faculty
of thought" in their head. French philosophism has
arisen; in which little word how much do we include!
Here, indeed, lies properly the cardinal symptom of the
whole widespread malady. Faith is gone out; skepticism
is come in. Evil abounds and accumulates ; no man has
faith to withstand it, to amend it, to begin by amending
himself; it must even go on accumulating. While hollow
languor and vacuity is the lot of the upper, and want and
stagnation of the lower, and universal misery is very cer
tain, what other thing is certain? That a lie cannot be
believed ! Philosophism knows only this : her other belief
is mainly, that in spiritual supersensual matters no belief
is possible. Unhappy ! nay, as yet the contradiction of a
lie is some kind of belief; but the lie with its contradic
tion once swept away, what will remain? The five unsa-
tiated senses will remain," the sixth insatiable sense (of
vanity) ; the whole dmmonic nature of man will remain,
hurled forth to rage blindly without rule or rein; savage
itself, yet with all the tools and weapons of civilization :
a spectacle new in history.
In such a France, as in a powder-tower, where fire
unquenched and now unquenchable is smoking and smol
dering all round, has Louis XV. lain down to die.
With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his fleur-de-lis has
been shamefully struck down in all lands and on all seas ;
poverty invades even the royal exchequer, and tax-farming
can squeeze out no more; there is a quarrel of twenty-five
years' standing with the parlement; everywhere want,
dishonesty, unbelief, and hotbrained sciolists for state
physicians : it is a portentous hour.
Such things can the eye of history see in this sick room
of King Louis, which were invisible to the courtiers there.
It is twenty years, gone Christmas day since Lord Ches
terfield summing up what he had noted of this same

14 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
France, wrote, and sent off by post, the following words,
that have become memorable: "In short, all the symp
toms which I have ever met with in history, previous to
great changes and revolutions in government, now exist
and daily increase in France." *

CHAPTER III.
VIATICUM.
Fok the present, however, the grand question with the
governors of France is: Shall extreme unction, or other
ghostly viaticum (to Louis, not to France), be admin
istered? It is a deep question. For, if administered, if so much
as spoken of, must not, on the very threshold of the busi
ness, Witch Dubarry vanish; hardly to return should
Louis even recover? With her vanishes Duke d'Aiguillon
and company, and all their Armida-Palace, as was said;
chaos swallows the whole again, and there is left nothing
but a smell of brimstone. But then, on the other hand,
what will the Dauphinists and Choiseulists say? Nay
what may the royal martyr himself say, should he happen
to get deadly worse, without getting delirious? For the
present, he still kisses the Dubarry hand; so we, from
the anteroom, can note: but afterwards? Doctor's bulletins
may run as they are ordered, but it is "confluent small
pox," of which, as is whispered too, the gatekeeper's once
so buxom daughter lies ill : and Louis XV. is not a man to
be trifled with in his viaticum. Was he not wont to cate
chize his very girls in the Parc-aux-cerfs, and pray with
and for them, that they might preserve their — orthodoxy? f
A strange fact, not an unexampled one; for there is no
animal so strange as man.
For the moment, indeed, it were all well, could Arch
bishop Beaumont but be prevailed upon — to wink with one
eye! Alas, Beaumont would himself so fain doit: for,
singular to tell, the church too, and whole posthumous
hope of Jesuitism, now hangs by the apron of this same
unmentionable woman. But then "the force of public
* Chesterfield's " Letters-." December 25th, 1753,
\ Dulaure (viii. 217) ; Besenval, etc.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 15
bpinion?" Rigorous Christophe de Beaumont, who has
spent his life in persecuting hysterical Jansenists and
incredulous non-confessors; or even their dead bodies, if
no better might be, how shall he now open heaven's gate
and give absolution with the corpus delicti still under his
nose? Our Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, for his part,
will not higgle with a royal sinner about turning of the
key; but there are other churchmen; there is a king's con
fessor, foolish Abbe Moudon ; and fanaticism and decency
are not yet extinct. On the whole, what is to be done?
The doors can be well watched; the medical bulletin
adjusted; and much, as usual, be hoped for from time and
chance. The doors are well Avatched, no improper figure can enter.
Indeed, few wish to enter; for the putrid infection reaches
even to the (Eil-de-Bmuf; so that "more than fifty fall
sick, and ten die." Mesdames the princesses alone wait at
the loathsome sick bed, impelled by filial piety. The
three princesses, Graille, Chiffe, Coche (Rag, Snip, Pig, as
he was wont to name them), are assiduous there, when all
have fled. The fourth princess, Loque (Dud), as we guess,
is already in the nunnery, and can only give her orisons.
Poor Graille and sisterhood, they have never known a
father; such is the hard bargain grandeur must make.
Scarcely at the Debotter (when royalty took off its boots)
could they snatch up their "enormous hoops, gird the
long train round their waist, huddle on their black cloaks
of taffeta up to the very chin," and so, in fit appearance of
full dress, "every evening at six," walk majestically in;
receive their royal kiss on the brow ; and then walk ma
jestically out again, to embroidery, small-scandal, prayers,
and vacancy. Jf- majesty came some morning, with coff e
of its own making, and swallowed it with them hastily
while the dogs were uncoupling for the hunt, it was re
ceived as a grace of heaven.* Poor withered ancient
women ! in the wild tossings that yet await your fragile
existence, before it be crushed and broken; as ye fly
through hostile countries, over tempestuous seas, are
almost taken by the Turks; and wholly, in the Sanscu-
lottic earthquake, know not your right hand from your left,
be this always an assured place in your remembrance : for
*Campan, i. 11-36.

16 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
the act was good and loving ! To us also it is a little
sunny spot, in that dismal howling waste, where we hardly
find another.
Meanwhile, what shall an impartial prudent courtier
do? In these delicate circumstances, while not only death
for life, but even sacrament or no sacrament, is a question,
the skillfulest may falter. Few are so happy as the Duke
d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde; who can themselves,
with volatile salts, attend the king's antechamber; and,
at the same time, send their brave sons (Duke de Chartres,
Egalite that is to be; Duke de Bourbon, one day Conde
too, and famous among dotards) to wait upon the
dauphin. With another few, it is a resolution taken; jacta
est alea. Old Richelieu, when Archbishop Beaumont,
driven by public opinion, is at last for entering the sick
room, will twitch him by the rochet, into a recess; and
there, with his old dissipated mastiff-face, and the oilest
vehemence, be seen pleading (and even, as we judge by
Beaumont's change of color, prevailing) " that the king
be not killed by a proposition in divinity." Duke de
Fronsac, son of Richelieu, can follow his father: when the
cure of Versailles whimpers something about sacraments,
he will threaten to "throw him out of the window if he
mention such a thing."
Happy these, we may say ; but to the rest that hover
between two opinions, is it not trying? He who would
understand to what a pass Catholicism, and much else,
had now got, and how the symbols of the holiest have be
come gambling-dice of the basest, must read the narrative
of those things by Besenval, and Soulavie, and the other
court newsmen of the time. He will see the Versailles
galaxy all scattered asunder, grouped into new ever-
shifting constellations. There are nods and sagacious
glances; go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding,
with smiles for this constellation, sighs for that : there is
tremor, of hope or desperation, in several hearts. There
is the pale grinning shadow of death, ceremoniously
ushered along by another grinning shadow, of etiquette:
at intervals the growl of chapel organs, like prayer by ma
chinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of horrid diabolic horse-
laughter, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. \1
CHAPTER IV.
LOUIS THE USTFORGOTTEN.
Poor Louis ! With these it is a hollow phantasmagory,
where like mimes they mope and mowl, and utter false
sounds for hire; but with thee it is frightful earnest.
Frightful to all men is death, from of old named king
of terrors. Our little compact home of an existence, where
we dwelt complaining, yet as in a home, is passing, in dark
agonies, into an unknown of separation, foreignness,
unconditioned possibility. The heathen emperor asks of
his soul: Into what places art thou now departing? The
Catholic king must answer: To the judgment-bar of the
most high God ! Yes, 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 to bear their fruits, long as eternity shall last.
Louis XV. had always the kingliest abhorrence of death.
Unlike that praying Duke of Orleans, EgaKWs grand
father, for indeed several of them had a touch of madness,
who honestly 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 indigna
tion on his poor secretary, who had stumbled on the words,
feu roi d^Espagne (the late king of Spain) : " Feu roi,
Monsieur?" " Monsiegueur" hastily answered the trem
bling but adroit man of business, " c'est une titre qiCilspren-
nent ('tis a title they take)."* Louis, we say, was not so
happy ; but he did what he could. He would not suffer death
to be spoken of; avoided the sight of churchyards, funeral
monuments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is
the resource of the ostrich; who, hard hunted, sticks his
foolish head in the ground, and would fain forget that his
foolish unseeing body is not unseen too. Or sometimes, ¦
with a spasmodic antagonism, significant of the same thing,
and of more, he would go; or stopping his court carriages,
would send into churchyards, and ask " how many new
f raves there were to-day," though it gave his poor Pompa-
our the disagreeablest qualms. We can figure the thought
of Louis that day, when, all royally caparisoned for hunt-
*Besenval, i. 199.

18 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
ing, he met, at some sudden turning in the wood of
Senart, a ragged peasant with a coffin: "For whom?" It
was for a poor brother slave, whom majesty had sometimes
noticed slaving in those quarters. "What did he die of?"
" Of hunger." The king gave his steed the spur.*
But figure his thought, when death is now clutching at
his own heart-strings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes,
poor Louis, death has found thee. No palace walls or life
guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest cere
monial could keep him out ; but he is here, here at thy
very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose
whole existence hitherto ' was a chimera and scenic show,
at length becomes a reality : sumptuous Versailles bursts
asunder, like a dream, into void immensity; Time is done,
and all the scaffolding of time falls wrecked with hideous
clangor round thy soul : the pale kingdoms yawn open ;
there must thou enter, naked, all unkinged, and await
what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou
turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a
thought is thine. Purgatory and hell-fire, now all too
possible, in the prospect: in the retrospect, alas, what
thing didst thou do that were not better undone; what
mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst
thou mercy on? Do the "five hundred thousand" ghosts,
who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Ross-
bach to Quebec, that thy harlot might take revenge for an
epigram, crowd round thee in this hour?1 Thy foul harem;
the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters?
Miserable man! thou "hast done evil as thou couldst;"
thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion and mis
take of nature; the use and meaning of thee not yet
known. Wert thou a fabulous griffin, devouring the
works of men ; daily dragging virgins to thy cave ; clad
also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but
death's? A griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, oh,
Louis, seems these moments for thee. We will pry no
further into the horrors of a sinner's deathbed.
And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his
soul. Louis was a ruler; but art thou also one? His
wide France, look at it from the fixed stars (themselves
not yet infinitude), is no wider than thy narrow brickfield,
*Campan, iii. 39.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 1 9
where thou too didst faithfully, or didst unfaithfully.
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.
But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of
poor Louis, when he rose as Bien- Aime from that Metz
sick bed really was ! What son of Adam could have swayed
such incoherences into coherence? Could he?-
Blindest fortune alone has cast him on the top of it: he
swims there; can as little sway it as the drift-log sways
the wind-tossed moon-stirred Atlantic. "What have I
done to be so loved?" ne said then. He may say now:
What have I done to be so hated? Thou hast done nothing,
poor Louis! Thy fault is properly even this, that thou
didst nothing. What could poor Louis do? Abdicate,
and wash his hands of it, in favor of the first that would
accept! Other clear wisdom there was none for him. As
it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal
extant, a very solecism incarnate, into the absurdest.
confused world; wherein at last nothing seemed so certain
as this, that he, the incarnate solecism, had five senses;
that there were flying tables ( Tables Volantes, which vanish
through the floor, to come back reloaded), and a Parc-
aux-cerfs. Whereby at least we have again this historical curiosity :
a human being in an original position; swimming passively,
as on some boundless "Mother of dead dogs," toward issues
which he partly saw. For Louis had withal a kind of
insight in him. So, when a new minister of marine, or
what else it might be, came announcing his new era, the
scarlet-woman would hear from the lips of majesty at
supper: "Yes, he spread out his ware like another;
promised the beautif ulest things in the world ; not a thing
of which will come : he does not know this region ; he will
see." Or again: "'Tis the twentieth time I have heard
all that; France will never get a navy, I believe." How
touching also was this: "If /were lieutenant of police, I
would prohibit those Paris cabriolets."*
Doomed mortal ; for is it not a doom to be solecism incar
nate! A new Roi Faineant, King Donothing; but with
* "Journal de Madame de Hausset," p. 293, etc.

20 THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION.
the strangest new mayor of the palace; no bow-legged
Pepin now for mayor, but that same cloud-capped, fire-
breathing specter of Democracy; incalculable which is en
veloping the world! Was Louis, then, no wickeder than
this or the other private Donothing and Eatall ; such as we
often enough see, under the name of man of pleasure,
cumbering God's diligent creation, for a time? Say,
wretcheder ! His life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole
scandalized world; him endless oblivion cannot engulf,
and swallow to endless depths, not yet for a generation or
two. However, be this as it will, we remark, not without
interest, that "on the evening of the 4th," Dame Dubarry
issues from the sickroom, with perceptible "trouble in
her visage." It is the fourth evening of May, year of
grace 1774. Such a whispering in the 03il-de-Bceuf ! Is
he dying, then? What can be said is, that Dubarry seems
making up her packages; she sails weeping through her
gilt boudoirs, as if taking leave. D'Aiguillon and Com
pany are near their last card; nevertheless they will not
yet throw up the game. But as for the sacramental con
troversy, it is as good as settled without being mentioned ;
Louis sends for his Abbe Moudon in the course of next
night; is confessed by him, some say for the space of "seven
teen minutes," and demands the sacraments of his own
accord. Nay already, in the afternoon, behold is not this your
sorceress Dubarry with the handkerchief at her eyes,
mounting D'Aiguillon's chariot; rolling off in his duchess'
consolatory arms? She is gone: and her' place knows her
no more. Vanish, false sorceress, into space! Needless
to hover at neighboring Ruel ; for thy day is done. Shut
are the royal palace-gates for evermore ; hardly in coming
years shalt thou, under cloud of night, descend once, in
black domino, like a black night-bird, and disturb the fair
Antoinette's music party in the park; all birds of paradise
flying from thee, and musical windpipes growing mute.*
Thou unclean, yet unmalignant, not unpitiable thing,
what a course was thine : from that first trucklebed (in
Joan of Arc's country) where thy mother bore thee, with
tears, to an unnamed father; forward, through lowest sub-
* Campan, i. 197.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 21
terranean depths, and over highest sunlit heights, of
harlotdom and rascaldom — to the guillotine-axe, which
shears away thy vainly whimpering head! Rest there
uncursed; only buried and abolished: what else befitted
thee? .
Louis, meanwhile, is in considerable impatience for his
sacraments; sends more than once to the window, to see
whether they are not coming. Be of comfort, Louis, what
comfort thou canst ; they are under way, those sacraments.
Toward six in the morning, they arrive. Cardinal Grand-
Almoner Roche-Aymon is here in pontificals, with his pyxes
and his tools ; he approaches the royal pillow ; elevates his
wafer; mutters or seems to mutter somewhat; and so (as the
Abbe Georgel, in words that stick to one, expresses it) has
Louis " made the amende honorable to God ;" so does your
Jesuit construe it. " Wa, Wa," as the wild Clotaire
groaned out, when life was departing, " what great God is
this that pulls down the strength of the strongest kings !" *
The amende honorable, what "legal apology," you will
to God: but not, if D'Aiguillon can help it, toman. Du
barry still hovers in his mansion at Ruel ; and while there
is life, there is hope. Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon,
accordingly (for he seems to be in the secret), has no sooner
seen his pyxes and gear repacked, than he is stepping
majestically forth again, as if the work were done! But
king's confessor Abbe Moudon starts forward ; with anxious
acidulent face, twitches him by the sleeve; whispers in his
ear. Whereupon the poor cardinal has to turn round,
and declare audibly : " That his majesty repents of any
subjects of scandal he may have given (a pu donner) ;
and purposes, by the strength of heaven assisting him to
avoid the like for the future!" Words listened to by
Richelieu with mastiff -face, growing blacker ; and answered
to, aloud, "with an epithet," which Besenval will not
repeat. Old Richelieu,' conqueror of Minorca, companion
of flying- table orgies, perforator of bedroom walls, f is thy
day also done?
Alas, the chapel organs may keep going; the shrine of
Sainte Genevieve be let down, and pulled up again, without
effect. In the evening the whole court, with dauphin
*Gregorius Turonensis, " Histor." lib. iv. cap. 21.
f Besenval, i. 159-172. Genlis ; Due de Levis, etc.

22 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
and dauphiness, assist at the chapel; priests are hoarse
with chanting their " prayers of forty hours ;" and the heav
ing bellows blow. Almost frightful ! For the very heaven
blackens; battering rain-torrents dash, with thunder; al
most drowning the organ's voice: and electric fire-flashes
make the very flambeaux on the altar pale. So that the
most, as we are told, retired, when it was over, with hur
ried steps, "in a state of meditation (recueillement)," and
said little or nothing. *
So it has lasted for the better half of a fortnight; the
Dubarry gone almost a week. Besenval says, all the world
was getting impatient que cela finit; that poor Louis
would have done with it. It is now the tenth of May,
1774. He will soon have done now.
This tenth May clay falls into the loathsome sick bed ;
but dull, unnoticed there : for they that look out of the
windows are quite darkened ; the cistern-wheel moves dis
cordant on its axis; life, like a spent steed, is panting
toward the goal. In their remote apartments, dauphin
and dauphiness stand road -ready; all grooms and equerries
booted and spurred : waiting for some signal to escape the
house of pestilence. f And, hark! across the OEil-de-
Bceuf , what sound is that ; sound " terrible and absolutely
like thunder?" It is the rush of the whole court, rush
ing as in wager, to salute the new sovereigns: Hail to
your majesties! The dauphin and dauphiness are king
and queen! Overpowered with many emotions, they two
fall on their knees together, and, with streaming tears, ex
claim, "0 God, guide us, protect us; we are too young to
reign !" Too young indeed.
But thus, in any case, "with a sound absolutely like
thunder," has the horologe of time struck, and an old era
* Weber, "Memoires concernant Marie- Antoinette " (London,
1890), i. 22.
¦f One grudges to interfere with the beautiful theatrical " candle,"
which Madame Campan (i. 79) has lit on this occasion; and blown
out at the moment of death. What candles might be lit or blown
out, in so large an establishment as that of Versailles, no man at
such distance would like to affirm: at the same time, as it was two
o'clock in a May afternoon, and these royal stables must have been
some five or six hundred yards from the royal sick room, the
"candle" does threaten to go out in spite of us. It remains burn
ing indeed — in her fantasy ; throwing light on much in those
" Mernoires " of hers.

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 23
passed away. The Louis that was, lies forsaken, a mass
of abhorred clay; abandoned "to some poor persons, and
priests of the Chapelle Ardente," who make haste to put
him " in two lead coffins, pouring in abundant spirits of
wine." The new Louis with his court is rolling toward
Choisy, through the summer afternoon: the royal tears
still flow; but a word mispronounced by Monseigneur
d'Artois sets them all laughing, and they weep no more.
Light mortals, how ye walk your light life-minuet, over
bottomless abysses, divided from you by a film !
For the rest, the proper authorities felt that no funeral
could be too unceremonious. Besenval himself thinks it was
unceremonious enough. Two carriages containing two
noblemen of the usher species, and a Versailles clerical per
son; some score of mounted pages, some fifty palfreniers:
these, with torches, but not so much as in black, start
from Versailles on the second evening, with their leaden
bier. At a high trot they start; and keep up that pace.
For the jibes (brocards) of those Parisians, who stand planted
in two rows, all the way to St. Denis, and "give vent
to their pleasantry, the characteristic of the nation," do
not tempt one to slacken. Toward midnight the vaults of
St. Denis receive their own: unwept by any eye of all
these; if not by poor Loque his neglected daughter,
whose nunnery is hard by.
Him they crush down, and huddle under-ground, in this
impatient way; him and his era of sin and tyranny and
shame : for behold a new era is come ; the future all the
brighter that the past was base.

U THE FR ENClt R E VOL UTION.

BOOK SECOND.
THE PAPER AGE.

CHAPTER I.
ASTR^EA REDUX.
A paradoxical philosopher, carrying to the uttermost
length that aphorism of Montesquieu's, "Happy the people
whose annals are tiresome," has said, " Happy the people
whose annals are vacant." In which saying, mad as it
looks, may there not still be found some grain of reason?
For, truly, as it has been written, "Silence is divine,"
and of heaven ; so in all earthly things too there is a silence
which is better than any speech. Consider it well, the
event, the thing which can be spoken of and recorded, is it
not, in all cases, some, disruption, some solution of con
tinuity? Were it even a glad event, it involves change,
involves loss (of active force) ; and so far, either in the past
or in the present, is an irregularity, a disease. Stillest
perseverance were our blessedness; not dislocation and
alteration, could they be avoided.
The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years;
only in the thousandth year, when the woodman arrives
with his axe, is there heard an echoing through the soli
tudes; and the oak announces itself when, with far-sound
ing crash, it falls. How silent too was the planting of the
acorn, scattered from the lap of some wandering wind!
Nay, when our oak flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad
events), what shout of proclamation could ¦ there be?
Hardly from the most observant a word of recognition.
These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in
an hour, but through the flight of days : what was to be
said of it? This hour seemed altogether as the last was,
as the next would be.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 25
It is thus everywhere that foolish rumor babbles not of
what was done, but of what was misdone or undone; and
foolish history (ever, more or less, the written epitomized
synopsis of rumor) knows so little that were not as well
unknown. Attila invasions, Walter-the-Penniless crusades, Sicilian
vespers, thirty-years wars; mere sin and misery; not work,
but hindrance of work! For the earth, all this while,
was yearly green and yellow with her kind harvests; the
hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker rested not:
and so, after all, and in spite of all we have this so glorious
high -domed blossoming world; concerning which, poor
history may well ask, with wonder, Whence it came? She
knows so little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it,
what would have rendered it impossible. Such, neverthe
less, by necessity or foolish choice, is her rule and practice ;
whereby that paradox, " Happy the people whose annals are
vacant," is not without its true side.
And yet, what seems more pertinent to note here, there
is a stillness, not of unobstructed growth, but of passive*
inertness, the symptom of imminent downfall. As victory
is silent, so is defeat. Of the opposing forces the weaker
has resigned itself; the stronger marches on, noiseless now,
but rapid, inevitable: the fall and overturn will not be
noiseless. How all grows, and has its period, even as the
herbs of the fields, be it annual, centennial, millennial!
All grows and dies, each by its own wondrous laws, in
wondrous fashion of its own ; spiritual things most won-
drously of all. Inscrutable, to the wisest, are these latter ;
not to be prophesied of, or understood. If when the oak
stands proudliest flourishing to the eye, you know that its
heart is sound, it is not so with the man; how much less
with the society, with the nation of men ! Of such it may
be affirmed even that the superficial aspect, that the
inward feeling of full health, is generally ominous. For
indeed it is of apoplexy, so to speak, and a plethoric lazy
habit of body, that churches, kingships, social institu
tions, ofteuest die. Sad, when such institution plethoric
ally 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.
Is it the healthy peace, or the ominous unhealthy, that
rests on France, for these next ten years? Over which the

26 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
historian can pass lightly, without call to linger : for as yet
events are not, much less performances. Time of sunniest
stillness; shall we call it, what all men thought it, the
new age of gold? Call it at least, of paper; which in many
ways is the succedaneum of gold. Bank-paper, wherewith
you can still buy when there is no gold left; book-paper,
splendent with theories, philosophies, sensibilities, beau
tiful art, not only of revealing thought, but also of so
beautifully hiding from us the want of thought ! _ Paper is
made from the rags of things that did once exist ; there
are endless excellences in paper. What wisest philosophe,
in this halcyon uneventful period, could prophesy that
there was approaching, big with darkness and confusion,
the event of events? Hope ushers in a revolution, as
earthquakes are preceded by bright weather. On the fifth
of May, fifteen years hence, old Louis will not be sending
for the sacraments ; but a new Louis, his grandson, with
the whole pomp of astonished intoxicated France, will be
opening the states-general.

Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone forever.
There is a young, still docile, well-intentioned king; a
young, beautiful and bountiful, well-intentioned queen;
and with them all France, as it were, become young.
Maupeou and his parlement have to vanish into thick
night; respectable magistrates, not indifferent to the na
tion, were it only for having been opponents of the court,
descend now unchained from their " steep rocks at Croe in
Combrailles" and elsewhere, and return singing praises:
the old parlement of Paris resumes its functions. Instead
of a profligate bankrupt Abbe Terray, we have now, for
controller-general, a virtuous philosophic Turgot, with a
whole reformed France in his head. By whom whatso
ever is wrong, in finance or otherwise, will be righted, as
far as possible. Is it not as if wisdom herself were hence
forth to have seat and voice in the council of kings?
Turgot has taken office with the noblest plainness of
speech to that effect; been listened to with the noblest
royal trustfulness.* It is true, as King Louis objects,
"They say he never goes to mass;" but liberal France likes
* Turgot's Letter: Condorcet, " Vie de Turgot " (CEuvres de Con-
dorcet, t. v.), p. 67. The date is 24th August, 1774.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 2 7
him little worse for that; liberal France answers, "The
Abbe Terray always went." Philosophism sees, for the
first time, a philosophe (or even a" philosopher) in office;
she in all things will applausively second him ', neither will
light old Maurepas obstruct, if he can easily help it.
Then how " sweet" are the manners ; vice " losing all its
deformity;" becoming decent (as established things, mak
ing regulations for themselves, do); becoming almost a
kind of " sweet" virtue ! Intelligence so abounds ; irradiated
by wit and the art of conversation. Philosophism sits joy
ful in her glittering saloons, the dinner-guest of opulence
preaches^ lifted up over all Bastilles, a coming millennium.
From far Ferney, Patriarch Voltaire gives sign : veterans
Diderot, D'Alembert have lived to see this day; these
with their younger Marmontels, Morelets, Chamforts,
Raynals, make 'glad the spicy board of rich ministering
Dowager, of philosophic Farmer-General. Oh nights
and suppers of the gods! Of a truth, the long demon
strated will now be done: "the Age of Revolution ap
proaches" (as Jean Jacques wrote), but then of happy
grown ingenuous, the very nobles proud to sit by her ; and
blessed ones. Man awakens from his long somnambulism ;
chases the phantasms that beleaguered and bewitched
him. Behold the new morning glittering down the
eastern steeps ; fly, false phantasms, from its shafts of light ;
let the absurd fly utterly, forsaking this lower earth for
ever. It is truth and Astrcea Redux that (in the shape
of philosophism) henceforth reign. For what imagin
able purpose was man made, if not to be "happy?" By
victorious analysis, and progress of the species, happiness
enough now awaits him. Kings can become philosophers;
or else philosophers kings. Let but society be once rightly
constituted, by victorious analysis. The stomach that is
empty shall be filled ; the throat that is dry shall be wetted
with wine. Labor itself shall be all one as rest ; not griev
ous, but joyous. Wheat-fields, one would think, cannot
come to grow unfilled ; no man made clayey, or made weary
thereby; unless indeed machinery will do it? Gratuitous
tailors and restaurateurs may start up, at fit intervals, one
as yet sees not how. But if each will, according to rule
of benevolence, have a care for all, then surely — no one
will be uncared for. Nay, who knows but, by sufficiently
victorious analysis, "human life may be indefinitely

28 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTJON.
lengthened," and men get rid of death, as they have
already done of the devil? We shall then be happy in
spite of death and the devil. So preaches magniloquent
philosophism her Redeunt Satumia regna.
The prophetic song of Paris and its philosophers is
audible enough in the Versailles CEil-de-Bceuf ; and the
CEil-de-Bceuf, intent chiefly on nearer blessedness, can
answer, at worst, with a polite "Why not?" Good old
cheery Maurepas is too joyful a prime minister to dash the
world's joy. Sufficient for the day be its own evil.
Cheery old man, he cuts his jokes, and hovers careless
along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he
may please all persons. The simple young king, whom a
Maurepas cannot think of troubling with business, has
retired into the interior apartments; taciturn, irresolute;
though with a sharpness of temper at times: he, at length,
determines on a little smith-work; and so, in apprentice
ship with a Sieur Gamain (whom one day he shall have
little cause to bless), is learning to make locks.* It
appears further, he understood geography, and could read
English. Unhappy young king, his childlike trust in
that foolish old Maurepas deserved another return. But
friend and foe, destiny and himself have combined to do
him hurt.
Meanwhile the fair young queen, in her halls of state,
walks like a goddess of beauty, the cynosure of all eyes;
as yet mingles not with affairs; heeds not the future; least
of all, dreads it. Weber and Campanf have pictured her,
there within the royal tapestries, in bright boudoirs,
baths, peignoirs, and the grand and little toilette with a
whole brilliant world waiting obsequious on her glance: fair
young daughter of time, what things has time in store for
thee! Like earth's brightest appearance, she moves grace
fully, environed with the grandeur of earth: a reality, and
yet a magic vision ; for, behold, shall not utter darkness
swallow it! The soft young heart adopts orphans, por
tions meritorious maids, delights to succor the poor,
such poor as come picturesquely in her way; and sets the
fashion of doing it; for, as was said, benevolence has now
begun reigning. In her Duchess de Polignac, in her Prin
cess de Lamballe, she enjoys something almost like friend-
*Campan, i. 125. t Ibid., i. 100-151. Weber, i. 11-50.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 29
ship : now too, after seven long years, she has a child, and
soon even a dauphin, of her own; can reckon herself, as
queens go, happy in a husband.
Events! The grand events are but charitable feasts of
morals {Fetes des mosurs,) with their prizes and speeches;
poissarde processions to the dauphin's cradle; above all,
flirtations, their rise, progress, decline and fall. There are
snow-statues raised by the poor in hard winter to a queen
who has given them fuel. There are masquerades, theatri
cals; beautifyings of little Trianon, purchase and repair of
St. Cloud; journeyings from the summer court Elysium to
the winter one. There are poutings and grudgings from
the Sardinian sisters-in-law (for the princes too are wedded) ;
little jealousies, which court etiquette can moderate.
Wholly the lightest-hearted frivolous foam of existence;
yet an artfully refined foam; pleasant were it not so
costly, like that which mantles on the wine of champagne !
Monsieur, the king's elder brother, has set up for a
kind of wit; and leans toward the philosophe side. Mon-
seigneur d' Artois pulls the mask from a fair impertinent ;
fights a duel in consequence, almost drawing blood.* He
has breeches of a kind new in this world — a fabulous kind ;
"four tall lackeys," says Mercier, as if he had seen it,
"hold him np in the air, that he may fall into the gar
ment without vestige of wrinkle; from which rigorous
encasement the same four, in the same way, and with more
effort, have to deliver him at night." f This last is he
who now, as a gray timeworn man, sits desolate at Gratz;J
having winded up his destiny with the three days. In
such sort are poor mortals swept and shoveled to and fro.

CHAPTER II.
PETITION IN HIEROGLYPHS.
With the working people, again, it is not so well. Un
lucky ! For there are from twenty to twenty-five millions
of them. Whom, however, we lump together into a kind
of dim compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off,
* Besenval, ii. 282-330.
f Mercier, " Nouveau Paris," iii. 147.
Ja.d. 1834.

30 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
as the canaille; or, more humanely, as "the masses."
Masses indeed : and yet, singular to say, if, with an effort
of imagination, thou follow them, over broad France, into
their clay hovels, into their garrets and hutches, 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. Oh, purple sovereignty,
holiness, reverence; thou, for example, cardinal grand-
almoner, with thy plush covering of honor, who hast thy
hands strengthened with dignities and moneys, and art set
on thy world watch-tower solemnly, in sight of God, for
such ends, what a thought: that every unit of these masses
„ is a miraculous man, even as thou thyself art; struggling,
•with vision or with blindness, for his infinite kingdom (this
life which he has got, once only, in the middle of eter
nities) ; with a spark of the divinity, what thou callest an
immortal soul, in him !
Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remote
ness; their hearth cheerless, their diet thin. For them, in
this world, rises no era of hope; hardly now in the other,
if it be not Jiope in the gloomy rest of death, for their
faith too fs 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 (as
now, in 1775), they will fling down their hoes and ham
mers; and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind,*
flock hither and thither, dangerous, aimless; get the length
even of Versailles. Turgot is altering the corn -trade,
abrogating the absurdest corn-laws; there is dearth, real,
or were it even "factitious;" an indubitable scarcity of
bread. And so, on the second day of May, 1775, these
waste multitudes do here, at Versailles chateau, in wide
spread wretchedness, in sallow faces, squalor, winged
raggedness, present, as in legible hieroglyphic writing,
their petition of grievances. The chateau gates have to be
shut; but the king will appear on the balcony, and speak
to them. They have seen the king's face; their petition
of grievances has been, if not read, looked at. For answer
two of them are hanged, on a "new gallows forty feet
high ;" and the rest driven back to their dens, for a time.
* Lacretelle, " France pendant le 18me Siecle," ii. 455. "Biogig,-
phie Universelle," § Turgot (by Durozoir).

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 31
Clearly a difficult "point" for government, that of deal-**
ing with these masses ; if indeed it be not rather the sole
point and problem of government, and all other points
mere accidental crotchets, superficialities, and beatings
of the wind! For let charter-chests, use and wont, law
common and special say what they will, the masses count
to so many millions of units ; made, to all appearance, by
God, whose earth this is declared to be. Besides, these
people are not without ferocity; they have sinews and
indignation. Do but look what holiday old Marquis
Mirabeau, the crabbed old friend of men, looked on, in
these same years, from his lodging, at the baths of Mont
d'Or : " The savages descending in torrents from the moun
tains; our people ordered not to go out. The curate in
surplice and stole; justice in its peruke; Marechausee
saber in hand, guarding the place, till the bagpipes can
begin. The dance interrupted, in a quarter of an hour,
by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of infirm
persons, and other assistants, tarring them on, as the rabble
does when dogs fight; frightful men, or rather frightful
wild-animals, clad in jupes of coarse woolen, with large
girdles of leather studded with copper nails; of gigantic
stature, heightened by high wooden-clogs (sabots) rising on
tiptoe to see the fight; tramping time to it; rubbing their
sides with their elbows; their faces haggard {figures haves)
and covered with their long greasy hair ; the upper part of
the visage waxing pale, the lower distorting itself into the
attempt at a cruel laugh and a sort of ferocious impatience.
And these people pay the taille! And you want further to
take their salt from them ! And you know not what it is
you are stripping barer, or as you call it, governing ; what,
by the spurt of your pen, in its cold dastard indifference,
you will fancy you can starve always with impunity;
always till the catastrophe come ! Ah, madame, such gov
ernment by blindman's-buff, stumbling along too far, will
end in the general overturn {culbute generate)" .*
Undoubtedly a dark feature this in an age of gold, age
at least, of paper and hope ! Meanwhile, trouble us not
with thy prophecies, Oh, croaking friend of men: 'tis -
long that we have heard such; and still the old world*
keeps wagging, in its old way.
* "Memoires de Mirabeau," ecrits bar Lui-meme, par son Pere, son
Oncle et son Fils Adoptif (Paris, 1634-5), ii. 186.

32 THE FRENCH RE VOL VTION.
CHAPTER III.
QUESTIONABLE.
Or is this same age of hope itself but a simulacrum ; as
hope too often is? Cloud-vapor with rainbows painted on
it, beautiful to see, to sail toward, which hovers over
Niagara Falls? In that case, victorious analysis will have
enough to do.
Alas, yes ! a whole world to remake, if she could see it :
work for another than she! For all is wrong, and gone
out of joint; the inward spiritual, and the outward econo
mical; 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.
Before those five-and-twenty laboring millions, for instance,
could get that haggardness of face, which old Mirabeau
now looks on, in a nation calling itself Christian, and call
ing man the brother of man, what unspeakable, nigh
infinite dishonesty (of seeming and not being) in all manner
of rulers, and appointed watchers, spiritual and temporal,
must there not, through long ages, have gone on accumu
lating ! It will accumulate : moreover, it will reach a head ;
for the first of all Gospels is this, that a lie cannot endure
forever. In fact, if we pierce through that'^rosepink vapor of sen-
timentalism, philanthropy, and feasts of morals, there
lies behind it one of the sorriest spectacles. You might
ask, What bonds that ever held a human society happily
together, or held it together at all, are in force here? It
is an unbelieving people; which has suppositions, hypoth
eses, and froth-systems of victorious analysis; and for
belief this mainly, that pleasure is pleasant. Hunger they
have for all sweet things; and the law of hunger: but what
other law? Within them or over them properly none!
Their king has become a King Popinjay : with his Maure
pas 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 sub
missive state; quite tamed by philosophism, in a singularly

The French Re Vol ution. gg
short time; for the hour was come. Some twenty years
ago, your Archbishop Beaumont would not even let the
poor Jansenists get buried: your Lomeni Brienne (a rising
man, whom we shall meet with yet) could in the name of
the clergy, insist on having the anti-Protestant laws, which
condemn to death for preaching, "put in execution."*
And alas, now not so much as Baron Holbach's antheism
can be burned, except as pipe-matches by the private specu
lative individual. Our church stands haltered, dumb, like-
a dumb ox; lowing only for provender (of tithes) ; content
if it can have that ; or, " with dumb stupor, expecting its
further, doom. And the twenty millions of "haggard
faces ;" and, as finger-post and guidance to them in their
dark struggle, " a gallows forty feet high !" Certainly a
singular golden age, with its feasts of morals, its " sweet
manners," its sweet institutions {institutions douces);
betokening nothing but peace among men! peace? Oh,
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! Meanwhile it is singular how long the rotten will hold
together, provided you do not handle it roughly. For
whole generations it continues standing, " with a ghastly
affectation of life," after all life and truth has fled out of
it: so loth are men to quit their old ways, and, conquering
indolence and inertia, venture on new. Great truly is
the actual; is the thing that has rescued itself from bot
tomless deeps of theory and possibility, and stands there
as a definite indisputable fact, whereby men do work and
live, or once did so. Wisely shall men cleave to that,
while it will endure; and quit it with regret, when it gives
way under them. Rash enthusiast of change, beware!
Hast thou well considered all that habit does in this life
of ours ; how all knowledge and all practice hang wondrous
over infinite abysses of the unknown, impracticable; and
our whole being is an infinite abyss, overarched by habit,
as by a thin earth -rind, laboriously built together?
But if "every man," as it has been written, "holds
confined within him a madman," what must every society,
do; society, which in its commonest state is called "the
*Boissy d'Anglas, " Vie dgJ^ahssfaeefeeSr" i. 15-22.

34 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
standing miracle of this world !" " Without such earth-rind
of habit," continues our author, "call it system of habits,
in a word, fixed ways of -"acting and of believing, society
would not exist at all. With such it exists, better or
worse. Herein too, in this its system of habits, acquired,
retained how you will, lies the true law-code and constitu
tion of a society ; the only code, though an unwritten one,
which it can in nowise disobey. The thing we call written
code, constitution, form of government, and the like,
what is it. but some miniature image, and solemnly ex
pressed summary of this unwritten code? 7s, or rather,
alas, is not; but only should be, and always tends to be!
In which latter discrepancy lies struggle without end."
And now, we add in the same dialect, let but, by ill
chance, in such ever-enduring struggle, your "thin earth-
rind" be once broken! The fountains of the great deep
boil forth; fire-fountains, enveloping, engulfing. ' Your
"earth -rind" is shattered, swallowed up ; instead of a green
flowery world, there is a waste wild-weltering chaos, which
has again, with tumult and struggle, to make itself into a
world. On the other hand, be this conceded: Where thou
findest a lie that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies
exist there only to be extinguished; they wait and cry
earnestly for extinction. Think well, meanwhile, in what
spirit thou wilt do it : not with hatred, with headlong self
ish 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.
So, however, in this world of ours, which has both an
indestructible hope in the future, and an indestructible
tendency to persevere as in the past, must innovation and
conservation wage their perpetual conflict, as they may and
can. Wherein the "daemonic element," that lurks in all
human things, may doubtless, some once in the thousand
years, get vent ! But indeed may we not regret that such
conflict, which after all, is but like that classical one of
"hate-filled Amazons with heroic youths," and will end in
embraces, should usually be so spasmodic? For conserva
tion, strengthened by that mightiest quality in us, our
indolence, sits for long ages, not victorious only, which she

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 35
should be; but tyrannical, incommunicative. She holds
her adversary as if annihilated; such adversary lying, all
the while, like some buried Enceladus; who, to gain the
smallest freedom, has to stir a whole Trinacria with its
JEtnas. Wherefore, on the whole, we will honor a paper age too ;
an era of hope! For in this same frightful process of
Enceladus revolt, when the task, on which no mortal
would willingly enter, has become imperative, inevitable,
is it not even a kindness of nature that she lures us for
ward by cheerful promises, fallacious or not; and a whole
generation plunges into the Erebus blackness, lighted on
by an era of hope? 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."

CHAPTER IV.
MAUREPAS.
But now, among French hopes, is not that of old M.
de Maurepas one of the best-grounded; who hopes that he,
by dexterity, shall contrive to continue minister? Nimble
old man, who for all emergencies has his light jest ; and
ever in the worst confusion will emerge, cork -like, unsunk !
Small care to him is perfectibility, progress of the species,
and Astrwa Redux: good only, that a man of light wit,
verging toward fourscore, can in the seat of authority feel
himself important among men. Shall we call him, as
haughty Chateauroux was wont of old, " M. Faquinet
(diminutive of scoundrel)?" In courtier dialect, he is
now named "the Nestor of France;" such governing
Nestor as France has.
At bottom, nevertheless, it might puzzle one to say
where the government of France, in these days, specially
is. In that chateau of Versailles, we have Nestor,_ king,
queen, ministers and clerks, with paper-bundles tied in
tape; but the government? For government is a thing»-
that governs, that guides; and if need be, compels. Visi
ble in France there is not such a thing. Invisible, inor
ganic, on the other hand, there is: in philosophe saloons,
in OEil-de-Bceuf galleries; in the tongue of the babbler,

36 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
in the pen of the pamphleteer. Her majesty appearing at
the opera is applauded ; she returns all radiant with joy.
Anon the applauses wax fainter, or threaten to cease; she
is heavy of heart, the light of her face has fled._ • Is sover
eignty some poor montgolfier, which, blown into by the
popular wind, grows great and mounts; or sinks flaccid, if
the wind be withdrawn? France was long a "despotism
tempered by epigrams;" and now, it would seem, the
epigrams have got the upper hand.
Happy were a young "Louis the Desired" to make
France happy; if it did not prove too troublesome, and he
only knew the way. But there is endless discrepancy
round him; so many claims and clamors; a mere confu
sion of tongues. Not reconcilable by man; not manage
able, suppressible, save by some strongest and wisest man ;
which only a lightly-jesting lightly-gyrating M. de Maurepas
can so much as subsist amidst. Philosophism claims her
new era, meaning thereby innumerable things. And
claims it in no faint voice; for France at large, hitherto
mute, is now beginning to speak also; and speaks in that
same sense. A huge, many-toned sound ; distant, yet not
unimpressive. On the other hand, the Q5il-de-Bceuf,
which, as nearest, one can hear best, claims with shrill
vehemence that the monarchy be as heretofore a horn of
plenty; wherefrom loyal courtiers may draw, to the just
support of the throne. Let liberalism and a new era, if
such is the wish, be introduced; only no curtailment of
the royal moneys! Which latter condition, alas, is pre-
scisely the impossible one.
Philosophism, as we saw, has got her Turgot made con
troller-general; and there shall be endless reformation.
Unhappily this Turgot could continue only twenty months.
With a miraculous Fortunatus'' purse in his treasury
it might have lasted longer; with such purse indeed, every
French controller-general, that would prosper in these
days, ought first to provide himself. But here again may
we not remark the bounty of nature in regard to hope?
Man after man advances confident to the Augean stable,
as if he could clean it; expends his little fraction of an
ability on it, with such cheerfulness; does, in so far as he
was honest, accomplish something. Turgot has faculties ;
honesty; insight, heroic volition; but the Fortunatus'
purse he has not. Sanguine controller-general ! a whole

THE FRENCH REVOL UTlON. 37
pacific French revolution may stand schemed in the head
of the thinker; but who shall pay the unspeakable
"indemnities" that will be needed? Alas, far from that:
on the very threshold of the business, he proposes that
the clergy, the noblesse, the very parlements be subjected
to taxes like the people ! One shriek of indignation and
astonishment reverberates through all the chateau gal
leries ; M. de Maurepas has to gyrate ; the poor king, who
had written few weeks ago, " II n'y a que vous et moi qui
aimions le peuple (There is none but you and I that has
the people's interest at heart)," must write now a dis
missal; * and let the French revolution accomplish itself,
pacifically or not as it can.
Hope then, is deferred? Deferred, not destroyed, or
abated.. Is not this, for example, our Patriarch Voltaire,
after long years of absence, revisiting Paris? With face
shriveled to nothing ; with " huge peruke a la Louis Qua-
torze, which leaves only two eyes visible, glittering like car
buncles," the old man is here.f What an outburst!
Sneering Paris has suddenly grown reverent; devotional
with hero-worship. Nobles have disguised themselves as
tavern-waiters to obtain sight of him: the loveliest of
France would lay their hair beneath his feet. "His
chariot is the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills the
whole streets:" they crown him in the theater, with im
mortal vivats; finally "stifle him under roses:" for old
Richelieu recommended opium in such state of the nerves,
and the excessive patriarch took too much. Her majesty
herself had some thought of sending for him; but was
dissuaded. Let majesty consider it, nevertheless. The
purport of this man's existeuce has been to wither up and
annihilate all whereon majesty and worship for the present
rests; and is it so that the world recognizes him? With
apotheosis ; as its prophet and speaker, who has spoken \
wisely the thing it longed to say? Add only, that the
body of this same rose-stifled, beautified patriarch cannot
get buried except by stealth. It is wholly a notable busi
ness; and France, without doubt, is big (what the Germans
call " of good hope ") ; we shall wish her a happy birth-hour,
and blessed fruit.
Beaumarchais too has now winded up his law-pleadings
* In May 1776. f February 1778.

gg THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
{Memoires);* not without result, to himself and to the
world. Caron Beaumarchais (or de Beaumarchais, for he
got ennobled) had been born poor, but aspiring, esurient;
with talents, audacity, adroitness; above all, with the
talent for intrigue: a lean, but also a tough indomitable
man. Fortune and dexterity brought him to the harpis-
cord of mesdames, our good Princesses Loque, Graille and
sisterhood. Still better, Paris Duvernier, the court-banker,
honored him with some confidence ; to the length even of
transactions in cash. Which confidence, however, Duver-
nier's heir, a person of quality, would not continue. Quite
otherwise; there springs a lawsuit from it: wherein tough
Beaumarchais, losing both money and repute is, in the
opinion of Judge-Reporter Goezman, of the Parlement
Maupeou, and of a whole indifferent acquiescing world,
miserably beaten. In all men's opinion, only not in his
own! Inspired by the indignation, which makes, if not
verses, satirical law-papers, the withered music-master,
with a desperate heroism, takes up his lost cause in spite
of the world; fights for it, against reporters, parlements
and principalities, with light banter, with clear logic;
adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness and resource,
like the skillf ulest fencer; on whom, so skillful is he, the
whole world now looks. Three long years it lasts; with
wavering fortune. In fine, after labors comparable to the
twelve of Hercules, our unconquerable Caron triumphs;
regains his lawsuit and lawsuits ; strips Reporter Goezman
of the judicial ermine, covering him with a perpetual
garment of obloquy instead : and m regard to the Parlement
Maupeou (which he has helped to extinguish), to parle
ments of all kinds, and to French justice generally, gives
rise to endless reflections in the minds of men. Thus has
Beaumarchais, like a lean French Hercules, ventured
down, driven by destiny, into the nether kingdom's, and
victoriously tamed hell-dogs there. He also is henceforth
among the notabilities of his generation.
* 1773-6. See " GSuvres de Beaumarchais;" where they, and the
history of them, are given.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 39
CHAPTER V.
ASTR.3EA REDUX WITHOUT CASH.
Observe, however, beyond the Atlantic, has not the
new day verily dawned! Democracy, as we said, is born;
stormgirt, is struggling for life and victory. A sym
pathetic France rejoices over the rights of man; in all
saloons, it is said, What a spectacle ! Now too behold our
Deane, our Franklin, American plenipotentiaries, here in
person soliciting : * the sons of the Saxon Puritans, with
their Old-Saxon temper, Old-Hebrew culture, sleek Silas,
sleek Benjamin, here on such errand, among the light
children of heathenism, monarchy, sentimentalism, and-
the scarlet- woman. A spectacle indeed; over which
saloons may crackle joyous; though Kaiser Joseph, ques
tioned on it, gave this answer, most -unexpected from a
philosophe : " Madame, the trade I live by is that of royal
ist {Mon metier a moi c'est d'etre royaliste)."
So thinks light Maurepas too ; but the wind of philoso
phism and force of public opinion will blow him round.
Best wishes, meanwhile, are sent; clandestine privateers
armed. Paul Jones shall equip his Bon Homme Richard:
weapons, military stores can be smuggled over (if the
English do not seize them) ; wherein, once more Beau
marchais, dimly as the giant smuggler, becomes visible, fill
ing his own lank pocket withal. But surely, in any case,
France should have a navy. For which great object were
not now the time — now when that proud Termagant of
the seas has her hands full? It is true, an impoverished
treasury cannot build ships; but the hint once given
(which Beaumaichais says he gave), this and the other
loyal seaport, chamber of commerce, will build and offer
them. Goodly vessels bound into the waters; a Ville de
Paris, leviathan of ships.
And now when gratuitous three-deckers dance there at
anchor, with streamers flying; and eleutheromaniac philo-
sophedom grows ever more clamorous, what can a Maurepas
do — but gyrate? Squadrons cross the ocean: Gateses,
Lees, rough Yankee generals, " with woolen night-caps
under their hats, "present arms to the far-glancing chivalry
* 1777 ; Deane somewhat earlier : Franklin remained till 1785,

40 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
of France; and newborn Democracy sees, not without
amazement, "Despotism tempered by epigrams" fight at
her side. So, however, it is. King's forces and heroic
volunteers; Rochambeaus, Bouilles, Lameths, Lafayettes,
have drawn their swords in this sacred quarrel of mankind ;
shall draw them again elsewhere, in the strangest way.
Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course
of which did our young prince, Duke de Chartres, "hide
in the hold;" or did he materially, by active heroism,
contribute to the victory? Alas, by a second edition, we
learn that there was no victory ; or that English Keppel
had it. * Our poor young prince gets his opera plaudits
changed into mocking tehees ; and cannot become grand -
•admiral, the source to him of woes which one may call
endless. Woe also for Ville de Paris, the leviathan of ships !
English Rodney has clutched it, and led it home, with
the rest; so successful was his "new manceuver of break
ing the enemy's line." f It seems as if, according to
Louis XV., " France were never to have a navy. " Brave
Suffren must return from Hyder Ally and the Indian
waters; with small result, yet with great glory for six
non-defeats; which indeed, with such seconding as he had,
one may reckon heroic. Let the old sea-hero rest now,
honored of France, in his native Cevennes mountains ; send
smoke, not of gunpowder, but mere culinary smoke,
through the old chimneys of the Castle of Jaels, which
one day, in other hands, shall have other fame. Brave
Laperouse shall by-and-by lift anchor, on philanthropic
voyage of discovery; for the king knows geography. \
But, alas, this also will not prosper: the brave navigator
goes, .and returns not ; the seekers search far seas for him
in vain. He has vanished trackless into blue immensity;
and only some mournful mysterious shadow of him hovers
long in all heads and hearts.
Neither, while the war yet lasts, will Gibraltar surren
der. Not though Crillon, Nassau-Siegen, with the ablest
projectors extant, are there; and Prince Conde and Prince
d'Artois have hastened to help. Wondrous leather-roofed
floating-batteries, set afloat by French-Spanish Facte de
*27th July, 1778. f 9th and 12th April, 1782.
i August 1st, 1785.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 41
Famille, give gallant summons: to which, nevertheless,
Gibraltar answers Plutonically, with mere torrents of redhot
iron, as if stone Calpe had become a throat of the pit; and
utters such a doom's-blast of a Ab, as all men must credit.*
And so, with this loud explosion, the noise of war has
ceased; an age of benevolence may hope, forever. Our
noble volunteers of freedom have returned, to be her mis
sionaries. Lafayette, as the matchless of his time, glitters
in the Versailles (Eil-de-Bceuf; has his bust set up in
the Paris H6tel-de- Ville. Democracy stands inexpungable,
immeasurable, in her new world; has even a foot lifted
toward the old; and our French finances, little strength
ened by such work, are in n.o healthy way.
What to do with the finances? This indeed is the great
question; a small but most black weather-symptom, which
no radiance of universal hope can cover. We saw Turgot
cast forth from. the controllership, with shrieks — for want
of a Fortunatus' purse. As little could M. de Clugny
manage the duty; or indeed do anything, but consume his
wages; attain "a place in history," where as an ineffectual
shadow thou beh oldest him still lingering; and 1st the
duty manage itself. Did Genevese Necker possess such a
purse then? He possessed banker's skill, banker's hon
esty ; credit of all kinds, for he had written academic prize
essays, struggled for Indian companies, given dinners to
philosophes, and "realized a fortune in twenty years."
He possessed, further, a taciturnity and solemnity; of
depth, or else of dullness. How singular for Celadon
Gibbon, false swain as he had proved, whose father,
keeping most probably his own gig, " would not hear of
such a union," to find nov his forsaken Demoiselle
Curchod sitting in the high places of the world, as min
ister's madame, and "Necker not jealous!" f
A new young demoiselle, one day to be famed as a madame
and De Stael, was romping about the knees of the decline
and fall : the lady Necker founds hospitals ; gives solemn
philosophe dinner-parties, to cheer her exhausted controller-
general. Strange things have happened: by clamor of
philosophism, management of Marquis de Pezay, and
*" Annual Register" (Dodsley's), xxv. 258-267. September,
October, 1782.
f Gibbon's " Letters :" date, 16th June, 1777, etc.

42 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
poverty constraining even kings. And so Necker, Atlas
like, sustains the burden of the finances, for five years
longer.* Without wages, for he refused such; cheered
only by public opinion, and the ministering of his noble
wife. With many thoughts in him, it is hoped; which,
ho wever, he is shy of uttering. His " Compte Rendu, " pub
lished by the royal permission, fresh sign of a new era,
shows wonders ; which what but the genius of some Atlas-
Necker can prevent from becoming portents? In Necker's
head too there is a whole pacific French revolution, of its
kind; and in that taciturn dull depth, or deep dullness,
ambition enough.
Meanwhile, alas, his Fortunatus' purse turns out to be
little other than the old "vectigal of parsimony." Nay, he
too has to produce his scheme of taxing: clergy, noblesse
to be taxed; provincial assemblies, and the rest, like a
mere Turgot! The expiring M. de Maurepas must gyrate
one other time. Let Necker also depart; not unlamented.
Great in a private station, Necker looks on from the
distance, abiding his time. " Eighty thousand copies" of
his new book, which he calls " Administration des Finances,"
will be sold in a few days. He is gone ; but shall return,
and that more than once, borne by a whole shouting na
tion. Singular controller-general of the finances; once
clerk in Thelusson's Bank!

CHAPTER VI.
WINDBAGS.
So marches the world, in this its paper age, or era of
hope. Not without obstructions, war-explosions; which,
however, heard from such distance, are little other than a
cheerful marching-music. If indeed that dark living
chaos of ignorance and hunger, five-and-twenty million
strong, under your feet, were to begin playing !
- For the present, however, consider Longchamp; now
when Lent is ending, and the glory of Paris and France
has gone forth, as in annual wont. Not to assist at Tenebris
masses, but to sun itself and show itself, and salute the
* Till May, 1781.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 43
young spring. * Manifold, bright-tinted, glittering with
gold ; all through the Bois de Boulougne, in long drawn
variegated rows; like longdrawn living flower -borders,
tulips, dahlias, lilies of the valley; all in their moving
flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages) : pleasure of the eye,
and pride of life! So rolls and dances the procession:
steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and
the foundations of the world; not on mere heraldic parch
ment, under which smolders a lake of fire. Dance on,
ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye
found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye
shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from of old,
written : The wages of sin is death?
But at Longchamp, as elsewhere, we remark for one
thing, that dame and cavalier are waited on each by a
kind of human familiar, named jokei. Little elf, or imp;
though young, already, withered ; with its withered air of
premature vice, of knowingness, of completed elfhood:
uesful in various emergencies. The name jokei (jockey)
comes from the English; as the thing also fancies that it
does. Our Anglomania, in fact, is grown considerable;
prophetic of much. If France is to be free, why shall she
not, now when mad war is hushed, love neighboring free
dom? Cultivated men, your Dukes de Liancourt, de la
Rbchefoucault 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 Chartes
(not yet d'Orleans or Egalite) flies to and fro across tho
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 redingotes,
as we call riding-coats. Nay the very mode of riding:
for now no man on a level with his age but will trot a
VAnglaise, rising in the stirrups; scornful of the old sit-
fast method, in which, according to Shakespeare, "butter
and eggs" go to market. Also, he can urge the fervid
wheels, this brave Chartres of ours ; no whip in Paris is
rasher and surer than the unprofessional one of mon-
seigneur. *Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," ii. 51. Louvet, "Roman de
Faublas," etc.

44 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Elf jokeis, we have seen; but see now real Yorkshire
jockeys, and what they ride on, and train : English racers
for French races. These likewise we owe first (under the
Providence of the devil) to monseigneur. Prince de'Artois
also has his stud of racers. Prince d' Artois has withal
the strangest horseleech: a moonstruck, much-enduring
individual, of Neuchatel in Switzerland, named Jean
Paul Marat. A problematic Chevalier d' Eon, now in
petticoats, now in breeches, no less problematic in Lon
don than in Paris ; and causes bets and lawsuits. Beauti
ful days of international communion! Swindlery and
blackguardism have stretched hands across the channel, and
saluted mutually : on the racecourse of Vincennes or Sab-
Ions, behold, in English curricle-aud-four, wafted glorious
among the principalities and rascalities, an English Dr.
Dodd,* for whom also the too early gallows gapes.
Duke de Chartres was a young prince of great promsie
as young princes often are; which promise unfortunately
has belied itself. With the huge Orleans 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 prema
turely burned 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 dazzle-
men ts; to obstreperous crochets; to activities which you
may call semi-delirious, or even semi-galvanic! Paris
affects to laugh at his charioteering; but he heeds not
such laughter.
On the other hand, what a day, not of laughter, was
that, when he threatened, for lucre's sake, to lay sacri
legious hand on the Palais-Royal Garden ! f The flower-
parterres shall be riven up; the Chestnut Avenues shall
fall: time-honored boscages, under which the Opera
Hamadryads were wont to wander, not inexorable to men.
* Adelung, " Geschichte der menschlichen Narrheit," § Dodd,
\ 1781-82. ( Dulaure, viii. 423.)

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 45
Paris moans aloud. Philidor, from his Cafe de la Regence,
shall no longer look on greenness; the loungers and losels
of the world, where now shall they haunt? In vain is
moaning. The axe glitters; the sacred groves fall crash
ing, for indeed monseigneur was short of money: the
Opera Hamadryads fly with shrieks. Shriek not, ye Opera
Hamadryads ; or not as those that have no comfort. He
will surround your garden with new edifices and piazzas;
though narrowed, it shall be replanted; dizened with
hydraulic jets, cannon which the sun fires at noon; things
bodily, things spiritual, such as man has not imagined ;
and in the Palais- Royal shall again and, more than ever,
be the Sorcerer's Sabbath, and Satan-at-home of our
planet. What will not mortals attempt? From remote Annonay
in the Vivarais, the brothers Montgolfier send up their
paper-dome, filled with the smoke of burned wool.* The
Viarvais provincial assembly is to be prorogued this same
day; Viarvais assembly -members applauded, and the shouts
of congregated men. Will victorous analysis scale the very
heavens, then?
Paris hears with eager wonder ; Paris shall ere long see.
From Reveillon's paper-warehouse there, in the Rue St.
Antoine (a noted warehouse), the new Montgolfier air-ship
launches itself. Ducks and poultry have been borne sky
ward: but now shall men be borne, f Nay, Chemist
Charles thinks of hydrogen and glazed silk. Chemist
Charles will himself ascend, from the Tuileries Garden;
Montgolfier solemnly cutting the cord. By heaven, this
Charles does also mount, he and another ! Ten times ten
thousand hearts go palpitating; all tongues are mute with
wonder and fear; till a shout, like the voice of seas, rolls
after him, on his wild way. He soars, he dwindles up
ward; has become a mere gleaming circlet, like some Tur-
gotine snuffbox, what we call " Turgotine-Platitude;"
like some new daylight moon! Finally he descends;
welcomed by the universe. Duchess Polignac, with a
party, is in the Bois de Boulougne, waiting; though it is
drizzly winter, the 1st of December, 1783. The whole
chivalry of France, Duke de Chartres foremost, gallops to
receive him.|  _] 
* 5th June, 1783. f October and November, 1783.
J Lacretelle, 18me " Siecle," iii. 258.

46 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Beautiful invention; mounting heavenward, so beauti
fully, so unguidably ! Emblem of much, and of our age
of hope itself; which shall mount, specifically-light, majes
tically in this same manner; and hover, tumbling whither
fate will. Well if it do not, Pilatre-like, explode; and
demount all the more tragically ! So, riding on windbags,
will men scale the Empyrean.
Or observe Herr Doctor Mesmer, in his spacious mag
netic halls. Long-stoled he walks; reverend, glancing up
ward, as in rapt commerce; an Antique Egyptian Hiero-
phant in this new age. Soft music flits; breaking fitfully
the sacred stillness. Round their magnetic mystery,
which to the eye is mere tubs with water, sit breathless,
rod in hand, the circles of beauty and fashion, each circle
a living circular passion-flower: expecting the magnetic
afflatus, and new-manufactured heaven-on-earth. Oh,
women, oh, men, great is your infidel faith! A parle-
mentary Duport, a Bergasse, D' Espremenil we notice
there; Chemist Berthollet too, on the part of Monseigneur
de Chartres.
Had not the academy of sciences, with its Baillys,
Franklins, Lavoisiers, interfered! But it did interfere.*
Mesmer may pocket his hard money and withdraw. Let
him walk silent by the shore of the Bodensee, by the an
cient town of Constance; meditating on much. For so,
under the strangest new vesture, the old great truth
(since no vesture can hide it) beigns 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.

CHAPTER VII.
CONTRAT SOCIAL.

In such succession of singular prismatic tints, flush after
flush suffusing our horizon, does the era of hope dawn on

* August, 1784.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 47
toward fulfillment. Questionable! As indeed, with an
era of hope that rests on mere universal benevolence, vic
torious analysis, vice cured of its deformity; and, in the
long run, on twenty-five dark savage millions, looking up, in
hunger and weariness, to that Ecce-signum of theirs
"forty feet high," how could it but be questionable?
Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be,
the parent of misery. This land calls itself most Chris
tian, 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. In
dustry, 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 in
dustry in this France? For two things there may be mar
ket and demand: for the coarser kind of field-fruits since
the millions will live: for the finer kinds of luxury and
spicery of multiform taste from opera-melodies down to
racers and courtesans; since the units will be amused.
It is at bottom but a mad state of things.
To mend and remake all which we have, indeed victo
rious analysis. Honor to victorious analysis; nevertheless,
out of the workshop and laboratory what thing was
victorious analysis yet known to make? Detection of inco
herences, mainly; destruction of the incoherent. From of
old, doubt was but half a magician; she evokes the specters
which she cannot quell. We shall have " endless vortices
of froth -logic;" whereon first words and then things are
whirled and swallowed. Remark accordingly as acknowl
edged grounds of hope, at bottom mere precursors of
despair, this perpetual theorizing about man, the mind of
man, philosophy of government, progress of the species, and
such-like; the main thinking furniture of every head.
Time, and so many Montesquieus, Mablys, spokesmen of
time, have discovered innumerable things: and now has not
Jean Jacques promulgated his new evangel of a Contrat

48 THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION.
Social; explaining the whole mystery of government, and
how it is contracted and bargained for, to universal satis
faction? 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 skill
fully planting down this and the other fixed pillar in the
chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee. That a new
young generation has exchanged the skeptic creed, What
shall I believe? for passionate faith in this gospel according
to Jean Jacques is a further step in the business; and
betokens much.
Blessed also is hope; and always from the beginning
there was some millennium prophesied; millennium of
holiness; but (what is notable) never till this new era,
any millennium of mere ease and plentiful supply. In
such prophesied lubberland, of happiness, benevolence, and
vice cured of its deformity, trust not, my friends! Man
is not what one calls a happy animal; his appetite for
sweet victual is so enormous. How, in this wild uni
verse, which storms in on him, infinite, vague menacing,
shall poorman find, say not happiness, but existence, and
footing to stand on, if it be not by girding himself together
for continual endeavor and endurance? Woe, if in his
heart there dwelt no devout faith; if the word duty had
lost its meaning for him ! For as to this of sentimental-
ism, so useful for weeping with over romances and on
pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily will avail nothing;
nay less. The healthy heart that said to itself, "How
healthy am I !" was already fallen into the fatalest sort of
disease. Is not sentimentalism twin-sister to cant, if not
one and the same with it? Is not cant the materia prima
of the devil; from which all falsehoods, imbecilities,
abominations body themselves; from which no true thing
can come? For cant is itself properly a double-distilled
lie; the second-power of a lie.
And now if a whole nation fall into that? In such case,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 49
I answer, infallibly they will return out of it ! 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 them
selves on delusions, but on fact. To fact, depend on it,
we shall come back; to such fact, blessed or cursed, as we
have wisdom for. The lowest, least blessed fact one knows
of, on which necessitous mortals have ever based them
selves, seems to be the primitive one of cannibalism : That
/ can devour Thee. What if such primitive fact were pre
cisely the one we had (with our improved methods) to
revert to, and begin anew from !

CHAPTER VIII.
PRINTED PAPER.
In such a practical France, let the theory of perfecti
bility say what it will, discontents cannot be wanting: your
promised reformation is so indispensable ; yet it comes not ;
who will begin it — -with himself? Discontent with what
is around us, still more with what is above us, goes on in
creasing; seeking ever new vents.
Of streets ballads, of epigrams that from of old tempered
despotism, we need not speak. Nor of manuscript news
papers {Nouvelles a la main) do we speak. Bachaumont
and his -journeymen and followers may close those "thirty
volumes of scurrilous eaves-dropping," and quit that
trade; for at length if not liberty of the press, there is
license. Pamphlets can be surreptitiously vended and
read in Paris, did they even bear to be "printed at Pekin."
We have a Courrier de V Europe in those years, regularly
published at London, by a De Morande, whom the guillo
tine has not yet devoured. There too an unruly Linguet,
still unguillotined, when his own country has become too
hot for him, and his brother advocates have cast him out,
can emit his hoarse wailings, and Bastille Devoilee (Bastille
Unveiled). Loquacious Abbe Ravnal,at length, has his wish ;
sees the "Histoire Philosophique," with its "lubricity,"
unveracity, loose loud eleutheromaniac rant (contributed,
they say, by philosophedom at large, though in the abbe's
name, and to his glory), " burned by the common hangman ;

g0 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
and sets out on his travels as a martyr. It was the edition
of 1781; perhaps the last notable book that had such fire-
beatitude, the hangman discovering now that it did not
serve. Again, in courts of law, with their money-quarrels,
divorce-cases, wheresoever a glimpse into the household
existence can be had, what indications! The parlements
of Besancon and Aix ring, audible to all France, with the
amours and destinies of a young Mirabeau. He, under
the nurture of a "Friend of Men," has, in state prisons,
in marching regiments, Dutch authors' garrets, and quite
other scenes, "been for twenty years learning to resist
despotism;" despotism of men, and alas also of gods.
How, beneath this rose-colored veil of universal benevo
lence and Astrcea Reddux, 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 in
ward and outward; which he could not rule, but only
madden. Edacity, rapacity; quite contrary to the finer
sensibilities of the heart! Fools, that expect your verdant
millennium, and nothing but love and abundance, brooks
running wine, winds whispering music, with the whole
ground and basis of your existence champed into a mud of
sensuality; which, daily growing deeper, will soon have
no bottom but the abyss !
Or consider that unutterable business of the diamond
necklace. Red-hatted Cardinal Louis de Rohan; Sicilian
jail -bird Balsamo Cagliostro; milliner Dame de Lamotte,
" with a face of some piquancy ;" the highest church dig
nitaries waltzing, in Walpurgis Dance, with quack-prophets,
pickpurses and public women; a whole Satan's invisible
world displayed ; working there continually under the day
light visible one; the smoke of its torment going up for
ever! The throne has been brought into scandalous
collision with the treadmill. Astonished Europe rings
with the mystery for nine months ; sees only lie unfold
itself from lie ; corruption among the lofty and the low,
gulosity, credulity, imbecility, strength nowhere but in

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 51
the hunger. Weep, fair queen, thy first tears of unmixed
wretchedness! Thy fair name has been tarnished by foul
breath; irremediably while life lasts. No more shalt
thou be loved and pitied by living hearts, till a new genera
tion has been' born, and thy own heart lies cold, cured of
all its sorrows. The epigrams henceforth become, not
sharp and bitter; but cruel, atrocious, unmentionable.
On that 31st of May, 1786, a miserable Cardinal Grand-
Almoner Rohan, on issuing from his Bastille, is escorted
by hurrahing crowds ; unloved he, and worthy of no love ;
but important since the court and queen are his enemies. *
How is our bright era of hope dimmed ; and the whole
sky growing bleak with signs of hurricane and earthquake!
It is a doomed world: gone all "obedience that made men
free;" fast going the obedience that made men slaves, at
least to one another. Slaves only of their own lusts they
now are, and will be. Slaves of sin; inevitably also of
sorrow. Behold the moldering mass of sensuality and
falsehood, round which plays foolishly, itself a corrupt
phosphorescence, some glimmer of sentimentalism; and
over all, rising as ark of their . covenant, the grim
Patibulary Fork "forty feet high;" which also ,-s now nigh
rotted. Add only that the French nation distinguishes
itself among nations by the characteristic of excitability;
with the good, but also with the perilous evil, which
belongs to that. Rebellion, explosion of unknown extent
is to be calculated on. There are, as Chesterfield wrote,
"all the symptoms I have ever met with in history!"
Shall we say, then: Woe to philosophism, that it
destroyed religion, what it called "extinguishing the
abomination {ecraser Vinfdme)?" Woe rather to those
that made the holy an abomination, and extinguishable ;
woe to all men that live in such a time of world abomina
tion 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 everv scoundrel that had
lived, and quack-like pretended to be doing, and been
only eating and mt'sdoing, in all provinces of life, as shoe
black or as sovereign lord, each in his degree, from the
time of Charlemagne and earlier. All this (for be sure no
*Fils Adoptif, " Memoires de Mirabeau," iv. 325 — See Carlyle's
" Biographical Essays," § Diamond Necklace, § Count Cagliostro.

S2 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
falsehood perishes, but is as seed sown out to grow) has
been storing itself for thousands of years; and now the
account-day has come. And rude will the settlement be:
of wrath laid up against the day of wrath. Oh, my
brother, be not thou a quack! Die rather, if thou wilt
take council; 'tis but dying once, and thou art quit of it
forever. Cursed is that trade; and bears curses, thou
knowest not how, long ages after thou art departed, and
the wages thou hadst are all consumed ; nay, as the ancient
wise have written — through eternity itself, and is verily
marked in the doom-book of a God !
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we
said, hope is but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable.
It is very notable, and touching, how this same hope does
still light onward 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 not out at all, since desperation
itself is a kind of hope. Thus is our era still to be named
of hope, though in the saddest sense, when there is nothing
left but hope.
But if any one would know summarily what a Pandora's
box lies there for the opening, he may see it in what by
its nature is the symptom of all symptoms, the surviving
literature of the period. Abbe Raynal, with his lubricity
and loud loose rant, has spoken his word ; and already the
fast-hastening generation responds to another. Glance at
Beaumarchais' "Marriage de Figaro;" which now (in 1784),
after difficulty enough, has issued on the stage; and "runs
its hundred nights," to the admiration of all men. By
what virtue or internal vigor it so ran, the reader of our
day will rather wonder : and indeed will know so much the
better that it flattered some pruriency of the time ; that it
spoke what all were feeling, and longing to speak. Small
substance in that " Figaro" ; thin wiredrawn intrigues, thin
wire-drawn sentiments and sarcasms; a thing lean, barren;
yet which winds and whisks itself, as through a wholly
mad universe, adroitly, with a high-sniffing air : wherein
each, as wasliinted, which is the grand secret, may see some
image of himself, and of his own state and ways. So it
runs its hundred nights, and all France runs with it,

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 53
laughing applause. If the soliloquizing barber ask : " What
has your lordship done to earn all this?" and can only
answer; "You took the trouble to be born ( Vous vous
etes donne la peine de naitre)," all men must laugh: and a
gay horse-racing Anglomaniac noblesse loudest of all. For
how can small books have a great danger in them ? asks
the Sieur Caron ; and fancies his thin epigram may be a
kind -of reason. Conqueror of a golden fleece, by giant
smuggling; tamer of hell-dogs, in the Parlement Maupeou ;
and finally crowned Orpheus in the T/iedter Francais,
Beaumarchais has now culminated, and unites the attri
butes of several demi-gods. We shall meet him once again,
in the course of his decline.
Still more significant are two books produced on the eve
of the ever-memorable explosion itself , and read eagerly by all
the world: Saint-Pierre's "Paul etVirginie, "and Louvet's
"Chevalier de Faublar." Noteworthy books; which may
be considered as the last speech of old Feudal France.
In the first there rises melodiously, as it were, the wail of
a moribund world; everywhere wholesome nature in
unequal conflict with diseased perfidious art; cannot
escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest island of
the sea. Ruin and death must strike down the loved one ;
and, what is most significant of all, death even here not
by necessity but by etiquette. What a world of prurient
corruption lies visible in that super-sublime of modesty !
Yet, on the whole, our good Saint-Pierre is musical,
poetical though most morbid; we will call his book the
swan-song of old dying France.
Louvet's, again, let no man account musical. Truly,
if this wretched Faublas is a death-speech, it is one under
the gallows, and by a felon that does not repent. Wretched
cloaca of a book; without depth even as a cloaca! What
"picture of French society" is here? Picture properly of
nothing, if not of the mind that gave it out as some sort
of picture. Yet symptom of much; above all, of the
world that could nourish itself thereon.

fo THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.

BOOK THIRD.
THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS.

CHAPTER I.
DISHONORED BILLS.
While the unspeakable confusion is everywhere welter
ing within, and through so many cracks in the surface sul- .
phur-smoke is issuing, the question arises : Through what
crevice will the main explosion carry itself? Through
which of the old craters or chimneys; or must it, at once,
form a new crater for itself? In every society are such
chimneys, are institutions serving as such : even Constan
tinople is not without its safety-valves; there too discon
tent can vent itself — in material fire; by the number of
nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the reign
ing power can read the signs of the times, and change course
according to these.
We may say that this French explosion will doubtless
first try all the old institutions of escape; for by each of
these there is, or at least there used to be, some communi
cation with the interior deep; they are national institutions
in virtue of that. Had they even become personal insti
tutions, and what we can call choked up from their original
uses, there nevertheless must the impediment be weaker than
elsewhere. Through which of them, then? An observer
might have guessed: Through the law parlements; above
all, through the parlement of Paris.
Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not
inaccessible to the influences of their time; especially men
whose life is business; who at all turns, were it even from
behind judgment-seats, have come in contact Avith the
actual workings of the world. The counsellor of parle-

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 55
ment, the president himself, Avho has bought his place
with hard money that he might be looked up to by his
fellow-creatures, how shall he, in all philosophe-soirees,
and saloons of elegant culture, become notable as a friend
of darkness? Among the Paris long-robes there may be
more than one patriotic Malesherbes, whose rule is con
science and the public good; there are clearly more than
one hotheaded D' Espremenil, to Avhose confused thought
any loud reputation of the Brutus sort may seem glorious.
The Lepelletiers, Lamoignons have titles and wealth; yet,
at court, are only styled "Noblesse of the Robe." There
are Duports of deep scheme; Freteaus, Sabatiers, of
incontinent tongue ; all nursed more or less on the milk of
the Contrat, Social. Nay, for the whole body, is not this
patriotic opposition also a fighting for one's self? Awake,
parlement of Paris, renew thy long warfare! Was not
the Parlement Maupeou abolished with ignominy? Not
now hast thou to dread a Louis XIV., with the crack of his
whip, and his Olympian looks; not now a Richelieu and
Bastilles: no, the whole nation is behind thee. Thou
too (Oh heavens!) mayest become a political power; and
with the shakings of thy horse-hair wig shake principalities
and dynasties, like a very Jove with his. ambrosial curls !
Light old M. de Maurepas, since the end of 1781, has
been fixed in the frost of death; "Never more," said the
good Louis, " shall I hear his step in the room there over
head;" his light jestings and gyratings are at an end. No
more can the importunate reality be hidden by pleasant
wit, and to-day's evil be deftly rolled over upon to-mor
row. The morrow itself has arrived ; 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, groAvn older yet hardly more experienced, must him
self, 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 e\en
noble; but all too superficial, vehement-shallow, for
that work! To govern France Avere such a problem;
and now it has grown well-nigh too hard to govern
even the 03il-de-Boeuf. For if a distressed people has

56 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
its cry, so likewise, and more audibly, has a bereaved
court. To the OSil-de-Boeuf it remains inconceivable
how, in a France of such resources, the horn of plenty
should run dry ; did it not use to flow ? Nevertheless
Necker, with his revenue of parsimony, has "suppressed
above six hundred places," before the courtiers could oust
him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was. Again, a
military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian ma-
nceuvers ; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-
of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected
military men; the Mousquetaires, with much else are sup
pressed : for he too was one of your suppressors ; and unset
tling and oversetting, did mere mischief to the OEil-de-
Boeuf. Complaints abound; scarcity, anxiety; it is a
changed 03il de-Bceuf. Besenval says, already in these
years (1781) there was such a melancholy (such a tristesse)
about court, compared with former days, as made it quite
dispiriting to look upon.
No wonder that the CEil-de-Bceuf feels melancholy, when
you are suppressing its places. Not a place can be sup
pressed, but some purse is the lighter for it; and more
than one heart the heavier; for did it not employ the
Avorking classes too, manufacturers, male and female, of
laces, essences; of pleasure generally, whosoever could
manufacture pleasure? Miserable economies; never felt
over twenty-five millions! So, however, it goes on: and
is not yet ended. Few years more and the wolf-hounds
shall fall suppressed, the bear-hounds, the falconry; places
shall fall, thick as autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac
demonstrates, to the complete silencing of ministerial
logic, that his place cannot be abolished; then gallantly,
turning to the queen, surrenders it, since her majesty so
wishes. Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny, and yet
not luckier: "We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I,"
said King Louis; "but if he had even struck me, I could
not have blamed him."* In regard to such matters there
can be but one opinion. Baron Besenval, with that frank
ness 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 in
deed a dog's life. * Besenval, iii. 255-58,

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 5 7
How singular this perpetual distress of the royal treasury !
And yet it is a thing not more incredible than undeni
able. 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! This is the stern
problem ; hopeless, seemingly, as squaring of the circle.
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 clamor and discontent. As little
could Controller d'Ormesson do, or even less; for if Joly
maintained himself beyond year and day, D'Ormesson
reckons only by months : till "the king purchased Ram-
bouillet without consulting him," which he took as a hint
to withdraw. And so, toward the end of 1783, matters
threaten to come to a standstill. Vain seems human
ingenuity. In vain has our newly devised "council of
finances" struggled, our intendants of finance, controller-
general of finances; there are unhappily no finances to
control. Fatal paralysis invades the social movement;
clouds, of blindness or of blackness, envelop us; are we
breaking down, then, into the black horrors of national
bankruptcy ?
Great is bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into
which all falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappear
ing; 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, Avith the ansAver, No effects.
Pity only that it often had so long a circulation : that the
original forger were so seldom he Avho bore the final smart
of it ! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring, are passed
on; shifted frcui 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 hoAv by a just compensating law, if
the lie 'with its burden (in this confused whirlpool of society)

58 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
sinks and is shifted ever downward, then in return the
distress of it rises ever upward and upward. 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.
But Avith a Fortunatus' purse in his pocket, through
what length of time might not almost any falsehood last!
Your society, your household, practical or spiritual
arrangement, is untrue, unjust, offensive to the eye of
God and man. Nevertheless its hearth is warm, its
larder Avell replenished : the innumerable Swiss of heaven,
with a kind of natural loyalty, gather round it; will prove,
by pamphleteering, musketeering, that it is a truth; or
if not an unmixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth, then,
better, a wholesomely attempered one (as wind is to the
shorn lamb), and works well. Changed outlook, however,
Avhen purse and larder grow empty ! Was your arrange
ment so true, so accordant to nature's ways, then how, in
the name of Avonder, has nature, with her infinite
bounty, come to leave it famishing there? To all men, to
all women and all children, it is now indubitable that your
arrangement was false. Honor to bankruptcy ; ever right
eous 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.

CHAPTER II.
CONTROLLER CALONNE.
Under such circumstances of tristesse, obstruction and
sick languor, when to an exasperated court it seems as if
fiscal genius had departed from among men, what appari
tion could be welcomer than that of M. de Calonne?
Calonne, a man of indisputable genius; even fiscal genius,
more or less; of experience both in managing finance and
parlements, for he has been intendant at Metz, at Lille;
King's procureur at Douai. A man of weight, connected
with the moneyed classes; of unstained name, if it were

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 5 9
not some peccadillo (of showing a client's letter) in that
old D 'Aiguillon-Lachalotais business, as good as forgotten
noAV. He has kinsmen of heavy purse, felt on the stock
exchange. Our Foulons, Berthiers intrigue for him : old
Foulon, who has now nothing to do but intrigue; who is
knoAvn and even seen to be what they call a scoundrel;
but of unmeasured wealth; who, from commissariat-clerk
which he once was, may hope, some think, if the game go
right, to be minister himself one day.
Such propping and backing has M. de Calonne; and
then intrinsically such qualities ! Hope radiates from his
face; persuasion hangs on his tongue. For all straits he
has present remedy, and will make the world roll on Avheels
before him. On the 3rd of November, 1783, the Ghl-de-
Boeuf rejoices in its new controller-general. Calonne also
shall have trial; Calonne also, in his way, as Turgot and
Necker had done in theirs, shall forward the consumma
tion ; suffuse, with one other flush of brilliancy, our now
too leaden-colored ear of hope, and wind it up — into
fulfillment. Great, in any case, is the felicity of the G3il-de-Bceuf.
Stinginess has fled from these royal abodes: suppression
ceases; your Besenval may go peaceably to sleep, sure that
he shall awake unplunderecl. Smiling plenty, as if con
jured by some enchanter, has returned; scatters content
ment from her newflowing horn. And mark what suavity
of manners! A bland smile distinguishes our controller;
to all men he listens wTith an air of interest, nay of antici
pation; makes their oAvn wish clear to themselves, and
grants it; or at least, grants conditional promise of it. "I
fear this is a matter of difficulty," said her majesty.
"Madame," answered the controller, "if it is but difficult,
it is done; if it is impossible, it shall be done (sefera)."
A man of such "facility" withal. To observe him in the
pleasure-vortex of society, which none partakes of with
more gusto, you might ask, When does he Avork? And
yet his work, as we see, is never behindhand; above all,
the fruit of his work: ready money. Truly a man of
incredible facility; facile action, facile elocution, facile
thought; hoAV, in mild suasion, philosophic depth sparkles
up from him, as mere wit and lambent sprightliness ; and
in her majesty's soirees, Avith the weight of a world lying
on him, he is the delight of men and women! By what

60 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
magic does he accomplish miracles? By the only true
magic, that of genius. Men name him "the minister."
as indeed, when was there another such? Crooked things
are become straight by him, rough places plain ; and over
the 03il-de-Bceuf there rests an unspeakable sunshine.
Nay, in seriousness, let no man say that Calonne had
not genius; genius for persuading; before all things, for
borrowing. With the skillfulest judicious appliances of
underhand money, he keeps the stock-exchanges flourish
ing; so that loan after loan is filled up as soon as opened.
"Calculators likely to know"* have calculated that he
spent, in extraordinaries, "at the rate of one million daily,"
which indeed is some fifty thousand pounds sterling;
but did he not procure something with it; namely peace
and prosperity, for the time being? Philosophedom grum
bles and croaks; buys, as we said, eighty thousand copies of
Necker's neAV book ; but Nonpareil Calonne, in her maj
esty's apartment, with the glittering retinue of dukes,
duchesses, and mere happy admiring faces, can let Necker
and philosophedom croak.
The misery is, such a time cannot last ! Squandering,
and payment by loan is no Avay to choke a deficit. Neither
is oil the substanec for quenching conflagrations ; alas no,
only for assuaging them, not permanently ! To the Non
pareil himself, Avho wanted not insight, it is clear at inter
vals, and dimly certain at all times, that his trade is by
nature temporary, growing daily more difficult; that
changes incalculable lie at no great distance. Apart from
financial deficit, the Avorld is wholly in such a newfangled
humor ; all things working loose from their old fastenings,
toward new issues and combinations. There is not a dwarf
jokei, a cropped Brutus'-head, or Anglomaniac horseman
rising on his stirrups, that does not betoken change. But
what then? The day, in any case, passes pleasantly ; for
the morrow, if the morrow come, there shall be council
too. Once mounted (by munificence, suasion, magic of
genius) high enough in favor with the OSil-de-Boeuf,
Avith the king, queen, stock-exchange, and so far as possible
with all men, a Nonpareil controller may hope to go
careering through the inevitable, in some unimagined way,
as handsomely as another. * Besenval, iii. 216

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 61
At all events, for these three miraculous years, it has
been expedient heaped on expedient: till now, with such
cumulation and height, the pile topples perilous. And
here has this world's wonder of a diamond necklace
brought it at last to the clear verge of tumbling. Genius
in that direction can no more: mounted high enough, or
not mounted, we must fare forth. Hardly is poor Rohan,
the necklace cardinal, safely bestowed in the Auvergue
Mountains, Dame de Lamotte (unsafely) in the Salpetriere,
and that mournful business hushed up, when our sanguine
controller once more astonishes the world. An expedient,
unheard of for these hundred and sixty years, has been
propounded; and, by dint of suasion (for his light audac
ity, his hope and eloquence are matchless) has been got
adopted, Convocation of the Notables.
Let notable persons, the actual or virtual rulers of their
districts, be summoned from all sides of France: let a true
tale, of his majesty's patriotic purposes and wretched
pecuniary impossibilities, be suasively told them ; and then
the question put: What are we to do? Surely to adopt
healing measures such as the magic of genius will unfold;
such as, once sanctioned by notables, all parlements and
all men must, with more or less reluctance, submit to.

CHAPTER III.
THE NOTABLES.
Here, then, is verily a sign and wonder; visible to the
whole world; bodeful of much. The OSil-de-Bceuf dolor
ously grumbles; were we not well as we stood, quenching
conflagrations by oil? Constitutional philosophedom starts
with joyful surprise ; stares eagerly what the result will be.
The public creditor, the public debtor, the whole think
ing and thoughtless public have their several surprises,
joyful or sorrowful. Count Mirabeau, who has got his
matrimonial and other lawsuits huddled up, better or
worse; and works now in the dimmest element at Berlin;
compiling "Prussian Monarchies," pamphlets "On Caglios-
tro ;" writing, with pay, but not with honorable recognition,
innumerable despatches for his government, scents or
descries richer quarry from afar. He, like an eagle or

62 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
vulture, or mixture of both, preens his wings for flight
homeward.* M. de Calonne has stretched out an Aaron's rod over
France; miraculous; and is summoning quite unexpected
things. Audacity and hope alternate in him with misgiv
ings; though the sanguine-valiant side carries it. Anon
he writes to an intimate friend, " Je me fais pitie a moi-
meme (I am an object of pity to myself) ;" anon, invites
some dedicating poet or poetaster to sing " this assembly of
the notables, and the revolution that is preparing." f _ Pre
paring indeed ; and a matter to be sung, only not till we
have seen it, and what the issue of it is. In deep obscure
unrest, all things have so long gone rocking and swaying :
will M. de Calonne, with this his alchemy of the notables,
fasten all together again, and get new revenues? Or
wrench all asunder ; so that it go no longer rocking and
swaying, but clashing and colliding?
Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold
men of weight and influence threading the great vortex of
French locomotion, each on his several line, from all sides
of France, toward the chateau of Versailles: summoned
thither de par le roi. There, on the 22d day of February
1787, they have met, and got installed: Notables to the
number of a hundred and thirty-seven, as we count them
name by name : \ add seven princes of the blood, it makes
the round gross of notables. Men of the SAVord, men of
the robe; peers, dignified clergy, parlementary presidents:
divided into seven boards {Bureax); under our seven
princes of the blood, Monsieur, D 'Artois, Penthievre, and
the rest; among whom let not our new Duke d'0rl6ans
(for, since 1785, he is Chartes no longer) be forgotten.
Never yet made admiral, and now turning the corner of
his fortieth year, with spoiled blood and prospects; half-
weary of a world which is more than half-weary of him,
monseigneur's future is most questionable. Not in illumi
nation and insight, not even in conflagration ; but, as was
said, "in dull smoke and ashes of outburned sensualities,"
does he live and digest. Sumptuosity and sordidness;
revenge, life-weariness, ambition, darkness, putrescence;
* Fils Adoptif, " Memoires de Mirabeau," t. iv. livv. 4 et 5.
\ " Biographie Universelle," § Calonne (by Guizot).
J Lacretelle, iii. 286. Montgaillard, i. 347.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 63
and, say, in sterling money, three hundred thousand a
year, were this poor prince once to burst loose from his
court-moorings, to what regions with what phenomena,
might he not sail and drift ! Happily as yet he " affects to
hunt daily ;" sits there, since he must sit, presiding that
bureau of his, with dull moon-visage, dull glassy eyes, as
if it were a mere tedium to him.
We observe finally, that Count Mirabeau has actually
arrived. He descends from Berlin, on the scene of action ;
glares into it Avith flashing sun-glance; discerns that it
will do nothing for him. He had hoped these notables
might need a secretary. They do need one; but have
fixed on Dupont de Nemours; a man of smaller fame, but
then of better; who indeed, as his friends often hear,
labors under this complaint, surely not a universal one, of
having "five kings to correspond with." * The pen of a
Mirabeau cannot become an official one; nevertheless it
remains a pen. In defect of secretaryship, he sets to
denouncing stock -brokerage {Denonciation de V Agiotage) ;
testifying, as his wont is, by loud bruit, that he is present
and busy ; till, warned by friend Talleyrand, and even by
Calonne himself underhand, that "a seventeenth Letter-
de- Cachet may be launched against him," he timefully flits
over the marches.
And now, in stately royal apartments, as pictures of that
time still represent them, our hundred and forty-four
notables sit organized; ready to hear and consider. Con
troller Calonne is dreadfully behindhand with his speeches,
his preparatives; however, the man's "facility of work" is
known to us. For freshness of style, lucidity, ingenuity,
largeness of view, that opening harangue of his was unsur
passable: had not the subject-matter been so appalling.
A deficit, concerning which accounts vary, and the con
troller's OAvn account is not unquestioned; but which all
accounts agree in representing as "enormous." This is
the epitome of our controller's difficulties; and then his
means? Mere Turgotism; for thither, it seems, we must
come at last: provincial assemblies; new taxation; nay,
strangest of all, new land-tax, what he calls Subvention
Territoriale, from which neither privileged nor unprivi
leged, noblemen, clergy, nor parlementeers shall be
exempt ! 
*Dumont, " Souvenirs sur Mirabeau " (Paris, 1832), p. 20.

64 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Foolish enough ! These privileged classes have been used
to tax; levying toll, tribute and custom, at all hands,
while a penny was left: but to 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 Avere 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 Avitchery of rhyme or prose wilt thou from the pocket
of Plutus draAV gold?
Accordingly, the storm that now rose and began to
whistle round Calonne, first in these seven bureaus, and
then on the outside of them, awakened by them, spreading
wider and wider over all France, threatens to become
unappeasable. A deficit so enormous: Mismanagement,
profusion is too clear. Peculation itself is hinted at; nay,
Lafayette and others go so far as to speak it out, with
attempts at proof. The blame of his deficit our brave
Calonne, as was natural, had endeavored to shift from him
self on his predecessors; not excepting even Necker.
But now Necker vehemently denies; whereupon an
"angry correspondence," which also, finds its way into
print. In the CEil-de-Boeuf, and her majesty's private apart
ments, an eloquent controller, with his " madame, if it is but
difficult," had been persuasive: but, alas, the cause is now
carried elsewhither. Behold him, one of these sad days, in
monsieur's bureau; to which all the other bureaus have
sent deputies. He is standing at bay; alone; exposed to
an incessant fire of questions, interpellations, objurgations
from those "hundred and thirty-seven" pieces of logic-
ordnance, what we may well call bouches a feu, fire mouths
literally ! Never, according to Besenval, or hardly ever,
had such display of intellect, dexterity, coolness, suasive
eloquence, been made by man. To the raging play of so
many fire-mouths he opposes nothing angrier than light-
beams, self-possession and fatherly smiles. With the im-
perturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps
ansAvering the incessant volley of fiery captious questions,

the French revol ution. 65
reproachful interpellations ; in words prompt as lightning,
quiet as light. . Nay, the cross-fire too: such side-questions
and incidental interpellations as, in the heat of the main-
battle,he (having only one tongue) could not get answered,
these also he takes up, at the first slake; answers even
these.* Could blandest suasive eloquence have saved
France, she were saved.
Heavy-laden controller! In the seven bureaus seems
nothing but hindrance: in monsieur's bureau, a Lomeniede
Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, with an eye himself to
the controllership, stirs up the clergy ; there are meetings,
underground intrigues. Neither from without anywhere
comes sign of help or hope. For the nation (where Mira
beau is now, Avith stentor-lungs, "denouncing Agio")
the controller has hitherto done nothing, or less. For
philosophedom he has done as good as nothing, sent out
some scientific Laperouse, or the like : and is he not in
"angry correspondence" with its Necker? The very (Eil-
de-Boeuf looks questionable; a falling controller has no
friends. Solid M. de Vergennes, who with his phleg
matic judicious punctuality might have kept doAvn many
things, died the very week before these sorrowful notables
met. And now a seal-keeper, Garde-des-Sceaux Miro-
m6nil is thought to be playing the traitor; spinning plots
for Lomenie-Brienne ! Queen's-Reader Abbe de Vermond,
unloved individual, was Brienne's creature, the work of
his hands from the first ; it may be feared the backstairs
passage is open, the ground getting mined under our feet.
Treacherous Garde-des-Sceaux Miromenil, at least, should
be dismissed; Lamoignon, the eloquent notable, a stanch
man, with connections, and even ideas, parlement-presi-
dent yet intent on reforming parlements, were not he the
right keeper? So, for one, thinks busy Besenval; and, at
dinner-table, rounds the same into the controller's ear, who
always, in the intervals of landlord-duties, listens to him
as with charmed look, but answers nothing positive. \
Alas, what to answer? The force of private intrigue,
and then also the force of public opinion, grows so danger
ous, confused! Philosophedom sneers aloud, as if its
Necker already triumphed. The gaping populace gapes
over wood-cuts or copper-cuts; where, for example, a
* Besenval, iii. 196. \ Ibid, iii. 203.

66 THE FRENCH R K VOL UTION.
rustic is represented convoking the poultry of his barn
yard, with this opening address: "Dear animals, I have
assembled you to advise me what sauce I shall dress you
Avith ;" to Avhich a cock responding, " We don't want to be
eaten," is checked by "You wander from the point ( Vous
vou ecarte de la question)."* Laughter and logic, ballad
singer, pamphleteer; epigram and caricature; what wind
of public opinion is this, as if the cave of the winds Avere
bursting loose ! At nightfall, President Lamoignon steals
over to the controller's; finds him "walking with large
strides in his chamber, like one out of himself." f With
rapid confused speech the controller begs M. de Lamoig
non to give him " an advice. " Lamoignon candidly an
swers that, except in regard to his oavu anticipated keeper-
ship, unless that would prove remedial, he really cannot
take upon him to advise.
"On the Monday after Easter," the 9th of April, 1787,
a date one rejoices to verify, for nothing can excel the
indolent falsehood of these "Histoiries" and "Memoires,"
" On the Monday after Easter, as I, Besenval, was riding
toAvard Romainville to the Marechal de Segur's, I met a
friend on the boulevards, who told me that M. de Calonne
was out. A little further on come M. the Duke d'Orleans,
dashing toward me, head to the wind" (trotting a V Ang-
laise), "and confirmed the news." % ItistrueneAVS. Treach
erous Garde-des-Sceaux Miromenil is gone, and Lamoignon
is appointed in his room ; but appointed for his own profit
only, not for the controller's; "next day" the controller
also has had to move. A little longer he may linger near;
be seen among the money-changers, and even " working in
the controller's office," where much lies unfinished: but
neither will that hold. Too strong blows and beats this
tempest of public opinion, of private intrigue, as from the
cave of all the winds ; and blows him (higher authority
giving sign) out of Paris and France, over the horizon,
into invisibility, or outer darkness.
Such destiny the magic of genius could not forever
avert. Ungrateful ffiil-de-Boeuf ! did he not miraculously
rain gold manna on you ; so that, as a courtier said, " All
the world held out its hands, and I held out my hat," for
* Republished in the " Musee de la Caricature " (Paris, 1834).
f Besenval, iii. 209. \ Ibid, iii. 211.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 6 1
a time? Himself is poor; penniless, had not a "finan
cier's Avidow in Lorraine" offered him, though he was
turned of fifty, her hand and the rich purse it held. Dim
henceforth shall be his activity, though unwearied : Letters
to the king, appeals, prognostications; pamphlets (from
London), written with the old suasive facility; which how
ever do not persuade. Luckily his Avidow's purse fails not.
Once, in a year or two, some shadow of him shall be seen
hovering on the northern border, seeking election as na
tional deputy; but be sternly beckoned away. Dimmer
than, far-borne over utmost European lands, in uncertain
twilight of diplomacy, he shall hover, intriguing for "ex
iled princes," and have adventures; be overset into the
Rhine-stream and half-drowned, nevertheless save his
papers dry. Unwearied, but in vain ! In France he works
miracles no more; shall hardly return thither to find a
grave. Farewell, thou facile sanguine controller-general,
with thy light rash hand, thy suasive mouth or gold;
Avorse men there have been, and better; but to thee also
was allotted a task, of raising the wind, and the winds;
and thou hast done it.
But now, Avhile ex-Controller Calonne flies storm-driven
over the horizon, in this singular way, what has become
of the controllership? It hangs vacant, one may say;
extinct, like the moon in her vacant interlunar cave. Two
preliminary shadows, poor M. Fourqueux, poor M. Ville-
deuil, do hold, in quick succession, some simulacrum of
it,* as the neAv moon will sometimes shine out with a dim
preliminary old one in her arms. Be patient, ye notables !
An actual new controller is certain, and even ready; were
the indispensable manceuvers but gone through. Long
headed Lamoignon, with Home-Secretary Breteuil, and
Foreign Society Montmorin have exchanged looks; let these
three once meet and speak. Who is it that is strong in
the queen's favor, and the Abbe de Vermond's? That is
a man of great capacity? Or at least that has struggled,
these fifty years, to have it thought great; noAV, in the
clergy's name, demanding to have Protestant death-penal
ties "put in execution;" now flaunting it in the (Eil-de-
Bceuf, as the gayest man-pleaser and woman-pleaser; glean
ing even a good word from philosophedom and your Vol-
* Besenval, iii. 225.

68 THE FR ENCH re VOL UTION.
taires and D'Alemberts? That has a party ready-made
for him in the notables? Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop
of Toulouse ! answer all the three, with the clearest instan
taneous concord; and rush off to propose him to the king;
"in such haste," says Besenval, "that M. de Lamoignon
had to borrow a simarre," seemingly some kind of cloth
apparatus necessary for that.*
Lomenie-Brienne, who had all his life " felt a kind of pre
destination for the highest offices," has now therefore ob
tained them. He presides over the finances; he shall have
the title of prime minister itself, and the effort of his long life
be realized. 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,
Lomenie beholds, not Avithout astonishment, next to
nothing but vacuity and possibility. Principles or methods,
acquirement outward or inAvard (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 cir
cumstances, that Calonne has had a plan; Calonne's plan
was gathered from Turgot's and Necker's by compilation;
shall become Lomenie's by adoption. Not in vain has
Lomenie studied the working of the British constitution;
for he professes to have some Anglomania, of a sort.
Why, in that free country, does one minister, driven out
by parlement, vanish from his king's presence, and another
enter, borne in by parlement? f Surely not for mere
change (which is ever wasteful) ; but that all men may
have share of Avhat is going ; and so the strife of freedom
indefinitely prolong itself, and no harm be done.
The notables, mollified by Easter festivities, by the sacri
fice of Calonne, are not in the worst humor. Aready his
majesty, while the "interlunar shadows" were in office,
had held session of notables ; and from his throne delivered
promissory conciliatory eloquence : " the queen stood waiting
at a Avindow, till his carriage came back; and monsieur
from afar clapped hands to her, " in sign that all was Avell. \
It has had the best effect ; if such do but last. Leading
* Besenval, iii. 224.
f Montgaillard, "Historie de France," i. 410-17.
| Besenval, iii. 220.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 69
notables meanwhile can be "caressed;" Brienne's new
gloss, Lamoignon's long head will profit somewhat; con
ciliatory eloquence shall not be Avanting. On the whole,
however, is it not undeniable that this of ousting Calonne
and adopting the plans of Calonne is a measure which,
to produce its best effect, should be looked at from a certain
distance, cursorily; not dwelt on with minute near
scrutiny? In a Avord, that no service the notables could
now do were so obliging as, in some handsome manner, to
—take themselves away? Their "six propositions" about
provisional assemblies, suppression of Corvees and such-like,
can be accepted without criticism. The subvention or
land-tax, and much else, one must glide hastily over ; safe
nowhere but in flourishes of conciliatory eloquence. Till
at length, on this 25th of May, year 1787, in solemn final
session, there bursts forth what Ave can call an explosion of
eloquence; king, Lomenie, Lamoignon and retinue taking
up the successive strain, in harangues to the number of
ten, besides his majetsy's, which last the livelong day;
whereby, as in a kind of choral anthem, or bravura peal,
of thanks, praises, promises, the notables are, so to speak,
organed out, and dismissed to their respective places of
abode. They had sat, and talked, some nine weeks; they
were the first notables since Richelieu's, in the year 1626.
By some historians, sitting much at their ease, in the
safe distance, Lomenie has been blamed for this dismissal
of his notables ; nevertheless it was clearly time. There are
things, as we said, Avhich should not be dwelt on with min
ute close scrutiny: over hot coals you cannot glide too fast.
In these seven bureaus, where no work could be done, un
less talk were work, the questionablest matters were coming
up. Lafayette, for example, in Monseigneur d' Artois'
bureau, took upon him to set forth more than one depreca
tory oration about L?ttres-de- Cachet, liberty of the subject,
Agio, and such like; which monseigneur endeavoring to
repress, was answered that a notable being siimmoned to
speak his opinion must speak it.*
Thus too his grace the archbishop of Aix perorating
once, with a plaintive pulpit-tone, in these words : " Tithe,
that free-will offering of the piety of Christians." "Tithe,"
interrupted Duke la Rochefoucault, Avith the cold business-
*Montgaillard, i. 360.

70 THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION.
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." * Nay, Lafayette,
bound to speak his opinion, went the length, one day, of
proposing to convoke a "National Assembly." "You
demand states-general?" asked monseigneur with an air of
minatory surprise. "Yes, monseigneur; and even better
than that." " Write it," said monseigneur to the clerks, f
AVritten accordingly it is; and Avhat is more, will be acted
by and by.

CHAPTER IV. •
LOMENIE'S EDICTS.
Thus, then, have the notables returned home; carrying,
to all quarters of France, such notions of deficit, decrepi
tude, distraction; and that states-general will cure it, or
will not cure it but kill it. Each notable, 'we may fancy,
is as a funereal torch; disclosing hideous abysses, better
left hid! The unquietest humor possesses all men; fer
ments, seeks issue, in pamphleteering, caricaturing, pro
jecting, 'declaiming; vain jangling of thought, word and
deed. It is spiritual bankruptcy, long tolerated ; verging now
toward economical bankruptcy, and become intolerable.
For from the lowest dumb rank, the inevitable misery,
as was predicted, has spread upward. 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. Oh, Lomenie,
what a wild-heaving, waste-looking, hungry and angry
world hast thou, after lifelong effort, got promoted to take
charge of!
Lomenie's first edicts are mere soothing ones; creation
of provincial assemblies, "for apportioning the imposts,"
when we get any; suppression of Corvees or statute-labor;
*Dumont, "Souvenirs sur Mirabeau," p. 21.
f Toulongeon, "Histoire de France depuis la Revolution de
1789 " (Paris, 1803), i. app. 4.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 71
alleviation of Gabelle. Soothing measures, recommended
by the notables; long clamored for by all liberal men.
Oil cast on the waters has been known to produce a good
effect. Before venturing with great essential measures,
Lomenie-will see this singular "swell of the public mind"
abate somewhat.
Most proper, surely. But what if it were not a swell of
the abating kind? There are swells that come of upper
tempest and wind -gust. But again there are swells that
come of subterranean pent wind, some say; and even of
inAvard decomposition, of decay that has become self -com
bustion : as when, according to Neptuno-Plutonic geology,
tne world is all decayed down into due attritus of this
sort; and shall now be exploded, and new-made! These
latter abate not by oil. The fool says, in his, heart, How
shall not to-morrow be as yesterday; as all days, which
were once to-morrows? The wise man, looking on this
France, moral, intellectual, economical, sees, "in short, all
the symptoms he has ever met with in history," unabat-
able by soothing edicts.
Meanwhile, abate or not, cash must be had ; and for
that, quite another sort of edicts, namely "bursal" or fiscal
ones. How easy were fiscal edicts, did you know for
certain that the parlement of Paris would Avhat they call
"register" them! Such right of registering, properly of
mere writing down, the parlement has got by old wont;
and, though but a law-court, can remonstrate, and higgle
considerably about the same. Hence many quarrels;
desperate Maupeou devices, and victory and defeat; a
quarrel now near forty years long. Hence fiscal edicts,
which otherwise were easy enough, become such problems.
For example, is there not Calonne's Subvention Terri
torial, universal, unexempting land-tax; the sheet-
anchor of finance? Or, to show, so far as possible, that
one is not without original finance talent, Lomenie
himself can devise an Edit du Timbre or stamp-tax, bor
rowed also, it is true; but then from America: may it
prove luckier in France than there !
France has her resources: nevertheless, it cannot be
denied, the aspect of that parlement is questionable.
Already among the notables, in that final symphony of dis
missal, the Paris president had an ominous tone. Adrian
Duport, quitting magnetic sleep, in, this agitation of the

72 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
world,, threatens to rouse himself into preternatural wake
fulness. Shallower, but also louder, there is magnetic
D'Espremenil, with his tropical heat (he was born at
Madras); with his dusky confused violence; holding of
illumination, animal magnetism, public opinion, Adam
Weisshaupt, Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner
of confused violent things; of whom can come no good.
The very peerage is infected with the leaven. Our peers
have, in too many cases, laid aside their frogs, laces, bag-
wigs; and go about in English costume, or ride rising in
their stirrups, in the most headlong manner ; nothing but
insubordination, eleutheromania, confused unlimited oppo
sition in their heads. Questionable; not to be ventured
upon, if we had a Fortunatus' purse! But Lomenie has
waited all June, casting on the waters what oil he had;
and now, betide as it may, the two finance edicts must out.
On the 6th of July, he forwards his proposed stamp-tax
and land-tax to the parlement of Paris; and, as if putting
his own leg foremost, not his borrowed Calonne's-leg,
places the stamp-tax first in order.
Alas, the parlement will not register: the parlement
demands instead a "state of the expenditure," a "state
of the contemplated reductions;" "states" enough; which
his majesty must decline to furnish! Discussions arise;
patriotic eloquence; the peers are summoned. Does the
Nemean Lion begin to bristle? Here surely is a duel,
which France and the universe may look upon: with
prayers ; at lowest, with curiosity and bets. Paris stirs with
new animation. The outer courts of the Palais de Jus
tice roll with unusual crowds, coming and going; their
huge outer . hum mingles with the clang of patriotic elo
quence within, and gives vigor to it. Poor Lomenie gazes
from the distance, little comforted; has his invisible emis
saries flying to and fro, assiduous, without result.
So pass the sultry dog-days, in the most electric man
ner; and the whole month of July. And still, in the
sanctuary of justice, sounds nothing but Harmodius-
Aristogiton eloquence, environed with the hum of crowd
ing Paris; and no registering accomplished, and no "states"
furnished. "States?" said a lively parlementeer : "Mes
sieurs, the states that should be furnished us, in my opinion
are the states-general." On which timely joke there fol
low cachinnatory buzzes of approval. What a word to be

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 73
spoken in the Palais de Justice! Old D'Ormesson (the
ex-controller's uncle) shakes his judicious head; far
enough from laughing. But the outer courts, and Paris
and France, catch the glad sound, and repeat it; shall
repeat it, and re-echo and reverberate it, till it groAv a
deafening peal. Clearly enough here is no registering to
be thought of.
The pious proverb says, "There are remedies for all
things but death." When a parlement refuses register
ing, the remedy, by long practice, has become familiar to
the simplest: a bed of justice. One complete month
this parlement has spent in mere idle jargoning, and
sound and fury: the Timbre edict not registered, or like
to be; the Subvention not yet so much as spoken of. On
the 6th of August let the whole refractory body roll out,
in wheeled vehicles, as far as the king's chateau of Ver
sailles; there shall the king, holding his bed of justice,
order them, by his own royal lips, to register. They may
remonstrate, in an undertone; but they must obey, lest
a worse unknown thing befall them.
It is done: the parlement has rolled out, on royal sum
mons ; has heard the express royal order to register. Where
upon it has rolled back again, amid the hushed expectancy
of men. And now, behold, on the morrow, this parle
ment, seated once more in its own palais, with crowds
inundating the outer courts," not only does not register,
but (Oh portent!) declares all that was done on the prior
day to be null, and the bed of justice as good as a futility !
In the history of France here verily is a new feature.
Nay better still, our heroic parlement, getting suddenly
enlightened on several things, declares that, for its part,
it is incompetent to register tax-edicts at all, having done
it by mistake, during these late centuries; that for such
act one authority only is competent : the assembled three
estates of the realm !
To such length can the universal spirit of a nation pene
trate the most isolated body-corporate: say rather, Avith
such weapons, homicidal and suicidal, in exasperated politi
cal duel, will bodies-corporate fight! But, in any case,
is not this the real death-grapple of war and internecine
duel, Greek meeting Greek ; whereon men, had they even
no interest in it, might look with interest unspeakable?
Crowds, as was said, inundate the outer courts: inunda-

74 THE FR ENCH REVOL UTION.
tion of young eleutheromaniac noblemen in English
costume, uttering audacious speeches; of procureurs,
basoche-clerks, who are idle in these days; of loungers,
newsmongers and other nondescript classes, rolls tumul
tuous there. "From three to four thousand persons,"
Avaiting eagerly to hear the Arretes (resolutions) you
arrive at within ; applauding Avith bravos, with the clap
ping of from six to eight thousand hands ! Sweet also is the
meed of patriotic eloquence, Avhen your D'Espremenil,
your Freteau, or Sabatier, issuing from his Demosthenic
Olympus, the thunder being hushed for the day, is wel
comed, in the outer courts, with a shout from four thous
and throats ; is borne home shoulder-high " with benedic
tions," and strikes the stars with his sublime head.

CHAPTER V.
lomenie's thunderbolts.
Arise, Lomenie-Brienne: here is no case for "Letters of
Jussion;" for faltering or compromise. Thou seest the
whole loose fluent population of Paris (whatsoever is not
solid and fixed to work) inundating these outer courts,
like a loud destructive deluge ; the very Basoche of lawyers'
clerks talks sedition. The lower classes, in this duel of
authority with authority, Greek throttling Greek, have
ceased to respect the city-watch : police-satellites are
marked on the back with chalk (the M signifies mouchard,
spy); they are hustled, hunted like fierce natures. Subor
dinate rural tribunals send messengers of congratulation,
of adherence. Their fountain of justice is becoming a
fountain of revolt. The provincial parlements look on,
Avith intent eye, with breathless wishes, while their elder
sister of Paris does battle: the whole twelve are of one
blood and temper; the victory of one is that of all.
Ever worse it grows: on the 10th of August, there is
" Plainte" emitted touching the "prodigalities of Calonne,"
and permission to "proceed" against him. No registering,
but instead of it, denouncing: of dilapidation, pecula
tion; and ever the burden of the song, states-general!
Have the royal armories no thunderbolt, that thoucouldst,
oh, Lomenie, with red right-hand, launch it among the

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 75
Demosthenic theatrical thunder-barrels, mere resin and
noise for most part; and shatter, and smite them silent?
On the night of the 14th of August, Lomenie launches
his thunderbolt, or handful of them. Letters named of
the seal {de Cachet), as many as needful, some six score and
odd, are delivered overnight. And so, next day betimes,
the whole parlement, once more set on wheels, is rolling
incessantly toward Troyes in Champagne; "escorted," says
history, "Avith the blessings of all people;" the very inn
keepers and postillions looking gratuitously reverent.*
This is the 15th of August, 1787.
What will not people bless; in their extreme need!
Seldom had the parlement of Paris deserved much bless
ing, or received much. An isolated body-corporate, which,
out of old confusions (while the scepter of the sword was
confusedly struggling to become a scepter of the pen), had
got itself together, better and worse, as bodies-corporate
do, to satisfy some dim desire of the world, and many
clear desires of individuals; and so had grown, in the
course of centuries, on concession, on acquirement and
usurpation, to be what we see it: a prosperous social
anomaly, deciding lawsuits, sanctioning or rejecting laws ;
and withal disposing of its places and offices by sale for
ready-money, which method sleek President Hfenault,
after meditation, will demonstrate to be the indifferent-
best, f
In such a body, existing by purchase for ready money,
there could not be excess of public spirit ; there might well
be excess of eagerness do divide the public spoil. Men in
helmets have divided that, with swords; men in wigs,
with quill and inkhorn, to divide it: and even more hate
fully these latter if more peaceably; for the wig-method
is at once irresistibler and baser. By long experience, says
Besenval, it has been found useless to sue a parlementeer
at law; no officer of justice will serve a writ on one; his
wig and gown are his Vulcan's-panoply, his enchanted
cloak of darkness.
The parlement of Paris may count itself an unloved body ;
mean, not magnanimous, on the political side. Were
the king weak always (as now), has his parlement barked,
*A. Lameth, "Histoire de 1' Assemblee Constituante " (Int. 73).
\ " Abrege Chronologique," p. 975.

76 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
cur-like at his heels; with what popular cry there might
be. Were he strong, it barked before his face; hunting
for him as his alert beagle. An unjust body ; where foul
influences have more than once worked shameful perver
sion of judgment. Does not, in these very days, the blood of
murdered Lally cry aloud for vengeance? Baited, circum
vented, driven mad like the snared lion, Valor had to
sink extinguished under vindictive Chicane. Behold
him, that hapless Lally, his wild dark soul looking through
his wild dark face; trailed on the ignominious death-
hurdle; the voice of his despair choked by a wooden gag!
The wild fire-soul that has known only peril and toil ; and,
for three score years, has buffeted against fate's obstruction
and men's perfidy, like genius and courage amid poltroon
ery, dishonesty and commonplace ; faithfully enduring and
endeavoring — oh, parlement of Paris, dost thou reward it
with a gibbet and a gag? * The dying Lally bequeathed
his memory to his boy; a young Lally has arisen,
demanding redress in the name of God and man. The
parlement of Paris does its utmost to defend the indefen
sible, abominable; nay, Avhat is singular, dusky-glowing
Aristogiton d'Espermenil is the man chosen to be its
spokesman in that.
Such social anomaly is it that France now blesses. An
unclean social anomaly; but in duel against another
worse! the exiled parlement is felt to have "covered itself
with glory." There are quarrels in which even Satan,
bringing help, were not unwelcome; even Satan, fighting
stiffly, might cover himself with glory, of a temporary
sort. But what a stir in the outer courts of the palais, when
Paris finds its parlement trundled off to Troyes in Cham
pagne; and nothing left but a few mute keepers of
records ; the Demosthenic thunder become extinct, the mar
tyrs of liberty clean gone ! Confused wail and menace rises
from the four thousand throats of procureurs, basoche-
clerks, nondescripts, and Anglomaniac noblesse ; ever neAV
idlers crowd to see and hear; rascality,- with increasing
numbers and vigor, hunts mouchards. Loud whirlpool
rolls through these spaces; the rest of the city, fixed to its
work, cannot yet go rolling. Audacious placards are
*9th May, 1766: "Biographie Universelle," § Lally.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 77
legible; in and about the palais, the speeches are as good as
seditious. Surely the temper of Paris is much changed.
On the third day of this business (18th of August), Mon
sieur and Monseigneur d'Artois, coming in state-carriages,
according to use and wont, to have these late obnoxious
Arretes and protests "expunged" from the records, are
received in the most marked manner. Monsieur, who is
thought to be in opposition, is met with vivats and strewed
flowers; monseigneur, on the other hand, Avith silence;
with murmurs which rise to hisses and groans; nay, an
irreverent rascality presses toAvard him in floods, with such
hissing vehemence, that the captain of the guards has to
give order, " ffaut les amies (Handle arms!)" at which
thunder-word, indeed, and the flash of the clear iron, the
rascal-flood recoils, through all avenues, fast enough.*
New features these. Indeed, as good M. de Malesherbes
pertinently remarks, " It is a quite new kind of contest,
this Avith the parlement :" no transitory sputter, as from
collision of hard bodies; but more like "the first sparks of
what, if not quenced, may become a great conflagration, "f
This good Malesherbes sees himself now again in the
king's council, after an absence of ten years; Lomenie
Avould profit if not by the faculties of the man, yet by the
name he has. As for the man's opinion, it is not listened
to; wherefore he will soon withdraw, a second time; back
to his books and his trees. In such king's council what
can a good man profit? Turgot tries it not a second
time: Turgot has quitted France and this earth, some
years ago ; and now cares for none of these things. Singu
lar enough; Turgot, this same Lomenie, and the Abbe
Morellet were once a trio of young friends ; fellow-scholars
in the Sorbonne. Forty new years have carried them
severally thus far.
Meanwhile the parlement sits daily at Troyes, calling
cases ; and daily adjourns, no porcureur making his appear
ance to plead. Troyes is as hospitable as could be looked
for : nevertheless one has comparatively a dull life. No
crowds now to carry you, shoulder high, to the immortal
gods ; scarcely a patriot or tAVO Avill drive out so far, and
bid you be of firm courage. You are in furnished lodg
ings, far from home and domestic comfort: little to do,
*Montgaillard, i. 369. Besenval, etc. f Montgaillard, i. 373.

78 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
but wander over the unlovely Champagne fields; seeing
the grapes ripen ; taking counsel about the thousand-times
consulted: a prey to tedium; in danger even that Paris
may forget you. Messengers come and go: pacific Lomenie
is not slack in negotiating, promising; D'Ormesson and
the prudent elder members see no goocTin strife.
After a dull month, the parlement, yielding and retain
ing, makes truce, as all parlements must. The stamp-tax
is withdrawn : the Subvention land-tax is also withdrawn ;
but, in its stead, there is granted, what they call a " Pro
rogation of the second twentieth," itself a kind of land-tax,
but not so oppressive to the influential classes; which lies
mainly on the dumb class. Moreover, secret promises
exist (on the part of the Elders), that finances may be
raised by loan. Of the ugly Avord states-general there
shall be no mention.
And so, on the 20th of September, our exiled parlement
returns; D'Espremenil said, "it went out covered with
glory, but had come back covered with mud {de boue)."
Not so, Aristogiton, or if so, thou surely art the man to
clean it.

CHAPTER VI.
LOMENIE'S PLOTS.
Was eter unfortunate chief minister so bested as
Lomenie-Brienne? The reins of the state fairly in his
hands these six months; and not the smallest motive-power
(of finance) to stir from the spot Avith, this way or that!
He flourishes his whip, but advances not. Instead of
ready money, there is nothing but rebellious debating and
recalcitrating. Far is the public mind from having calmed; it goes
chafing and fuming ever worse : and in the royal coffers,
with such yearly deficit running on, there is hardly the
color of coin. Ominous prognostics! Malesherbes, seeing
an exhausted, exasperated France grow hotter and hotter,
talks of "conflagration:" Mirabeau, without talk has, as
we perceive, descended on Paris again, close on the rear of
the parlement * — not to quit his native soil any more.
*Fils Adoptif, "Mirabeau," iv. 1. 5,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 79
Over the frontiers, behold Holland invaded by Prussia ; *
the French party oppressed, England and the Stadtholder
triumphing : to the sorrow of War-Secretary Montmorin and
all men. But without money, sinews of war, as of work,
and of existence itself, what can a chief minister do?
Taxes profit little: this of the second twentieth falls not
due till next year ; and will then, with its " strict valuation, "
produce more controversy than cash. Taxes on the privi
leged classes cannot be got registered ; are intolerable to
our supporters themselves: taxes on the unprivileged yield
nothing, as from a thing drained dry more cannot be
drawn. Hope is nowhere, if not in the old refuge of loans.
To Lomenie, aided by the long head of Lamoignon,
deeply pondering this sea of troubles, the thought suggested
itself: Why not have a successive loan {Emprunt Successif),
or loan that went on lending, year after year, as much as
needful; say, till 1792? The trouble of registering such
loan were the same : we had then breathing time ; money to
work with, at least to subsist on. Edict of a successive
loan must be proposed. To conciliate the philosophers,
let a liberal edict walk in front of it, for emancipation of
Protestants; let a liberal promise guard the rear of it, that
when our loan ends, in that final 1792, the states-general
shall be convoked.
Such liberal edict of Protestant emancipation, the time
having come for it, shall cost a Lomenie as little as the
" death-penalties to be put in execution" did. As for the
liberal promise, of states-general, it can be fulfilled or not :
the fulfillment is five good years off ; in five years much
intervenes. But the registering? Ah, truly, there is the
difficulty ! However, we have that promise of the elders,
given secretly at Troyes. Judicious gratuities, cajoleries,
underground intrigues, with old Foulon, named " Ame
damnee, Familiar-demon, of the parliament," may perhaps
do the rest. At worst and lowest, the royal authority has
resources, which ought it not to put forth? If it cannot
realize money, the royal authority is as good as dead; dead
of that surest and miserablest death, inanition. Risk and
win ; without risk all is already lost ! For the rest, as in
enterprises of pith, a touch of stratagem often proves
furthersome, his majesty announces a royal hunt, for the
?October, 1787. MontgaiUard, i. 374. Besenval, iii. 283.

80 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
19th of November next; and all Avhom it concerns are joy
fully getting their gear ready.
Royal hunt indeed; but of two-legged unfeathered game!
At eleven in the morning of that royal-hunt day, 19th of
November, 1787, unexpected blare of trumpeting, tumult of
charioteering and cavalcading disturbs the seat of justice :
his majesty is come, with Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon,
and peers and retinue, to hold royal session and have edicts
registered. What a change, since Louis XIV. entered
here, in boots; and, whip in hand, ordered his registering
to be done, with an Olympian look, which none durst gain
say; and did, without stratagem, in such unceremonious
fashion, hunt as well as register!* For Louis XVI., on
this day, the registering will be enough ; if indeed he and
the day suffice for it.
Meanwhile, with fit ceremonial words, the purpose of
the royal breast is signified: Two edicts, for Protestant
emancipation, for successive loan: of both which edicts
our trusty Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon will explain the
purport ; on both which a trusty parlement is requested
to deliver its opinion, each member having free privilege of
speech. And so, Lamoignon too having perorated not
amiss, and wound up with that promise of states-general,
the sphere-music of parlementary eloquence begins.
Explosive, responsive, sphere answering sphere, it waxes
louder and louder. The peers sit attentive; of diverse
sentiment: unfriendly to states-general ; unfriendly to
despotism, which cannot reAvard merit, and is suppressing
places. But what agitates his Highness d'Orleans? The
rubicund moon-head goes Avagging; darker beams the
copper visage, like unscoured copper; in the glazed eye is
disquietude; he rolls uneasy in his seat, as if he meant
something. Amid unutterable satiety, has sudden new
appetite, for neAV forbidden fruit, been vouchsafed him?
Disgust and edacity; laziness that cannot rest; futile
ambition, revenge, non-admiralship ; oh, within that car-
buncled skin what a confusion of confusions sits bottled!
"Eight couriers," in the course of the day, gallop from
Versailles, where Lomenie Avaits palpitating; and gallop
back again, not with the best news. In the outer courts
of the palais, huge buzz of expectation reigns; it is whis-
*Dulaure, yi. 306.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 81
pered the chief minister has lost six votes overnight. And
from within, resounds nothing but forensic eloquence,
pathetic and even indignant; heart-rending appeals to the
royal clemency, that his majesty would please to summon
states-general forthwith, and be the savior of France;
herein dusky-glowing D'Espremenil, but still more Sabatier
de Cabre, and Freteau, since named Commere Freteau
(Goody Freteau), are among the loudest. For six mortal
hours it lasts, in this manner; the infinite hubbub
unslackened. And so now, when broAvn dusk is falling through the
Avindows, and no end visible, his majesty, on hint of
Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon, opens his royal lips once
more to say, in brief, that he must have his loan-edict
registered. Momentary deep pause! See! Monsiegneur
d'Orleans rises; with moon-visage turned toward the royal
platform, he asks, with a delicate graciosity of manner
covering unutterable things: "whether it is a bed of jus
tice, then, or a royal session?" Fire flashes on him from
the throne and neighborhood : surly answer that " it is a
session." In that case, monseigneur will crave leave to
remark that edicts cannot be registered by order in a
session; and indeed to enter, against such registry, his
individual humble protest. " Vous etes bien le maitre (You
will do your pleasure)," answers the king; and thereupon,
in high state marches out, escorted by his court-retinue;
D'Orleans himself, as in duty bound, escorting him, but
only to the gate. Which duty done, D'Orleans returns in
from the gate; redacts his protest, in the face of an
applauding parlement, an applauding France; and so —
has cut his court-moorings, shall we say? And will now
sail and drift, fast enough, toAvard chaos?
Thou foolish D'Orleans; equality that art to be! Is
royalty grown a mere wooden scarecrow; whereon thou,
pert scaldheaded crow, mayest alight at pleasure, and
peck? Not yet wholly.
Next day, a Lettre-de-Chachet sends D'Orleans to bethink
himself in his ch&teau of Villers-Cotterets, where, alas; is
no Paris Avith its joyous necessaries of life; no fascinating
indispensable Madame de Buffon, light wife of a great
naturalist much too old for her. Monseigneur; it is said,
does nothing but walk distractedly, at Villers-Cotterets;
cursing his stars. Versailles itself shall hear penitent wail

g2 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
from him, so hard is his doom. By a second, simultaneous
Lettre-de- Cachet, Goody Freteau is hurled into the strong
hold of Ham, amid the Norman marshes; by a third,
Sabatier de Cabre into Mont St. Michel, amid the Norman
quicksands. As for the parlement, it must, on summons,
travel out to Versailles, with its register book under its
arm, to have the protest biffe (expunged) ; not without ad
monition, and even rebuke. A stroke of authority, which,
one might have hoped, would quiet matters.
Unhappily, no: it is a mere taste of the whip to rearing
coursers, which makes them rear worse ! When a team of
twenty-five milllions begins rearing, what is Lomenie's
whip? The parlement will nowise acquiesce meekly; and set to
register the Protestant edict, and do its other work, in salu
tary fear of these three Lettres-de- Cachet. Far from that,
it begins questioning Lettres-de- Cachet generally, their
legality, endurability : emits dolorous objurgation, petition
on petition to have its three martyrs delivered; cannot, till
that be complied with, so much as think of examining the
Protestant edict, but puts it off always "till this day
week." *
In which objurgatory strain Paris and France joins it, or
rather has preceded it; making fearful chorus. And now
also the other parlements, at length opening their mouths,
begin to join, some of them, as at Grenoble and at Rennes,
with portentous emphasis, threatening, by way of reprisal,
to interdict the very tax-gatherer, f " In all former con
tests," as Malesherbes remarks, "it was the parlement that
excited the public ; but here it is the public that excites the
parlement."
CHAPTER VII.
INTERNECINE.
What a France, through these winter months of the
year 1787! The very 03il-de-Boeuf is doleful, uncertain;
with a general feeling among the suppressed, that it were
better to be in Turkey. The wolf-hounds are suppressed,
the bear-hounds, Duke de Coigny, Duke de Polignac: in
* Besenval, iii. 309. f Weber, i. 266.

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTldN. 83
the Trianon little heaven, her majesty, one evening, takes
Besenval's arm; asks his candid opinion. The intrepid
Besenval, having, as he hopes, nothing of the sycophant in
him plainly signifies that, with a parlement in rebellion,
and an OEil-de-Bceuf in suppression the king's crown is in
danger; whereupon, singular to say, her majesty, as if
hurt, changed the subject, et ne me parla plus de rien! *
To whom, indeed, can this poor queen speak. In need
of wise counsel, if ever mortal was ; yet beset here only by
the hubbub of chaos ! Her dwelling-place is so bright to
the eye, and confusion and black care darkens it all. Soi^
rows of the sovereign, sorrows of the. woman, thick-
coming sorrows environ her more and more. Lamotte, the
necklace-countess, has in these late months escaped, per
haps been suffered to escape, from the Salpetriere. Vain
was the hope that Paris might thereby forget her; and
this evef-widening-lie, and heap of lies, subside. The
Lamotte, Avith a V for Voleuse, Thief (branded on both
shoulders, has got to England ; and will therefrom emit lie
on lie ; defiling the highest queenly name : mere distracted
lies ; f which in its present humor, France will greedily
believe. For the rest, it is too clear our successive loan is not fill
ing. As indeed, in such circumstances, a loan registered
by expunging of protests was not the likeliest to fill.
Denunciation of Lettres-de- Cachet of despotism generally,
abates not: the twelve parlements are busy; the twelve
hundred placarders, ballad singers, pamphleteers. Paris is
what, in figurative speech, they call "flooded with pam
phlets {regorge de brochures);" flooded and eddying again.
Hot deluge, from so many patriot ready-Avriters, all at the
fervid or boiling point; each ready-writer, now in the hour
of eruption, going like an Iceland geyser ! Against which
what can a judicious friend Morellet do; a Rivarol, an
unruly Linguet (Avell paid for it) spouting cold I
Now also, at length does come discussion 'of the Protes
tant edict; but only for new embroilment; in pamphlet
and counter-pamphlet, increasing the madness of men.
* Besenval, iii. 264.
¦f " Memoires justificatifs de la Comtesse de Lamotte" (London,
1788). " Vie de Jeanne de St. Remi, Comtesse de Lamotte," etc.
etc. See " Diamond Necklace" (ut supra).

84 THE FRENCH REVOL VTlON.
Not even orthodoxy, bedrid as she seemed, but will have a
hand in this confusion. She once again in the shape of
Abbe Lenfant, "whom prelates drive to visit and con
gratulate," raises audible sound from her pulpit-drum.*
Or mark how D'Espremenil, who has his own confused
way in all things, produces at the right moment in parle-
mentary harangue, a pocket crucifix, with the apostrophe:
"Will ye crucify him afresh?" Him, oh, D'Espremenil,
without scruple ; considering what poor stuff, of ivory and
filigree, he is made of !
To all which add only, that poor Brienne has fallen sick;
so hard was the tear and wear of his sinful youth, so vio
lent, incessant is this agitation of his foolish old age.
Baited, bayed at through so many throats, his grace,
growing consumptive, inflammatory (with humeur de
dartre), lies reduced to milk diet; in exasperation, almost
in desperation; with "repose," precisely the impossible
recipe, prescribed as the indispensable, f
On the whole, what can a poor government do, but once
more recoil ineffectual? The king's treasury is running
toward the less ; and Paris " eddies with a flood of pam
phlets." Atallrate, let the latter subside a little! D'Or
leans gets back to Raincy, which is nearer Paris, and the
fair frail Buffon ; finally to Paris itself : neither are Freteau
and Sabatier banished forever. The Protestant edict is
registered; to the joy of Boissy d'Anglas and good Male
sherbes: successive loan, ali protests expunged or else with
drawn, remains open, the rather as few or none come to
fill it. States-general, for which the parlement has
clamored and now the whole nation clamors, will follow
"in five years," if indeed not sooner. Oh, parlement of
Paris Avhat a clamor was that! "Messieurs," said old
D'Ormesson, "you will get states-general, and you will
repent it." Like the horse in the fable, who, to be
avenged of his enemy, applied to the man. The man
mounted; did swift execution on the enemy; but,
unhappily, would not dismount ! Instead of five years, let
three years pass, and this clamorous parlement shall have
both seen its enemy hurled prostrate, and been itself
ridden to foundering (say rather, jugulated for hide and
shoes) and lie dead in the ditch.
* Lacretelle, iii. 343. Montgaillard, etc. f Besenval, iii. 317,

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 85
Under such omens, however, Ave have reached the spring
of 1788. By no path can the king's government find
passage for itself, but is everywhere shamefully flung
back. Beleaguered by twelve rebellious parlements,
which are grown to be the organs of an angry nation, it
can advance nowhither; can accomplish nothing, obtain
nothing, not so much as money to subsist on ; but must
sit there, seemingly, to be eaten up of deficit.
The measure of the iniquity, then, of the falsehood
which has been gathering through long centuries, is nearly
full? At least, that of the misery is! From the hovels
of the twenty-five millions, the misery, permeating up
ward and forward, as its law is, has got so far, to the
very GSil-de-Bceuf of Versailles. Man's hand, in this blind
pain, is set against man : not only the low against the
higher, but the higher against each other; provincial
noblesse is bitter against court noblesse; robe against
sword; Rochet against pen. But against the king's gov
ernment who is not bitter? Not even Besenval, in these
days. To it all men and bodies of men are become as
enemies ; it is the center whereon infinite contentions unite
and clash. What new universal vertiginous movement is
this ; of institutions, social arrangements, individual minds,
which once worked co-operative; now rolling and grinding
in distracted collision? Inevitable: it is the breaking-up
of a world-solecism, worn out at last, doAvn even to bank
ruptcy of money ! And so this poor Versailles court, as
the chief or central solecism, finds all the other solecisms
arrayed against it. Most natural! For your human
solecism, be it person or combination of persons, is ever,
by law of nature, uneasy; if verging toward bankruptcy,
it is even miserable ; and when would the meanest solecism
consent to blame or amend itself, while there remained
another to amend?
These threatening signs do not terrify Lomenie, much
less teach him. Lomenie, though of light nature, is not
Avithout courage, of a sort. Nay, have we not read of
lightest creatures, trained canary-birds, that could fly
cheerfully with lighted matches, and fire cannon ; fire
whole powder-magazines? To sit and die of deficit is no
part of Lomenie's plan. 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

86 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
can attack, and perhaps remove. Much is dim to Lom6nie,
but two things are clear; that such parlementary duel
with royalty is growing perilous, nay internecine; above
all, that money must be had. Take thought, brave
Lomenie; thou Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon, who hast
ideas! So often defeated, balked cruelly Avhen the golden
fruit seemed within clutch, rally for one other struggle.
To tame the parlement, to fill the king's coffers: these
are now life-and-death questions.
Parlements have been tamed, more than once. Set to
perch "on the peaks of rocks inaccessible except by
litters," a parlement grows reasonable. Oh, Maupeou,
thou bold bad man, had we left thy work where it was!
But apart from exile, or other violent methods, is there
not one method, Avhereby all things are tamed, even lions?
The method of hunger! What if the parlement's sup
plies were cut off ; namely its lawsuits !
Minor courts, for the trying of innumerable miner
causes might be instituted: these we could call Grand
Bailliages. Whereon the parlement, shortened of its
prey, would look with yellow despair ; but the public, fond
of cheap justice, with favor and hope. Then for finance,
for registering of edicts, why not, from our own CEil-de-
Bceuf dignitaries, our princes, dukes, marshals, make a
thing we could c&llplenary court; and there, so to speak,
do our registering ourselves? Saint Louis had his plenary
court, of great barons ; * most useful to him : our great
barons are still here (at least the name of them is still here)
our necessity is greater than his.
Such is the Lomenie-Lamoignon device; Avelcome to the
king's council, as a light-beam in great darkness. The
device seems feasible, it is eminently needful: be it once
well executed, great deliverance is wrought. Silent, then,
and steady; now or never! the world shall see one other
historical scene; and so singular a man as Lomenie de
Brienne still the stage-manager there.
Behold, accordingly, a Home-Secretary Breteuil " beau
tifying Paris," in the peaceablest manner, in this hopeful
spring weather of 1788; the old hovels and hutches dis
appearing from our bridges; as if for the state too there
were halcyon weather, and nothing to do but beautify.
* Montgaillard, i. 405.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 8f
Parlement seems to sit acknowledged victor. Brienne
says nothing of finance; or even says, f.nd prints, that it is
all well. How is this; such halcyon quiet; though the
• successive loan did not fill? 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. Nevertheless Brienne endures it,
launches no Lettre-de- Cachet against it. How is this?
Smiling is such vernal weather; but treacherous, sudden!
For one thing, we hear it whispered, " the intendants of
provinces have all got order to be at their posts on a cer
tain day." Still more singular, what incessant printing is
this that goes on at the king's chateau, under lock and
key? Sentries occupy all gates and windows; the printers
come not out; they sleep in their workrooms; their very
food is handed in to them ! * A victorious parlement
smells new danger. D'Espremenil has ordered horses to
Versailles ; prowls round that guarded printing office ; pry
ing, snuffing, if so be the sagacity and ingenuity of man
may penetrate it.
To a shoAver of gold most things are penetrable.
D'Espremenil descends on the lap of a printer's Danae, in
the shape of " five hundred louis d'or:" the Danae's hus
band smuggles a ball of clay to her; which she delivers to
the golden counsellor of parlement. Kneaded within
it, there stick printed proof-sheets ; by heaven ! the royal
edict of that same self -registering plenary court of those
grand bailiages that shall cut short our lawsuits! It is to
be promulgated over all France on one and the same day.
This, then, is what the intendants were bid wait for at
their posts; this is what the court sat hatching, as its
accursed cockat rice-egg ; and would not stir, though
provoked, till the brood were out! Hie with it, D'Espre
menil, home to Paris; convoke instantaneous sessions; let
the parlement, and the earth, and the heavens know it.
t Weber, i. 276.

88 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
CHAPTER VIII.

On the morrow, which is the1 3rd of May, 1788, an
astonished parlement sits convoked; listens speechless to
the speech of D'Espremenil, unfolding the infinite mis
deed. Deed of treachery; of unhalloAved darkness, such
as despotism loves! Denounce it, oh, parlement of
Paris; awaken France and the universe; roll what thunder-
barrels of forensic eloquence thou hast : with thee too it is
verily now or never !
The parliament is not wanting, at such juncture. In
the hour of his extreme jeopardy, the lion first incites
himself by roaring, by lashing his sides. So here the par
lement of Paris. On the motion of D'Espremenil, a most
patriotic oath, of the one-and-all sort, is sworn, with
united throat; an excellent new-idea, which in these com
ing years, shall not remain unimitated. Next comes
indomitable declaration, almost of the rights of man, at
least of the rights of parlement; invocation to the friends
of French freedom, in this and in subsequent time. All
which, or the essence of all which, is brought to paper; in
a tone wherein something of plaintiveness blends with, an'd
tempers, heroic valor. And thus, having sounded the
storm-bell, which Paris hears, which all France will hear;
and hurled such defiance in the teeth of Lomenie and
despotism, the parlement retires as from a tolerable first
clay's work.
But how Lomenie felt to see his cockatrice-egg (so essen
tial to the salvation of France) broken in this premature
manner, let readers fancy ! Indignant he clutches at his
thunderbolts {de Cachet of the seal) ; and launches two of
them; a bolt for D'Espremenil; a bolt for that busy
Goeslard, whose service in the second twentieth and " strict
valuation" is not forgotten. Such bolts clutched promptly
overnight, and launched with the early new morning,
shall strike agitated Paris if not into requiescence, yet into
Avholesome astonishment.
Ministerial thunderbolts may be launched ; but if they
do not hit? D'Espremenil and Goeslard, warned, both of
them, as is thought, by the singing of some friendly bird,
elude the Lomenie Tipstaves; escape disguised through

[ THE FR ENCH RE VOL U TION. 89
sky windows, over roofs, to their own palais de justice: the
thunderbolts have missed. Paris (for the buzz flies
abroad) is struck into astonishment not wholesome. The
two martyrs of liberty doff their disguises ; don their long
gowns: behold, in the space of an hour, by aid of ushers
and swift runners, the parlement, with its counsellors,
presidents, even peers, sits aneAf assembled. The assem
bled parlement declares that these its two martyrs cannot
be given up, to any sublunary authority ; moreover that the
"session is permanent," admitting of no adjournment,
till pursuit of them has been relinquished.
And so, with forensic eloquence, denunciation and pro
test, with couriers going and returning, the parlement,
in this state of continual explosion that shall cease neither
night nor day waits the issue. Awakened Paris once more
inundates those outer courts; boils, in floods wider than
ever, through all avenues. Dissonant hubbub there is;
jargon as of Babel, in the hour when they were first
smitten (as here) with mutual unintelligibility, and the
people had not yet dispersed !
Paris city goes through its diurnal epochs, of working
and slumbering; and now, for the second time, most
European and African mortals are asleep. But here, in
this whirlpool of Avords, sleep falls not ; the night spreads
her coverlid of darkness over it in vain. Within is the
sound of mere martyr invincibility; tempered with the
due tone of plaintiveness. Without is the infinite expec
tant hum, growing drowsier a little. So has it lasted for
six-and-thirty hours.
But hark, through the dead of midnight, what tramp
is this? Tramp as of armed men, foot and horse; Gardes
Franchises, Gardes Suisses; marching hither; in silent
regularity; in the flare of torchlight! There are sappers
too, with axes and crow-bars; apparently, if the doors open
not, they will be forced! It is Captain D'Agoust, mis
sioned from Versailles. D'Agoust, a man of known firm
ness; who once forced Prince Conde himself, by mere in
cessant looking at him, to give satisfaction and fight: * he
now, with axes and torches, is advancing on the very sanc
tuary of justice. Sacrilegious; yet what help? The man
is a soldier; looks merely at his orders; impassive, moves
forward like an inanimate engine.
* Weber, i. 283.

90 THE FR ENCH R E VOL UTION.
The doors open on summons, there need no axes; door
after door. And noAV the innermost door opens; discloses
the long-gowned senators of France : a hundred and sixty-
seven by tale, seventeen of them peers ; sitting there, majestic
" in permanent session. " Were not the man military, and
of cast-iron, this sight, this silence re-echoing the clank of
his own boots, might stagger him ! For the hundred and
sixty-seven receive him in perfect silence; which some
liken to that of the Roman senate overf alien by Brennus;
some to that of a nest of coiners surprised by officers
of the police.* Messieurs, said D'Agoust, De par h
Roi! Express order has charged D'Agoust with the
sad duty of arresting two individuals; M. Duval d'Espre-
menil and M. Goeslard de Monsabert. Which respect
able individuals, as he has not the honor of knowing
them, are hereby invited, in the king's name, to surrender
themselves. Profound silence! Buzz, Avhich grows a mur
mur; "We are all D'Espremenils!" ventures a voice;
Avhich other voices repeat. The president inquires,
Whether he will employ violence? Captain D'Agoust,
honored with his majesty's commission, has to execute his
majesty's order; would so gladly do it without violence,
will in any case do it ; grants an august senate space to
deliberate which method they prefer. And thereupon
D'Agoust, with grave military courtesy, has withdrawn for
the moment.
What boots it, august senators? All avenues are closed
Avith fixed bayonets. Your courier gallops to Versailles,
through the dewy night; but also gallops back again, with
tidings that the order is authentic, that it is irrevocable.
The outer courts simmer Avith idle population; but
D'Agoust's grenadier-ranks stand there as immovable flood
gates: there will be no revolting to deliver you. "Mes
sieurs!" thus spoke D'Espremenil, "when the victorious
Gauls entered Rome, which they had carried by assault,
the Roman senators, clothed in their purple, sat there, in
their curule chairs, with a proud and tranquil countenance,
awaiting slavery or death. Such too is the lofty spectacle,
which you, in this hour, offer to the universe {a Vunivers),
after having generously " — with much more of the like, as
can still be read.f
* Besenval, iii. 355. f Toulongeon, i. App. 20.

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 91
In vain, oh, D'Espremenil! Here is this cast-iron
Captain D'Agoust, with his cast-iron military air, come
back. Despotism, constraint, destruction, sit waving in his
plumes. D'Espremenil must fall silent; heroically give
himself up, lest worst befall. Him Goeslard heroically
imitates. With spoken and speechless emotion, they fling
themselves into the arms of their parlementary brethren,
for a last embrace ; and so amid plaudits and plaints, from
a hundred and sixty-five throats; amid wavings, sobbings,
a whole forest-sigh of parlementary pathos, they are led
through winding passages, to the rear-gate; where, in the
gray of the morning, two coaches with exempts stand wait
ing. There must the victims mount; bayonets menacing
behind. D'Espremenil's stern question to the populace,
"Whether they have courage?" is answered by silence.
They mount, and roll ; and neither the rising of the May
sun (it is the 6th morning), nor its setting shall lighten
their heart: but they fare forward continually ; D'Espre
menil toward the utmost Isles of Saint Marguerite, or
Hieres (supposed by some, if that is any comfort, to be
Calypso's Island) ; Goeslard toAvard the land-fortress of
Pierre-en-Cize, extant then, near the city of Lyons.
Captain D'Agoust may now therefore look forward to
majorship, to commandantship of the Tuileries;* and
withall vanish from history; where nevertheless he has been
fa-ted to do a notable thing. For not only are D'Espre
menil and Goeslard safe whirling southward, but the par
lement itself has straightway to march out : to that also his
inexorable order reaches. Gathering up their long skirts,
they file out, the whole hundred and sixty-five of them,
through two rows of unsympathetic grenadiers : a spectacle
to gods and men. The people revolt not; they only Avon-
der and grumble: also, we remark, these unsympathetic
grenadiers are, Gardes Francaises, Avho, one day will sym
pathize ! In a word, the palais de justice is swept clear,
the doors of it are locked; and D'Agoust returns to Ver
sailles with, the key in his pocket, having, as was said,
merited preferment.
As for this parlement of Paris, now turned out to the
street, we will without reluctance leave it there. The beds
of justice it had to undergo, in the coming fortnight at
*Montgaillard,i. 404.

92 THE FR ENCH R E VOL UTION.
Versailles, in registering, or rather refusing to register, those
new-hatched edicts; and how it assembled in taverns and
tap-rooms there, for the purpose of protesting ; * or hovered
disconsolate, with outspread skirts, not knowing where to
assemble; and was reduced to lodge protest "with a
notary;" and in the end, to sit still (in a state of forced
"vacation,") and do nothing: all this, natural now, as the
burying of the dead after battle, shall not concern us. The
parlement of Paris has as good as performed its part;
doing and misdoing, so far, but hardly further, could it stir
the world.
Lomenie has removed the evil, then? Not at all; not so
much as the symptom of the evil ; scarcely the twelfth part
of the symptom, and exasperated the other eleven ! The in
tendants of provinces, the military commandants are at
their posts, on the appointed 8th of May : but in no parle
ment, if not in the single one of Douai, can these new edicts
get registered. Not peaceable signing with ink ; but brow-
beating,bloodshedding, appeal to primary club-law ! Against
these bailliages, against this plenary court, exasperated
Themis everywhere shows face of battle; the provincial
noblesse are of her party, and whosoever hates Lomenie
and the evil time with her attorneys and tipstaves, she
enlists and operates down even to the populace. At
Rennes in Brittany, where the historical Bertrand de Mole-
ville is intendant, it has passed from fatal continual duel
ing, between the military and gentry, to street-fighting; to
stone-volleys and musket-shot : and still the edicts remain
unregistered. The afflicted Bretons send remonstrance to
Lomenie, by a deputation of twelve; whom, however,
Lomenie, having heard them, shuts up in the bastille. A
second larger deputation he meets, by his scouts, on the
road, and persuades or frightens back. But noAV a third
largest deputation is indignantly sent by many roads:
refused audience on arriving, it meets to take counsel;
invites Lafayette and all patriot Bretons in Paris to
assist; agitates itself; becomes the Breton Club, first germ
of — the Jacobins' Society, f
So many as eight parlements get exiled : \ others might
* Weber, i. 299-303.
f A. F. de Bertrand-Mole ville. " Memoires Particuliers " (Paris,
1816), i. ch. i. Marmontel, "Memoires," iv. 27.
JMontgaillard, i. 308.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 93
need that remedy, but it is one not always easy of appliance.
At Grenoble, for instance, where a Mounier, a Barnave
have not been idle, the parlement had due order (by
Lettres-de- Cachet) to depart, and exile itself; but on the
morrow, instead of coaches getting yoked, the alarm-bell
bursts forth, ominous; and peals and booms all day:
crowds of mountaineers rush doAvn ; Avith axes, even Avith
firelocks, whom (most ominous of all!) the soldiery
shows no eagerness to deal with. "Axe over head," the
poor general has to sign capitulation ; to engage that the
Lettres-de- Cachet shall remain unexecuted, and a beloved
parlement stay where it is. Besancon, Dijon, Rouen,
Bourdeaux, are not what they should be! At Pau in
Beam, where the old commandant had failed, the new one
(a Grammont, native to them) is met by a procession of
townsmen with the cradle of Henri Quatre, the palladium
of their town ; is conjured as he venerates this old tortoise-
shell, in which the great Henri was rocked, not to trample
on Bearnese liberty; is informed, withal, that his maj
esty's cannon are all safe— in the keeping of his majesty's
faithful burghers of Pau, and do now lie pointed on
the walls there ; ready for action ! *
At this rate, your Grand Bailliages are like to have a
stormy infancy. As for the plenary court, it has literally
expired in the birth. The very courtiers looked shy at it;
old Marshal Broglie declined the honor of sitting therein.
Assaulted by a universal storm of mingled ridicule and
execration, f this poor plenary court met once, and never
any second time. Distracted country ! Contention hisses
up, with forked hydra-tongues, wheresoever poor Lomenie
sets his foot. "Let a commandant, a commissioner of
the king," says Weber, "enter one of these parlements to
have an edict registered, the whole tribunal will disappear,
and leave the commandant alone with the clerk and first
president. The edict registered and the commandant gone,
* Besenval, iii. 348.
f " La Cour Pleniere," heroi'-tragi-comedie en trois actes et en
prose ; jouee le 14 Juillet 1788, par une societe d'amateurs dans un
chateau aux environs de Versailles ; par M. l'Abbe de "Vermond,
Lecteur de la Reine: A Baville (Lamoignon 's Country-house), et se
trouve a Paris, chez la Veuve Liberty, a l'enseigne de la Revolution,
1788. — " La Passion, la Mort et la Resurrection du Peuple:" Imprime
a Jerusalem, etc. etc.— See Montgaillard, i. 407.

94 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
the whole tribunal hastens back, to declare such registra
tion null. The highways are covered with Grande Depu
tations of parlements, proceeding to Versailles, to have
their registers expunged by the king's- hand; or returning
home, to covei a new page with a new resolution still
more audacious. " *
Such is the France of this year, 1788. Not now a golden
or paper age of hope ; with its horse-racings, balloon-flyings,
and finer sensibilities of the heart; ah, gone is that; its
golden effulgence paled, bedarkened in this singular man
ner, brewing toward preternatural weather! For, as in
that wreck-story of " Paul et Virginie" and Saint- Pierre,
" One huge motionless cloud" (say, of sorrow and indigna
tion) "girdles our whole horizon; streams up, hairy, cop
per-edged, over a sky of the color of lead." Motionless
itself; but "small clouds" (as exiled parlements and such
like), "parting from it, fly over the zenith, with the
velocity of birds;" till at last, with one loud howl, the
whole four winds be dashed together, and all the world
exclaim, There is the tornado! Tout le monde s'ecria,
Voila Voitragan!
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 clamor for states-
general, f
Oh, Lomenie-Brienne, with thy poor flimsy mind all
bewildered, and now "three actual cauteries" on thy worn-
out body; who art like to die of inflammation, provoca
tion, milk-diet, dartres vives and maladie — (best untrans
lated) ; \ and presidest over a France with innumerable
actual cauteries, which also is dying of inflammation and
the rest! Was it wise to quit the bosky verdures of
Brienne, and thy new ashlar chateau there, and what it
* Weber, i. 275.
f Lameth, " Assemb. Const." (Introd.) p. 87.
X Montgaillard, i. 424.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 95
held for this? Soft were those shades and lawns; sweet
the hymns of poetasters, the blandishments of high -rouged
graces : * and always this and the other Philosophe Morellet
(nothing deeming himself or thee a questionable sham-
firiest) could be so happy in making happy: and also
hadst thou knoAvn it), in the military school hard by,
there sat, studying mathematics, a dusky-complexioned
taciturn boy, under the name of: Napoleon Bonaparte!
With fifty years of effort, and one final dead-lift struggle,
thou hast made an exchange ! Thou has got thy robe of
office, as Hercules had his Nessus' shirt.
On the 13th of July of this 1788, there fell, on the very
edge of harvest, the most frightful hailstorm; scattering
into wild waste the fruits of the year; which had otherwise
suffered grievously by drought. For sixty leagues round
Paris especially, the ruin was almost total, f To so many
other evils, then, there is to be added, that of dearth, per
haps of famine.
Some days before this hailstorm, on the 5th of July, and
still more decisively some days after it, on the 8th of
August, Lomenie announces that the states-general are
actually to meet in the following month of May. Till after
which period, this of the plenary court, and the rest, shall
remain postponed. Further, as in Lomenie there is no
plan of forming or holding these most desirable states-
general, " thinkers are invited" to furnish him with one,
through the medium of discussion by the public press !
What could a poor minister do? There are still ten
months of respite reserved: a sinking pilot will fling out all
things, his very biscuit-bags, lead, log, compass and quad
rant, before flinging out himself. It is on this principle, of
sinking, and the incipent delirium of despair, that we ex
plain likewise the almost miraculous "invitation to
thinkers." Invitation to chaos to be so kind as build, out
of its tumultuous drift-wood, an ark of escape for him! In
these cases, not invitation but command has usually proved
serviceable. The queen stood, that evening, pensive, in a
window, with her face turned toward the garden. The
Chef de Gobelet had followed her Avith an obsequious cup of
coffee; and then retired till it were sipped. Her majesty
beckoned Dame Campan to approach : " Grand Dieu!"
* See " Memoires de Morellet." f Marmontel, iv. 30.

96 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
murmured she, with the cup in her hand, "what a piece of
news will be made public to-day! The king grants states-
general." Then raising her eyes to heaven (if Campan
were not mistaken), she added: "'Tis a first beat of the
drum, of ill-omen for France. This noblesse will ruin
us." *
During all that hatching of the plenary court, Avhile
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 Lom6nie) 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 noAV 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. With another movement as of desperation,
Lomenie invites Necker to come and be controller of
finances ! Necker has other work in view than controlling
finances for Lomenie: with a dry refusal he stands
taciturn; awaiting his time.
What shall a desperate prime minister do? He has
grasped at the strongbox of the king's theater: some
lottery had been set on foot for those sufferers by the
hailstorm; in his extreme necessity, Lomenie lays hands
even on this, f To make provision for the passing day,
on any terms, will soon be impossible. On the 16th of
August, poor Weber heard, at Paris and" Versailles,
hawkers, " with a hoarse stifled tone of voice {voix etouffee,
sourde)," drawling and snuffling, through the streets,
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!
Poor Weber almost swooned at the sound of these cracked
voices, with their bodeful raven-note; and will never for
get the effect it had on him. X
But the effect on Paris, on the world generally? From
* Campan, iii. 104, 111. -f Besenval, iii. 360.
| Weber, i. 339.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 97
the dens of stock-brokerage, from the heights of political
economy, of Neckerism and philosophism; from all articu
late and inarticulate throats, rise hootings and howlings,
such as ear had not yet heard. Sedition itself may be
imminent! Monseigneur d' Artois, moved by Duchess
Polignac, feels called to wait upon her majesty; and ex
plain frankly what crisis matters stand in. " The queen
wept;" Brienne himself wept; for it is now visible and
palpable that he must go.
Remains only that the court, to whom his manners and
¦garrulities were always agreeable, shall make his fall soft.
The grasping old man has already got his archbishopship
of Toulouse exchanged for the richer one of Sens; and
now, in this hour of pity, he shall have the coadjutorship
for his nephew (hardly yet of due age); a dameship of
the palace for his niece ; a regiment for her husband; for
himself a red cardinal's-hat, a Coupe de Bois (cutting
from the royal forests), and on the Avhole "from five to six
hundred thousand livres of revenue;" * finally, his brother,
the Comte de Brienne, shall still continue war-minister.
Buckled round with such bolsters and huge featherbeds
of promotion, let him now fall as soft as he can !
And so Lomenie departs : rich if court-titles, and money
bonds can enrich him ; but if these cannot, perhaps the
poorest of all extant men. "Hissed at by the people of
Versailles," he drives forth to Jardi; southward to Brienne,
for recovery of health. Then to Nice, to Italy; but
shall return; shall glide to and fro, tremulous, faint-
twinkling, fallen on awful times: till the guillotine — snuff
out his weak existence? Alas, worse: for it is blown out,
or choked out, foully, pitiably, on the way to the guillo
tine! In his palace of Sens, rude Jacobin bailiffs made
him drink with them from his own wine-cellars, feast
with them from his own larder; and on the morrow
morning, the miserable old man lies dead. This is the
end of Prime Minister, Cardinal Archbishop Lomenie de
Brienne. Flimsier mortal Avas 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 toward such a
* Weber, i. 341.

98 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
powder mi
Lomenie ;
forget him

powder mine, which he kindled ! Let us pity the hapless
Lomenie; and forgive him; and, as soon as possible,

CHAPTER IX.
BURIAL WITH BONFIRE.
Besenval, during these extraordinary operations, of
payment two-fifths in paper, and change of prime minis
ter, had been out on a tour through his district of com
mand; and indeed, for the last months, peacefully drink
ing the waters of Contrexeville. Returning now, in the end
of August, toAvard Moulins, and "knowing nothing," he
arrives one evening at Langres; sends the whole town in a
state of upoar {grande rumeur). Doubtless some sedition;
a thing too common in these days ! He alights neverthe
less ; inquires of a " man tolerably dressed," what the matter
is? "How?" answers the man, "you have not heard the
news? The archbishop is thrown out, and M. Necker is
recalled; and all is going to go well !" *
Such rumeur and vociferous acclaim has risen round M.
Necker, ever from "that day Avhen he issued from the
queen's apartments," a nominated minister. It was on the
24th of August: "the galleries of the chateau, the courts,
the streets of Versailles; in few hours, the capital; and, as
the news flew, all France, resounded with the cry of
Vive le Roi! Vive M. Necker! "f In Paris indeed it unfor
tunately got the length of "turbulence." Petards, rockets
go off, in the Place Dauphine, more than enough. A
"wicker figure {Mannequin cVosier)," in archbishop's
stole, made emblematically, three-fifths of it satin, two-
fifths of it paper, is promenaded, not in silence, to the
popular judgment-bar; is doomed; shriven by a mock Abbe
de Vermond; then solemnly consumed by fire, at the foot
of Henri's statue on the Pont Neuf ; with such petarding
and huzzaing that Chevalier Dubois and his city-watch see
good finally to make a charge (more or less ineffectual) ; and
there wanted not burning of sentry-boxes, forcing of
* Besenval, iii. 366. \ Weber, i. 342.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 99
guard-houses, and also " dead bodies thrown into the Seine
over-night," to avoid new effervescence.*
Parlements therefore shall return from exile: plenary
court, payment two-fifths in paper have vanished; gone
off in smoke, at the foot of Henri's statue. States-general
(with a political millennium) are now certain; nay, it shall
be announced, in our fond haste, for January next: and
all, as the Langres man said, is "going to go."
To the prophetic glance of Besenval, one other thing is
too apparent: that Friend Lamoignon cannot keep his
keepership. Neither he nor War-minister Comte de
Brienne! Already old Foulon, Avith an eye to be war-
minister himself, is making underground movements.
This is that same Foulon named dme dammee du Parle
ment; a man grown gray in treachery, in griping, project
ing, intriguing and iniquity : who once when it was ob
jected, to some finance-scheme of his, "What will the
people do?" made answer, in the fire of discussion, "The
people may eat grass:" hasty words, which fly abroad irrev
ocable, and will send back .tidings !
Foulon, to the relief of the world, fails on this occa
sion ; and will always fail. Nevertheless it steads not M.
de Lamoignon. It steads not the doomed man that he
have interviews with the king; and be "seen to return
radieux," emitting rays. Lamoignon is the hated of par
lements: Comte de Brienne is brother to the cardinal arch
bishop. The 24th of August has been; and the 14th of
September is not yet, when they two, as their great prin
cipal had done, descend, made to fall soft], like him.
And now, as if the last burden had been rolled from its
heart, and assurance were at length perfect, Paris bursts
forth anew into extreme jubilee. The Basoche rejoices
aloud, that the foe of parlements is fallen ; nobility, gentry,
commonalty have rejoiced; and rejoice. Nay now, with
new emphasis, rascality itself, starting suddenly from its
dim depths, will arise and do it, for down even thither the
new political evangel, in some rude version or other, has
penetrated. It is Monday, the 14th of September, 1788 :
rascality assembles anew, in great force, in the Place
Dauphine ; lets off petards, fires blunderbusses, to an incred-
* "Histoire Parlementaire de la Revolution Francaise ; ou Journal
des Assemblies Nationales depuis " 1789 (Paris, 1833 et seqq.), i. 253.
Lameth, " Assemblee Constituante," i. (Introd.) p. 89.

100 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
ible extent, without interval, for eighteen hours. There is
again a wicker figure, "Mannequin of osier:" the center of
endless howlings. Also Necker's portrait snatched, or pur
chased, from some printshop, is borne processionally, aloft
on a perch, with huzzas; an example to be remembered.
But chiefly on the Pont Neuf, where the great Henri, in
bronze, rides sublime; there do the crowds gather. All
passengers must stop, till they have bowed to the people's
king, and said audibly: Vive Henri Quatre; au diable
Lamoignon! No carriage but must stop; not even that
of his highness D'Orleans. Your coach-doors are opened:
monsieur will please to put forth his head and bow; or
even if refractory, to alight altogether, and kneel: from
madame a wave of her plumes, a smile of her fair face,
there where she sits, shall suffice: and surely a coin or
two (to buy fusees) were not unreasonable, from the upper
classes, friends of liberty? In this manner it proceeds for
days ; in such rude horse-play, not without kicks. The city
Avatch can do nothing; hardly save its own skin: for the
last twelvemonth, 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. Long rows of torches, following it,
move toward the Hotel Lamoignon; but "a servant of
mine" (Besenval's) has run to give warning, and there are
soldiers come. Gloomy Lamoignon is not to die by con
flagration, or this night; not yet for a year, and then by
gunshot (suicidal or accidental is unknown).* Foiled ras
cality 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 Franchises, 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 clangor, complaint; subsequent
* " Histoire de la Revolution," par Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 50.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION- " '- 101
criminal trials, and official persons dying of heartbreak!'*
So, however, with steel-besom, rascality is bru'sljed back,~
into its dim depths, and the streets are Wept o\e&%>
Not for a century and half had rascalitV VenturecP-to step
forth in this fashion; not for so long, showWOs huge.rude
lineaments in the light of day. A wonder aiMf^ajew. thing :
as yet gamboling merely, in awkward brodbrgnag Isport,
not without quaintness; hardly in anger: yet in i-t»4i«ge
half- vacant laugh lurks a shade of grimness, which could
unfold itself!
However, the thinkers invited by Lomenie 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.
* " Histoire de la Revolution," par Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 58.

1 02 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.

BOOK FOURTH.
STATES-GENERAL.

CHAPTER I.
THE NOTABLES AGAIN.
The universal prayer, therefore, is to be fulfilled!
Always in days of national perplexity, when wrong
abounded and help was not, this remedy of states-general
was called for; by a Malesherbes, nay by a Fenelon;*
even parlements calling for it were " escorted with bless
ings." And now behold it is vouchsafed us; states-general
shall verily be !
To say, let states-general be, was easy; to say in what
manner they shall be, is not so easy. Since the year 1614,
there have no states-general met in France, all trace of
them has vanished from the living habits of men. Their
structure, powers, methods of procedure, which Avere never
in any measure fixed, have now become wholly a vague
possibility. Clay which the potter may shape, this way or
that: say rather, the twenty-five millions of potters; for
so many have noAV, more or less, a vote in it ! How to
shape the states-general? There is a problem. Each
body-corporate, each privileged, each organized class has
secret hopes of its OAvn in that matter; and also secret
misgivings of its own, for, behold, this monstrous twenty
million class, hitherto the dumb sheep which these others
had to agree about the manner of shearing, is now also
arising with hopes! It has ceased or is ceasing to be
dumb; it speaks through pamphlets, or at least brays and
* Montgaillard, i. 461.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 103
growls behind them, in unison. Increasing wonderfully
their volume of sound.
As for the parlement of Paris, it has at once declared
for the "old form of 1614." Which form had this advan
tage, that the Tiers Etat, third estate, or commons,
figured there as a show mainly: whereby the noblesse and
clergy had but to avoid quarrel between themselves, and
decide unobstructed what they thought best. Such was
the clearly declared opinion of the Paris parlement. But,
being met by a storm of mere hooting and howling from
all men, such opinion was blown staightway to the winds ;
and the popularity of the parlement along with it, never
to return. The parlement's part, we said above, was as
good as played. Concerning which, however, there is
this further to be noted : the proximity of dates. It was
on the 22d of September that the parlement returned from
" vacation" or " exile in its estates ;" to be reinstalled amid
boundless jubilee from all Paris. Precisely next day it
Avas, that this same parlement came to its " clearly declared
opinion;" and then on the morrow after that you behold,
it "covered with outrages;" its outer court, one vast
sibilation, and the glory departed from it for evermore.*
A popularity of twenty-four hours was, in those times,
no uncommon allowance.
On the other hand, how superfluous was that invitation
of Lomenie's; the invitation to thinkers! Thinkers and
unthinkers, by the million, are spontaneously at their
post, doing what is in them. Clubs labor: Societe Pub-
licole; Breton Club; Enraged Club, Club des Enrages.
Likewise dinner-parties in the Palais Royal; your Mira-
beaus, Talleyrands dining there, in company with Cham-
forts, Morellets, with Duponts and hot parlementeers, not
without object! For a certain Neckerean Lion's provider,
whom one could name, assembles them there ; f or even
their own private determination to have dinner does it.
And then as to pamphlets in figurative language, "it is
a sheer snowing of pamphlets ; like to snow-up the govern
ment thoroughfares!" Now is the time for friends of
freedom; sane, and even insane.
Count, or self-styled Count d' Aintrigues, "the young
Languedocian gentleman," with perhaps Chamfort the
* Weber, i. 347. tIbid>i. 360.

104 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
cynic to help him, rises into furor almost py thic ; highest,
where many are high. * Foolish young Languedocian
gentleman ; who himself so soon, " emigrating among the
foremost," has to fly indignant over the marches, with the
Contrat Social in his pocket, toward outer darkness,
thankless intriguings, ignis-fatuus, hoverings, and death
by the stiletto! Abbe Sieyes has left Chartes Cathedral,
and canonry and book-shelves there; has let his tonsure
grow, and come to Paris with a secular head, of the most
irrefragable sort, to ask three questions, and answer them:
Wliat is the third estate? All. What has it hitherto
been in our form of government? Nothing. What does it
want? To become something.
D'Orleans, for be sure he, on his way to chaos, is in the
thick of this, promulgates his " Deliberations "f fathered by
him, written by Laclos of the Liaisons Dangereuses. The
result of which comes out simply : " The third estate is
the nation." On the other hand, Monseigneur d' Artois,
Avith other princes of the blood, publishes, in* solemn
memorial to the king, that if such things be listened to,
privilege, nobility, monarchy, church, state and strongbox
are in danger. J In danger truly ; and yet if you do not
listen, are they out of danger? It is the voice of all
France, this sound that rises. Immeasurable, manifold;
as the sound of outbreaking waters : wise were he who knew
what to do in it, if not to fly to the mountains, and hide
himself. How an ideal, all-seeing Versailles government, sitting
there on such principles, in such an environment, would
have determined to demean itself at this new juncture, may
even yet be a question. Such a government would have
felt too well that its long task was now drawing to a close;
that, under the guise of these states-general, at length
inevitable, a new omnipotent Unknown of democracy
was coming into being; in presence of which no Versailles
government either could or should, except in a provisory
character, continue extant. To enact which provisory
*"Memoire sur les Etats-Generaux." See Montgaillard, i. 457-9.
t ' ' Deliberations a prendre pour les Assemblies des Bailliages. "
% Memoire presente au Roi," par Monseigneur Comte d' Artois, M.
le Prince de Conde, M. le Due de Bourbon, M. le Due d'Enghien,
et M. le Prince de Conti. (Given in " Hist. Pari." i. 256.)

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 105
.character, so unspeakably important, might its whole
faculties but have sufficed; and so a peaceable, gradual,
well-conducted abdication and Domine-dimittas have been
the issue !
This for our ideal, all-seeing Versailles government.
But for the actual irrational Versailles government? Alas,
that is a government existing there only for its own be
hoof ; without right, except possession ; and now also with
out might. It foresees nothing, sees nothing; has not so
much as a purpose, but has only purposes, and the instinct
whereby all that exists will struggle to keep existing.
Wholly a vortex ; in which vain counsels, hallucinations,
falsehoods, intrigues, and imbecilities whirl; like withered
rubbish in the meeting of winds! The CEil-de-Bceuf has
its irrational hopes, if also its fears. Since hitherto all
states-general have done as good as nothing, why should
these do more? The commons, indeed, look dangerous;
but on the whole is not revolt, unknown now for five gen
erations, an impossibility? The three estates can, by
management, be set against each other; the third will, as
heretofore, join with the king; will, out of mere spite and
self-interest, be eager to tax and vex the other two. The
other two are thus delivered bound into our hands, that Ave
may fleece them likewise. Whereupon, money being got,
and the three estates all in quarrel, dismiss them, and let
the future go as it can ! As good Archbishop Lomenie was
wont to say : " There are so many accidents ; and it needs
but one to save us." Yes; and how many to destroy us?
Poor Necker in the midst of such an anarchy does what
is possible for him. He looks into it with obstinately hope
ful face; lauds the knoAvn rectitude of the kingly mind;
listens indulgent-like to the known perverseness of the
queenly and courtly; emits if any proclamation or regula
tion, one favoring the Tiers Etat; but settling nothing;
hovering afar off rather, and advising all things to settle
themselves. The grand questions, for the present, have
got reduced to two: the double representation, and the
vote by head. Shall the commons have a "double repre
sentation," that is to say, have as many members as the
noblesse and clergy united? Shall the states-general, when
once assembled vote and deliberate, in one body, or in three
separate bodies; "vote by head, or vote by class," ordre as
they call it? These are the moot-points now filling all

! o 6 THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION.
France with jargon, logic and eleutheromania. To ter
minate which, Necker bethinks him, might not a second
convocation of the notables be fittest? Such second convo
cation is" resolved on.
On the 6th of November of this year 1788, these notables
accordingly have reassembled; after an interval of some
eighteen months. They are Calonnes' old notables, the
same hundred and forty-four, to sIioav one's impartiality;
likewise to save time. They sit there once again, in their
seven bureaus, in the hard winter weather: it is the
hardest winter seen since 1709; thermometer below zero
of Fahrenheit, Seine river frozen over.* Cold, scarcity,
and eleuthromaniac clamor; a changed Avorld since these
notables were "organed out," in May gone a year! They
shall see now whether, under their seven princes of the
blood, in their seven bureaus, they can settle the moot-
points. To the surprise of patriotism, these notables, once so
patriotic, seem to incline the wrong way ; toward the anti-
patriotic side. They stagger at the double representation,
at the vote by head: there is not affirmative decision;
there is mere debating, and that not with the best aspects.
For, indeed, were not these notables themselves mostly of
the privileged classes? They clamored once ; now they have
their misgivings; make their dolorous representations.
Let them vanish, ineffectual; and return no more! They
vanish, after a month's session, on this 12th of December,
year 1788: the last terrestrial notables; not to reappear
any other time, in the history of the world.
And so, the clamor still continuing, and the pamphlets;
and nothing but patriotic addresses, louder and louder,
pouring in on us from all corners of France, Necker him
self some fortnight after, before the year is yet done, has
to present his report; f recommending at his own risk
that same double representation; nay, almost enjoining
it, so loud is the jargon and eleutheromania. What dubitat-
ing, what circumambulating! These whole six noisy
months (for it began with Brienne in July), has not report
followed report, and one proclamation flown in the teeth
of the other? X However, that first moot-point, as we see,
*Marmontel, " Memoires " (London, 1805), iv. 33. " Hist. Pari." etc.
f " Rapport fait au Roi dans son Conseil, le 27 Decembre, 1788."
X 5th July ; 8th August ; 23d September, etc. etc.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 107
is now settled. As for the second, that of voting by head
or by order, it unfortunately is still left hanging. It
hangs there, we may say, between the privileged orders
and the unprivileged; as a ready-made battle-prize, and
necessity of war, from the very first: which battle-prize
whosoever seizes it— may thenceforth bear as battle-flag,
with the best omens !
But so, at least, by royal edict of the 24th of January, *
does it finally, to impatient expectant France, become not
only indubitable that national deputies are to meet, but
possible (so far and hardly farther has the royal regulation
gone) to begin electing them.

CHAPTER II.
THE ELECTION.
Up, then, and be doing! The royal signal-word flies
through France, as through vast forests the rushing of a
mighty wind. At parish churches, in townhalls, and every
house of convocation; by bailliages, by seneschalsies, in
whatsoever form men convene; there with confusion enough,
are primary assemblies forming. To elect your electors;
such is the form prescribed : then to draw up your "writ
of plaints and grievances {Cahier de plaintes et doleances),"
of which latter there is no lack.
With such virtue works this royal January edict; as it
rolls, rapidly in its leathern mails, along these frostbound
highways, toward all the four winds. Like some fiat, or
magic spell- word; which such things do resemble! For
always, as it sounds out "at the market-cross," accom
panied with trumpet-blast; presided by bailli, seneschai,
or other minor functionary, with beef -eaters; or, in
country churches, is droned forth after sermon, " cm prone
des messes paroissales;" and is registered, posted and let
fly over all the world, you behold how this multitudinous
French people, so long simmering and buzzing in eager
expectancy, begins heaping and shaping itself into organic
groups. Which organic groups, again, hold smaller organic
* " Reglement du Roi pour la Convocation des Etats-Generaux a
Versailles." (Reprinted, wrong dated, in "Histoire Parlementaire,"
i, 262.)

J 08 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
grouplets: the inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate
speaking and acting. By primary assembly, and then by
secondary; by "successive elections," and infinite elabora
tion and scrutiny, according to described process, shall
the genuine "plaints and grievances" be at length got to
paper; shall the fit national representative be at length
laid hold of.
How the Avhole people shakes itself, as if it had one
life; and, in thousand-voiced rumor, announces that it is
aAvake, suddenly out of long death-sleep, and will thence
forth sleep no more ! The long looked-for has come at
last; Avotidrous news, of victory, deliverance, enfranchise
ment, sounds magical through every heart. To the proud
strong man it has come; Avhose strong hands shall no
more be gyved ; to whom boundless unconquered continents
lie disclosed. The weary day-drudge has heard of it; the
beggar with his crust moistened in tears. What! To us
also has hope reached; down even tons? 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! Thus, at any rate, may the lower people, who
pay no money-taxes and have no right to vote,* assiduously
croAvd round those that do; and most halls of assembly,
within doors and without, seem animated enough.
Paris, alone of towns, is to have representatives; the
number of them twenty. Paris is divided into sixty dis
tricts ; each of which (assembled in some church, or the
like) is choosing two electors. Official deputations pass
from district to district, for all is inexperience as yet, and
there is endless consulting. The streets swarm strangely
with busy crowds, pacific yet restless and loquacious; at
intervals, is seen the gleam of military muskets ; especially
about the palais, where the parlement, once more on duty,
sits querulous, almost tremulous.
Busy is the French world ! In those great days, what
poorest speculative craftsman but will leave his workshop;
if not to vote, yet to assist in voting? On all highways is
* "Reglement du Roi " (in "Histoire Parlementaire." as above, i,
267-307.)

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 109
a rustling and bustling. Over the wide surface of France,
ever and anon, through the spring months, as the sower
casts his corn abroad upon the furrows, sounds of congre
gating and dispersing; of crowds in deliberation, acclama
tion, voting by ballot and by voice, rise discrepant toward
the ear of heaven. To which political phenomena add this
economical one, that trade is stagnant, and also bread get
ting 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.* 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;" f nor such like,
detain us here. It is the same sad history everywhere;
with superficial variations. A reinstated parlement (as at
Besancon), which stands astonished at this Behemoth of
a states-general it had itself evoked, starts forward, with
more or less audacity, to fix a thorn in its nose ; and, alas,
is instantaneously struck down, and hurled down, and
hurled quite out, for the new popular force can use not only
arguments but brickbats ! Or else, and perhaps combined
with this, it is an order of noblesse (as in Brittany), which
will beforehand tie up the third estate, that it harm not
the old privileges. In which act of tying up, never so
skillfully set about, there is likewise no possibility of pros
pering ; but the Behemoth-Briareus snaps your cords like
green rushes. Tie up? Alas, messieurs! And then, as
for your chivalry rapiers, valor and wager-of-battle, think
one moment, how can that answer? The plebeian heart
too has red life in it, which changes not to paleness at glance
*Bailly, " Memoires," i. 336.
f " Protestation et Arrete des Jeunes Gens dela Ville de Nantes,
du 28 Janvier 1789, avant leur depart pour Rennes. Arrete des
Feunes Gens de la Ville d'Angers, du 4 Fevrier 1789. Arrete des
Meres, Sceurs, Epouses et Amantes des Jeunes Citoyens d'Angers,
du 6 Fevrier 1789." (Reprinted in "Histoire Parlementaire, i.
290-3.)

110 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
even of you; and "the six hunderd Breton geHtlemeu
assembled in arms, fcr seventy-two hours, in the Corde
liers cloister, at Rennes," have to come out again, wiser
than they entered. For the Nantes youth, the Angers
youth, all Brittany was astir; "mothers, sisters and sweet
hearts" shrieking after them, March! The Breton noblesse
must even let the mad world have its way.*
In other provinces, the noblesse, with equal goodwill,
finds it better to stick to protests, to well-redacted
" Cahier s of grievances," and satirical writings and speeches.
Such is partially their course in Provence : whither indeed
Gabriel Honore Riquetti Comte de Mirabeau has rushed
down from Paris, to speak a word in season. In Provence,
the privileged, backed by their Aix parlement, discover
that such novelties, enjoined though they be by royal
edict, tend to national detriment; and what is still more
indisputable, "to impair the dignity of the noblesse."
Whereupon Mirabeau protesting aloud, this same noblesse,
amid huge tumult within doors and without, flatly deter
mines to expel him from their assembly. No other
method, not even that of successive duels, would answer
with him, the obstreperous fierce-glaring man. Expelled
he accordingly is.
"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 perish by the hands of the patri
cians. But he, being struck with the mortal stab flung
dust toward heaven, and called on the avenging deities;
and from this dust there Avas born Marius, Marius not so il
lustrious for exterminating the Cimbri, as for overturning in
Rome the tyranny of the nobles." f Casting up whichnew
curious handful of dust (through the printing press), to
breed what it can and may, Mirabeau stalks forth into the
third estate.
That he now, to ingratiate himself with this third state,
" opened a cloth-shop in Marseilles," and for moments be
came a furnishing tailor, or even the fable that he did so,
is to us always among the pleasant memorabilities of this
* " Hist. Pari." i. 287. " Deux Amis de la Liberte," i. 105-128,
f " Fils Adoptif," v. 256.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. Hi
era. Stranger clothier never wielded the ell-wand, and
rent webs for men, or fractional parts of men. The "Fils
Adoptif "is indignant at such disparaging fable,* which
nevertheless was widely believed in those days, f But in
deed, if Achilles, in the heroic ages, killed mutton, Avhy
should not Mirabeau, in the unheroic ones, measure broad
cloth? 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 is deputy elect, both of Aix and of
Marseilles ; but will prefer Aix. 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 multi
tudes move under him as under the moon do billows of
the sea; he has "become a world-compeller, and ruler over
men. One other incident and specialty we note; with how
different an ¦ interest ! It is of the parlement of Paris
which starts forward, like the others (only with less
audacity, seeing better how it lay), to nose-ring that Behe
moth of a states-general. Worthy Doctor Guillotin,
respectable practitioner in Paris, has drawn up his little
"plan of a Cahier of doleances;" as had he not, having the
wish and gift, the clearest liberty to do? He is getting the
people to sign it; whereupon the surly parlement sum
mons him to give account of himself. He goes; but with
all Paris at his heels; which floods the outer courts, and
copiously signs the Cahier even there, while the doctor is
giving account of himself within ! The parlement cannot
too soon dismiss Guillotin, with compliments; to be borne
home shoulder high. J This respectable Guillotin we hope
to behold once more, and perhaps only once; the parle
ment not even once, but let it be engulfed unseen by us.
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,
* "Memoires de Mirabeau," v. 307.
f Marat, " Ami-du-Peuple " Newspaper (in "Histoire Parlemen-
tiare," ii. 103), etc.
X " Deux Amis de la Liberty," i. 141.

112 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
what certainty can seem so certain as money in the purse,
and the Avisdom 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 rigor of
seasons has also done its part, and to scarcity of work is
added scarcity of food! In the opening spring there
come rumors of forestallment, there come king's edicts,
petitions of bakers against millers; and at length, in the
month of April, troops of ragged Lackalls, and fierce cries
of starvation ! These are the thrice-famed brigands: an
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, won-
drously 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 Appollo'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 {wkti eoixoos) !
But remark at least, for the first time, the singular empire
of suspicion, in those lands, in those days. If poor famish
ing men shall, prior to death, gather in groups and crowds,
as the poor fieldfares and plovers do in bitter weather, were
it but that they may chirp mournfully together, and misery
look in the eyes of misery; if famishing men (what
famishing fieldfares cannot do) should discover, once con
gregated, that they need not die while food is in the
land, since they are many, and with empty wallets have
right hands: in all this, what need were there of preter
natural machinery? To most people, none; but not to
French people, in a time of revolution. These brigands
(as Turgot's also were, fourteen years ago) have all been
set on; enlisted, though without tap of drum, by aristo
crats, by democrats, by D'Orleans, D 'Artois, and enemies
of the public weal. Nay historians, to this day, will
prove it by one argument; these brigands, pretending to
have no victual, nevertheless contrive to drink, nay, have
been seen drunk.* An unexampled fact! But on the
* Lacretelle, 18me " Siecle," ii. 155. 1

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION H3
whole, may we not predict that a people, with such a width
of credulity and of incredulity (the proper union of
which makes suspicion, and indeed unreason generally),
will see shapes enough of immortals fighting in its battle-
ranks, and never want for epical machinery?
Be this as it may, the brigands are clearly got to Paris,
in considerable multitudes ; * with sallow faces, lank
hair (the true enthusiast complexion), with sooty rags;
and also Avith 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.

CHAPTER III.
GROAVN ELECTRIC.
But now also national deputies from all ends of France
are in Paris, with their commissions, what they call
pouvoirs, or powers, in their pockets; inquiring, consult
ing; looking out for lodgings at Versailles. The states-
general shall open there, if not on the first, then surely on
the fourth of May; in grand procession and gala. The
Salle des Menus is all new-carpentered, bedizened for
them ; their very costume has been fixed : a grand con
troversy which there was, as to "slouch-hats or slouch ed-
hats," for the commons deputies, has got as good as ad
justed. Ever new strangers arrive : loungers, miscellaneous
persons, officers on furlough, as the worthy Captain
Dampmartin, whom we hope to be acquainted with: these
also, from all regions, have repaired hither, to see what
is toward. Our Paris committees of the sixty districts, are
busier than ever ; it is uoav too clear, the Paris elections
will be late.
On Monday, the 27th day of April, Astronomer Bailly
notices that the Sieur Reveillon is not at his post. The
Sieur Reveillon, "extensive paper manufacturer of the
* Besenval, iii. 385, etc.

114 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Rue Saint- Antoine;" he, commonly so punctual, is absent
from electoral committee; and even will never reappear
there. In those "immense magazines of velvet paper"
has aught befallen? Alas, yes! Alas, it is no Montgolfier
rising there to-day; but drudgery, rascality and the suburb
that is rising: Was the Sieur Reveillon, himself once a
journeyman, heard to say that "a journeyman might live
handsomely on fifteen sows a day?" Some sevenpence half
penny; 'tis a slender sum! 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. Down in those dark dens, in those dark heads and
hungry hearts, who knows in what strange figure the new
political evangel may have shaped itself ; what miraculous
" Communion of drudges" may be getting formed !
Enough; grim individuals, soon waxing to grim multi
tudes, 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: Reveillon, at
his wit's end, entreats the populace, entreats the authori
ties. Besenval, now in active command, commandant of
Paris, does, toward evening, to Reveillion's earnest prayer,
send some thirty Gardes Francaises. These clear the
street, happily without firing ; and take post there for the
night, in hope that it may be all over. *
Not so : on the morrow it is far worse. Saint- Antoine
has arisen anew, grimmer than ever; reinforced by the
unknown tatterdemalion figures, with their enthusiast
complexion and large sticks. The city, through all
streets, is flowing thitherward to see: "tAVO cartloads of
paving-stones, that happened to pass that way," have been
seized as a visible godsend. Another detachment of
Gardes Francaises 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 evis
cerated by axe and fire; mad din of revolt; musket-volleys
* Besenval, iii. 385-8.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTlON. n 5
responded to by yells, by miscellaneous missiles, by tiles
raining from roof and window, tiles, execrations and
slain men !
The Gardes Francaises like it not, but have to persevere.
All day it continues, slackening and rallying; the sun is
sinking, and 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 Chaussee
d' An tin; alters the tone of the dinner gossip there. Cap
tain Dampmartin leaves his wine ; goes out Avith a friend
or two, to see the fighting. Unwashed men growl on him,
with murmurs of "A bas les Aristocrates (DoAvn 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 Reveillon's too there was not thei' slightest
stealing. *
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 Reveillon has found shelter in the Bastille;
does thereform, 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 Ver
sailles, a thing the man of true worth is used to.f
But how it originated, this fierce electric sputter and
explosion? From D'Orleans! cries the court-party: he
with his gold, enlisted these brigands, surely in some sur
prising manner, without sound of drum : he raked them in
* " Evenemens qui se sont passes sous mes yeux pendant la
Revolution Francaise," par A. H. Dampmartin (Berlin, 1799), i. 25-27.
\ Besenval, iii. 389.

116 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
hither, from all corners; to ferment and take fire; evil is
his good. From the court! cries enlightened patriotism:
it is the cursed gold and wiles of aristocrats that enlisted
them; set them upon ruining an innocent Sieur Reveillon;
to frighten the faint, and disgust men with the career of
freedom. Besenval, with reluctance, concludes that it came from
"the English, our natural enemies." Or, alas, might not
one rather attribute it to Diana in the shape of hunger?
To some twin, Dioscuri Oppression and Revenge; so often
seen in the battles of men? Poor Lackalls, all betoiled,
besoiled, encrusted into dim defacement; into whom never
theless the breath of the Almighty has breathed a living
soul. To them it is clear only that eleutheromaniac phil
osophism has yet baked no bread ; that patriot 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
Defenseurs de la Patrie, martyrs of the good cause.
Or shall we say : insurrection has now served its appren
ticeship; and this was its proof-stroke, and no inconclu
sive one? Its next will be a master-stroke; announcing
indisputable mastership to a- whole astonished world. Let
that rock -fortress, tyranny's stronghold, which they name
Bastille, or, Building as if there were no other building,
look to its guns !
But, in such wise, with primary and secondary assem
blies, and Cahier s of grievances; with motions, congrega
tions of all kinds; with much thunder of froth-eloquence,
and at last with thunder of platoon-musquetry, does agitated
France accomplish its elections. With confused winnow
ing and sifting, in this rather tumultuous manner, it has
now (all except some remnants of Paris) sifted out the true
Avheat-grains of national deputies, twelve hundred and
fourteen in number; and will forthwith open its states-
general.

CHAPTER IV.
THE PROCESSION.

On the first Saturday of May, it is gala at Versailles;
and Monday, fourth of the month, is to be a still greater

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. H7
day. The deputies have mostly got thither, and sought
out lodgings; and are now successively, in long well-
ushered files, kissing the hand of majesty in the chateau.
Supreme Usher de Breze does not give the highest satis
faction : we cannot but observe that in ushering noblesse or
clergy into the anointed presence, he liberally opens both
his folding-doors; and on the other hand, for members of
the third estate opens only one ! However, there is room
to enter; majesty has smiles for all.
The good Louis welcomes his honorable members, with
smiles of hope. He has prepared for them the Hall of
Menus, the largest near him ; and often surveyed the work
men as they went on. A spacious hall : with raised plat
form for throne, court and blood-royal ; space for six hun
dred commons deputies in front ; for half as many clergy on
this hand, and half as many noblesse on that. It has
lofty galleries; wherefrom dames of honor, splendent in
gaze d'or; foreign diplomacies, and other gilt-edged white-
frilled individuals, to the number of two thousand, may sit
and look. Broad passages flow through it; and, outside "
the inner wall, all round it. There are committee-rooms,
guard -rooms, robing-rooms ; really a noble hall; where
upholstery, aided by the subject fine-arts, has done its
best; and crimson tasseled cloths, and emblematic fleurs-
de-lys are not wanting.
The hall is ready: the very costume, as we said, has
been settled ; and the commons are not to wear that hated
slouch-hat {chapeau clabaud) but one not quite so slouched
{chapeau rabattu). As for their manner of working when
all dressed ; for their " voting by head or by order" and
the rest, this, which it were perhaps still time to settle,
and in few hours will be no longer time, remains unsettled;
hangs dubious in the breast of twelve hundred men.
But now finally the sun, on Monday the 4th of May,
has risen; unconcerned, as if it were no special day. And
yet, as his first rays could strike music from the Memnon's
statue on the Nile, what tones were these, so thrilling,
tremulous of preparation and forboding, which he awoke
in every bosom at Versailles ! Huge Paris, in all conceiv
able and inconceivable vehicles, is pouring itself forth;
from each town and village come subsidiary rills: Ver
sailles is a very sea of men. But above all, from the
church of St. Louis to the church of Notre-Dame : one

118 . THE PRENCH REVOLUTION.
vast suspended-billow of -life, with spray scattered even to
the chimney-tops ! For on chimney-tops too, as over the
roofs, and up thitherward on every lamp-iron, signpost,
breakneck coign of vantage, sits patriotic courage; and
every window bursts with patriotic beauty ; for the deputies
are gathering at St. Louis Church; to march in procession
to Notre-Dame, and hear sermon.
Yes, friends, ye may sit and look; bodily or in thought,
all France and all Europe, may sit and look ; for it is a
day like few others. Oh, one might weep like Xerxes:
So many serried rows sit perched there; like winged crea
tures, alighted out of heaven : all these, and so many more
that follow them, shall have wholly fled aloft again, van
ishing into the blue deep ; and the memory of this day still
be fresh. It is the baptism day of democracy ; sick Time has
given it birth, the numbered months being run. The ex
treme-unction day of feudalism! A superannuated system
of society, decrepit with toils (for has it not done much;
produced you, and what ye have and know !) and with thefts
and brawls, named glorious victories ; and with profligacies,
sensualities, and on the whole with dotage and senility, is
now to die : and so, with death-throes and birth-throes, anew
one is to be born. What a work, oh, earth and heavens,
what a work ! Battles and bloodshed, September massacres,
bridges of Lodi, retreats of Moscow, Waterloos, Peterloos,
tenpound franchises, tarbarrels and guillotines; and from
this present date, if one might prophesy, some two cen
turies of it still to fight! Two centuries; hardly less; be
fore democracy go through its due, most baleful, stages of
quackocmcy ; and a pestilential world be burned up, and
have begun to groAv green and young again.
Rejoice nevertheless, ye Versailles multitudes; to you,
from whom all this is hid, the glorious end of it is visible.
This day, sentence of death is pronounced on shams; judg
ment of resuscitation, were it but afar 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
Ms chapter of world-history.
Behold, however! The doors of St. Louis Church flung
wide; and the procession of processions advancing toward

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 1 19
Notre-Dame! Shouts rend the air; one shout, at Avhich
Grecian birds might drop dead. It is indeed a stately, sol
emn sight. The elected of France, and then the court of
France; they are marshaled and march there, all in pre
scribed place and costume. Our commons " in plain black
mantle and white cravat;" Noblesse, in gold-worked,
bright-dyed cloaks of velvet, resplendent, rustling with
laces, waving with plumes; the clergy in rochet, alb, or
other best pontificalibus: lastly comes the king himself, and
king's household, also in their brightest blaze of pomp,
their brightest and final one. Some fourteen hundred men
blown together from all Avinds, on the deepest errand.
Yes, in that silent marching mass there lies futurity
enough. No symbolic ark, like the old Hebrews, do these
men hear : yet with them too is a covenant ; they too pre
side at a new era in the history of men. The whole future
is there, and destiny dim-brooding over it; in the hearts
and unshaped thoughts of these men, it lies illegible,
inevitable. Singular to think : they have it in them ; yet
not they, not mortal, only the eye above can read it, as
it shall unfold itself, in fire and thunder, of siege, and
field-artillery ; in the rustling of battle-banners, the tramp
of hosts, in the glow of burning cities, the shriek of
strangled nations! Such things lie hidden, safe-wraped in
this Fourth day of May ; say rather, had lain in some
other unknown day, of which this latter is the public fruit
and outcome. As indeed what wonders lie in every day,
had we the sight, as happily we have not, to decipher it!
for is not every meanest day "the conflux of two eter
nities !"
Meanwhile, suppose we too, good reader, should, as now
without miracle Muse Clio enables us, take our station also
on some coign of vantage; and glance momentarily over
this procession, and this life-sea ; with far other eyes than
the rest do, namely with prophetic? We can mount, and
stand there, without fear of falling.
As for the life-sea, or onlooking unnumbered multitude,
it is unfortunately all too dim. Yet as we gaze fixedly,
do not nameless figures not a feAv, which shall not always
be nameless, disclose themselves; visible or presumable
there! Young Baroness de Stael — she evidently looks
from a window; among older honorable women.* Her
* Madame de Stael, " Considerations sur la Revolution Franijaise"
(Loudon, 1818), i. 114-191.

120 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
father is minister, and one of the gala personages; to his
own eyes the chief one. Young spiritual Amazon, thy
rest is not there; nor thy loved father's; "as Malebranche
saw all things in God, so M. Necker sees all things in
Necker," a theorem that will not hold.
But where is the brown-locked, light-behaved, fire-
hearted Demoiselle Theroigne? Brown eloquent beauty ;
who, with thy winged words and glances, shalt thrill
rough bosoms, whole steel battalions, and persuade an
Austrian kaiser, pike and helm lie provided for thee in
due season; and, alas, also strait-waistcoat and long lodging
in the Salpetriesre ! Better hadst thou staid in native
Luxemburg, and been the mother of some brave man's
children : but it was not thy task, it was not thy lot.
Of the rougher sex how, without tongue, or hundred
tongues, of iron, enumerate the notabilities! Has not
Marquis Valadi hastily quitted his Quaker broadbrim; his
Pythagorean Greek in Wapping, and the city of Glasgow? *
De Morande from his Courrier de la Europe; Linguet
from his Annates, they looked eager through the London
fog, and became ex-editors, that they might feed the
guillotine, and have their due. Does Louvet (of Fablas)
stand a-tiptoe? AndBrissot, hight De Warville, friend of
the blacks? He, with Marquis Condorcet, and Claviere
the Genevese, "have created the Moniteur newspaper," or
are about creating it. Able editors must give account of
such a clay.
Or seest thou with any distinctness, low down probably,
not in places of honor, a Stanislas Maillard, riding-tipstaff
{huissier a cheval) of the Chatelet ; one of the shiftiest of
men? A Captain Hulin of Geneva, Captain Elie of the
queen's regiment; both with an air of half -pay? Jourdan,
with tile-colored whiskers, not yet with tile-beard; an
unjust dealer in mules? He shall be, in few months,
Jourdan the headsman, and have other work.
Surely also, in some place not of honor, stands or
sprawls up querulous, that he too, though short, may see,
one squalidests bleared mortal, redolent of soot and horse-
drugs ; Jean Paul Marat of Neuchatel ! Oh Morat, renovator -
of human science, lecturer on optics; oh, thou remark-
ablest horseleech, once in D 'Artois' stables, as thy bleared
* " Founders of the French Republic " (London, 1798), § Valadi.

THE FR ENCH RE VOL U TION. 121
soul looks forth, through thy bleared, dull-acrid, woe-
stricken face, what sees it in all this? Any faintest light
of hope; like dayspring after Nova-Zembla night? Oris
it but blue sulphur-light, and specters, woe, suspicion,
revenge without end?
Of Draper Lecointre, how he shut his cloth-shop hard
by, and stepped forth, one need hardly speak. Nor of
Santerre, the sonorous brewer from the Faubourg St.
Antoine. Two other figures, and only two, we signalize
there. The huge, brawny figure; through whose black
brows, and rude flattened face {figure ecrasee), there looks
a waste energy as of Hercules not yet furibund, he is an
esurient, unprovided advocate; Danton by name: him
mark. Then that other, his slight-built comrade and
craft-brother; he with the long curling locks; with the
face of dingy blackguardism, wondrously irradiated with
genius, as if a naphtha-lamp burned within it : that figure
is Camille Desmoulins. A fellow of infinite shrewdness,
wit, nay humor; 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!
But the brawny, not ye't furibund figure, we say, is Jacques
Danton; a name that shall be "tolerably knoAvn in the
revolution." He is president of the electoral Cordeliers
district at Paris, or about to be it ; and shall open his lungs
of brass.
We dwell no longer on the mixed shouting multitude:
for now, behold, the commons deputies are at hand!
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. He with
the thick black locks, will it be? With the hurd, as him
self calls it, or black boars' -head, fit to be "shaken" as a
senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows,
and rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face, there look
natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,
and burning fire of genius; like comet-fire glaring fuligi
nous through murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honor e

122 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Riquetti de Mirabeau, the world-compeller; man -ruling
deputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de Stael, he
steps proudly along, though looked at askance here; and
shakes his black chevelure, or lion's mane; as if prophetic
of great deeds.
Yes, reader, that is the type-Frenchman of this epoch;
as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspira
tions, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps
more French than any other man; and intrinsically such a
mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The national
assembly were all different without that one; nay, he
might say with the old despot: " The national assembly?
I am that."
Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood : for the
Riquettis, or Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the
Guelfs, long centuries ago, and settled in Provence; where
from generation to generation they have ever approved
themselves a peculiar kindred : irascible, indomitable, sharp-
cutting, true, like the steel they wore ; of an intensity and
activity that sometimes verged toward madness, yet did
not reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfillment of
a mad vow, chains tAVO 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 drift
ing, which also shall be seen?
Destiny has work for that swart burly -headed Mirabeau;
destiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did
not his grandfather, stout Col-d,' Argent (silver-stock, so
they named him), shattered and slashed by seven-and-
twenty wounds in one fell day lie sunk together ou the
bridge at Casano; while \Prince Eugene's cavalry galloped
and regalloped over him, only the flying sergeant had
thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head; and Vendome,
dropping his spyglass, moaned out, "Mirabeau is dead,
then!" Nevertheless he was not dead; he awoke to breath,
and miraculous surgery; for Gabriel was yet to be. With
his silver stock he kept his sacred head erect, through long
years; and wedded; and 'produced tough Marquis Victor,
the friend of men. Whereby at last in the appointed year
1749, this long-expected rough-hewn Gabriel Honore did
likewise see the light: roughest lion's-Avhelp ever littered
of that rough breed. How the old lion (for our old mar
quis too was lion-like, most unconquerable, kingly-genial,

1HE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 123
most perverse) gazed wondering on his offspring; and
determined to train him as no lion had yet been ! It is in
vain, oh, marquis! This cub, though thou slay him and
flay him, will not learn to draw in dogcart of political
economy, and be a friend of men; he will not be thou, but
must and will be himself, another than thou. Divorce
lawsuits, " whole family save one in prison, and three-score
lettres-de-cacfiet" for thy own sole use, do but astonish the
world. Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has
been in the Isle of Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his
toAver ; in the castle of If and heard the Mediterranean at
Marseilles. He has been in the fortress of Joux; and
forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the
dungeon of Vincennes; all by lettres-de-cachet, from his
lion father. He has been in Pontarlier jails (self-consti
tuted prisoner} ; was noticed fording estuaries of the sea
(at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has
pleaded before Aix parlements (to get back his wife) ; the
public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear ;
" the clatter-teeth !" {claque-dents) snarls singular old Mira
beau; discerning in such admired forensic eloquence
nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant,
sonorous, of the drum species.
But as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfarings,
what has he not seen and tried ! From drill-sergeants, to
prime-ministers, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all
manner of men he has seen. All manner of men he has
gained ; for at bottom it is a social, loving heart, that wild
unconquerable one: more especially all manner of women.
From the archer's daughter at Saintes to that fair young
Sophie Madame Monnier, whom he could not but "steal,"
and be beheaded for — in effigy ! For indeed hardly since
the Arabian prophet lay dead to Ali's admiration, was
there seen such a love-hero, with the strength of thirty
men. In war, again, he has helped to conquer Corsica;
fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious
barons. In literature, he has written on " Depotism," on
"Lettres-de-Cachet;" erotics Sapphic-Werterean, obsceni
ties, profanities; books on the "Prussian Monarchy," on
"Cagliostro," on "Calonne," on the "Water-Companies of
Paris:" each book comparable, we will say, to a bituminous
alarum-fire; huge, smoky, sudden! The firepan, the

124 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
kindling, the bitumen were his own ; but the lumber, of
rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish (for all
is fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters, and ass-
panniers, of every description under heaven. Whereby,
indeed, hucksters enough have been heard to exclaim:
Out upon it, the fire is mine!
Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a
talent for borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another
man he can make his; the man himself he can make his.
"All reflex and echo {tout de reflet et de reverbere)"
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 qualities 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 !
But consider further how, as the old marquis still snarls,
he has "made aAvay with {hume, swallowed, snuffed-up)
all formulas;" a fact which, if we meditate it, will in
these days mean much. This is no man of system, then;
he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man never
theless 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;
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.
Toward such work, in such manner, marches he, this
singular Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with
black Samson-locks under the slouch-hat, he steps along
there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could not be choked

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 125
and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke. And
now it has got air it will burn its whole substance, its
whole smoke atmosphere too, and fill all France with
flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that smoldering,
with foul fire-damp and vapor enough ; then victory over
that; and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high ;
and for twenty-three replendent 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 Houore, the greatest of them all: in the Avhole
national deputies, in the whole nation, there is none like
and none second to thee.
But now if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these six
hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say, that anxious,
slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles;
his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with up
turned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future time;
complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade
of which may be the pale sea-green.* That greenish-
colored {verddtre) individual is an advocate of Arras; his
name is Maximelien Robespierre. The son of an advo
cate; his father founded mason-lodges under Charles
Edward, the English prince or pretender. Maximelien
the first-born was thriftily educated; he had brisk Camille
Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le
Grand, at Paris. But he begged our famed necklace-
cardinal, Rohan, the patron, to let him depart thence, and
resign in favor of a younger brother. The strict-minded
Max departed; home to paternal Arras; and even had a
law-case there and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, " in favor
of the first Franklin thunder-rod." With a strict painful
mind, an understanding small but clear and ready, he
grew in favor with official persons who could foresee in him
an excellent man of business, happily quite free from
genius. The bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints
him judge of his diocese; and he faithfully does justice to
the people; till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose
crime merits hanging; and the strict-minded Max must
abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of
*See De Stael, "Considerations" (ii. 142); Barbaroux, "Me
moires," etc.

126 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
any son of Adam to die. A strict-minded, strait-laced
man! A man unfit for revolutions? Whose small soul,
transparent, wholesome-looking as small-ale, could by no
chance ferment into virulent alegar, the mother of ever
new alegar; till all France were grown acetous virulent?
We shall see.
Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest,
so many grand and mean roll on, toward their several
destinies, in that procession! There is Cazales, the
learned young soldier; who shall become the eloquent
orator of royalism, and earn the shadow of a name. Ex
perienced Mounier, experienced Malouet; whose presi
dential parlementary experience the stream of things shall
soon leave stranded. A Petion has left his gown and
briefs at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading ; has not
forgotten his violin, being fond of music. His hair is
grizzled, though he is still young, convictions, beliefs
placid-unalterable are in that man; not hindmost of them,
belief in himself. A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.Etienne,
a slender young eloquent and vehement barnave, will
help to regenerate France. There are so many of them
young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to
marry : but how many men here under thirty ; coming to
produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a
world of such ! The old to heal up rents ; the young to
remove rubbish: which latter, is it not, indeed, the task
here? Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically
there, thou noticest the deputies from Nantes? To us
mere clothes-screens, with slouch-hat and cloak, but bear
ing in their pocket a cahier of doleances with this singular
clause, and more such, in it: "That the master Avigmakers
of Nantes be not troubled with new guild-brethren, the
actually existing number of ninety-two being more than
sufficient!"* The Rennes people have elected Farmer
Gerard, "a man of natural sense and rectitude, without
any learning." He walks there, with solid step; unique,
"in his rustic farmer-clothes;" which he will wear always;
careless of short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gerard,
or " Pere Gerard, Father Gerard," as they please to call
him, will fly far; borne about in endless banter; in royalist
* " Histoire Parlementaire," i. 335.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 127
satires, in republican didactic almanacs.* As for the man
Gerard, being asked once, what he did, after trial of it,
candidly think of this parlementary work, "I think," an
swered he, "that there are a good many scoundrels among
us." So walks Father Gerard; solid in his thick shoes,
whithersoever bound.
And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold
one other time? If not here, the doctor should be here,
and we see him with the eye of prophecy ; for indeed the
Parisian deputies are all a little late. Singular Guillotin,
respectable practitioner : doomed by a satiric destiny to the
strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal
from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion! Guillotin
can improve the ventilation of the hall; in all cases of
medical police and hygiene be a present aid : but, greater
far, he can produce his "Report on the Penal Code;" and
reveal therein a cunningly devised beheading machine,
which shall become famous and world-famous. This is the
product of Guillotin's endeavors, gained not Avithout medi
tation 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 tete)
in a twinkling and you have no pain" ; whereat they all
laugh. f Unfortunate doctor! For two-and-twenty years
he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see
nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long cen
turies wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the
wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive
Caesar's. See Bailly likewise of Paris, time-honored historian of
astronomy ancient and modern. Poor Bailly, hoAV thy
serenely beautiful philosohpizing, with its soft moonshiny
clearness and thinness, ends in foul thick confusion — of
presidency, mayorship, diplomatic officialty, 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
* " Actes des Apotres " (by Peltier and others);" Almanach du Pere
Gerard " (by Collot d' Herbois), etc. etc.
f"Moniteur" Newspaper, of December 1st, 1789 (in "Histoire
Parlementaire ").

128 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
must "tremble," though only with cold, "de froid."
Speculation is not practice : to be weak is not so miser
able; but to be weaker than our task. Woe the day when
they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that Avild
hippogrifE 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; *
and at least one clergyman; the Abbe Sieges. Him also
Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light
thin man ; cold, but elastic, Aviry ; instinct with the pride
of logic; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-
conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which, in
its independent concentrated greatness, seems to have
soared into transcendentalism ; and to sit there with a
kind of godlike indifference, and look down on passion!
He is the man, and wisdom shall, die with him. This is
the Sieyes who shall be system-builder, constitution-builder
general; and build constitutions (as many as wanted) sky-
high, Avhich shall all unfortunately fall before he get the
scaffolding aAvay. "La Politique," said he to Dumont,
"Polity is a science I think I have completed {achevee)." f
What things, Oh, Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes,
art thou to see! But were it not curious to know how
Sieyes, now in these days (for he is said to be still alive) X
looks out on all that constitution masonry, through the
rheumy soberness of extreme age? Might we hope, still
with the old irrefragable transcendentalism? The vic
torious cause pleased the gods, the vanquisned one pleased
Sieyes {victa Catoni).
Thus, however, amid skyrending vivats, and blessings
from every heart, has the procesiion of the commons
deputies rolled by.
Next follow the noblesse, and next the clergy; concern
ing both of whom it might be asked, What they specially
have come for? Specially, little as they dream of it, to
answer this question, put in a voice of thunder: What are
* Bouille, " Memoires sur la Revolution Francaise" (London, 1797).
i. 68. \ Dumont, " Souvenirs sur Mirabeau," p. 64.
Ja.d. 1834.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 129
you doing in God's fair earth and task -garden; where who
soever is not working is begging or stealing? Woe, woe
to themselves and to all, if they can only answer: Collect
ing tithes, preserving game! Remark, meanwhile, how
D'Orleans affects to step before his own order, and mingle
with the commons. For him are vivats: few for the rest,
though all wave in plumed "hats of a feudal cut," and
have sword on thigh; though among them is D'Antraigeus,
the young Langnedocian gentleman, and indeed many a
peer more or less noteworthy.
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 Wash
ington-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,iand right mind to conform thereto ; he can become
a hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one
idea. Note further our old parlementary friend, Crispin-
Catiline d'Espremenil. He is returned from the Mediter
ranean Islands, a redhot royalist, repentant to the finger-
ends; unsettled-looking; whose light, dusky-glowing at
best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the national
assembly will by and by, to save time, "regard as in a
state of distraction." Note lastly that globular younger
Mirabeau ; indignant that his elder brother is among the
commons : it is Viscomle Mirabeau ; named of tener Mira
beau 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 toward 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

130 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
them. But now, when so many looms, improved plow
shares, steam-engines and bills of exchange have been
invented ; and, for battle-brawling itself, men hire drill-ser
geants at eighteenpence a day, what mean these gold-
mantled chivalry figures, walking there "in black-velvet
cloaks," in high-plumed "hats of a feudal cut?" Reeds
shaken in the wind!
The clergy have got up ; with cahier s for abolishing
pluralities, enforcing residence of bishops, better payment
of tithes.* The dignitaries, we can observe, walk stately,
apart from the numerous undignified, who indeed are
properly little other than commons disguised in curate-
frocks. " Here, however, though by strange ways, shall the
precept be fulfilled, and they -that are greatest (much to
their astonishment) become least. For one example, out
of many, mark that plausible Gregoire: one day Cure
Gregoire shall be a bishop, when the now stately are wan
dering distracted, as bishops in partibus. With other
thought, mark also the Abbe Maury: his broad bold face;
mouth accurately primmed; full eyes, that ray out intelli
gence, falsehood, the sort of sophistry which is astonished
you should find it sophistical. Skillfulest vampeV-up of
old rotten leather, to make it look like new; always a
rising man; he used to tell Mercier, "You will see; I
shall be in the academy before you."f Likely indeed,
thou skillfulest Maury; nay, thou shalt have a cardinal's
hat, and plush and glory ; but alas, also, in the long run —
mere oblivion, like the rest of us; and six feet of earth!
What boots it, vamping rotten leather on these terms?
Glorious in comparison is the livelihood thy good old father
earns, by making shoes, one may hope, in a sufficient man
ner. Maury does not want for audacity. He shall wear
pistols, by and by; and, at death-cries of "La lanteme,
the lamp-iron!" answer coolly, "Friends, Avill you see bet
ter there?"
But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next
Bishop Talleyrand-Perigord, his reverence of Autun.
A sardonic grimness lies in that irreverend reverence of
Autun. 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;
* " Hist. Pari." i. 322-27. f Mercier, " Nouveau Paris."

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 131
yet not what you can call a false man: there is the
specialty f It will be an enigma for future ages, one may
hope: hitherto such a product of nature and art was pos
sible only for this age of ours, age of paper, and of the
burning of paper. Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Mar
quis Lafayette as the topmost of their two kinds ; and say
once more, looking at what they did and what they were,
0 Tempus ferax rerum!
On the whole, however, 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.

King Louis with his court brings up the rear ; he cheer
ful, in this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits; still more
Necker his minister. Not so the queen; on whom hope
shines not steadily any more. Ill-fated queen ! Her hair
is already gray with many cares and crosses; her first-born
son is dying in these weeks : black falsehood has ineff ace-
ably soiled her name; ineffaeeably while this generation
lasts. Instead of Vive la Reine, voices insult her with Vive
d' Orleans. 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! Oh, these 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 toward honor and quick fire-consumma
tion; most toward dishonor; not a few toward massacre,
confusion, emigration, desperation; all toward eternity!

132 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
So many heterogeneities cast together into the fermenting-
vat; there, with incalcuable action, counteraction, elective
affinities, explosive developments, to work out healing for
a sick moribund system of society ! Probably the strangest
body of men, if we consider well, that ever met together
on our planet on such an errand. So thousandfold com
plex a society, ready to burst up from its infinite depths;
and these men, its rulers and healers, without life-rule for
themselves, other life-rule than a gospel according to Jean
Jacques! To the wisest of them, Avhat 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 con
stitution." 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 pretense of-belief, in consecrated dough-
wafers, and the godhood of a poor old Italian man ! Never
theless 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. A determination, which, con
sciously or unconsciously, is fixed; which waxes ever more
fixed, into very madness and fixed idea; which in such em
bodiment as lies provided there, shall now unfold itself
rapidly: monstrous, stupendous, unspeakable; new for
long thousands of years! How has the heaven's light, of
tentimes in this earth, to clothe itself in thunder and elec
tric murkiness; and descend as molten lightning, blasting
if purifying ! Nay it is not rather the very murkiness,
and atmospheric suffocation, that brings the lightning and
the light? The neAV evangel, as the old had been, was it
to be born in the destruction of a world?
But hoAV the deputies assisted at high mass, and heard
sermon, and applauded the preacher, church as it was,
when he preached politics; how, next day, with sustained
pomp, they are, for the first time, installed in their Salle
des Menus (hall no longer of amusements), and become a
states-general, readers can fancy for themselves. The king

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 133
from his estrade, gorgeous as Solomon in all his glory,
runs his eye over that majestic hall; many-plumed, many-
glancing; bright-tinted as rainbow, in the galleries and
near side-spaces, where beauty sits raining bright influence.
Satisfaction, as of one that after long voyaging had got
to port, plays over his broad simple face ; the innocent
king! He rises and speaks, with sonorous tone, a con
ceivable speech. With which, still more with the succeed
ing one-hour and two-hours speeches of Garde-des-Sceaux
and M. Necker, full of nothing but patriotism, hope,
faith, and deficiency of the revenue, no reader of these
pages shall be tried.
We remark only that, as his majesty, on finishing the
speech, put on his plumed hat, and the 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.* Thick buzz among them, between
majority and minority of Couvrez vous, Decouvrez-vous
(Hats off, Hats on) ! To which his majesty puts end, by
taking off his own royal hat again.
The session terminates without further accident or omen
than this; with which, significantly enough, France has
opened her states-general.
* " Histoire Parlementaire " (i. 356). Mercier, " Nouveau
Paris," etc!

134 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.

BOOK FIFTH.
THE THIRD ESTATE.

CHAPTER I.
INERTIA.

That exasperated France, in this same national assem
bly of hers, has got something, nay something great,
momentous, indispensable, cannot be doubted; yet still
the question were : Specially what? A question hard to
solve, even for calm onlookers at this distance ; wholly in
soluble to actors in the middle of it. The states-general,
created and conflated by the passionate effort of the whole
nation is there as a thing high and lifted up. Hope, jubi
lating, 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 ser
pent-bites. We may answer, it will at least prove a symbolic banner;
round which the exasperated complaining twenty-five mil
lions, 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 Repub
lican Carroccio) ; and shall tower up, car-borne, shining in
the wind; and with iron tongue peal forth many a signal.
A thing of prime necessity; which whether in the van or
in the center, whether leading or led and driven, must do
the fighting multitude incalculable services. For a season,
while it floats io the very front, nay as it were stands soli
tary there, waiting whether force will gather round it, this

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 135
same national Carroccio, and the signal-peals it rings, are
a main object with us.
The omen of the " slouch-hats clapped on" shows the com
mons deputies to have made up their minds on one thing :
that neither noblesse nor clergy shall have precedence of
them; hardly even majesty itself. To such length has
the contrat social, and force of public opinion, carried us.
For what is majesty but the delegate of the nation; dele
gated, and bargained with (even rather tightly), in some
very singular posture of affairs, which Jean Jacques has
not fixed the date of?
Coming therefore into their hall, on the morrow, an in
organic mass of six hundred individuals, these commons
deputies perceive, without terror, that they have it all to
themselves. Their hall is also the grand or general hall
for all the three orders. But the noblesse and clergy, it
would seem, have retired to their two separate apartments,
or halls; and are there "verifying their powers," not in a
conjoint but in a separate capacity. They are to consti
tute two separate, perhaps separately-voting orders, then?
It is as if both noblesse and clergy had silently taken for
granted that they already were such! Two orders against
one; and so the third order to be left in a perpetual
minority? Much may remain unfixed ; but the negative of that is a
thing fixed: in the slouch-hatted heads, in the French na
tion's head. Double representation, and all else hitherto
gained, were otherwise futile, null. Doubtless, the
"poAversmust 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. Neither is this question, of doing it separately
or doing it conjointly, a vital one : but if it lead to such ?
It must be resisted; wise was that maxim, Resist the
beginnings! Nay, were resistance unadvisable, even dan
gerous, yet surely pause is very natural: pause, with
twenty-five millions behind you, may become resistance
enough. The inorganic mass of commons deputies will
restrict itself to a "system of inertia," and for the present
remain inorganic.
Such method, recommendable alike to sagacity and to
timidity, do the commons deputies adopt; and, not with
out adroitness, and with ever more tenacity, they persist in

136 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION:
it, day after day, week after week. 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 incubat
ing! In fact, what they did was to do nothing, in a
judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body reassembles;
regrets that they cannot get organization, "verification of
powers in common," and begin regenerating France. Head
long motions may be made, but let such be repressed;
inertia alone is at once unpunishable and unconquerable.
Cunning must be met °by cunning; proud pretension by
inertia, by a low tone of patriotic sorrow; low, but incur
able, unalterable. Wise as serpents; harmless as doves:
what a spectacle for France! Six hundred inorganic
individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit
there, on their elliptic benches, longing passionately toward
life: in painful durance; like souls waiting to be born.
Speeches are spoken; eloquent; audible within doors and
without. Mind agitates itself against mind; the nation
looks on with ever deeper interest. Thus do the commons
deputies sit incubating.
There are private conclaves, supper-parties, consultations;
Breton Club, Club of Viroflay; germs of many clubs.
Wholly an element of confused noise, dimness, angry heat;
wherein, however, the Eros-egg, kept at the fit tempera
ture, may hover safe, unbroken till it be hatched. In
your Mouniers, Malouets, Lechapeliers is science sufficient
for that; fervor in your Barnaves, Rabauts. At times
shall come an inspiration from royal Mirabeau: he is
nowise yet recognized as royal; nay he was "groaned at,"
when his name was first mentioned: but he is struggling
toward recognition.
In the course of the week, the commons having called
their eldest to the chair, and furnished him with young
stronger-lunged assistants, can speak articulately; and, in
audible lamentable words, declare, as we said, that they
are an inorganic body, longing to become organic. Letters
arrive; but an inorganic body cannot open letters; they
lie on the table unopened. The eldest may at most pro
cure for himself some kind of list or muster-roll, to take
the votes by; and wait what Avill betide. Noblesse and
clergy are all elsewhere ; however, an eager public crowds all
galleries and vacancies ; which is some comfort. With effort,

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: 137
it is determined, not that a deputation shall be sent, for
how can an inorganic body send deputations? but that
certain individual commons members shall, in an accidental
way, stroll into the clergy chamber, and then into the
noblesse one; and mention there, as a thing they have
happened to observe, that the commons seem to be sitting
waiting for them, in order to verify their powers. That
is the wiser method !
The clergy, among whom are such a multitude of undig
nified, of mere commons in curate's frocks, depute instant
respectful answer that they are, and will now more than
ever be, in deepest study as to that very matter. Con
trariwise the noblesse, in cavalier attitude, reply, after four
days, that they, for their part, are all verified and consti
tuted; which, they had trusted, the commons also were;
such separate verification being clearly the proper consti
tutional wisdom-of -ancestors method ; as they the noblesse
will have much pleasure in demonstrating by a commission
of their number, if the commons will meet them, commis
sion against commission ! Directly in the rear of which
comes a deputation of clergy, reiterating, in their insidious
conciliatory way, the same proposal. Here, then, is a com
plexity; what will wise commons say to this?
Warily, inertly, the wise commons, considering that
they are, if not a French third estate, at least an aggregate
of individuals pretending to some title of that kind, deter
mine, after talking on it five days, to name such a com
mission, though, as it were, with proviso not to be con
vinced; a sixth day is taken up in naming it; a seventh
and an eighth day in getting the forms of meeting, place,
hour and the like, settled : so that it is not till the even
ing of the 23rd of May that noblesse commission first meets
commons commission, clergy acting as conciliators; and
begins the impossible task of convincing it. One other
meeting, on the 25th, will suffice: the commons are incon-
vincible, the noblesse and clergy irrefragably convincing;
the commissions retire; each order persisting in its first
pretensions.* Thus have three weeks passed. For three weeks, the
third estate Carroccio, with far-seen Gonfalon, has stood
* Reported Debates, 6th May to 1st June, 1789 (in "Histoire Parle-
mentaire," i. 379-422).

138 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
stockstill, "flouting the wind; waiting what force would
gather round it.
Fancy can conceive the feeling of the court; and how
counsel met council, and loud-sounding inanity whirled
in that distracted vortex, where Avisdom could not dwell.
Your cunningly devised taxing-machine has been got to
gether; set up Avith incredible labor; and stands there, its
three pieces in contact; its two fly-wheels of noblesse and
clergy, its huge working-wheel of Tiers-Etat. The two
fly-wheels Avhirl in the softest manner; but, prodigious
to look upon, the huge working-wheel hangs motionless,
refuses to stir! The cunningest engineers are at fault.
How will it work, when it does begin? Fearfully, my
friends; and to many purposes; but to gather taxes, or
grind court-meal, one may apprehend, never. Could Ave
but have continued gathering taxes by hand! Mes-
seigneurs d'Artois, Conti, Conde (named Court Trium
virate), they of the anti-democratic Memoire au Roi, has
not their foreboding proved true? They may wave
reproachfully their high heads ; they may beat their poor
brains; but the cunningest engineers can do nothing.
Necker himself, were he even listened to, begins to look
blue. The only thing one sees advisable is to bring up
soldiers. New regiments, two, and a battalion of a third,
have already reached Paris; others shall get in march.
Good were it, in all circumstances, to have troops within
reach; good that the command were in sure hands. Let
Broglie be appointed; old Marshal Duke de Broglie; vet
eran disciplinarian, of a firm drill-sergeant morality, such
as may be depended on.
For, alas, neither are the clergy, or the very noblesse
Avhat they should be; and might be, when so menaced from
without; entire, undivided Avithin. The noblesse, indeed,
have their Catiline or Crispin D'Espremenil, dusky-glow
ing, all in renegade heat; their boisterous Barrel- Mirabeau;
but also they have their Lafayettes, Liancourts, Lameths;
above all, their D'Orleans, noAV cut forever from his court-
moorings, and musing drowsily of high and highest sea-
prizes (for is not he too a son of Henri Quatre, and partial
potential heir-apparent?) on his voyage toward chaos.
From the clergy again, so numerous are the cures, actual
deserters have run over: two small parties; in the second
party Cure Gregoire. Nay there is talk of a whole hun-

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 139
dred and forty-nine of them about to desert in mass, and
only restrained by an archbishop of Paris. It seems a
losing game.
But judge if France, if Paris sat idle, all this while!
Addresses from far and near flow in : for our commons
have now grown organic enough to open letters. Or
indeed to cavil at them ! Thus poor Marquis de Brez6,
supreme usher, master of ceremonies, or whatever his title
was, writing about this time on some ceremonial matter,
sees no harm in winding up with a " Monsieur, yours with
sincere attachment." " To whom does it address itself, this
sincere attachment?" inquires Mirabeau. "To the dean of
the Tiers-Etat." " There is no man in France entitled to
write that," rejoins he; whereat the galleries and the
world will not be kept from applauding.* Poor De
Breze ! These commons have a still older grudge at him ;
nor has he yet done with them.
In another way, Mirabeau has had to protest against the
quick suppression of his newspaper, Journal of the States-
General; and to continue it under a new name. In which
act of valor, the Paris electors, still busy redacting their
cahier, could not but support him, by address to his
majesty; they claim utmost "provisory freedom of the
press ;" they have spoken even about demolishing the Bas
tille, and erecting a bronze patriot king on the site ! These
are the rich burghers: but now consider how it went, for
example, with such loose miscellany, now all grown
eleutheromaniac, of loungers, proAvlers, social nondescripts
(and the distilled rascality of our planet), as whirls for
ever in the Palais Royal ; or what low infinite groan, fast
changing into a growl, comes from Saint-Antoine, and the
twenty-five millions in danger of starvation!
There is the indisputablest scarcity of corn; be it aris
tocrat-plot, D' Orleans-plot, of this year; or drought and
hail of last year : in city and province, the poor man looks
desolately toward a nameless lot. And this states-general,
that could make us an age of gold, is forced to stand mo
tionless; 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
* " Moniteur " (in "Histoire Parlementaire," i, 405),

140 THE FR ENCH R E VOL UTION.
bois) ; * most convenient ; where select patriotism can now
redact resolutions, deliver harangues, with comfort, let the
weather be as it will. Lively is that Satan-at-home ! On
his table, on his chair, in every cafe, stands a patriotic
orator; a crowd round him Avithin; a crowd listening from
without, open-mouthed, through open door and window;
with "thunders of applause for every sentiment of more
than common hardiness." In Monsieur Dessein's pam
phlet-shop, close by, you cannot without strong elbowing
get to the counter : every hour produces its pamphlet, or
litter of pamphlets; "there were thirteen to-day, sixteen
yesterday, ninety-two last week." f Think of tyranny
and scarcity; fervid-eloquence, rumor, pamphleteering;
Societe Publicole, Breton Club, Enraged Club; and whether
every tap-room, coffee-room, social reunion, accidental
street-group, over wide France, was not an enraged club !
To all which the commons deputies can only listen with
a sublime inertia of sorrow; reduced to busy themselves
"with their internal police." Surer position no deputies
ever occupied; if they keep it with skill. Let not the
temperature rise too high ; break not the Eros-egg till it be
hatched, till it break itself ! An eager public crowds all
galleries and vacancies; "cannot be restrained from
applauding." The two privileged orders, the noblesse all
verified and constituted, may look on with what face they
will; not without a secret tremor of heart. The clergy,
always acting the part of conciliators, make a clutch at
the galleries, and the popularity there; and miss it.
Deputation of them arrives, Avith dolorous message about
the "dearth of grains," and the necessity there is of cast
ing aside vain formalities, and deliberating on this. An
insidious proposal; which, however, the commons (moved
thereto by sea-green Robespierre) dexterously accept as a
sort of hint, or even pledge, that the clergy will forthwith
come over to them, constitute the states-general and, so
cheapen grains ! J Finally, on the 27th day of May, Mira
beau, 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
* " Histoire Parlementaire," i. 429.
f Arthur Young, " Travels," i. 104.
X Bailly, "Memoires," i. 114.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 141
God of Peace," to join the commons, and begin.* To
which summons if they turn a deaf ear, we shall see ! Are
not one hundred and forty-nine of them ready to desert?
Oh, triumvirate of princes, new Garde-des-Sceaux
Barentin, thou Home-Secretary Breteuil, Duchess Polignac,
and queen eager to listen, what is now to be done? 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 counterbalances and drags, will
be shamefully dragged after it, and take fire along with it.
What is to be done? The 03i]-de-Boeuf waxes more con
fused than ever. Whisper and counter- whisper; a very
tempest of whispers! Leading men from all the three
orders are nightly spirited thither; conjurors many of
them; but can they conjure this? Necker himself were
now welcome, could he interfere to purpose.
Let Necker interfere, then; and in the king's name!
Happily that incendiary " God-of- Peace" message is not
yet answered. The three orders shall again have confer
ences; under this patriot minister of theirs, somewhat may
be healed, clouted up; we meanwhile getting forward
Swiss regiments, and a "hundred pieces of field artillery."
This is what the (Eil-de-Bceuf, for its part, resolves on.
But as for Necker — Alas, poor Necker, thy obstinate
third estate has one first-last word, verification in common,
as the pledge of voting and deliberating in common !
Half-way proposals, from such a tried friend, they answer
with a stare. The tardy conferences speedily break up :
the third estate, now ready and resolute, the whole world
backing it, returns to its hall of the three orders; and
Necker to the G3il-de-Boeuf , with the character of a discon-
jured conjuror there, fit only for dismissal, f
And so the commons deputies are at last on their own
strength getting under way? Instead of chairman, or
dean, they have now got a president : Astronomer Bailly.
Under way, with a vengeance! With endless vociferous
and temperate eloquence, borne on newspaper wings to all
lands, they have now on this 17th day of June, determined
that their name is not Third Estate, but — National
* " Histoire Parlementaire," i. 413.
f Debates, 1st to 17th June, 1789 (in " Histoire Parlementaire," i.
422-478).

142 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
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.
All regardless of which, our new national assembly pro
ceeds to appoint a "committee of subsistences;" dear to
France, though it can find little or no grain. Next as, if
our national assembly stood quite firm on its legs, to
appoint "four other standing committees;" then to settle
the security of the national debt; then that of the annual
taxation : all within eight-and-forty hours. At such rate
of velocity it is going: the conjurors of the 03il-de-Bo3uf
may well ask themselves, Whither?

CHAPTER II.
MERCURY DE BREZE.
Now surely were the time for a "god from the ma
chine;" there is a nodus worthy of one. The only ques
tion 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 Breze !
On the morrow, Avhich is the 20th of June, these hun
dred and forty-nine false curates, no longer restrainable by
his grace of Paris, will desert in a body : let De Breze
intervene, and produce — closed doors! Not only shall
there be royal session, in that Salle des Menus; but no
meeting, nor working (except by carpenters), till then.
Your third estate, self-styled "national assembly," shall
suddenly see itself extruded from its hall, by carpenters, in
this dexterous way ; and reduced to do nothing, not even
to meet, or articulately lament, till majesty, with Seance
Royale and new miracles, be ready ! In this manner shall
De Breze, as Mercury ex machind, intervene; and, if the
OJlil-de-Boeuf' mistake not, work deliverance from the
nodus. Of poor De Brez6 we can remark that he has yet pros
pered in none of his dealings with these commons. Five
weeks ago, when they kissed the hand of majesty, the
mode he took got nothing but censure ; and then his " sin
cere attachment," how was it scornfully whiffed aside!

THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION. 143
Before supper, this night, he writes to President Bailly
a new letter, to be delivered shortly after dawn to-morrow,
in the king's name. Which letter, however, Bailly, in the
pride of office, will merely crush together into his pocket,
like a bill he does not mean to pay.
Accordingly on Saturday morning the 20th of June,
shrill-sounding heralds proclaim, through the streets of
Versailles, that there is to be Seance Royale next Monday ;
and no meeting of the states-general till then. And yet,
we observe, President Bailly, in sound of this, and with
De Breze's letter in his pocket, is proceeding, with national
assembly at his heels, to the accustomed Salle des Menus ;
as if De Brez6 and heralds were mere wind. It is shut,
this Salle; occupied by Gardes Francaises. "Where is
your captain?" The captain shows his royal order: work
men, he is grieved to say, are all busy setting up the plat
form for his majesty's Seance; most unfortunately, no
admission ; admission, at furthest, for president and secre
taries 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 pro
fanation without parallel.
The deputies stand grouped on the Paris road, on this
umbrageous Avenue de Versailles; complaining aloud of
the indignity done them. Courtiers, it is supposed, look
from their windows, and giggle. The morning is none of
the comf ortablest ; raw; it is even drizzling a little.*
But all travelers pause; patriot gallery-men, miscellaneous
spectators increase the groups. Wild counsels alternate.
Some desperate deputies propose to go and hold session on
the great outer staircase at Marly, under the king's win
dows; for his majesty, it seems, has driven over thither.
Others talk of making the ch&teau Forecourt, what they
call Place d'Armes, a Runymede and new Champ de Mai
of free Frenchmen; nay of awakening, to sounds of indig
nant patriotism, the echoes of the Q5il-de-Ba3uf itself.
Notice is given that President Bailly, aided by judicious
Guillotin and others, has found place in the tennis-court
of the Rue St. Francois. Thither, in long-drawB files,
* Bailly, " Memoires," i. 185-206.

144 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
hoarse-jingling, like cranes on wing, the commons deputies
angrily wend.
Strange sight Avas this in the Rue St. Francois, Vieux
Versailles! A naked tennis-court, as the pictures of that
time still give it: four walls, naked, except aloft some
poor wooden penthouse, or roofed spectator's-gallery,
hanging round them : on the floor not now an idle teehee-
ing, a snapping of balls and rackets ; but the bellowing din
of an indignant national representation, scandalously
exiled hither ! However, a cloud of witnesses looks down on
them, from wooden penthouse, from wall-top, from ad
joining roof and chimney; rolls toward them from all
quarters, with passionate spoken blessings. Some table
can be procured to write on; some chair, if not to sit on,
then to stand on. The secretaries undo their tapes; Bailly
has constituted the assembly.
Experienced Mounier, not wholly new to such things, in
parlementary revolts, which he has seen or heard of, thinks
that it were well, in these lamentable threatening circum
stances, to unite thesmelves by an oath. Universal accla
mation, as from smoldering bosoms getting vent! The
oath is redacted; pronounced aloud by President Bailly,
and indeed in such a sonorous tone, that the cloud of wit
nesses, even outdoors, hears it, and bellow response to it.
Six hundred right-hands rise with President Bailly's, to
take God above to witness that they will not separate for
man below, but will meet in all places, under all circum
stances, wheresoever two or three can get together, till
they have made the constitution. Made the constitution,
friends ! That is a long task. Six hundred hands, mean
while, will sign as they have sworn : six hundred save one;
one Loyalist Abdiel, still visible by this sole light-point,
and namable, poor "M. Martin d'Auch, from Castelnau-
dary, in Languedoc." Him they permit to sign or signify
refusal ; they even save him from the cloud of witnesses, by
declaring "his head deranged." At four o'clock, the sig
natures are all appended ; new meeting is fixed for Monday
morning, earlier than the hour of the royal session ; that
our hundred and forty-nine clerical deserters be not balked:
we will meet "at the Recollets church or elseAvhere," in
hope that our hundred and forty-nine will join us; and
now it is time to go to dinner.
This, then, is the session of the tennis-Court, famed

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 145
Seance du Jeu de Paume; the fame of which has gone
forth to all lands. This is Mercurius de Breze's appear
ance as Deus ex machind; this is the fruit it brings ! The
giggle of courtiers in the Versailles avenue has already
died into gaunt silence. Did the distracted court, with
Garde-des-Sceaux Barentin, Triumvirate and Company,
imagine that they could scatter six hundred national
deputies, big with a national constitution, like as much
barndoor poultry, big with next to nothing, by the white
or black rod of a supreme usher? Barndoor poultry fly
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 honor ; which
shall become reAvards. 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 Seance Royale: * which,
by a new felicity, is postponed till Tuesday. The hun
dred 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 ; f for it is growing a life-
and-death matter now.
As for the Seance itself, the carpenters seem to have
accomplished their platform ; but all else remains unaccom
plished. Futile, we may say fatal, was the whole matter.
King Louis enters, through seas of people, all grim-
silent, angry with many things, for it is a bitter rain too.
Enters, to a third estate, likewise grim-silent; which has
been wetted waiting under mean porches, at back-doors,
while court and privileged were entering by the front.
King and Garde-des-Sceaux (there is no Necker visible)
make known, not without longwindedness, the determina
tions of the royal breast. The three orders shall vote sepa
rately. On the other hand, France may look for consider
able consitutional blessings; as specified in these five-and-
* See Arthur Young (" Travels," i. 115-118 ); A. Lameth, etc.
f Dumont, " Souvenirs sur Mirabeau," C. 4.

1 46 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
thirty articles,* which Garde-des-Sceaux is waxing hoarse
with reading. Which five-and-thirty articles, adds his
majesty again rising, if the three orders most unfortu
nately cannot agree together to effect them, I myself will
effect; "seulje ferai le biendemes peuples," Avhich being
interpreted may signify, You, contentious deputies of the
states-general, have probably not long to be here ! But,
in fine, all shall now withdraw for this day; and meet
again, each order in its separate place, to-morrow morning,
for despatch of business. Tliis 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 Honore been there, one can well
fancy, how the commons deputies, affrighted at the perils
which now yawned dim all round them, and waxing ever
paler in each other's paleness, might very naturally, one
after one, have glided off; and the whole course of Euro
pean 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 Mercurins de Breze, muttering somewhat!
" Speakout," cry several. " Messieurs" — shrills De Breze, re
peating himself, " You have heard the king's orders !" Mira-
beaug lares on him with fire-flashing face ; shakes the black
lion's mane : "Yes, monsieur, Ave 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 spech here ; you are not the man to
remind us of it. Go, monsieur, tell those who sent you
that we are here by the will of the people, and that nothing
* " Histoire Parlementaire," i. 13.

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 147
but the force of bayonets shall send us hence !" * And
poor De Breze shivers forth from the national assembly;
and also (if it be not in one faintest glimmer, months later)
finally from the page of history !
Hapless De Breze; doomed to survive long ages; in
men's memory, in this faint way, with tremulent white
rod ! He was true to etiquette, which was his faith here
below; a martyr to respect of persons. Short woolen
cloaks could not kiss majesty's hand as long velvet ones
did. Nay lately, when the poor little dauphin lay dead,
and some ceremonial visitation came, was he not punctual
to announce it even to the dauphin's dea d body: "Mon
seigneur, a deputation of the states-general!" f Sunt
lachrymce rerum.
But what does the OUil-de-Boeuf, now when De Breze
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 chateau itself; for a report has risen that
Necker is to be dismissed. Worst of all, the Gardes
Francaises seem indisposed to act; "two companies of
them do not fire when ordered ! " J Necker, for not
being at the Seance, shall be shouted for, carried home in
triumph ; and must not be dismissed. His grace of Paris,
on the other hand, has to fly with broken coach -panels,
and owe his life to furious driving. The Gardes du
Corps (Body-guards), whicn jzv were drawing out, had
Jpetter be drawn in again. § There is no sending of bayo
nets to be thought of.
Instead of soldiers, the O3ilde-Boeuf sends — carpenters,
to take down the platform. Ineffectual shift! In feAV
instants, the very carpenters cease Avrenching and knock
ing at their platform; standing on it, hammer in hand,
and listen open-mouthed. | The third estate is decreeing
that it is, was, and will be, nothing but a national assem
bly; and now, moreover, an inviolable one, all members of
it inviolable; "infamous, traitorous, toward the nation,
and guilty of capital crime, is any person, body-corporate,
tribunal, court or commission that now or henceforth, dur-
* " Moniteur " (" Hist. Pari." ii. 22). \ Montgaillard, ii. 38.
X "Histoire Parlementaire," ii. 26. § Bailly, i. 217.
|| " Histoire Parlementaire," ii. 23.

148 THE FRENCH REVOL VTION.
ing the present session or after it, shall dare to pursue, in
terrogate, arrest, or cause to be arrested, detain or cause
to be detained, any" etc. etc., " on whose part soever the same
be commanded." * Which done, one can wind up with
this comfortable reflection from Abbe Sieyes: "Mes
sieurs, you are to-day what you were yesterday."
Courtiers may shriek; but it is, and remains, even so.
Their well-charged explosion has exploded through the
touch hole covering themselves with scorches, confusion,
and unseemly soot! Poor Triumvirate, poor queen; and
above all, poor queen's husband, who means well, had he
any fixed meaning! Folly is that wisdom which is wise
only behindhand. Few months ago these thirty-five con
cessions 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" f
The remaining clergy, and likewise some forty-eight
noblesse, D'Orleans 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 whirl
ing! Let the Q5il-de-Boeuf look to it. As for King Louis,
he will swallow his injuries; will temporize, keep silencej
will at all costs have present peace. It was Tuesday the
23d of June, when he spoke that peremptory royal man
date; 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'Esprem6nil rages his last; Barrel
Mirabeau "breaks his sword," making a vow, which he
might as well have kept. The "triple family" is now
therefore complete; the third erring brother, the noblesse
having joined it; erring but pardonable; soothed, so far
as possible, by sweet eloquence from President Bailly.
So triumphs the third estate; and states-general are be
come national assembly; and all France may sing Te
Deum. By wise inertia, and wise cessation of inertia,
* Montgaillard, ii. 47. \ Arthur Young, i. 119,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 149
great victory has been gained. It is the last night of
June : all night you meet nothing on the streets of Ver
sailles but "men running with torches," with shouts and
jubilation. From the 2nd of May when they kissed the
hand of majesty, to this 30th of June Avhen men run with
torches, we count eight weeks and three days. For eight
weeks the national Carroccio has stood far-seen, ringing
many a signal; and, so much having now gathered round
it, may hope to stand.

CHAPTER III.
BROGLIE THE WAR-GOD.
The court feels indignant that it is conquered; but
what then? Another time it will do better. Mercury
descended in vain ; now has the time come for Mars. The
gods of the OEil-de-Bceuf have Avithdrawn into the dark
ness of their cloudy Ida : and sit there, shaping and forg
ing what may be needful, be it " billets of a new national
bank," munitions of war, or things forever inscrutable to
men. Accordingly, what means this "apparatus of troops?"
The national assembly can get no furtherance for its com
mittee of subsistences; can hear only that, at Paris, the
baker's shops are besieged; that, in the provinces, people
are " living on meal-husks and boiled grass. " But on all
highways there hover dustclouds, with the inarch of regi
ments, with the trailing of cannon : foreign Pandours, of
fierce aspect; Salis-Samade, Esterhazy, Royal- Allemand ;
so many of them foreign; to the number of thirty thous
and, which fear can magnify to fifty; all wending toward
Paris and Versailles! Already, on the heights of Mont-
martre, is a digging and delving; too like a scarping and
trenching. The effluence of Paris is arrested Versailles-
ward by a barrier of cannon at Sevres Bridge. From the
queen's mews, cannon stand pointed on the national-
assembly hall itself. The national assembly has its very
slumbers broken by the tramp of soldiery, swarming and
defiling, endless, or seemingly endless, all round those
spaces, at dead of night, "without drum-music, without
audible Avord of command." * What means it?
* A. Lameth, " Assemblee Constitutante," i. 41,

150 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Shall eight, or even shall twelve deputies, our Mira-
beaus, Barnaves at the head of them, be whirled suddenly
to the castle of Ham ; the rest ignominiously dispersed to
the winds? No national assembly can make the constitu
tion with cannon leveled on it from the queen's mews!
What means this reticence of the 03il-de-Bceuf, broken
only by nods and shrugs? In the mystery of that cloudy
Ida what is it, that they forge and shape? Such questions
must distracted patriotism keep asking, and receive no
answer but an echo.
Questions and echo bad enough in themselves: and now,
above all, while the hungry food-year, which runs from
August to August, is getting older; becoming more and
more a famine-year! With "meal -husks and boiled
grass," brigands may actually collect; and, in crowds,
at farm and mansion, howl angrily Food! Food! It is in
vain to send soldiers against them : at sight of soldiers
they disperse, they vanish as under ground ; then directly
reassemble elsewhere for new tumult and plunder. Fright
ful enough to look upon; but Avhat to hear of, reverberated
through twenty-five millions of suspicious minds! Brigands
and Broglie, open conflagation, preternatural rumor are
driving mad most hearts in France. What will the issue
of these things be?
At Marseilles, many weeks ago, the townsmen have
taken arms; for "suppressing of brigands," and other pur
poses: the military commandant may make of it what he
will. Elsewhere, everywhere, could not the like be done?
Dubious, on the distracted patriot imagination, wavers,
as a last deliverance, some foreshadow of a National
Guard. But conceive, above all, the wooden tent in the
Palais Royal ! A universal hubbub there, as of dissolving
worlds: there loudest bellows the mad, mad-making voice
of rumor; there sharpest gazes suspicion into the pale dim
world-whirlpool ; discerning shapes and phantasms : immi
nent bloodthirsty regiments camped on the Champ-de-
Mars; dispersed national assembly; redhot cannon-balls
(to burn Paris) : the mad war-god and Bellona's sounding
thongs. To the calmest man it is becoming too plain that
battle is inevitable.
Inevitable, silently nod measeigneurs and Broglie: In
evitable and brief! Your national assembly, stopped short
in its constitutional labors, may fatigue the royal ear with

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 151
addresses and remonstrances: those cannon of ours stand
duly leveled; those troops are here. The king's declara
tion, with its thirty-five too generous articles, was spoken,
was not listened to; but remains yet unrevoked : he him
self shall effect it, seul ilfera! As for Broglie, he has his
headquarters at Versailles, alias in a seat of war: clerks
writing; significant staff-officers, inclined to taciturnity;
plumed aides-de-camp, scouts, orderlies flying or hover
ing. He himself looks forth, important, impenetrable;
listens to Besenval, commandant of Paris, and his warning
and earnest counsels (for he has come out repeatedly on pur
pose), with a silent smile.* The Parisians resist? scorn
fully 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." f Stand by the royal
declaration, of the 23rd 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; under his buffs and bandoleers your
hired -shooter has instincts, feelings, even a kind of
thought. It is his kindred, bone of his bone, this same
canaille that shall be whiffed; he has brothers in it, a
father and mother, living on meal-husks and boiled grass.
His very doxy, not yet " dead i' the spital/' drives him
into military heterodoxy; declares that if he shed patriot
blood, he shall be accursed among men. The soldier, Avho
has seen his pay stolen by rapacious Foulons, his blood
wasted by Soubises, Pompadours, and the gates of promo
tion 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.
•Besenval, iii. 398. f Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," vi. 22,

152 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
For example, the world may have heard how, at Bethune
lately, when there rose some "riot about grains," of which
sort there are so many, and the soldiers stood drawn out,
and the word "Fire!" was given, not a trigger stirred ;
only the butts of all muskets rattled angrily against the
ground; and the soldiers stood glooming, with a mixed
expression of countenance ; till clutched " each under the
arm of a patriot householder," they were all hurried off, in
this manner, to be treated and caressed, and have their
pay increased by subscription ! *
Neither have the Gardes Francaises, the best regiment of
the line, shown any promptitude for street-firing lately.
They returned grumbling from Reveillon's; and have not
burned a single cartridge since; nay, as we saw, not even
when bid. A dangerous humor dwells in these Gardes.
Notable men too, in their way ! Valadi the Pythagorean
Avas, at one time, an officer of theirs. Nay, in the ranks,
under the three-cornered felt and cockade, Avhat hard
heads may there not be, and reflections going on, unknown
to the public! One head of the hardest we do now discern
there; on the shoulders of a certain Sergeant Hoche.
Lazare Hoche, that is the name of him ; he used to be
about the Versailles royal stables, nephew of a poor herb-
woman; a handy lad; exceedingly addicted to reading.
He is now Sergeant Hoche, and can rise no farther: he
lays out his pay in rushlights, and cheap editions of
books, f
On the whole, the best seems to be: Consign these
Gardes Francaises to their barracks. So Besenval thinks,
and orders. Consigned to their barracks, the Gardes
Francaises do but form a "Secret Association," an engage
ment not to act against the national assembly. Debauched
by Valadi the Pythagorean; debauched by money and
women! cry Besenval and innumerable others. De
bauched 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:
* " Histoire Parlementaire."
f " Dictionnaire des Hommes Maiuuans," Lonure^ (Pans). i<30l. "¦
198.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 153
declaring in words that the cause of France is their cause!
Next day and the folloAving days the like. What is singu
lar too, except this patriot humor, and breaking of their
consignment, they behave otherwise with " the most rigor
ous accuracy. " *
They are growing questionable, these gardes! Eleven
ringleaders of them are put in the Abbaye Prison. It
boots not in the least. The imprisoned eleven have only,
"by the hand of an individual," to drop, toward nightfall,
aline in the Cafe de Foy; where patriotism harangues
loudest on its table. " Two hundred young persons, soon
waxing to four thousand," with fit croAvbars, roll toward
the abbaye; smite asunder the needful doors; and bear
out their eleven, with other military victims; to supper
in the Palais Royal Garden; to board, and lodging "in
camp-beds, in the Theatre des Varietes;" other national
Prytaneum as yet not being in readiness. Most deliber
ate! Nay so punctual were these young persons, that
finding one military victim to have been imprisoned for
real civil crime, they returned him to his cell, Avith protest.
Why new military force was not called out? New mili
tary force was called out. New military force did arrive,
full gallop, with draAvn saber : but the people gently " laid
hold of thejr bridles," the dragoons sheathed their swords;
lifted their caps by Avay 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, "f
And now, ask in return, why messeigneurs and Broglie
the great god of war, on seeing these things, did not pause,
and take some other course, any other course? Unhappily,
as we said, they could see nothing. 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. All regiments are not
Gardes Francaises, or debauched by Valadi the Pythago
rean: let fresh undebauched regiments come up; let
Royal-Allemand, Salis-Samade, Swiss Chateau-Vieux
/-on?" up, w>rich can fight, but can hardly speak except in
German gutturals; let soldiers march, and highways thun-
* Besenval, iii. 394-6. f " Histoire Parlementaire," ii. 32.

154 THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION.
der with artillery-wagons; majesty has a new royal session
to hold, and miracles to work there ! The whiff of grape-
shot can, if needful, become a blast and tempest.
In which circumstances, before the redhot balls begin
raining, may not the hundred-and-twenty Paris electors,
though their Cahier is long since finished, see good to meet
again daily, as an " electoral club?" They meet first "in
a tavern ;" where " a large wedding-party" cheerfully gives
place to them.* But latterly they meet in the Hotel de
Ville, in the town hall itself. Flesselles, provost of mer
chants, with his four Echevins {Scabins, assessors), could
not prevent it; such Avas the force of public opinion. He,
with his Echevins, and the six-and-twenty town councillors
all appointed from above, may well sit silent there, in
their long gowns; and consider, with awed eye, what pre
lude this is of convulsion coming from below, and how
they themselves shall fare in that !

CHAPTER IV.
TO ARMS.
So hangs it, dubious, fateful, in the sultry days of
July. It is the passionate printed advice of M. Marat, to
abstain, of all things, from violence, f Nevertheless the
hungry poor are already burning town barriers, Avhere
tribute on eatables is levied; getting clamorous for food.
The twelfth July morning is Sunday: the streets are
all placarded with an enormous-sized De par le Roi, "in
viting peaceable citizens to remain within doors," to feel
no alarm, to gather in no crowd. Why so? What mean
these "placards of enormous size?" Above all, what means
this clatter of military; dragoons, hussars, rattling in from
all the points of the compass toward the Place Louis Quinze;
with a staid gravity of face, though saluted with mere
nicknames, hootings and even missiles ? J Besenval is
*Dusaulx, "Prize de la Bastille" ("Collection des Memoires," par
Berville et Barriere, Paris, 1821), p. 269.
f "Avis au Peuple, ou les Ministres de voiles, 1st July, 1789, in
"Histoire Parlementaire,") ii. 37.
X Besenval, iii. 411.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 155
with them. Swiss guards of his are already in the Champs
Elysees, with four pieces of artillery.
Have the destroyers descended on us, then? From the
Bridge of Sevres to utmost Vincennes, from Saint-Denis
to the Champ-de-Mars, we are begirt! Alarm, of the
vague unknown, is in every heart. The Palais Royal has
become a place of awestruck interjections, silent shakings
of the head : one can fancy Avith what dolorous stound the
noon-tide cannon (which the "sun fires at crossing of his
meridian) went off there; bodeful, like an articulate
voice of doom.* Are these troops verily eome 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, savior of France,
is uismissed. Impossible; incredible! Treasonous to
the public peace ! Such a voice ought to be choked in the
water-works; f had not the news-bringer quickly fled.
Nevertheless, friends, make of it what you will, the news
is true. Necker is gone. Necker hies northward inces
santly, in obedient secrecy, since yesternight. We have a
new ministry: Broglie the war-god; aristocrat Breteuil;
Foulon who said the people might eat grass !
Rumor, therefore, shall arise; in the Palais Royal, and
in broad France. Paleness sits on every face; confused
tremor and f remescence ; waxing into thunder-peals of fury
stirred on by fear.
But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Cafe de Foy,
rushing out, sibyline in face; his hair streaming, in each
hand a pistol ! fie 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,
SAvift death, or deliverance forever. Let such hour be well
come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits: To arms Let uni
versal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the
whirlwind, sound only : To arms — " To arms," yell respon-
* " Histoire Parlementaire," ii. 81. t IWd, ii. 81.

1 56 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
sive 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,*
does Camille evoke the elemental powers, in this great
moment. Friends, continues Camille, some rallying-sign !
Cockades; green ones; the color of hope! As with the
flight of locusts, these green tree-leaves; green ribbons
from the neighboring 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 ribbon handed him; sticks it in his hat. And now
to Curtius' image-shop there; to the boulevards; to the
four winds ; and rest not till France be on fire !
France, so long shaken and wind-parched, is probably at
the right inflammable point. As for poor Curtius, who,
one grieves to think, might be but imperfectly paid, he
cannot make two words about his images. The wax-bust
of Necker, the wax-bust of D'Orleans, helpers of France:
these, covered with crape, as in funeral procession, or
after the manner of suppliants appealing to heaven, to
earth, and Tartarus itself, a mixed multitude bears off.
For a sign! As indeed man, with his singular imagina
tive faculties, can do little or nothing without signs ! thus
Turks look to their prophet's banner; also osier man-
nikins have been burned, and Necker's portrait has erewhile
figured, aloft on its perch.
In this manner march they, a mixed, continually increas
ing multitude; armed with axes, staves and miscellanea;
grim many-sounding, through the streets. Be all theaters
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 !
However, Besenval, with horse and foot, is in the Place
Louis Quinze. Mortals promenading homeward, in the
fall of the day, saunter by, from Chaillot or Passy, from
flirtation and a little thin wine; with sadder step than
usual. Will the bust-procession pass that way? Behold
it; behold also Prince Lambesc dash forth on it, with his
*"Vieux Cordelier," par Camille Desmoulins, No. 5 (reprinted in
" Collection des Memoires," par Baudouin Freres, Paris, 1825)', p. 81.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 157
Soyal-Allemands ! Shots fall, and saber-strokes; busts are
hewed asunder; and, alas, also heads of men. A sabered
procession has nothing for it but to explode, a long what
streets, alleys, Tuileries avenues it finds; and disappear.
One unarmed man lies hewed down ; a Garde Francaise by
his uniform: bear him (or bear even the report of him)
dead and gory to his barracks ; where he has comrades still
alive !
But why not now, victorious Lambesc, charge through
that Tulieries Garden itself, where the fugitives are van
ishing? Not show the Sunday promenaders too, how steel
glitters, besprent with blood; that it be told of, and men's
ears tingle? Tingle, alas, they did; but the wrong way.
Victorious Lambesc, in this his second or Tuileries charge,
succeeds but in overturning (call it not slashing, for he
struck with the flat of his sword) one man, a poor old
schoolmaster, most pacifically tottering there; and is
driven out, by barricade of chairs, by flights of "bottles
and glasses," by execrations in bass voice and treble. Most
delicate is the mob-queller's vocation; wherein too-much
may be as bad as not-enough. For each of these bass
voices, and more each treble voice, borne to all parts of the
city, rings now nothing but distracted indignation; will
ring all night. The cry, To arms! roars tenfold ; steeples
with their metal storm-voice boom out, as the sun sinks;
armorer's shops are broken open, plundered ; the streets
are a living foam -sea, chafed by, all the winds.
Such issue came of Lambesc's charge on the Tuileries
Garden ; no striking of salutary terror into Chaillot prome
naders; a striking into broad wakefulness of frenzy and
the three furies, which otherwise were not asleep! For
they lie ahvays, those subterranean Eumenides (fabulous
and yet so true), in the dullest existence of man; and can
dance, brandishng their dusky torches, shaking their
serpent-hair. Lambesc with Royal-Allemand may ride to
his barracks with curses for his marching-music ; then ride
back again, like one troubled in mind : vengeful Gardes
Francaises, sacreing, with knit brows, start out on him,
from their barracks in the Chausse d'Antin; pour a volley
into him (killing and wounding); which he must not
answer, but ride on. * * Weber, ii. 75-91.

158 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
Counsel dwells not under the plumed hat. If the
Eumenides awaken, and Broglie has given no orders,
what can a Besenval do? When the Gardes Francaises, with
Palais-Royal volunteers, roll down, greedy of more venge
ance, to the Place Louis Q-umze itself, they find neither
Besenval, Lambesc, Royal- Allemand, nor any soldier now
there. Gone is military order. On the far eastern boule
vard, of Saint-Antoine, the Chasseurs Normandie arrive,
dusty, thirsty, after a hard day's ride; but can find no
billet-master, see no course in this city of confusions; can
not get to Besenval, cannot so much as discover Avhere he
is : Normandie must even bivouac there, in its dust and
thirst, unless some patriot will treat it to a cup of liquor,
Avith advices.
Raging multitudes surround the H6tel-de-Ville, crying:
Arms! Orders! The six-and-twenty town-councillors,
with their long gowns, have ducked under (into the raging
chaos) ; shall never emerge more. Besenval is painfully
Avriggling 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 Q3il-de-Bceuf, 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 Avere, but one foot in the stirrup, cannot take leaps.
Mad Paris is abandoned altogether to itself.

What a Paris, when the darkness fell ! A European
metropolitan city hurled suddenly forth from its old com
binations and arrangements; to crash tumultuously
together, seeking new. Use and wont will 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
clangor and terror, they know not as yet whether running,
swimming or flying, headlong into the new era. With
clangor and terror: from above, Broglie the war-god im-

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. I59
pends, preternatural, with his redhot cannon-balls; and
from below, a preternatural brigand-world menaces with
dirk and firebrand: madness rules the hour.
Happily, in place of the submerged twenty-six, the elec
toral club is gathering; has declared itself a " provisional
municipality." On the morrow it will get Provost Fles-
selles, with an Echevin or two, to give help in many
things. For the present it decrees one most essential thing ;
that forthwith a "Parisian militia" shall be enrolled.
Depart, ye heads of districts, to labor in this great work ;
while we here, in permanent committee, sit alert. Let
fencible men, each party in its own range of streets, keep
watch and ward, all night. Let Paris court a little fever-
sleep ; confused by such fever-dreams, of " violent motions
at the Palais Royal;" or from time to time start awake,
and look out, palpitating, in its nightcap, at the clash of
discordant mutually-unintelligible patrols; on the gleam
of distant barriers, going up all too ruddy toward the
vaults of night.*

CHAPTER V.
GIVE US ARMS.
On Monday the huge city has awoke, not to its week
day industry : to what a different one ! The working man
has become a fighting man; has one want only; that of
arms. The industry of all crafts, has paused ; except it
be the smith's fiercely hammering pikes; and, in a faint
degree, the kitchener's, cooking off-hand victuals ; for bouche
va toujours. Women too are sewing cock ides; not now
of green, which being D'Artois color, the Hotel -de-Ville
has had to interfere in it; but of red and blue, our old
Paris colors; these, once based on a ground of constitu
tional white, are the famed tricolor, which (if prophecy err
not) "will go round the world."
All shops, unless it be the baker's and vintner's, are shut:
Paris is in the streets; rushing, foaming like some Venice
wine-glass into which you had dropped poison. The
tocsin, by order, is pealing madly from all steeples. Arms,
ye elector municipals; thou Flesselles with thy Echevins,
*" Deux Amis," i. 267-306.

160 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
give ns arms! Flesselles gives what he can; fallacious,
perhaps insidious promises of arms from Charleville; order
to seek arms here, order to seek them there. The new
municipals give what they can ; some three hundred and
sixty indifferent firelocks, the equipment of the city-
watch ; " a man in wooden shoes, and without coat, directly
clutches one of them, and mounts guard." Also as hinted,
an order to all smiths to make pikes with their whole soul.
Heads of districts are in fervent consultation ; subordi
nate patriotism roams distracted, ravenous for arms.
Hitherto at the H6tel-de- Ville was only such modicum of
indifferent firelocks as we have seen. At the so-called
arsenal, there lies nothing but rust, rubbish and saltpetre,
overlooked too by the guns of the Bastille. His majesty's
repository, what they call Garde-Meuble, is forced and
ransacked; tapestries enough, and gauderies; but of serv
iceable fighting-gear small stock! Two silver-mounted
cannons there are; an ancient gift from his majesty of
Siam to Louis Fourteenth; gilt sword of the Good Henri;
antique chivalry arms and armor. These, and such as
these, a necessitous patriotism snatches greedily, for want
of better. The Siamese cannons go trundling, on an
errand they were not meant for. Among the indifferent
firelocks are seen tourney-lances; the princely helm and
hauberk glittering amid ill-hatted heads, as in a time when
all times and their possessions are suddenly sent jumbling!
At the Maison de Saint-Lazare, Lazar-Honse once, now
a correction-house with priests, there was no trace of arms;
but, on the other hand, corn, plainly to a culpable extent.
Out with it, to market; in this scarcity of grains! Heavens,
will "fifty-two carts," in long row, hardly carry it to the
Hallea ux Bleds? Well, truly, ye reverend fathers, was your
pantry filled; fat are your larders; over-generous your
wine-bins, ye plotting exasperators of the poor; traitorous
f orestallers of bread !
Vain is protesting, entreaty on bare knees : the House of
Saint-La'zarus has that in it which comes not out by pro
testing. Behold, how, from every window, it vomits:
mere torrents of furniture, of bellowing and hurlyburly;
the cellars also leaking wine. Till, as was natural, smoke
rose, kindled some say, by the desperate Saint- Lazaristes
themselves, desperate of other riddance; and the establish
ment vanished from this world in flame. Remark never-

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 161
theless that "a thief" set (on or not by aristocrats), being
detected there, is "instantly hanged."
Look also at the Chatelet prison. The debtors' prison
of La Force is broken from without; and they that sat in
bondage to aristocrats go free : hearing of which the felons
at the chatelet do likewise "dig up their pavements," and
stand on the offensive ; with the best prospects, had not
partiotism, passing that Avay, "fired a volley," into the
felon Avorld; and crushed it down again under hatches.
Patriotism consorts not with thieving and felony; surely
also punishment, this day, hitches (if she still hitch) after
crime, with frightful shoes-of -swiftness ! "Some score
or two" of wretched persons, found prostrate with drink
in the cellars of that Saint-Lazare, " are indignantly haled
to prison; the jailer has no room; whereupon, other place
of security not suggesting itself , is it written, on les pendit,
they hanged them." * Brief is the word; not without sig
nificance, be it true or untrue !
In such circumstances, the aristocrat, the unpatriotic
rich man is packing up for departure. But he shall not
get departed. A wooden-shod force has seized all barriers,
burned or not; all that enters, all that seeks to issue, is
stopped there, and dragged to the H6tel-de- Ville : coaches,
tumbrils, plate, furniture, "many meal-sacks," in time even
"flocks and herds" encumber the Place de Greve." f
And so it roars, and rages, and brays; drums beating,
steeples pealing; criers rushing with hand-bells: "Oyez,
oyez. All men to their districts to be enrolled !" The
districts have met in gardens, open squares; are getting
marshaled into volunteer troops. No redhot ball has yet
fallen from Besenval 's camp; on the contrary, deserters
with their arms are continually dropping in : nay now, joy
of joys, at two in the afternoon, the Gardes Francaises,
being ordered to Saint-Denis, and flatly declining, have
come over in a body ! It is a fact worth many. Three
thousand six hundred of the best fighting men, with com
plete accouterment ; with cannoneers even, and cannon!
Their officers are left standing alone ; could not so much
as succeed in "spiking the guns." The very Swiss, it
* " Histoire Parlementaire," ii. 96.
f Dusaulx, " Prise de la Bastille," p. 290.

162 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
may now be hoped, Chateau -Vieux and the others, will have
doubts about fighting.
Our Parisian militia, which some think it were better to
name national guard, is prospering as heart could wish.
It promised to be forty-eight thousand ; but will in few
hours double and quadruple that number; invincible, if
we had only arms !
But see, the promised Charleville boxes, marked Artil-
lerie! Here, then, are arms enough ? Conceive the blank
face of patriotism, when it found them filled with rags,
foul linen, candle-ends, and bits of wood ! Provost of the
merchants, how is this? Neither at the Charteaux Con
vent, whither we were sent with signed order, is there or
ever was there any weapon of war. Nay here, in this Seine
boat, safe under tarpaulings (had not the nose of patriot
ism been of the finest,) are "five thousand-weight of
gunpoAvder ;" not coming in, but surreptitiously going out !
What meanest thou, Flesselles? 'Tis a ticklish game,
that of "amusing" us. Cat plays with captive mouse;
but mouse with enraged cat, with enraged national tiger?
Meanwhile, the faster, oh, ye black-aproned smiths, smite
with strong arm and willing heart. This man, and that, all
stroke from head to heel, shall thunder alternating, and
ply the great forge-hammer, till stithy reel and ring again;
while ever and anon, overhead, booms the alarm-cannon,
for the city has now got gunpowder. Pikes are fabricated ;
fifty thousand of them, in six-and-thirty hours; judge
whether the black-aproned have been idle. Dig trenches,
unpave the streets, ye others, assiduous, man and maid;
cram the earth in barrel-barricades, at each of them a vol
unteer sentry; pile the whinstones in window-sills and
upper rooms. Have scalding pitch, at least boiling water
ready, ye Aveak old women, to pour it and dash it on Royal-
Allemand, with your old skinny arms : your shrill curses
along with it will not be wanting ! Patrols of the newborn
national guard, bearing torches, scour the streets, all that
night; which otherwise are vacant, yet illuminated in
every windoAV by order. Strange-looking; like some
naphtha-lighted city of the dead, with here and there a
flight of perturbed ghosts.
Oh, 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

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 163
ragings and waitings ye have and have had, in all times :
to be buried all, in so deep silence ; and the salt sea is not
swollen with your tears.
Great meanwhile is the moment, when tidings of free
dom 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 he 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 consider
able, when the chains have grown corrosive, poisonous, to
be free "from oppression by our fellow-man." Forward,
ye maddened sons of France; be it toward this destiny or
toward that! Around you is but starvation, falsehood,
corruption and the clam of death. Where ye are is no
abiding. Imagination, may, imperfectly, figure how commandant
Besenval, in the Champ-de-Mars, has worn out these sor
rowful hours. Insurrection raging all round; his men
melting away! From Versailles, to the most pressing-
messages, comes no answer ; or once only some vague word
of answer which is worse than none. A council of officers
can decide merely that there is no decision : colonels in
form him, "weeping," that they do not think their men
will fight. Cruel uncertainty is here: 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 chateau of Versailles all seems mystery: in
the town of Versailles, were we there, all is rumor, alarm
and indignation. An august national assembly sits, to
appearance, menaced with death; endeavoring to defy
death. It has resolved "that Necker carries with him
the regrets of the nation." It has sent solemn deputation
over to the ch&teau, with entreaty to have these troops
withdrawn. In vain: his majesty, with a singular com
posure, invites us to be busy rather with our own duty,

164 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
making the constitution! Foreign Pandours, and such
like, go pricking and prancing with a swashbuckler air;
with an eye too probably to the Salle des Menus, were
it not for the " grim -looking countenances" that crowd all
avenues there. \ Be firm, ye national senators; the cyno
sure of a firm, grim-looking people!
The august national senators determine that there shall,
at least, be permanent session till this thing end. Wherein,
however, consider that worthy Lafranc de Pompignan, our
new president, whom we have named Bailly's successor,
is an old man, wearied with many things. He is the
brother of that Pompignan who meditated lamentably on
the book of Lamentations; " Savez-vous pourquoi Jeremie
Se lamentait toute sa vie ?
C'est qu'il prevoyait
Que Pompignan le traduirait ! "
Poor Bishop Pompignan withdraws; having got Lafayette
for helper or substitute : this latter, as nocturnal vice-presi
dent, with a thin house in disconsolate humor, sits sleep
less, with lights unsnuffecl ; waiting what the hours will
bring. So at Versailles. But at Paris, agitated Besenval, before
retiring for the night, has stepped over to old M. de Som-
breuil, of the Hotel des Invalides hard by. M. de
Sombreuil has, what is a great secret, some eight-and-
twenty thousand stand of muskets deposited in his cellars
there; but no trust in the temper of his invalides. This
day, for example, he sent twenty of the fellows down to
unscrew those muskets; lest sedition might snatch at
them : but scarcely, in six hours, had the twenty unscrewed
twenty gun-locks, or dogsheads {chiens) of locks, each
invalide his dogshead ! If ordered to fire, they would, he
imagines, turn their cannon against himself.
Unfortunate old military gentleman, 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 illumi
nated Paris; whom a national patrol, passing that way,
takes the liberty of firing at : " seven shots toward twelve
* See Lameth; Ferrieres, etc.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 165
at night," which do not take effect.* This was the 13th
day of July, 1789; a worse day many said than the last
13th was when only hail fell out of heaven, not madness
rose out of Tophet ruining worse than crops !

In these same days as chronology will teach us, hot old
Marquis Mirabeau lies stricken down, at Argenteuil, not
within sound of these alarm-guns; for he properly is not
there and only the body of him now lies deaf and cold
forever. It was on Saturday night that he drawing his
last life-breaths gave up the ghost there ; leaving a world
which Avould never go to his mind now broken out seem
ingly into deliration and the culbute generate. What is it
to him departing elsewhither on his long journey? The
old Chateaux Mirabeau stands silent far off on its scarped
rock in that "gorge of two windy valleys;" the pale-fading
specter now of a chdteau : this huge world-riot and France
and the world itself fades also like a shadow on the great
still mirror-sea; and all shall be as God wills.
Young Mirabeau sad of heart, for he loved this crabbed
brave old father ; sad of heart and occupied with sad cares,
is withdrawn from public history. The great crisis trans
acts itself without him. f

CHAPTER VI.
STORM AND VICTORY.
But, to the living and the struggling, a new fourteenth
morning dawns. Under all roofs of this distracted city is
the nodus of a drama, not untragical, crowding toward
solution. The bustlings and preparings, the tremors and
menaces; the tears that fell from old eyes! This day,
my sons, ye shall quit you like men. By the memory of
your father's wrongs, by the hope of your children's rights!
Tyranny impends in red wrath : help for you is none, if
not in your own right hands. This day ye must do or die.
From earliest light, a sleepless permanent committee
* "Deux Amis de la Liberte," i. 312.
f Fils Adoptif, " Mirabeau," vi. 1. 1.

1 66 THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION.
has heard the old cry, now waxing almost frantic,
mutinous: Arms! Arms! Provost Flesselles, or, what
traitors there are among you may think of those Charleville
boxes. A hundred and fifty thousand of us ; and but the
third man furnished with so much as a pike ! Arms are
the one thing needful; with arms we are an unconquerable
man-edifying national guard ; without arms, a rabble to be
whiffed with grapeshot.
Happily the world has arisen, for no secret can be kept,
that there lie muskets at the Hotel des Invalides.
Thither will we: king's procureur M. Ethys de Corny, and
whatsoever of authority a permanent committee can lend,
shall go with us. Besenval's camp is there; perhaps he
will not fire on us ; if he kill us, Ave shall but die.
Alas, poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in
that manner, has not the smallest humor to fire! At five
o'clock this morning, as he lay dreaming, oblivious in the
Ecole Militaire, a "figure" stood suddenly at his bedside;
" with face rather handsome ; eyes inflamed, speech rapid
and curt, air "audacious;" such a figure drew Priam's cur
tains : The message and monition of the figure was, that
resistance would be hopeless; that if blood flowed, woe to
him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure : and vanished.
"Withal there was a kind of eloquence that struck one."
Besenval admits that he should have arrested him, but
did not.* Who this figure with inflamed eyes, with speech
rapid and curt, might be? Besenval knows, but mentions
not. Camille Desmoulins? Pythagorean Marquis Valadi,
inflamed with "violent motions all night at the Palais
Royal?" Fame names him "Young M. Meillar," f then
shuts her lips about him forever.
In any case, behold, about nine in the morning, our
national volunteers rolling in long wide flood south-west
ward to the Hotel des Invalides; in search of the one thing
needful. King's procureur M. Ethys de Corny and
officials are there; the Cure of Saint-Etienne du Mont
marches unpacific at the head of his militant parish ; the
clerks of the Basoche in red coats we see marching, now
* Besenval, iii, 414.
f " Tableaux de la Revolution, Prise de la Bastille " (a folio Col
lection of Pictures and Portraits, with letter-press, not always unin-
structive — part of it said to be by Chamfort).

• THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 16?
volunteers of the Basoche; the volunteers of the Palais
Royal : national volunteers, numerable by tens of thous
ands; of one heart and mind. The king's muskets are the
nations; think, old M. de Sombreuil, how, in this ex
tremity, thou wilt refuse them ! Old M. de Sombreuil
would fain hold parley, send couriers ; but it skills not : the
walls are scaled, no invalide firing a shot ; the gates must
be flung open. Patriotism rushes in, tumultuous, from
grunsel up to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages ;
rummaging distractedly for arms. What cellar, or what
cranny can escape it? The artns are found; all safe there;
lying packed in straw, apparently with a view to being
burned ! More ravenous than famishing lions over dead
prey, the multitude, with clangor and vociferation,
pounces on them; struggling, dashing, clutching: to the
jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture and probable ex
tinction of the weaker patriot.* And so, with such pro
tracted crash of deafening, most discordant orchestra-
music, the scene is changed; and eight-and-twenty thous
and sufficient firelocks are on the shoulders of as many
national guards, lifted thereby out of darkness into fiery
light. Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets, as
they flash by ! Gardes Francaises, it is said, have cannon
leveled on him; ready to open, if need were, from the
other side of the river. f Motionless sits he; "aston
ished," one may flatter oneself, "at the proud bearing
{fiere contenance) of the Parisians." And, now, to the
Bastille, ye intrepid Parisians! There grapeshot still
threatens; thither all men's thoughts and steps are now
tending. Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew "into his
interior" soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains
there ever since, hampered, as all military gentlemen now
are, in the saddest conflict of uncertainties. The Hotel-
de- Ville "invites" him to admit national soldiers, which is
a soft name for surrendering. On the other hand, his
majesty's orders were precise. His garrison is but eighty-
two old invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young Swiss;
his walls indeed are nine feet thick, he has cannon and
powder; but alas, only one day's provision of victuals. The
* " Deux Amis," j. 302. f Besenval, iii. 416.

168 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
city too is French, the poor garrison mostly French. Rig
orous old De Launay, think what thou wilt do!
All morning, since nine, there has been a cry every
where: To the Bastille! Repeated "deputations of citi
zens" have been here, passionate for arms; whom De
Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through port
holes. Toward noon, elector Thuriot de la Rosiere gains
admittance; finds De Launay indisposed for surrender;
nay disposed for bloAving up the place rather. Thuriot
mounts with him to the battlements: heaps of paving-
stones, old iron and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly
leveled; in every embrasure a cannon, only drawn back
a little! But outward, behold, oh, Thuriot, how the mul
titude flows on, welling through every street: tocsin
furiously pealing, all drums beating the generate: the
suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hitherward wholly, as one
man! Such vision (spectral yet real) thou, oh Thuriot, as
from thy mount of vision, beholdest in this moment;
prophetic of what other phantasmagories, and loud-gibber
ing spectral realities, Avhich thou yet beholdest not but
shalt: " Que voulez-vous?" said De Launay, turning pale at
the sight, with an air of reproach, almost of menace.
"Monsieur," said Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime,
"what mean you? Consider if I could not precipitate
both of us from this height," say only a hundred feet, ex
clusive of the walled ditch ! Whereupon De Launay fell
silent. Thuriot shows himself from some pinnacle, to
comfort the multitude becoming suspicious, fremescent;
then descends; departs with protest; with warning
addressed also to the invalides, on whom, however, it pro
duces but a mixed indistinct impression. The old heads
are none of the clearest; besides, it is said, De Launay
has been profuse of beverages {prodigua des buissons).
They think, they will not fire, if not fired on, if they can
help it ; but must, on the whole, be ruled considerably by
circumstances. Woe to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst
not, taking some one firm decision, rale circumstances!
Soft speeches will not serve ; hard grapeshot is question
able; but hovering between the two is ^^questionable.
Ever Avilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum
waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into
cackle of stray musketry, which latter, on walls nine feet

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 169
thick, cannot do execution. The outer drawbridge has
been lowered for Thuriot ; new deputation of citizens (it
is the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into
the outer court; soft speeches producing no clearance of
these, De Launay gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge. A
slight sputter; which has kindled the too combustible
chaos; made it a roaring fire-chaos! Bursts forth insur
rection, at sight of its own blood (for there were deaths
by that sputter of fire), into endless rolling explosion of
musketry, distraction, execration; and overhead, from the
fortress, let one great gun, with its grapeshot, go boom
ing, to show what we could do. The Bastille is besieged !
On, then, all Frenchmen, that have hearts in your
bodies: ! Roar with all your throats, of cartilage and
metal, ye sons of liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of
utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the
hour! Smite, thou Louis Tournay, cartwright of the
Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment Dauphine ; smite at
that outer drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles
round thee : Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe strike
such a stroke. Down with it, man; down with it to
Orcus: let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and
tryanny be swallowed up forever! Mounted, some say,
on the roof of the guard-room, some "on bayonets stuck
into joints of the Avail," Louis Tournay smites, brave
Aubin Bonnemere (also an old soldier) seconding him:
the chain yields, breaks; the huge drawbridge slam down,
thundering {avec fracas). Glorious; and yet, alas, it is
still but the outworks. The eight grim towers, with their
invalide musketry, their paving-stones and cannon-
mouths, still soar aloft intact; ditch yawning impassable,
stone-faced; the inner drawbridge with its back toward
us; the Bastille is still to take!

To describe this seige of the Bastille (thought to be one
of the most important in history) perhaps transcends the
talent of mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading,
get to understand so much as the plan of the building!
But there is open esplanade, at the end of the Rue Saint-
Antoine; there are such forecourts, Cour Avance, Cour

] 70 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
de VOrme, arched gateway (where Louis Tournay now
fights) ; then new drawbridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-
bastions, and the grim eight toAVers ; a labyrinthic mass,
high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four
hundred and twenty; beleagued, in this its last hour, as
we said, by mere chaos come again ! Ordnance of all cali
bres ; throats of all capacities ; men of all plans, every man
his own engineer : seldom since the war of Pygmies and
Cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay
Elie is home for a suit of regimentals ; no one would heed
him in colored clothes: half -pay Hulin is haranguing
Gardes Francaises in the Place de Greve. Frantic patriots
pick up the grapeshots; bear them, still hot (or seemingly
so), to the Hdtel-de-Ville : Paris, you perceive, is to be
burned! Flesselles is "pale to the very lips," for the roar
of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the
acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways by panic madness.
At every street-barricade, there whirls simmering a minor
whirlpool, strengthening the barricade, since God knows
what is coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly
into that grand fire-malestrom which is lashing round the
Bastille. And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant
has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of the
marine service, fresh from Brest, ply the king of Siam's
cannon. Singular (if we were not used to the like);
Georget lay, last night taking his ease at his inn; the
king of Siam's cannon also lay, knowing nothing of him,
for a hundred years. Yet now, at the right instant, they
have got together, and discourse eloquent music. For,
hearing what was toward, Georget sprang from the Brest
diligence, and ran. Gardes Francaises also will be here
with real artillery : were not the walls so thick ! Upward
from the esplanade, horizontally from all neighboring
roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of mus
ketry, without effect. The invalides lie flat, firing com
paratively at their ease from behind stone ; hardly through
portholes show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make
no impression."
Let conflagation rage; of whatsoever is combustible!
Guard-rooms are burnt, invalides mess-rooms. A dis
tracted "Perukemaker with two fiery torches" is burning
" the saltpetres of the arsenal ;" had not a woman run scream-

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 171
ing; had not a patriot, with some tincture of natural phi
losophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of mus
ket on pit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the
devouring element. A young beautiful lady, seized escap
ing in these outer courts, and thought falsely to be De
Launay's daughter, shall be burned 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 burned ; three cart loads 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 wounded
are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie ; the dying leave
their last mandate not to yield till the accursed stronghold
fall. And yet, alas, how fall? The walls are so thick!
Deputations, three in number, arrive from the H6tel-de-
Ville ; Abbe Fauchet (who was of one) can say, with what
almost superhuman courage of benevolence.* These
wave their town-flag in the arched gateway; and stand,
rolling their drum ; but to no purpose. In such crack of
doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe
them ; they return, with justified rage, the whew of lead
still singing in their ears. What to do? The firemen are
here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the invalides
cannon to wet the touch holes ; they unfortunately cannot
squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray. Individ
uals 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 phosphorus
and oil-of -turpentine spouted up through forcing-pumps;"
0 Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready? Every
man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates
not; even women are firing, and Turks; at least one
woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk.f Gardes
Francaises have come: real cannon, real cannoneers.
Usher Maillard is busy ; half -pay Elie, half -pay Hulin rage
in the midst of thousands.
. — .  — — — — — . — — .¦
*Fauchet's "Narrative" (" Deux Amis," i. 324),
f " Deux Amis," i. 319; Dusaulx, etc.

172 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
How the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its inner
court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing
special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled one
when the firing began ; and is now pointing toward five,
and still the firing slakes not. Far down, in their vaults,
the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes;
their turnkeys answer vaguely.
Woe to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred in
valides ! Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy : Besenval
hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of Hussars
has crept, reconnoitering, cautiously along the Quais, as
far as the Pont Neuf . "We are come to join you," said
the captain; for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-
headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect,
shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense
in him; and croaks: "Alight then, and give up your
arms !" The Hussar-captain is too happy to be escorted
to the barriers, and dismissed on parole. Who the squat
individual was? Men answer, It is M. Marat, author of
the excellent pacific " Avis au Peuple !" Great truly 0, thou
remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and
new-birth; and yet this same day come four years! But
let the curtains of the future hang.
What shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay
could have done ; what he said he would do. Fancy him
sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm's
length of the powder-magazine ; motionless, like old Roman
senator, or bronze lamp-holder; coldly apprising Thuriot,
and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolu
tion was : Harmless he sat there, while unharmed ; but
the king's fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would or
should in nowise be surrendered, save to the king's mes
senger: one old man's life is worthless,, so it be lost with
honor; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be
when a whole Bastille springs skyward : In such statu
esque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might
have left Thuriot, the red clerks of the Basoche, cure of
Saint-Stephen and all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the world,
to work their will.
And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou con
sidered 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

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. \ 73
indignation palsies the strong soul; their hoAvl of con
tumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck con
fessed 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 somewhere beyond time. De
Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers between
two; hopes in the middle of despair; surrenders not his
fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches
to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old De
Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee !
Jail, jailering and jailer, all three, such as they may have
been, must finish.
For four hours now has the world-Bedlam roared : call it
the world-chimasra, blowing fire ! The poor invalides have
sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed
muskets: they have made a white flag of napkins; go
beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can
hear nothing. The very Swiss at the portcullis look
weary of firing ; disheartened in the fire-deluge : a port
hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would
speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his
plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone ditch ; plank
resting on parapet, balanced by weight of patriots, he
hovers perilous : such a dove toward such an ark ! Deftly,
thou shifty usher; one man already fell; and lies smashed,
far down there, against the masonry! Usher Maillard falls
not: deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The
Swiss holds a paper through his porthole; the shifty usher
snatches it, and returns. Terms of surrender: pardon,
immunity to all! Are they accepted: " Foi d'officier,
On the word of an officer," answers half -pay Hulin, or
half -pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, "they are!"
Sinks the drawbridge, Usher Maillard bolting it when
down; rushes in the living deluge : the Bastille is fallen :
Victoire! La Bastille est prise! *
*" Histoire de la Revolution," par Deux Amis de la Liberte, i.
267-306; Besenval, iii. 410-434; Dusaulx, " Prise de la Bastille," 291-
301; Bailly, "Memoires " ("Collection de Berville et Barriere "), i. 322
et seqq.

174 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
CHAPTER VII.
NOT A REVOLT.
Why dwell on what follows; "H.u\m' s foi d'officier should
have been kept, but could not. The Swiss stand drawn
up, disguised in white canvas smocks; the invalides without
disguise; their arms all piled against the wall. The first
rush of victors, in ecstasy that the death-peril is passed,
"leaps joyfully on their necks;" but new victors rush,
and ever new, also in ecstasy not wholly of joy. As we
said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlong : had not
the Gardes Francaises, in their cool military way, " wheeled
round with arms leveled," it would have plunged suicidally
by the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.
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. The poor invalides will fare ill: one Swiss, running
off in his white smock, is driven back, with a death-thrust.
Let all prisoners be marched to the town hall, to be judged!
Alas, already one poor invalide has his right hand slashed
off him ; his maimed body dragged to the Place de Greve,
and hanged there. This same right hand, it is said, turned
back De Launay from the powder-magazine, and saved
Paris. De Launay, "discovered in gray frock with poppy-
colored ribbon," is for killing himself with the sword of
his cane. He shall to the H6tel-de- Ville; Hulin, Mail
lard and others escorting him; Elie marching foremost
"with the capitulation-paper on his sword's point."
Through roarings and cursings; through hustlings,
clutchings, and at last through strokes! Your escort is
hustled aside, felled doAvn; Hulin sinks exhausted on a
heap of stones. Miserable De Launay! He shall never
enter the H6tel-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, " 0 friends, kill me fast!"
Merciful De Losme must die though gratitude embraces
him, in this fearful hour, and will die for him; it avails
not. Brothers, your wrath is cruel! Your Place de Gr6ve

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 175
is become a throat of the tiger ; full of mere fierce bellow-
ings, and thirst of blood. One other officer is massacred;
one other invalide is hanged on the lamp-iron ; with diffi
culty, with generous perseverance, the Gardes Francaises
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 !
Oh 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 ; on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-
rouged dames of the palace are even now dancing with
double jacketed Hussar-officers; and also on this roaring
hell-porch of a H6tel-de-Ville ! Babel ToAver, with the
confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the
conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest
of distracted steel bristles, endless, in front of an electoral
committee; points itself, in horrid radii, against this
and the other accused breast. It was the Titans warring
with Olympus; and they scarcely crediting it have con
quered: prodigy of prodigies ; delirious, as it could not but
be. Denunciation, vengeance; blaze of triumph on a dark
ground of terror; all outward, all inward things fallen into
one general wreck of madness !
Electoral committee? Had it a thousand throats of
brass, it would not suffice. Abbe Lefevre, in the vaults
down below, is black as Vulcan, distributing that "five
thousand-weight of powder;" with what perils, these eight-
and-forty hours! Last night, a patriot, in liquor, insisted
on sitting to smoke on the edge of one of the powder bar
rels; there smoked he, independent of the world, till the
abbe "purchased his pipe for three francs," and pitched
it far.Elie, in the grand hall, electoral commitee looking on,
sits " with drawn sword bent in three places ;" Avith bat
tered 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. Oh 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

176 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
declining sun ; the need of victuals, and of telling news,
will bring assuagement, dispersion: all earthly things
must end.
Along the streets of Paris circulate seven Bastille
prisoners, borne shoulder-high; seven heads on pikes; the
keys of the Bastille; and much else. See also the Gardes
Francaises, in their steadfast military way, marching home
to their barracks, with the invalides and Swiss kindly
enclosed in hollow square. It is one year and two months
since these same men stood unparticipating, with Brennus
d'Agoust at the Palais de Justice, when fate overtook
D'Espremenil; and now they have participated; and will
participate. Not Gardes Francaises henceforth, hut Center
Grendiers of the National Guard: men of iron discipline and
humor, not without a kind of thought in them!
LikeAvise ashlar stones of the Bastille continue thunder
ing through the dusk; its paper archives shall fly white.
Old secrets come to vieAv; and long-buried despair finds
voice. Read this portion of an old letter:* "If for my
consolation monseigneur would grant me, for the sake of
God and the most blessed Trinity, that I could have news
of my dear wife ; were it only her name on a card, to show
that she is alive ! It were the greatest consolation I could
receive ; and I should forever bless the greatness of mon
seigneur." Poor prisoner, who namest thyself Queret-
Demery, and hast no other history, she is dead that dear
wife of thine, and thou art dead ! 'Tis fifty years since
thy breaking heart put this question; to be heard now
first, and long heard, in the hearts of men.
But so does the July twilight thicken ; so must Paris, as
sick children, and all distracted creatures do, brawl itself
finally into a kind of sleep. Municipal electors, aston
ished to find their heads still uppermost, are home; only
Moreau de Saint-Mery, of tropical birth and heart, of
coolest judgment; he, with two others, shall sit perma
nent at the town hall. Paris sleeps ; gleams upward the
illuminated city: patrols go clashing, without common
watchword; there go rumors; alarms of war, to the extent
of "fifteen thousand men marching through the suburb
Saint-Antoine," who never got it marched through. Of
* Dated a la Bastille, 7 Octobre, 1752; signed, Queret-Demery.
" Bastille Devoilee;" in Linguet, " Memoires sur la Bastille " (Paris,
1821), p. 199.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 177
the day's distraction judge by this of the night : Moreau
de Saint Mery, " before rising from his seat, gave upward
of three thousand orders." * What a head; comparable to
Friar Bacon's brass head! Within it lies all Paris.
Prompt must the answer be, right or wrong; in Paris is
no other authority extant. Seriously, a most cool clear
head; for which also thou, oh brave Saint-Mery, in many
capacities, from august senator to merchant's clerk,
book-dealer, vice-king; in many places, from Virginia to
Sardinia, shalt, ever as a brave man, find employment. \
Besenval has decamped, under cloud of dusk, " amid a
great affluence of people," who did not harm him; he
marches, with faint-growing tread, down the left bank of
the Siene, all night, toward infinite space. Re-summoned
shall Besenval himself be; for trial, for difficult acquittal.
His king's-troops, his Royal-Allemands, are gone hence
forever. The Versailles ball and lemonade is done; the Orangerie
is silent except for nigh thirds. Over in the Salle des
Menus Vice-President Lafayette, with unsnuffed lights,
" with some hundred or so of members, stretched on tables
round him," sits erect; outwatching the bear. This day,
a second solemn deputation went to his majesty-; a second,
and then a third; with no effect. What will the end of
these things be?
In the court, all is mystery, not without whisperings of
terror; though ye dream of lemonade and epaulettes, ye
foolish women! His majesty, kept in happy ignorance,
perhaps dreams of double-barrels and the Woods of
Meudon. Late at night, the Duke des Liancourt, having
official right of entrance, gains access to the royal apart
ments; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in his constitu
tional way, the Job's-news. "Mais," said poor Louis,
"c'est une revolte, Why, that is a revolt!" "Sire," an
swered Liancourt, "it not a revolt, it is a revolution."
* Dusaulx.
f'Biographie Universelle," § Moreau Saint-Mery (by Fournier-
Pescay).

178 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONQUERING YOUR KING.
On the morrow a fourth deputation to the chateau is
on foot: of a more solemn, not to say awful character;
for, besides "orgies in the Orangery," it seems "the grain-
convoys are all stopped;" nor has Mirabeau 's thunder
been silent. Such deputation is on the point of setting
out, when lo, his majesty himself, attended only by his
two brothers, steps in; quite in the paternal manner;
announces that the troops, and all causes of offense are
gone, and henceforth there shall be nothing but trust,
reconcilement, goodwill; whereof he "permits, and even
requests," a national assembly to assure Paris in his name:
Acclamation, as of men suddenly delivered from death,
gives answer. The whole assembly spontaneously rises to
escort his majesty back; "interlacing their arms to keep
off the excessive pressure from him ;" for all Versailles is
crowding and shouting. The chateau musicians, with a
felicitous promptitude, strike up the Sein de sa Famille
(bosom of one's family) ; the queen appears at the balcony
with her little boy and girl, "kissing them several times;"
infinite Vivats spread far and wide; and suddenly there
has come, as it were, a new heaven-on-earth.
Eighty-eight august senators, Bailly, Lafayette and
our repentant archbishop among them, take coach for
Paris, with the great intelligence; benedictions without
end on their heads. From the Place Louis Quinze, where
they alight, all the way to the H6tel-de-Ville, it is one sea
of tricolor cockades, of clear national muskets; one tempest
of huzzaings, hand -clappings, aided by "occasional
rollings" of drum-music. Harangues of due fervor are
delivered; especially by Lally Tollendal, pious son of the
ill-fated murdered Lally; on whose head, in consequence,
a civic crown (of oak or parsley) is forced, which he forcibly
transfers to Bailly's.
But surely, for one thing, the national guard should
have a general ! Moreau de Saint-Mery, he of the " three
thousand orders," casts one of his significant glances on
the bust of Lafayette, which has stood there ever since the
American war of liberty. Whereupon, by acclamation,
Lafayette is nominated. Again, in room of the slain

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 179
traitor or quasi traitor, Flesselles, President Bailly shall be
provost of the merchants? No; mayor of Paris! So
be it. Maire de Paris! Mayor Bailly, General Lafay
ette; vive Bailly, vive Lafayette! the universal out-of-
doors multitude rends the welkin in confirmation. And
now finally let us to Notre-Dame for a Te Deum.
Toward Notre-Dame Cathedral, in glad procession,
these regenerators of the country walk, through a jubilant
people; in fraternal manner; Abbe Lefevre, still black
with his gunpowder services, walking arm in arm with the
white-stoled archbishop. Poor Bailly comes upon the
foundling children, sent to kneel to him; and weeps."
Te Deum, our archbishop officiating, is not only sung, but
shot — with blank cartridges. Our joy is boundless, as
our woe threatened to be. Paris, by her own pike and
musket, and the valor of her own heart, has conquered
the very war-gods, to the satisfaction now of majesty
itself. A courier is, this night, getting under way for
Necker: the people's minister, invited back by king, by
national assembly, and nation, shall traverse France amid
shoutings, and the sound of trumpet and timbrel.
Seeing which course of things, messeigneurs of the court
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-royal Broglies, Polignacs and
princes of the blood; off while it is yet time! Did not
the Palais Royal, in its late nocturnal "violent motions,"
set a specific price (place of payment not mentioned) on
each of your heads? With precautions, with the aid of
pieces of cannon and regiments that can be depended on,
messeigneurs, between the 16th night and 17th morning,
get to their several roads. Not without risk! Prince
Conde has (or seems to have) "men galloping at full
speed:" with a view, it is thought, to fling him into the
river Oise, atPont-Sainte-Mayence.* The Polignacs travel
disguised; friends, not servants, on their coach-box.
Broglie has his own difficulties at Versailles, runs his own
risks at Metz and Verdun; does nevertheless get safe to
Luxemburg, and there' rests.
This is what they call the first emigration ; determined
on, as appears, in full court-conclave; his majesty assist-
* Weber, ii. 126.

180 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
ing ; 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 appear
ing to withdraw in fear of their life." Alas, the burghers
of Paris bear it with unexpected stoicism ! The man
D 'Artois indeed is gone; but has he carried, for example,
the Land D 'Artois with him? Not even Bagatelle the
country-house (which shall be useful as a tavern) ; hardly
the four-valet breeches, leaving the breeches-maker ! As
for old Foulon, one learns that he is dead; at least "a
sumptuous funeral" is going on; the undertakers honoring
him, if no other will. Intendant Berthier, his son-in-law,
is still living; lurking: he joined Besenval, on that
Eumenides Sunday; appearing to treat it with levity; and
is now fled no man knows whither.

The emigration is not gone many miles, Prince Conde
hardly across the Oise, when his majesty, according to
arrangement for the emigration also thought it might do
good, undertakes a rather daring enterprise ; that of visit
ing Paris in person. With a hundred members of assem
bly; with small or no military escort, which indeed he
dismissed at the Bridge of Sevres, poor Louis sets out; leav
ing a desolate palace ; a queen weeping, the present, the
past and the future all so unfriendly for her.
As the barrier of Passy, Mayor Bailly, in grand galop,
presents him with the keys ; harangues him, in academic
style; mentions that it is a great day; that in Henri
Quartre's case, the king had to make conquest of his
people; but in this happier case, the people makes con
quest 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; is
harangued at the town hall, by Moreau of the three thous
and 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 shown at
the balcony, with a tricolor cockade in his hat ; is greeted
now, with vehement acclamation, from square and street,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 181
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.

It was Sunday when the red-hot balls hung over us, in
mid air: it is now but Friday, and "the revolution is
sanctioned." An august national assembly shall make the
constitution; and neither foreign Pandour, domestic
triumvirate, with leveled cannon, Guy-Faux powder-
plots (for that too was spoken of) ; nor any tyrannic poAver
on the earth or under the earth, shall say to it, What dost
thou? So jubilates the people; sure now of a constitu
tion. Cracked Marquis Saint-Huruge is heard under the
windows of the chateaux; murmuring sheer speculative-
treason.*

CHAPTER IX.
THE LANTERNE.
The fall of the Bastille may be said to have shaken
all France to the deepest foundations of its existence. The
rumor of these wonders flies everywhere : with the natural
speed of rumor ; with an effect thought to be preternatural,
produced by plots. Did D'Orleans or Laclos, nay did
Mirabeau {not overburdened with money at this time) send
riding couriers out from Paris; to gallop "on all radii," or
highways, toward all points of France? It is a miracle,
which no penetrating man will call in question, f
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
noiv, 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 rumor 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! Where
upon the Avhole population of such town defensively flies
* Campan, ii. 46-64. fToulongeon, i. 95; Weber, etc.

182 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
to arms. Petition is soon thereafter forwarded to national
assembly ; in such peril and terror of peril, leave to organize
yourself cannot be withheld: the armed population be
comes everywhere an enrolled national guard. Thus rides
rumor, careering along all radii, from Paris outward, 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 crystallized mass, of sharp-cutting steel ! Guai a
chi la tocca, 'Ware who touches it!
In Paris, an electoral committee, Avith a new mayor and
general, is urgent with belligerent workmen to resume
their handicrafts. Strong dames of the market {Dames de
la Halle) deliver congratulatory harangues; present
"bouquets to the shrine of Sainte Genevieve." Unenrolled
men deposit their arms : not so readily as could be wished
and receive "nine francs." With Te Deums, royal visits,
and sanctioned revolution, there is halcyon weather;
weather even of preternatural brightness; the hurricane
being overblown.
Nevertheless, as is natural, the waves still run high,
hollow rocks retaining their murmur. We are but at the
22d of the month, hardly above a week since the Bastille
fell, when it suddenly appears that old Foulon is alive;
nay, that he is here, in early morning, in the streets of Paris :
the extortioner, the plotter, who would make the people
eat grass, and was a liar from the beginning! It is even
so. The deceptive " sumptuous funeral" (of some domestic
that died); the hiding-place at Vitry toward Fontaine-
bleau, have not availed that wretched old man. Some-
living domestic or dependent, 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 H6tel-de- Ville!
His old head, Avhich 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;

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION 183
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."
Sooty Saint- Antone, and every street, musters its crowds
as he passes ; the hall of the H6tel-de- Ville, the Place de
Greve itself, will scarcely hold his escort and him. Foulon
must not only be judged righteously, but judged there
where he stands, without any delay. Appoint seven
judges, ye municipals, or seven ty-and-seven ; name them
yourselves, or we will name them : but judge him ! * Elec
toral rhetoric, eloquence of Mayor Bailly, is wasted for
hours, explaining the beauty of the laws's delay. Delay,
and still delay ! Behold, oh mayor of the people, the morn
ing has Avorn 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
handclapping, Foulon (in his fainness, as his destiny
would have it) also claps. "See! they understand one
another!" cries dark Sanculottism, blazing into fury of
suspicion. "Friends," said "a person in good clothes,"
stepping forward, "what is the use of judging this man?
Has not he been judged these thirty years?" With' wild
yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands:
he is whirled across the Place de Greve, 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, f
Surely if "revenge is a kind of justice," it is a "wild"
kind ! 0 mad Sansculottism, hast thou risen, in thy mad
darkness, in thy soot and rags; unexpectedly, like an
Enceladus, living-buried, from under his Trinacria? They
that would make grass be eaten do now eat grass, in this
manner? After long dumb-groaning generations, has the
* " Histoire Parlementaire," ii. 146 9.
4- " Deux Amis de la Liberte," ii.60-6,

1 84 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
turn suddenly become thine? To such abysmal overturns,
and frightful instantaneous inversions of the center of
gravity, are human Solecisms all liable, if they but knew it;
the more liable, the falser (and topheavier) they are !

To add to the horror of Mayor Bailly and his municipals,
word comes that Berthier has also been arrested ; that he is
on his way hither from Compiegne. Berthier, intendant
(say tax levier) of Paris; sycophant and tyrant; forestaller
of corn; contriver of camps against the people; accused of
many things: is he not Foulon's son-in-law; and, in that
one point, guilty of all? In these hours, too, when Sans
culottism has its blood up! The shuddering municipals
send one of their number to escort him, with mounted na
tional guards.
At the fall of day, the wretcher Berthier, still wearing a
face of courage, arrives at the barrier; in an open carriage;
with the municipal beside him; five hundred horsemen
with drawn sabers; unarmed footmen enough: not with
out noise! Placards go brandished round him; bearing
legibly his indictment, as Sansculottism, with unlegal
brevity, "in huge letters," draws it up.* Paris is come
forth to meet him: with hand-clappings, with windows
flung up; with dances, triumph-songs, as of the furies.
Lastly, the head of Foulon ; this also meets him on a pike.
Well might his "look become glazed," and sense fail him,
at such sight ! Nevertheless, be the man's conscience what
it may, his nerves are of iron. At the Hotel-de- Ville he
will answer nothing. He says he obeyed superior orders;
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
toward the Abbaye. At the very door of the H6tel-de-
Ville, they are clutched; flung asunder, as by a vortex of
mad arms; Berthier Avhirls toward the Lanterne. He
snatches a musket ; fells and strikes, defending himself like
*" 11 a vole le Roi et la France (He robbed the King and France)."
" He devoured the substance of the People." " He was the slave of
the rich, and the tryant of the poor." " He drank the blood of the
widow and orphan." "He betrayed his country." See "Deus
Amis," ii. 67-73.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 185
a mad lion; he 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. "Le sang
qui coule, est-il done si pur" asks Barnave; intimating
that the gallows, though by irregular methods, has its own.
Thou thyself, reader, oh Avhen thou turnest that corner of
the Rue de la Vannerie, and discernest still that same grim
bracket of old iron, wilt not want for reflections. " Over
a grocer's shop," or otherwise; with "a bust of Louis
XIV., in the niche under it," now no longer in the niche,
it still sticks there; still holding out an ineffectual light,
of fish-oil; and has seen worlds wrecked, and says nothing.
But to the eye of enlightened patriotism, what a thunder
cloud was this; suddenly shaping itself in the radiance of
the halcyon Aveather ! Cloud of Erebus blackness ; beto
kening latent electricity without limit. Mayor Bailly,
General Lafayette throw up their commissions, in an indig
nant manner; need to be flattered back again. The cloud
disappears, as thunder-clouds do. The halycon weather
returns, though of a grayer complexion; of a character
more and more evidently not supernatural.
Thus, in any case, with what rubs soever, shall the
Bastille be abolished from our earth ; and with it, feudal
ism, despotism; and, one hopes, scoundrelism generally,
and all hard usage of man by his brother man. Alas, the
scoundrelism and hard usage are not so easy of abolition !
But as for the Bastille, it sinks day after day, and month
after month ; its ashlars and boulders tumbling down con
tinually, by express order of our municipals. Crowds of
the curious roam through its caverns; gaze on the skele
tons found walled-up, on the oubliettes, iron-cages, mon
strous stone-blocks with padlock chains. One day we
discern Mirabeau there, along with the Genevese Dumont. *
Workers and onlookers make reverent way for him ; fling
verses, flowers on his path, Bastille-papers and curiosities
into his carriage, with vivats.
Able editors compile books from the Bastille Archives,
from what of them remained unburned. The key of that
robber-den shall cross the Atlantic ; shall lie on Washing-
*Pumont, " Souvenirs sur Mirabeau," p. 305,

186 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
ton's hall-table. The great clock ticks now in a private
patriotic cloakmaker's apartment; no longer measuring
hours of mere heaviness. Vanished is the Bastille, what
we call vanished : the body, or sandstones, of it hanging, in
benign metamorhposis, for centuries to come, over the
Seine waters, as Pont Louis Seize; * the soul of it living,
perhaps still longer, in the memories of men.

So far, ye august senators, with your tennis-court oaths,
your inertia and impetus, your sagacity and pertinacity,
have ye brought us. "And yet think, messieurs," as the
petitioners justly urged, "you who Avere our saviors did
yourselves need saviors," the brave Bastillers, namely;
workmen of Paris; many of them in straitened pecuniary
circumstances ! f Subscriptions are opened ; Lists are
formed, more accurate than Elie's; harangues are deliv
ered. A body of Bastille heroes, tolerably complete, did
get together; comparable to the Argonauts; hoping to en
dure 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, includ
ing 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 invalide, shot stone-dead
{roide-mort) on the battlements! X The Bastille Fortress,
like the City of Jericho, was overturned by miraculous
sound.

* Dulaure, " Histoire de Paris," viii. 434.
f Moniteur, ' ' Seance du Samedi 18 Juil
'arlementaire," ii. 137).
X Dusanlx, " Prise de la Bastille," p. 447, etc.

f Moniteur, "Seance du Samedi 18 Juillet 1789" (in "Histoire
Parlementaire," ii. 137).

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 187

BOOK SIXTH.
CONSOLIDATION.

CHAPTER I.
MAKE THE CONSTITUTION.
Here perhaps is the place to fix, a little more precisely,
what these two words, French Revolution shall mean; for,
strictly considered, they may have as many meanings as
there are speakers of them. All things are in revolution;
in change from moment to moment, which becomes sen
sible 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.
For ourselves, we answer that French revolution means
here the open violent rebellion, and victory of disimpris
oned anarchy against corrupt worn-out authority: how
anarchy breaks prison ; bursts up from the infinite deep,
and rages uncontrollable, immeasurable, enveloping a
world; in phasis after phasis of fever-frenzy; till the
frenzy burning itself out, and what elements of new order
it held (since all force hold such) developing themselves,
the uncontrollable be got if not reimprisoned, yet har
nessed, and its mad forces made to work toward their
object as sane regulated ones. For as hierarchies and

188 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
dynasties of all kinds, theocracies, aristocracies, autocracies,
strumpetocracies, have ruled over the world; so it was
appointed, in the decrees of providence, that this same
victorious anarchy, Jacobinism, Sansculottism, French
Revolution, Horrors of French Revolution, or what else
mortals name it, should have its turn. The "destructive
wrath" of Sansculottism : this is what we speak, having
unhappily no voice for singing.
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 fanati
cism of "making away with formulas, de humer lesfor-
mules." The world of formulas, the formed regulated
Avorld, 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, anathematizing it; can nevertheless
in nowise prevent its being and its having been. The
anathemas are there, and the miraculous thing is there.
Whence it cometh? Whither it goeth? These are ques
tions! When the age of miracles lay faded into the
distance as an incredible tradition, and even the age of con
ventionalities was now old; and man's existence had for
long generations rested on mere formulas which were groAvn
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-breath
ing, and asks: What think ye of me? Well may the buck
ram masks start together, terror-struck; "into expressive
well-concerted groups!" It is indeed, friends, a most
singular, most fatal thing. Let whosoever is but buckram
and a phantasm look to it: ill, verily, may it fare with him;
here methinks he cannot much longer be. Woe also to
many a one who is not wholly buckram, but partly real and
human! The age of miracles has comeback! "Behold
the World-Phcenix, in fire-consummation and fire-creation :
wide are. her fanning wings; loud is her death-melody, of

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 189
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 unspeak
able 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 royalist 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; recognize it
for what it is, the portentous inevitable end of much, the
miraculous beginning of much. One other thing thou
mayest understand of it : that it too came from God ; for
has it not been? From of old, as it is written, are His
goings forth; in the great deep of things; fearful and
wonderful now as in the beginning : in the whirlwind also He
speaks; and the wrath of men is made to praise him. But
to gauge and measure this immeasurable thing, and what
is called account for it, and reduce it to a dead logic-
formula, attempt not ! Much less shalt thou shriek thy
self hoarse, cursing it; for that, to all needful lengths,
has been already done. As an actually existing son of
time, look, with unspeakable manifold interest, oftenest in
silence, at what the time did bring; therewith edify,
instruct, nourish thyself, or were it but amuse and gratify
thyself, as it is given thee.

Another question which at every new turn will rise on us,
requiring ever new reply, is this: Where the French
Revolution specially is? In the king's palace, in his maj
esty's or her majesty's managements, and maltreatments
cabals, imbecilities and woes, answer some few: whom we

190 THE FRENCH REVOL UTIONl
do not answer. In the national assembly, answer a large
mixed multitude: Avho accordingly seat themselves in the
reporter's chair; and therefrom noting what proclamations,
acts, reports, passages of logic-fence, bursts of parliamen
tary eloquence seem notable within doors, and what tumults
and rumors of tumult become audible from without, pro
duce volume on volume; and, naming it history of the
French Revolution, contentedly publish the same. To do
the like, to almost any extent, with so many filed news
papers, Choix des Rapports, Histoires Parlementaires as
there are, amounting to many horseloads, were easy for us.
Easy but unprofitable. The national 'assembly, named
now constitutent assembly, goes its course; making the
constitution; but the French Revolution also goes its
course. In general, may we not say that the French Revolution
lies in the heart and head of every violent-speaking, of
every violent-thinking Frenchman? How the twenty-five
millions of such, in their perplexed combination, acting
and counter-acting, may give birth to events; which event
successively is the cardinal one; and from what point of
vision it may best be surveyed: this is a problem. Which
problem the best insight, seeking light from all possible
sources, shifting its point of vision whithersoever vision or
glimpse of vision can be had, may employ itself in solving;
and be well content to solve in some tolerably approximate
way. As to the national assembly, in so far as it still towers
eminent -over France, after the manner of a car-borne
Carroccio though now no longer in the van: and rings
signals for retreat or for advance, it is and continues a
reality among other realities. But in so' far as it sits
making the constitution, on the other hand, it is a fatuity
and chimera mainly. Alas, in the never so heroic build
ing of Montesquieu-Mably card-castles, though shouted
over by the world, what interest is there? Occupied in
that way, an august national assembly becomes for us little
other than a Sanhedrim of pedants, not of the gerund-
grinding, yet of no f ruitf uller sort ; and its loud debatings
and recriminations about rights of man, right of peace
and war, Veto suspensif, Veto absolu, Avhat are they but
so many pedant's-curses, " May God confound you for your
theory of irregular verbs!

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 191
A constitution can be built, constitutions enough a la
Sieyes: but the frightful difficulty is, that of getting men to
come and live in them ! Could Sieyes have drawn thunder
and lightning out of heaven to sanction his constitution, it
had been well : but without any thunde»? 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, than 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 at
their earliest convenience.
The question of questions accordingly were, 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! Here, however, in defect of such tran
scendent supreme man, time with its infinite succession of
merely superior men, each yielding his little contribution,
does much. Force likewise (for, as antiquarian philoso
phers teach, the royal scepter was from the first something
of a hammer, to crack such heads as could not be con
vinced) will all along find somewhat to do. And thus in
perpetual abolition and reparation, rending and mending,
with struggle and strife, with present evil, and the hope
and effort toward future good, must the constitution, as
all human things do, build itself fonvard ; or unbuild
itself, and sink, as it can and may. 0 Sieyes, and ye
other committee-men, and twelve hundred miscellaneous
individuals from all parts of France ! what is the belief of
France, and yours, if ye knew it? Properly that there
shall be no belief; that all formulas be swallowed. The
constitution which will suit that? Alas, too clearly, a no-
constitution, an anarchy; which also, in due season, shall
be vouchsafed you.
But, after all, what can an unfortunate national assem-

192 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
bly do? Consider only this, that there are twelve hundred
miscellaneous individuals; not a unit of whom but has
his own thinking-apparatus, his own speaking-apparatus!
In every unit of them is some belief and wish, different
for each, both that France should be regenerated, and also
that he individually should do it. Twelve hundred sepa
rate forces, yoked miscellaneously to any object, miscel
laneously to all sides of it ; and bidden pull for life !
Or is it the nature of national assemblies generally to do,
with endless' labor and clangor, nothing? Are repre
sentative 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, recognized, or for most
part unrecognized, as may exist in individual heads here
and there? Nay, even that were a great improvement;
for of old, with their Guelf factions and Ghibelline
factions, with their red roses and white roses, they were
wont to cancel the whole country as well. Besides they
do it now in a much narrower cockpit; within the four
walls of their assembly house, and here and there an out
post of hustings and barrel-heads ; do it with tongues too,
not with swords: all Avhich improvements, in the art of
producing zero, are they not great? Nay, best of all,
some happy continents (as the western one, with its
savannahs, where whosoever has four willing limbs finds
food under his feet, and an infinite sky over his head) can-
do without governing. What Sphinx-questions; which
the distracted world, in these very generations, must an
swer or die !

CHAPTER II.
THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY.
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

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 193
nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will
destroy themselves.
So and not otherwise proved it with an august national
assembly. It took the name constituent, as if its mission
and function had been to construct or build ; which also,
with its whole soul, it endeavored to do; yet, in the fates,
in the nature of things, there lay for it precisely of all
functions the most opposite to that. Singular, what Gos
pels men will believe; even Gospels according to Jean
Jacques ! It was the fixed faith of these national deputies,
as of all thinking Frenchmen, that the constitution could
be made; that they, there and then, were called to make
it. How, with the toughness of old Hebrews or Ishmael-
ite Moslem, did the otherwise light unbelieving people
persist in this their Credo quia impossibile; and front the
armed world with it, and grow fanatic and even heroic,
and do exploits by it! The constituent assembly's consti
tution, and several others, will, being printed and not
manuscript, survive to future generations, as an instructive,
well-nigh incredible document of the time ; the most sig
nificant picture of the then existing France; or at lowest,
picture of these men's picture of it.
But in truth and seriousness, what could the national
assembly have done? The thing to be done was, actually
as they said, to regenerate France; to abolish the old
France, and make a neAv one, quietly or forcibly, by con
cession or by violence ; this by the law of nature has become
inevitable. With what degree of violence, depends on the
wisdom of those that preside over it. With perfect wis
dom on the part of the national assembly, it had all been
otherwise; but whether, in any wise, it could have been
pacific, nay other than bloody and convulsive, may still be
a question.

Grant, meanwhile, that this constituent assembly does
to the last continue to be something. With a sigh, it sees
itself incessantly forced away from its infinite divine task
of perfecting "the theory of irregular verbs," to finite
terrestrial tasks, which latter have a still significance for
us. It is the cynosure of revolutionary France, this na
tional assembly. All work of government has fallen into
its hands, or under its control; all men look to it for

1 94 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
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. It emits pacificatory proclamations not a few;
Avith more or with less result. It authorizes the enroll
ment of national guards, lest brigands come to devour us,
and reap the unripe crops. It Sends missions to quell
"effervescences;" to deliver men from the Lanterne. It
can listen to congratulatory addresses, which arrive daily
by the sackful; mostly in King Cambyses' vein: also to
petitions and complaints from all mortals; so that every
mortal's complaint, if it cannot get redressed, may at
least hear itself complain. For the rest, an august national
assembly can produce parlementary eloquence ; and appoint
committees. Committees of the constitution, of reports,
of reseaches; and of much else; which again yield moun
tains of printed paper; the theme of new parlementary
eloquence, in bursts or in plenteous smooth-flowing floods.
And so, from the waste vortex whereon all things go
whirling and grinding, organic laws, or the similitude of
such slowly emerge.
With endless debating, we get the rights of man written
down and promulgated: true paper basis of all paper
constitutions. Neglecting, cry the opponents, to declare
the duties of man ! Forgetting, answer we, to ascertain
the mights of man; one of the fatalest omissions! Nay
sometimes, as on the 4th of August, our national
assembly, fired suddenly by an almost preternatural enthu
siasm, will get through whole masses of work in one night.
A memorable night, this 4th of August: dignitaries
temporal and spiritual ; peers, archbishops, parlement-presi-
dents, each outdoing the other in patriotic devotedness,
come successively to throw their now untenable posses
sions on the "altar of the fatherland." With louder and
louder vivats, for indeed it is "after dinner" too, they
abolish tithes, seignorial dues, Gabelle, excessive preserva
tion of game ; nay privilege, immunity, feudalism root and
branch ; then appoint a Te Deum for it ; and so, finally,
disperse about three in the morning, striking the stars
with their sublime heads. Such night, unforeseen but for
ever memorable, was this of the 4th of August, 1789.
Miraculous, or semi-miraculous, some seem to think it.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 195
A new night of Pentecost, shall we say, shaped according
to the new time, and new church of Jean Jacques Rous
seau? It had its causes; also its effects.

In such manner labor the national deputies; perfecting
their theory of irregular verbs; governing France, and
being governed by it ; with toil and noise; cutting asun
der ancient intolerable bonds; and, for new ones, assidu
ously spinning ropes of sand. Were their labors a nothing
or a something, yet the eyes of all France being reverently
fixed on them, history can never very long leave them alto
gether out of sight.
For the present, if we glance into that assembly-hall
of theirs, it will be found, as is natural, "most irregular."
As many as " a hundred members are on their feet at once ;"
no rule in making motions, or only commencements of a
rule; spectator's gallery allowed to applaud, and even to
hiss; * President, appointed once a fortnight, raising
many times no serene head above the waves. Neverthe
less, as in all human assemblages, like does begin arranging
itself to like; the perennial rule, Ubi homines sunt modi
sunt, proves valid. Rudiments of methods disclose them
selves ; rudiments of parties. There is a right side ( Cote
Droit), a left side {Cote Gauche); sitting on M. le Presi
dent's right hand, or on his left : the Cote Droit conserva
tive; the Cote Gauche destructive. Intermediate is
anglomaniac constitutionalism, or two-chamber royalism;
with its Mouniers, its Lallys, fast verging toward nonentity.
Pre-eminent, on the right side, pleads and perorates
Cazales the dragoon-captain, eloquent, mildly fervent ;
earning for himself the shadow of a name. There also
blusters Barrel-Mirabeau, the Younger Mirabeau, not
without wit: dusky D'Espremenil does nothing but sniff
and ejaculate; might, it is fondly thought, lay prostrate
the Elder Mirabeau himself, would he but try,f which he
does not. Last and greatest, see, for one moment, the
Abbe Maury; with his Jesuitic eyes, his impassive brass
face, "image of all the cardinal sins." Indomitable,
unquenchable, he fights jesuitico-rhetorically ; with toughest
* Arthur Young, i. 111.
| " Biographie Universelle," § D'Espremenil (by Beaulieu).

196 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
lungs and heart; for throne, especially for altar and tithes.
So that a shrill voice exclaims once, from the gallery:
" Messieurs of the clergy, you have to be shaved ; if you
Avriggle too much you will get cut." *
The left side is also called the D'Orleans side; and
sometimes, derisively, the Palais Royal. And yet, so
confused, real-imaginary seems everything, " It is doubtful,"
as Mirabeau said, "whether D'Orleans himself belong to
that same D'Orleans party." What can be known and
seen is, that his moon-visage does beam forth from that
point of space. There likewise sits seagreen Robespierre;
throwing in his light weight, with decision, not yet with
effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian, he Avould
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 center and left, by inextinguishable
laughter, f Yet men of insight discern that the Seagreen
may by chance go far: "This man," observes Mirabeau,
"will do somewhat; he believes every word he says."
Abbe Sieyes is busy with mere constitutional work;
wherein, unluckily, fellow-workmen are less pliable than,
with one who has completed the science of polity, they
ought to be. Courage, Sieyes, nevertheless ! Some twenty
months of heroic travail, of contradiction from the
stupid, and the constitution shall be built; the top-stone
of it brought out with shouting, say rather, the top-paper;
for it is all paper, and thou hast done in it what the earth
or the heaven could require, thy utmost. Note likewise this
trio ; memorable for several things ; memorable were it only
that their history is written in an epigram : " Whatsoever
these three have in hand," it is said, "Duport thinks it,
Barnave speaks it, Lameth does it." X
But royal Mirabeau? Conspicuous among all parties,
raised above and beyond them all, this man rises more and
more. As we often say, he has an eye, he is a reality;
while others are formulas and eye-glasses. In the transient
* '' Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans, " ii. 519.
f " Moniteur," No. 67 (in " Hist. Pari.").
X See Toulongeon, i. c. 3.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 19?
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 postillions of
inns have heard of Mirabeau ; when an impatient traveler
complains that the team is insufficient, his postillion
answers, " Yes, monsieur, the wheelers are weak ; but my
mirabeau (main horse), you see, is a right one, mais mon
mirabeaus est excellent." *
And now, reader, thou shalt quit this noisy discrepancy
of a national assembly; not (if thou be of humane mind)
without pity. Twelve hundred brother men are there, in
the center 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.
Nay, on the Avhole, it is admitted further to be very dull.
"Dull as this day's assembly," said some one. "Why
date, Pour quoi dater?" answered Mirabeau.
Consider that they are twelve hundred ; that they not
only speak, but read their speeches; and even borrow and
steal speeches to read! With twelve hundred fluent
speakers, and their Noah's Deluge of vociferous common
place, silence unattainable may well seem the one blessing
of life. 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 news
paper here; of tobacco (much less of pipes) there is not
the slightest provision. Conversation itself has to be
transacted in a low tone, with continual interruption :
only " Pencil-notes" circulate freely, " in incredible num
bers, to the foot of the very tribune." f Such work is it,
regenerating a nation ; perfecting one's theory of irregular
verbs !
* Dumont, "Souvenirs sur Mirabeau," p. 255.
f See Dumont (pp. 159-67); Arthur Young, etc.

198 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
CHAPTER III.
THE GENERAL OVERTURN.
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 CEil-de-Boeuf rally again. The
scepter is departed from King Louis; is gone over to the
Salle des Menus, to the Paris town hall, or one knows not
whither. In the July days, Avhile all ears were yet deaf
ened by the crash of the Bastille, and ministers and princes
were scattered to the four winds, it seemed as if the very
valets had grown heavy of hearing. Besenval, also in
flight toward infinite space, but hovering a little at Ver
sailles, was addressing his majesty personally for an order
about post-horses; when lo, "the valet-in-waiting places
himself familiarly between his majesty and me," stretch
ing out his rascal neck to learn Avhat it was ! His majesty,
in sudden choler, whirled round; made a clutch at the.
tongs; "I gently prevented him; he grasped my hand in
thankfulness; and I noticed tears in his eyes." *
Poor king; for French kings also are men! Louis
Fourteenth himself once clutched the tongs, and even
smote with them; but then it was at Louvois, and Dame
Maintenon ran up. The queen sits weeping in her inner
apartments, surrounded by weak women : she is at " 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.
The Chateau Polignac still frowns aloft, on its " bold and
enormous cubical rock," mid the blooming champaigns,
amid the blue girdling mountains of Auvergne.f but no
Duke and Duchess Polignac look forth from it; they have
fled, they have "met Necker at Bale"; they shall not
return. 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 under
stood nothing; would understand nothing. Does not, at
this hour, a new Polignac, first-born of these two, sit
* Besenval, iii. 419. f Arthur Young, i. 165.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 199
reflective in the Castle of Ham ; * in an astonishment he
will never recover from; the most confused of existing
mortals? King Louis has his new ministry: mere popularities ; Old-
President Pompignan; Necker, coming back in triumph;
and other such.f But what will it avail him? As was
said, the specter, all but the wooden gilt scepter, has
departed elseAvhither. Volition, determination is not in
this man; only innocence, indolence; dependence on all
persons but himself, on all circumstances but the circum
stances he were lord of. So troublous internally is our Ver
sailles and its work. Beautiful, if seen from afar,
resplendent like a sun; seen near at hand, a mere sun's-
atmosphere, hiding darkness, confused ferment of ruin!
But over France, there goes on the indisputablest
"destruction of formulas;" transaction of realities that
follow therefrom. So many millions of persons, all guyed,
and nigh strangled, with formulas ; whose life nevertheless,
at least the digestion and hunger of it, Avas 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 aris
tocrats, plotting of D'Orleans; were it brigands, preter
natural terror, and the clang of Phcebus 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 others the like, much mend the matter.
Dragoons with drawn swords stand ranked among the
corn-sacks, often more dragoons than sacks. J Meal-mobs
abound ; growing into mobs of a still darker quality.
Starvation has been knoAvn among the French com
monalty before this; known and familiar. Did not we see
* a.-d. 1835. f Montgaillard, ii. 108,
X Arthur Young, i. 129, etc.

200 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION
them, in the year 1775, presenting, in sallow faces, in
wretchedness and raggedness, their petition of grievances;
and, for answer, getting a hrand-new gallows forty feet
high? Hunger and darkness, through long years! For
look back on that earlier Paris riot, when a great person
age, worn out by debauchery, was believed to be m 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 oppres
sion of the great were like the hail and the thunder, a
thing irremediable, the ordinance of nature." * 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,"
Avhich 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 woolen 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 exercise-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 govern
ment by blind-man's-buff, stumbling along too far,
would end by the general overturn, the Culbute Generate!"
No man would listen; each went his thoughtless way;
and time and destiny also traveled on. The government
by blind-man-bnff, stumbling along, has reached the preci
pice inevitable for it. Dull drudgery, driven on, by clerks
Avith 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,
* Fils Adoptif, " Memoires de Mirabeau," i. 364-394.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 201
where no journals are.* by rumor and conjecture: Oppres
sion not inevitable ; a Bastille prostrate, and the constitu
tion fast getting ready! Which constitution, if it be some
thing and not nothing, what can it be but bread to eat?
The traveler, "walking uphill, bridle in hand," over
takes " a poor Avoman ;" the image, as such commonly are,
of drudgery and scarcity; "looking sixty years of age,
though she is not yet twenty-eight." They have seven
children, her poor drudge and she : a farm, with one cow,
which helps to make the children soup; also one little
horse, or garron. They have rents and quit-rents, hens
to pay to this seigneur, oat-sacks to that; king's taxes,
statute-labor, church-taxes, taxes enough; and think the
times inexpressible. She has heard that some where, in
some manner, some thing is to be done for the poor: "God
send it soon ; for the dues and taxes crush us down {nous
ecrasent) ! " f
Fair prophecies are spoken, but they are not fulfilled.
There have been notables, assemblages, turnings-out and
comings-in. Intriguing and manceuerving; parlementary
eloquence and arguing, Greek meeting Greek in high
. places, has long gone on ; yet still bread comes not. 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, Avith their haggard faces {figures haves); in
woolen 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 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
*See Arthur Young, i. 137, 150, etc. flbid., i. 134.

202 THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION.
among the mights of man. Seventy-two chateaus have
flamed aloft in the Maconnais and Beaujolais alone: this
seems the center of the conflagation ; but it has spread over
Dauphine, Alsace, the Lyonnais, the whole south-east is in
a blaze. All over the north, from Rouen to Metz, dis
order is abroad: smugglers of salt go openly in armed
bands : the barriers of toAvns are burned ; toll-gatherers, tax-
gatherers, official persons put to flight. "It was thought,"
says Young, "the people, from hunger, would revolt;"
and we see they have done it. Desperate Lackalls, long
prowling aimless, now finding hope in desperation itself,
everywhere form a nucleus. They ring the church-bell
by Avay of tocsin: and the parish turns out to the work.*
Ferocity, atrocity ; hunger and revenge : such work as
we can imagine !
Ill stands it now with the seigneur, Avho, for example,
"has Avalled-up the only fountain of the township;" who
has ridden high on his chartier and parchments; who has
preserved game not Avisely but too Avell. Churches also,
and canonries, are sacked, without mercy; Avhich have
shorn the flock too close, forgetting to feed it. Woe to
the land over which Sansculottism, in its day of venge
ance, tramps roughshod, shod in sabots! Highbred
seigneurs, with their delicate women and little ones, had
to "fly half -naked," under cloud of night: glad to escape
the flames, and even worse. You meet them at the tables
d'hote of inns; making wise reflections or foolish, that
"rank is destroyed;" uncertain whither they shall now
wend.f The metayer will find it convenient to be slack
in paying rent. As for the tax-gatherer, he, long hunt
ing as a biped of prey, may now find himself hunted as
one; his majesty's exchequer Avill not "fill up the deficit"
this season : it is the notion of many, that a patriot maj
esty, being the restorer of French liberty, has abolished
most taxes, though, for their private ends, some men make
a secret of it.
Where this will end? In the abyss, one may prophesy;
whither all delusions are, at all moments, traveling;
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 forever. The very truth has to change its vesture
* See " Hist. Pari." ii. 243-6. f See Young, i. 149, etc.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 203
from time to time; and be born again. But all lies have
sentence of death written down against them, in heaven's
chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly
toward their hour. " The sign of a grand seigneur being
landlord," says the vehement plain-spoken Arthur Young,
"are wastes, landes, deserts, ling; go to his residence,
you will find it in the middle of a forest, peopled with
deer, wild boars and wolves. The fields are scenes of piti
able management, as the houses are of misery. To see so
many millions of hands, that would be industrious, all
idle and starving: oh, if I were legislator of France for
one day, I would make these great lords skip again !" *
Oh, Arthur, thou now actually beholdest them skip; wilt
thou grow to grumble at that too?
'For long years and generations it lasted; but the time
came. Featherbrain, whom no reasoning and no pleading
could touch, the glare of the firebrand had to illuminate ;
there remained but that method. Consider it, look at it!
The widow is gathering nettles for her children's dinner;
a perfumed seigneur, delicately lounging in the QSil-de-
Bceuf has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her
the third nettle, and name it rent and law ; such an arrange
ment must end. Ought it not? But, oh, most fearful is
such an ending! Let those, to whom God, in his great
mercy, has granted time and space, prepare another and
milder one.

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 valiant 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 Avith 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.
Besides, those starving peasants, after all, have not four
feet and claws, that you could keep down them perma
nently in that manner. They are not even of black color;
* See Young, i. 12, 48, 84, etc.

204 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
they are mere unwashed seigneurs ; and a seigneur too has
human bowels! The seigneurs did what they could;
enrolled in national guards; fled, with shrieks, complain
ing to heaven and earth. One seigneur, famed Memmay
of Quincy, near Vesoul, invited all the rustics of his neigh
borhood to a banquet; bleAV up his ch&teau and them with
gunpowder; and instantaneously vanished, no man yet
knows whither.* Some half-dozen years after, he came
back ; and demonstrated that it was by accident.
Nor are the authorities idle ; though unluckily, all author
ities, municipalities and such-like, are in the uncertain
transitionary state ; getting regenerated from old monarchic
to new democratic ; no official yet knows clearly what he
is. Nevertheless, mayors old or new do gather mare-
chaussees, national guards, troops of the line ; justice, of
the most summary sort, is not wanting. The electoral
committee of Macon, though but a committee, goes the
length of hanging, for its own behoof, as many as twenty.
The prevot of Dauphine traverses the country "with a
movable column," with tipstaves, gallows-ropes; for gal-
Ioavs any tree will serve, and suspend its culprit, or " thir
teen" culprits.
Unhappy country ! How is the fair gold and green of
the ripe bright year defaced with horrid blackness; black
ashes of chateaus, black bodies of gibbeted men ! Industry
has ceased in it; not sounds of the hammer and saw, but
of the tocsin and alarm-drum. The scepter has departed,
ichither one knows not; breaking itself in pieces; here
impotent, there tyrannous. National guards are un
skillful 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 town
hall 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, f
Through the middle all which phenomena is seen, on
his triumphant transit, "escorted," through Befort for
instance, by fifty national horsemen and all the military
* "Hist. Parl."ii. 161.
f Arthur Young, i. 141. Dampmartin, " Evenemens qui se sont
passes sous enes yeux," i. 105-127.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 205
music of the place," M. Necker returning from Bale!
Glorious as the meridian; though poor Necker himself
partly guesses whither it is leading.* One highest cul
minating day at the Paris town hall, with immortal
vivats, with wife and daughter kneeling publicly to kiss
his hand; with Besenval's pardon granted, but indeed
revoked before sunset: one highest day, but then lower
days, and ever lower, down even to lowest ! Such magic
is in a name; and in the want of a name. Like some
enchanted Mambrino's Helmet, essential to victory, comes
this "savior of France," beshouted, becymballed by the
world; alas, so soon to be ^'senchanted, to be pitched
shamefully over the lists as a barber's basin! Gibbon
"could wish to show him" (in this ejected, barber's-basin
state) to any man of solidity, who were minded to have
the soul burned out of him, and become a caput mortuum,
by ambition, unsuccessful or successful, f
Another small phasis we add, and no more: how, in the
autumn months, our sharp-tempered Arthur has been
"pestered for some days past," by shot, lead-drops and
slugs, " rattling five or six times into my chaise and about
my ears;" all the mob of the county gone out to kill
game! | It is even so. On the cliffs of Dover, overall
the marches of France, there appear, this autumn, two
signs on the earth; emigrant flights of French seigneurs;
emigrant winged flights of French game! Finished, one
may say, or as good as finished, is the preservation of game
on this earth ; completed for endless time. What part it
had to play in the history of civilization is played; plaudite
exeat!

In this manner does Sansculottism blaze up, illustrat
ing many things; producing, among the rest, as we saw,
on the 4th of August, that semi-miraculous night of
Pentecost in the national assembly; semi-miraculous,
which had its causes, and its effects. Feudalism is struck
dead; not on parchment only, and by ink; but in very
fact, by fire; say, by self-combustion. This conflagration
of the south-east will abate ; will be got scattered, to the
* " Biographie Universelle," § Necker (by Lally-Tollendal).
t Gibbon's " Letters." X Young, i. 176.

206 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
west, or elseAvhither ; extinguish it will not, till the fuel
be all done.

CHAPTER IV.
IN QUEUE.
If we look now at Paris, one thing is too evident : that
the baker's shops have got their queues, or tails, their
long strings of purchasers, arranged in tail, so that the
first come be the first served, were the shop once open !
This waiting in tail, not since the early days of July, again
makes its appearance in August. In time, we shall see it
perfected by practice to the rank almost of an art; and
the art, or quasi-art, of standing in tail become one of the
characteristics of the Parisian people, distinguishing them
from all other peoples whatsoever.
But consider, while work itself is so scarce, how a man
must not only realize money, but stand waiting (if his
wife is too weak to wait and struggle) for half-days m the
tail, till he get it changed for dear bad bread ! Contro
versies, to the length sometimes of blood and battery, must
arise in these exasperated queues. Or if no controversy,
then it is but one accordant Range Lingua of complaint
against the powers that be. France has begun her long
curriculum of hungering, instructive and productive be
yond academic curriculums; which extends over some
seven most strenuous years. As Jean Paul says of his own
life, "to a great height shall the business of hungering go."
Or consider, in strange contrast, the jubilee ceremonies;
for, in general, the aspect of Paris, presents these two
features; jubilee ceremonials and scarcity of victual.
Processions enough walk in jubilee; of young women,
decked and dizened, their ribbons all tricolor moving with
song and tabor, to the shrine of Sainte Genevieve, to
thank her that the Bastille is down. The strong men of
the market, and the strong women, fail not with their
bouquets and speeches. Abbe Fauchet, famed in such
work (for Abbe Lefevre could only distribute powder)
blesses tricolor cloth for the national guard; and makes
it a national tricolor flag; victorious, or to be victorious,
in the cause of civil and religious liberty all over the
world. Fauchet, we say, is the man for Te Deums, and

THE FRENCH REVOL UtIoN. 20?
public consecrations; to which, as in this instance of the
flag, our national guard will "reply with volleys of
musketry," church and cathedral though it be; * filling
Notre Dame with such noisiest fuliginous Amen, signifi
cant of several things.
On the whole, we will say our new Mayor Bailly, our
new Commander Lafayette named also " Scipio- Americans,"
have bought their preferment dear. Bailly rides in gilt
state-coach, with beef -eaters and sumptouosity ; Camille
Desmoulins, and others, sniffing at him for it; Scipio
bestrides the "white charger," and waves with civic
plumes in sight of all France. Neither of them, however,
does it for nothing ; but, in truth, at an exorbitant rate.
At this rate, namely: of feeding Paris, and keeping it
from fighting. Out of the city funds, some seventeen
thousand of the utterly destitute are employed digging on
Montmartre, at tenpence a day, which buys them, at
market price, almost two pounds of bad bread ; they look
very yellow, when Lafayette goes to harangue them.
The town hall is in travail, night and day; it must bring
forth bread, a municipal constitution, regulations of all
kinds, curbs on the Sansculottic press; above all, bread,
bread. Purveyors prowl the country far and wide, with the
appetite of lions; detect hidden grain, purchase open
grain; by gentle means or forcible, must and will find
grain. A most thankless task; and so difficult, so dan
gerous, even if a man did gain some trifle by it ! On the
19th of August, there is food for one day. f Complaints
there are that the food is spoiled, and produces an effect
on the intestines: not corn but plaster-of-paris ! Which
effect on the intestines, as well as that " smarting in the
throat and palate," a town hall proclamation warns you
to disregard, or even to consider as drastic-beneficial.
The mayor of Saint-Denis, so black was his bread, has, by
a dyspeptic populace, been hanged on the Lanterne there.
National guards protect the Paris corn-market: first ten
suffice; then six hundred. J Busy are ye, Bailly, Brissot
de Warville, Condorcet, and ye others !
* See " Hist. Pari." iii, 20; Mercier, " Nouveau Paris," etc.
f See Bailly, "Memoires," ii. 137 409.
f'Hist. Pari." ii. 421.

208 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
For, as just hinted, there is a municipal constitution to
be made too. The old Bastille electors, after some ten.
days of psalmodying over their glorious victory, began
to hear it asked, in a splenetic tone, Who put you there?
They accordingly had to give place, not without moanings
and audible growlings on both sides,to a new larger body,
specially elected for that post. Which new body, aug
mented, altered, then fixed finally at the number of three
hundred, with the title of town representatives {Repre-
sentans de la Commune), now sits there; rightly por
tioned jinto committees ; assiduous making a constitution,
at all moments when not seeking flour.
And such a constitution; little short of miraculous; one
that shall " consolidate the revolution !" The revolution is
finished, then? Mayor Bailly and all respectable friends
of freedom would fain think so. Your revolution, like jelly
sufficiently boiled, needs only to be poured into shapes,
of constitution, and "consolidated" therein? Could it,
indeed, contrive to cool; which last, however, is precisely
the doubtful thing, or even the not doubtful !
Unhappy friends of freedom ; consolidating a revolution !
They must sit at work there, their pavilion spread on
very chaos ; between two hostile worlds, the upper court
world, the nether Sansculottic one; and, beaten on by
both, toil painfully, perilously, doing, in sad literal earnest,
"the impossible."

CHAPTER V.
THE FOURTH ESTATE.
Pamphleteering opens its abysmal throat wider and
wider; never to close more. Our philosophes, indeed,
rather withdraw ; after the manner of Marmontel, " retir
ing in disgust the first day." Abbe Raynal, grown gray
and quiet in his Marseilles domicile, is little content with
this work : the last literary act of the man will again be
an act of rebellion; and indignant Letter to the Constit
uent Assembly answered by "the order of the day."
Thus also philosopher Morellet puckers discontented brows;
being indeed threatened in his benefices by that 4th of
August : it is clearly going too far. How astonishing that

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 209
those " haggard figures in woolen jupes" would not rest
as satisfied with speculation, and victorious analysis, as Ave !
Alas, yes : speculation, philosophism, once the ornament
and wealth of the saloon, will now coin itself into mere
practical propositions, and circulate on street and high-
Avay, universally; with results! A fourth estate, of able
editors, springs up ; increases and multiplies ; irrepressible,
incalculable. New printers, new journals, and ever
new (so prurient is the world), let our three hundred curb
and consolidate as they can ! Loustalot, under the wing
of Prudhomme dull-blustering printer, edits weekly his
Revolutions de Paris; in an acrid, emphatic manner.
Acrid, corrosive, as the spirit of sloes and copperas, is
Marat, Friend of the people, struck already with the fact
that the national assembly, so full of aristocrats, "can do
nothing," except dissolve itself and make way for a better;
that the town hall representatives are little other than
babblers and imbeciles, if not even knaves. Poor is this
man; squalid, and dwells in garrets; a man unlovely to
the sense, outward and inward; a man forbid; and is
becoming fanatical, possessed with fixed-idea. Cruel lusus
of nature! Did nature, oh, poor Marat, as in cruel sport,
knead thee out of her leavings and miscellaneous waste
clay; and fling thee forth, stepdame-like, a distraction
into this distracted eighteenth century? Work is appointed
thee there; which thou shalt do. The three hundred
have summoned and will again summon Marat: but always
he croaks forth answer sufficient; always he will defy
them, or elude them; and endure no gag.
Carra, "ex-secretary or a decapitated Hospodar," and
then of a necklace-cardinal; likewise pamphleteer, ad
venturer in many scenes and lands, draws nigh to Mercier
of the Tableau de Paris; and, with foam on his lips, pro
poses an Annates patriotiques. The Moniteur goes its
prosperous Avay; Barrere "weeps," on paper as yet loyal;
Rivarol, Royou are not idle. Deep calls to deep: your
Domine salvum Fac regem shall awaken Pange lingua
with an Ami du Peuple; there is a king's-friend news
paper, Ami-du Roi. Camille Desmoulins has appointed
himself Procureur- General 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

210 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
if, in that thick murk of journalism, with its dull blus
tering, with its fixed or loose fury, any ray of genius greet
thee, be sure it is Camille's. The thing that Camille
touches, 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. Ques
tionable Camille, how thou glitterest with a fallen,
rebellious, yet still semi-celestial light; as is the startlight
on the brow of Lucifer ! Son of the morning, into what
times and what lands are thou fallen !
But in all things there is good ; though it be not good
for "consolidating revolutions." Thousand wagon -loads
of this pamphleteering and newspaper matter lie rotting
slowly in the public libraries of our Europe. Snatched
from the great gulf, like oysters by bibilomaniac pearl-
divers, there must they first rot, then what was pearl, in
Camille or others, may be seen as such, and continue as
such.

Nor has public speaking declined, though Lafayette and
his patrols look sour on it. Loud always is the Palais
Royal, loudest the Caf e de Foy ; such a miscellany of citi
zens and citizenesses circulating there. "Now and then,"
according to Camille, "some citizens employ the liberty of
the press for a private purpose; so that this or the other
patriot finds himself short of his watch or pocket-handker
chief!" But for the rest, in Camille's opinion, nothing
can be a livelier image of the Roman forum. " A patriot
proposes his motion ; if it finds any supporters, they make
him mount on a chair, and speak. If he is applauded, he
prospers and redacts; if he is hissed, he goes his ways."
Thus they, circulating and perorating. Tall shaggy
Marquis Saint-Huruge, a man that has had losses, and
has deserved them, is seen eminent, and also heard.
" Bellowing" is the character of his voice, like that of a
Bull of Bashan; voice which drowns all voices, which
causes frequently the hearts of men to leap. Cracked or
half -cracked is this tall marquis's head; uncracked are his
lungs; the cracked and the uncracked shall alike avail
him. Consider farther that each of the forty-eight districts
has its own committee; speaking and motioning contin-

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 211
ually; aiding in the search for grain, in the search for a
constitution ; checking and spurring the poor three hun
dred of the town hall. That Danton with a " voice rever
berating from the domes," is president of the Cordeliers
district ; which has already become a Goshen of patriotism.
That apart from the "seventeen thousand utterly necessi
tous, digging on Montmartre," most of whom, indeed,
have got passes, and been dismissed into space " Avith four
shillings," there is a strike, or union, of domestics out of
place; who assemble for public speaking; next, a strike
of tailors, for even they will strike and speak ; farther, a
strike of journeymen cordwainers ; a strike of apothecaries :
so dear his bread.* All.these, having struck, must speak;
generally under the open canopy; and pass resolutions;
Lafayette and his patrols watching them suspiciously from
the distance.
Unhappy mortals ; such tugging and lugging, and throt
tling 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 deal
ing with mobs. But surely all these things bode ill for the
consolidating of a revolution.
* " Histoire Parlementaire," ii. 359, 417, 423.

212 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

BOOK SEVENTH.
THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN.

CHAPTER I.
PATROLLOTISM.
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 porportioned, 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.
A Sansculottism, which has prostrated Bastilles, which
has got pike and musket, and now goes burning ch&teaus,
passing resolutions and haranguing under roof and
sky, may be said to have sprung; and, by law of nature,
must grow. To judge by the madness and diseasedness
both of itself, and of the soil and element it is in, one
might expect the rapidity and monstrosity would be
extreme. Many things, too, especially all diseased things, grows
by shoots and flts. The first grand fit and shooting-forth
of Sansculottism was that of Paris conquering its king;
for Bailly's figure of rhetoric was ail-too sad a reality.
The king is conquered; going at large on his parole; on

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 213
condition, say, of absolutely good behavior, which, in
these circumstances, ivill unhappily mean no behavior
whatever. A quite untenable position, that of majesty put
on its good behavior ! Alas, is it not natural that what
ever lives try to keep itself living? Whereupon his maj
esty's behavior will soon become exceptionable; and so
the second grand fit of Sansculottism, that of putting him
in durance, cannot be distant.

Necker, in the national assembly, is making moan, as
usual, about his deficit: Barriers and custom houses burned ;
the tax-gatherer hunted, not hunting; his majesty's ex
chequer 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; penetrat
ing inward to the very purse! So early as the 7th of
August, a Don Patriotque, " Patriotic gift of jewels to a
considerable extent," has been solemnly made by certain
Parisian women; and solemnly accepted with honorable
mention. Whom forthwith all the world takes to imitat
ing 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 honorable 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 shoe-buckles, takes cheerfully to shoe-ties. Un
fortunate females give what they "have amassed in
loving." * The smell of all cash, as Vespasian thought, is
good. Beautiful, and yet inadequate! The clergy must be
"invited" to melt their superfluous church-plate in the
royal mint. Nay, finally, a patriotic contribution, of the
forcible sort, has to be determined on, though unwillingly :
let the fourth part of your declared yearly revenue, for
* " Histoire Parlementaire," ii. 427.

214 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
this once only, be paid down ; so shall a national assembly
make the constitution, undistracted at least by insolvency.
Their own wages, as settled on the 17th of August, are
but eighteen francs a day, each man ; but the public service
must have sinews, must have money. To appease the
deficit; not to "combler, or choke, the deficit," if you or
mortal could ! For with all, as Mirabeau was heard saying,
" it is the deficit that saves us. "

Toward the end of August, our national assembly in its
constitutional labors has got so far as the question of veto:
shall majesty have a veto on the national enactments; or
not have a veto? What speeches were spoken, within
doors and without; clear, and also passionate logic; im
precations, comminations ; gone happily, for most part, to
Limbo ! Through the cracked brain and uncracked lungs
of Saint-Huruge, the Palais Royal rebellows with veto.
Journalism is busy, France rings with veto. "I never
shall forget," says Dumont, "my going to Paris, one of
those days, with Mirabeau ; and the crowd of people we
found waiting for his carriage about Le Jay the book
seller's shop. They flung themselves before him; conjur
ing 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.'" * 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 imperturability, and bound
himself to nothing.
Deputations go to the Hotel-de- Ville; anonymous letters
to aristocrats in the national assembly, threatening that
fifteen thousand, or sometimes that sixty thousand, " will
march to illuminate you." The Paris districts are astir;
petitions signing; Saint-Huruge sets forth from the Palais
Royal with an escort of fifteen hundred individuals, to
petition in person. Resolute, or seemingly so, is the tall
shaggy marquis, is the Cafe de Foy; but resolute also is
* " Souvenirs sur Mirabeau," p. 156.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 215
Commandant-General Lafayette. The streets are all beset
by patrols; Saint-Huruge is stopped at the Barriere des
Bons Hommes; he may bellow like the bulls of Bashan, but
absolutely must return. The brethren of the Palais Royal
"circulate all night," and make motions, under the open
canopy ; all coffee houses being shut. Nevertheless, Lafay
ette and the town hall do prevail ; Saint-Huruge is thrown
into prison; veto absolu adjusts itself into suspensive veto
prohibition not forever, but for a term of time; and this
doom's clamor will grow silent, as the others have done.
So far has consolidation prospered, though with diffi
culty; repressing the nether Sansculottic world; and the
constitution shall be made. With difficulty : amid jubilee
and scarcity; patriotic gifts, bakers '-queues; Abbe-Fauchet
harangues, with their Amen of platoon-musketry ! Scipio-
Americanus has deserved thanks from the national assem
bly and France. They offer him stipends and emoluments
to a handsome extent ; all which stipends and emoluments
he, covetous of far other blessedness than mere money,
does, in his chivalrous way, without scruple, refuse.

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 f orestallers ; a court still bent on intrigues?
Something is rotten somewhere.
And yet, alas, what to do? Lafayette, with his patrols,
prohibits everything, even complaint. Saint-Huruge
and other heroes of the veto lie in durance. People's
friend Marat was seized; printers of patriotic journals are
fettered and forbidden ; the very hawkers cannot cry, till
they get license and leaden badges. Blue national guards
ruthlessly dissipate all groups; scour, with leveled
bayonets, the Palais Royal itself. Pass, on your affairs,
along the Rue Taranne, the patrol, presenting his bayonet,
cries, To the left! Turn into the Rue Saint-Benoit, he
cries, To the right! A judicious patriot (like Camille
Desmoulins, in this instance) is driven, for quietness' sake,
to take the gutter.
Oh, much-suffering people, our glorious revolution is

216 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
evaporating in tricolor ceremonies and complimentary
harangues! Of which latter, as Loustalot acridly calcu
lates, "upward of two thousand have been delivered within
the last month at the town hall alone. " * And our mouths,
unfilled with bread, are to be shut, under penalties? The
caricaturist promulgates his emblematic Tablature: Le
Patrouillotisme chassant le Patriotisme, patriotism driven
out by patrollotism. Ruthless patrols; long superfine
harangues ; and scanty ill -baked loaves, more like baked
bath bricks, which produce an effect on the intestines!
Where will this end? In consolidation?

CHAPTER II.
OH RICHARD, OH, MY KING.
For, alas, neither is the town hall itself without mis
givings. The nether Sansculottic world has been sup
pressed hitherto : but then the upper court-world ! Symp
toms there are that the OEil-de-Boeuf is rallying.
More than once in the town hall Sanhedrim, often enough
from those outspoken baker's-queues, has the wish uttered
itself: Oh, that our restorer of French liberty were here;
that he could see with his own eyes, not with the false
eyes of queens and cabals, and his really good heart be
enlightened ! For falsehood still environs him ; intriguing
Dukes de Guiche, with bodyguards; scouts of Bouille; a
new flight of intriguers, now that the old is flown. What
else means this advent of the Regiment de Flandre; enter
ing Versailles, as we hear, on the 23d of September, with
two pieces of cannon? Did not the Versailles national
guard do duty at the chateau? Had they not Swiss;
hundred Swiss; Gardes-du-Corps, bodyguards so-called?
Nay, it would seem, the number of bodyguards on duty
has, by a manceuver, been doubled; the new relieving
battalion of them arrived at its time; but the old relieved
one does not depart!
Actually, there runs a whisper through the best informed
upper-circles, or a nod still more portentous than Avhisper-
ing, of his majesty's flying to Metz ; of a bond (to stand' by
*" Revolutions de Paris Newspaper" (cited in " Histoire Parle
mentaire," ii. 357).

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 217
him therein), which has been signed by noblesse and clergy,
to the incredible amount of thirty, or even of sixty thous
and. Lafayette coldly whispers it, and coldly asseverates
it, to Count d'Estaing at the dinner-table; and D'Estaing,
one of the bravest men, quakes to the core lest some lackey
overhear it; and tumbles thoughtful, without sleep, all
night.* Regiment de Flandre, as we said, is clearly
arrived. His majesty, they say, hesitates about sanction
ing the 4th of August; makes observations, of chilling
tenor, on the very rights of man ! Likewise, may not all
persons, the baker's-queues themselves discern, on the
streets of Paris, the most astonishing number of officers on
furlough, crosses of St. Louis, and such like? Some
reckon "from a thousand to twelve hundred." Officers
of all uniforms; nay one uniform never before seen by eye:
green faced with red ! The tricolor cockade is not always
visible : but what, in the name of heaven, may these black
cockades, which some wear, foreshadow?
Hunger whets everything, especially suspicion and indig
nation. Realities themselves, in this Paris, have grown
unreal, preternatural. Phantasm's once more stalk through
the brain of hungry France. Oh, ye laggards and das
tards, 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 ; patriot
ism, driven out by patroUotism, knows not what to
resolve on.

The truth is, the CEil-de-Bceuf has rallied ; to a certain
unknown extent. A changed QSil-de-Bceuf; with Ver
sailles national guards, in their tricolor cockades, doing
duty there; a court all flaring with tricolor! Yet even
to a tricolor court men will rally. Ye loyal hearts, burned-
out seigneurs, rally round your queen! With wishes;
Avhich will produce hopes; which will produce attempts!
For indeed self-preservation being such a law of nature,
what can a rallied court do, but attempt and endeavor, or
* " Brouillon de Lettre de M. d'Estaing a la Reine " (in " Histoire
Parlementaire," iii. 24).,

218 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
call it plot, with such wisdom and unwisdom as it has?
They will fly, escorted, to Metz, where brave Bouille
commands; they will raise the royal standard; the bond-
signatures shall become armed men. Were not the king
so languid ! Their bond, if at all signed, must be signed
without his privity. Unhappy king, he has but one
resolution; not to have a civil war. For the rest, he still
hunts, having ceased lockmaking; he still dozes, and
digests; is clay in the hands of the potter. Ill will it fare
with him, in a world where all is helping itself, where, as
has been Avritten "whosoever is not hammer must be
stithy ;" and " the very hyssop on the wall grows there,
in that chink, because the whole universe could not pre
vent its growing!"
But as for the coming-up of this regiment de Flandre,
may it not be urged that there was Saint-Huruge petitions,
and continual meal-mobs? Undebauched soldiers, be there
plot, or only dim elements of a plot, are always good. Did
not the Versailles municipality (an old monarchic one, not
yet refounded into a democratic) instantly second the
proposal? Nay the very Versailles national guard, wearied
with continual duty at the chateau, did not object; only
Draper Lecointre, who is now Major Lecointre, shook his
head. Yes, friends, surely it was natural this regiment
de Flandre should be sent for, since it could be got. It
was natural that, at sight of military bandoleers, the heart
of the rallied Ghl-de-Bceuf should revive ; and maids of
honor, and gentlemen of honor, speak comfortable words
to epauletted defenders and to one another. Natural
also, and mere common civility, that the bodyguards,
a regiment of gentlemen, should invite their Flander
brethren to a dinner of welcome! Such invitation, in the
last days of September, is given and accepted.
Dinners are defined as "the ultimate act of communion ;"
men that can have communion in nothing else, can sym
pathetically eat together, can still rise into some glow of
brotherhood over food and wine. The dinner is fixed on,
for Thursday, the 1st of October; and ought to have a fine
effect. Further, as such dinner may be rather extensive,
and even the noncommissioned and the common man be
introduced, to see and to hear, could not his majesty's
opera apartment, which has lain quite silent ever since
Kaiser Joseph was here, be obtained for the purpose?

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 219
The hall of the opera is granted; the salon d'Hercule
shall be drawing-room. Not only the officers of Flander,
but of the Swiss; nay of the Versailles national guard, such
of them as have any loyalty, shall feast; it will be a repast
like few.
And now suppose this repast, the solid part of it, trans
acted; and the first bottle over. Suppose the customary
loyal toasts drunk; the king's health, the queen's with
deafening vivats; that of the nation "omitted," or even
"rejected." Suppose champagne flowing; with pot-
valorous speech, with instrumental music; empty feather-
heads growing ever the noisier, in their own emptiness, in
each other's noise. Her majesty, who looks unusually sad
to-night (his majesty sitting dulled with the day's hunt
ing), is told that the sight of it would cheer her. Behold!
She enters there, issuing from her state-rooms, like the
moon from clouds, this fairest unhappy queen of hearts;
royal husband by her side, young dauphin in her arms!
She descends from the boxes, amid splendor and acclaim ;
walks queen-like round the tables; gracefully escorted,
gracefully nodding; her looks full of sorrow, yet of grati
tude and daring, with the hope of France on her mother-
bosom! And now, the band striking up 0 Richard, 0
mon Roi, I'univers t'abandonne (Oh Richard, oh, my
king, the world is all forsaking thee), could man do more
than rise to height of pity, of loyal valor? Could feather-
headed young ensigns do other than, by white Bourbon
cockades, handed them from fair fingers ; by waving of
swords, drawn to pledge the queen's health; by trampling
of national cockades ; by scaling the boxes, whence intru
sive murmurs may come; by vociferation, tripudiation,
sound, fury and distraction, within doors and without,
testify what tempest-tossed state of vacuity they are in?
Till champagne and tripudiation do their work ; and all lie
silent, horizontal; passively slumbering with meed-of-
battle dreams !
A natural 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 ban
quet-house! Poor ill-advised Marie Antoinette; with a
woman's vehemence, not Avith a sovereign's foresight! It
was so natural, yet so unwise. Next day, in public speech
of ceremony, her majesty declares herself " delighted with
the Thursday."

220 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
The heart of the (Eil-de-Boeuf glows into hope ; into dar
ing which is premature. Rallied maids of honor, waited on
by abbes, sew "white cockades"; distribute them with
words, with glances, to epauletted youths; who, in return
may kiss, not without fervor, the fair sewing fingers.
Captains of horse and foot go swashing with " enormous
white cockades;" nay one Versailles national captain has
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 inso
lently, once and then again elsewhere, to recant; and fail
ing 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.*

CHAPTER III.
BLACK COCKADES.
But fancy what effect this Thyestes repast, and tramp
ling 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.
Flander has given its counter-dinner to the Swiss and hun
dred 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 hunger-struck, insulted by patroUotism; while
bloody-minded 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 color of night! Are we to have military
onfall; and death also by starvation? For, behold, the
Oorbeil cornboat, which used to come twice a day, with its
* " Moniteur" (in " Histoire Parlementaire," iii. 59); "Deux Amis,"
iii. 128-141; Campan, ii. 70-85; etc. etc.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 221
plaster-of-paris meal, now comes only once. And the
town hall is deaf; and the men are laggard and dastard!
At the Cafe de Foy, this Saturday evening, a new thing is
seen, not the last of its kind : a woman engaged in public
speaking. Her poor man, she says, was put to silence by
his district; their presidents and officials would not let
him speak. Wherefore she here, with her shrill tongue,
will speak; denouncing, while her breath endures, the Cor-
beil boat; the plaster-of-paris bread, sacrilegious opera-
dinners, green uniforms, pirate aristocrats, and those black
cockades of theirs !
Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least to van
ish. Them patroUotism 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. PatroUotism itself is not without suppressed
fury. Also the districts begin to stir; the voice of Presi
dent Danton reverberates in the Cordeliers: people's
friend, Marat, has flown to Versailles and back again;
swart bird, not of the halycon kind.*
And so patriot meets promenading patriot, this Sunday ;
and sees his own grim care reflected on the face of another.
Groups, in spite of patroUotism, which is not so alert as
usual, fluctuate deliberative : groups on the bridges, on the
quais, at the patriotic cafes. And ever as any black cock
ade may emerge, rises the many-voiced growl and bark :
A bas, down! All black cockades are ruthlessly plucked
off : one individual picks his up again ; kisses it, attempts
to refix it; but a "hundred canes start into the air," and
he desists. Still worse went it with another individual;
doomed, by extempore plebiscitum, to the Lanterne;
saved, with difficulty, by some active Corps-de-Garcle.
Lafayette sees signs of an effervescence; which he doubles
his patrols, doubles his diligence, to prevent. So passes
Sunday the 4th of October, 1789.
Sullen is the male heart, repressed by patroUotism ; vehe
ment is the female, irrepressible. The public-speaking
woman at the Palais Royal was not the only speaking one:
* Camille's Newspaper, "Revolution de Paris et de Brabant" (in
"Histoire Parlementaire," iii. 108).

222 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION
Men know not what the pantry is, when it grows empty;
only house-mothers know. Oh, women, wives of men that
will only calculate and not act! PatroUotism is strong; but
death, by starvation and military onfall, is stronger.
Patrollotism represses male patriotism ; but female patriot
ism? 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 univer
sally under .the female nightcap; and, by earliest day
break, on slight hint, will explode.

CHAPTER IV.
THE MENADS.
If Voltaire once, in splenetic humor, asked his coun
trymen: "But you, Gualches, what have you invented?"
they cannot answer: the art of insurrection. It was an
art needed in these last singular times : an art for which
the French nature, so full of vehemence, so free from
depth, was perhaps of all others the fittest.
Accordingly, to what a height, "one may well say of
perfection, has this branch of human industry been carried
by France, within the last half -century ! Insurrection,
which Lafayette thought might be "the most sacred of
duties," ranks now, for the French people, among the
duties which they can perform. Other mobs are dull
masses; which roll onward with a dull fierce tenacity, a
dull fierce heat, but emit no light-flashes of genius as they
go. The French mob, again, is among the liveliest phenom
ena of our world. So rapid, audacious; so clear-sighted,
inventive, prompt to seize the moment; instinct with life
to its finger-ends! That talent, were there no other, of
spontaneously standing in queue, distinguishes, as we said,
the French people from all peoples, ancient and modern.
Let the reader confess too, that taking one thing with
another, perhaps few terrestrial appearances are better
worth considering than mobs. Your mob is a genuine
outburst of nature; issuing from, or communicating with,
the deepest deep of nature. When so much goes grinning
and grimacing as a lifeless formality, and under the stiff
buckram no heart can be felt beating, here once more, if

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 223
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 Avork 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 fireworks, 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 AVritten, "is forever 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 trans
acted by mechanism; with the slightest possible develop
ment 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?

A thought, or dim raw-material of a thought, was fer
menting all night, universally in the female head, and
might explode. In squalid garret, on Monday morning
maternity awakes, to hear children weeping for bread.
Maternity must forth to the streets, to the herb-markets
and bakers'-queues; meets there with hunger-stricken
maternity, sympathetic, exasperative. Oh, we unhappy
women. But, instead of bakers'-queus, why not to aristo
crats' palaces, the root of the matter? Allons! Let us
assemble. To the H6tel-de-Ville ; to Versailles; to the
Lanterne !
In one of the guardhouses of the Quartier Saint-
Eustache, "a young woman" seizes a drum, for how shall
national guards give fire on women, on a young woman?
The young woman seizes the drum ; sets forth, beating it,
"uttering cries relative to the dearth of grains." Descend,
oh mothers; descend, ye Judiths, to food and revenge!

224 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
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 uni
versal "Press of women." Robust dames of the halle,
slim mantua-makers, assiduous, risen with the dawn;
ancient virginity tripping to matins; the housemaid, with
early broom; all must go. Rouse ye, oh women; the lag
gard men will not act ; they say, we ourselves may act !
And so, like snowbreak from the mountains, for every
staircase is a melted brook, it storms; tumultuous, wild-
shrilling, toward the H6tel-de- Ville. Tumultuous; with
or without drum-music : for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine
also has tucked up its goAvn ; and with besom-staves, fire-
irons, and even rusty pistols (void of ammunition), is flow
ing on. Sound of it flies, with a velocity of sound, to the
utmost barriers. By seven o'clock, on this raw October
morning, fifth of the month, the town hall will see won
ders. Nay, as chance would have it, a male party are
already there ; clustering tumultuously round some national
patrol, and a baker who has been seized with short weights. '
They are there ; and have even lowered the rope of the
Lanterne. So that the official persons have to smuggle
forth the short-weighing baker by back-doors, and even
send " to all the districts" for more force.
Grand it was, says Camille, to see so many Judiths,
from eight to ten thousand of them in all, rushing out to
search into the root of the matter! Not unf rightful it
must have been ; ludicro-terrific, and most unmanageable.
At such hour the overwatched three hundred are not yet
stirring; none but some clerks, a company of national
guards; and M. de Gouvion, the major-general. Gouvion
has fought in America for the cause of civil liberty; a man
of no inconsiderable heart, but deficient in head. He is,
for the moment, in his back apartment; assuaging Usher
Maillard, the Bastille-sergeant, Avho has come, as too
many do, with "representations." The assuagement is
still incomplete when our Judiths arrive.
The national guards form on the outer stairs, with
leveled bayonets; the ten thousand Judiths press up,
resistless; with obtestations, with outspread hands, merely
to speak to the mayor. The rear forces them ; nay from
male hands in the rear, stones already fly : the national
guard must do one of two things; sweep the Place de

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 225
Greve Avith cannon, or else open to right and left. They
open, the living deluge rushes in. Through all rooms and
cabinets, upward to the topmost belfry: ravenous; seeking
arms, seeking mayors, seeking justice; while, again, the
better-dressed speak kindly to the clerks; point out the
misery of these poor women; also their ailments, some
even of an interesting sort.*
Poor M. de Gouvion is shiftless in this extremity; a man
shiftless, perturbed: who Avill one day commit suicide.
How happy for him that Usher Maillard the shifty was
there, at the moment, though making representations!
Flyback, thou shifty Maillard: seek the Bastille company;
and oh, 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 Abbe 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.
Abbe Lefevre falls, some twenty feet, rattling among the
leads ; and lives long years after, though always with " a
tremblement in the limbs. " f
And now doors fly under hatchets; the Judiths have
broken the armory ; have seized guns and cannons, three
money-bags, paper-heaps; torches flare: in few minutes,
our brave Hdtel-de- Ville, which dates from the Fourth
Henry, will, with all that it holds, be in flames!

CHAPTER V.
USHER MAILLARD.
In flames, truly, were it not that Usher Maillard,
swift of foot, shifty of head, has returned !
Maillard, of his own motion, for Gouvion or the rest
would not even sanction him, snatches a drum ; descends
the porchstairs, ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls,
his Rogues'-march : To Versailles! Allons; a Versailles!
As men beat on kettle or warming-pan, when angry she-
* " Deux Amis " iii. 141-166.
\ Dusaulx, " Prise de la Bastille," note, p. 281.

226 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
bees, or say, flying desperate wasps, are to be hived; and
the desperate insects hear it, and cluster round it, simply
as round a guidance, where there was none : so now these
Menads round shifty Maillard, riding-usher of the chatelet.
The axe pauses uplifted; Abbe Lefevre is left half -hanged:
from the belfry downward all vomits itself. What rub-a-
dub is that? Stanislas Maillard, Bastille hero, will lead
us to Versailles? Joy to thee, Maillard; blessed art thou
above riding-ushers ! Away, then, away !
The seized cannon are yoked with seized cart-horses:
brown-locked Demoiselle Theroigne, with pike and helmet,
sits there as gunneress, " Avith haughty eye and serene fair
countenance;" comparable, some think, to the Maid of
Orleans, or even recalling "the idea of Pallas Athene." *
Maillard (for his drum still rolls) is, by heaven-rending
acclamation, admitted general. Maillard hastens the
languid march. Maillard, beating rhythmic, with sharp
ran-tan, all along the quais, leads forward, with difficulty,
his Menadic host. Such a host — marched not in silence!
The bargeman pauses on the river; all wagoners and
coach-drivers fly; men peer from windows, not women,
lest they be pressed. Sight of sights: Bacchantes, in
these ultimate formalized ages ! Bronze Henri looks on,
from his Pont-Neuf; the Monarchic Louvre, Medicean
Tuileries see a day like none heretofore seen.
And now Maillard has his Menads in the Champs
Elysees (Fields Tartarean rather) ; and the H6tel-de- Ville
has suffered comparatively nothing. Broken doors; and
Abbe Lefevre, who shall never more distribute powder;
three sacks of money, most part of which (for Sanscu
lottism, though famishing, is not without honor) shall
be returned : f this is all the damage. Great Maillard ! A
small nucleus of order is round his drum ; but his out
skirts fluctuate like the mad ocean : for rascality male and
female is flowing in on him, from the four winds: guid
ance there is none but in his single head and two drum
sticks. Oh, Maillard, when, since war first was, had general
of force such a task before him as thou this day? Walter
the penniless still touches the feeling heart: but then Wal
ter had sanction; had space to turn in; and also his
* " Deux Amis," iii. 157. f " Hist" Parl" iu' 31°-

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 227
crusaders Avere of the male sex. Thou, this day, disowned
of heaven and earth, art general of Menads. Their
inarticulate frenzy thou must, on the spur of the instant,
render into articulate words, into actions that are not
frantic. Fail in it, this way or that! Pragmatical
officiality, ^with its penalties and law-books, waits before
thee; Menads storm behind. If such hewed off the
melodious head of Orpheus, and hurled it into 'the Peneus
waters, what may they not make of thee, thee, rhythmic
merely, with no music but a sheepskin drum ! Maillard
did not fail. Remarkable Maillard, if fame were not an
accident, and history a distillation of rumor, how remark
able wert thou !
On the Elysian Fields there is pause and fluctuation;
but, for Maillard, no return. He persuades his Menads,
clamorous for arms and the arsenal, that no arms are in the
arsenal; that an unarmed attitude, and petition to a
national assembly, will be the best : he hastily nominates
or sanctions generalesses, captains of tens and fifties; and
so, in loosest-flowing order, to the rhythm of some " eight
drums" (having laid aside his own), with the Bastille volun
teers bringing up his rear, once more takes the road.
Chaillot, which will promptly yield baked loaves, is not
plundered; nor are the Sevres potteries broken. The old
arches of Sevres bridge echo under Menadic feet; Seine
River gushes on with his perpetual murmur; and Paris
flings after us the boom of tocsin and alarm-drum, inaudible,
for the present, amid shrill-sounding hosts, and the splash
of rainy weather. To Meudon, to Saint-Cloud, on both
hands, the report of them is gone abroad; and hearths,
this evening, will have a topic. The press of women still
continues, for it is the cause of all Eve's daugthers, mothers
that are, or that ought to be. No carriage-lady, were it
Avith never such hysterics, but must dismount, in the mud
roads, in her silk shoes, and walk.* In this manner, amid
wild October weather, they a wild unwinged stork-flight,
through the astonished country wend their way. Trav
elers of all sorts they stop ; especially travelers or couriers
from Paris. Deputy Lechapelier, in his elegant vesture,
from his elegant vehicle, looks forth amazed through his
spectacles ; apprehensive for life ; states eagerly that he is
* " Deux Amis," iii. 159.

228 THE FRENCH REVOL UTlON.
patriot-deputy Lechapelier, and even old-president Lecha
pelier, who presided on the night of Pentecost, and is
original member of the Breton Club. Thereupon "rises
huge shout of Vive Lechapelier, and several armed persons
spring up behind and before to escort him." *

Nevertheless, news, despatches from Lafayette, or vague
noise of rumor, have pierced through, by side roads. In
the national assembly, while all is busy discussing the
order of the day; regretting that there should be anti-
national repasts in opera-halls; that his majesty should
still hesitate about accepting the rights of man, and hang
conditions and peradventures on them, Mirabeau steps up
to the president, experienced Mounier as it chanced to be;
and articulates, in bass undertone: "Mounier, Paris
marche sur nous (Paris is marching on us)." "May be
{Je n'en sais rien) !" " Believe it or disbelieve it, that is
not my concern ; but Paris, I say, is marching on us. Fall
suddenly unwell; go over to the chateau; tell them this.
There is not a moment to lose." " Paris marching on us?"
responds Mounier, with an atrabiliar accent: "Well, so
much the better! We shall the sooner be a republic."
Mirabeau quits him, as one quits an experienced president
getting blind-fold into deep waters ; and the order of the
day continues as before.
Yes, Paris is marching on us; and more than the women
of Paris ! Scarcely was Maillard gone, when M. de Gouvion's
message to all the districts, and such tocsin and drumming
of the generate, began to take effect. Armed national
guards from every district; especially the grenadiers of the
center, who are our old Gardes Francaises, arrive, in quick
sequence, on the Place de Greve. An " immense people"
is there ; Saint-Antoine, with pike and rusty firelock, is all
croAvding thither, be it welcome or unwelcome. The cen
ter grenadiers are received with cheering: "It is not cheers
that we want," answer they gloomily; "the nation has
been insulted; to arms, and come with us for orders!"
Ha, sits the wind so? Patriotism and patroUotism are
now one!
The three hundred have assembled; "all the committees
f " Deux Amis," ii. 177;" Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquana,"
ii. 379.

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 229
are in activity;" Lafayette is dictating despatches for
Versailles, when a deputation of the center grenadiers in
troduces itself to him. The deputation makes military
obeisance; and thus speaks, not without a kind of thought
in it: "Mon generate, we are deputed by the six com
panies of grenadiers. We do not think you a traitor, but
we think the government betrays you ; it is time that this
end. We cannot turn our bayonets against women crying
to us for bread. The people are miserable, the source of
the mischief is at Versailles : we must go seek the king,
and bring him to Paris. We must exterminate {exter-
miner) the Regiment de Flandre and the Gardes-du- Corps,
who have dared to trample on the national cockade. If
the king be too weak to Avear his crown, let him lay it
down. You will croAvn his son, you will name a council of
regency ; and all will go better. " * Reproachful astonish
ment paints itself on the face of Lafayette; speaks itself
from his eloquent chivalrous lips : in vain. "My general,
we would shed the last drop of our blood for you ; but the
root of the mischief is at Versailles ; we must go and bring
the king to Paris ; all the people wish it, tout le peuple le
veut." My general descends to the outer staircase; and haran
gues : once more in Arain. " To Versailles ! To Versailles !"
Mayor Bailly, sent for through floods of Sansculottism,
attempts academic oratory from his gilt state-coach ; real
izes nothing but infinite hoarse cries of : " Bread ! To Ver
sailles!" and gladly shrinks within doors. Lafayette
mounts the white charger ; and again harangues, and rehar-
angues: with eloquence, with firmness, indignant demon
stration; with all things but persuasion. "To Versailles!
To Versailles !" So lasts it, hour after hour ; for the space
of half a day.
The great Scipio- Americanus can do nothing; not so
much as escape. " Morblue, mon general," cry the grena
diers serrying their ranks as the white charger makes a
motion that way, "you will not leave us, you will abide
with us!" A perilous juncture: Mayor Bailly and the
municipals sit quaking within doors ; my general is prisoner
without: the Place de Greve, with its thirty thousand
regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and Saint-
* " Deux Amis," iii. 161.

230 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel; all
hearts set, with a moody fixedness, on one object. Moody,
fixed are all hearts: tranquil is no heart, if it be not that
of the white charger, Avho paws there, with arched neck,
composedly champing his bit; as if no world, with its
dynasties and eras, were now rushing down. The drizzly
day bends westward ; the cry is still : " To Versailles !"
Nay, now, borne from afar, come quite sinister cries;
hoarse, reverberating in long-drawn hollow murmurs, with
syllables too like those of " Lanierne!" Or else, irregular
Sansculottism may be marching off of itself; with pikes,
nay with cannon. The inflexible Scipio does at length,
by aide-de-camp, ask of the municipals : Whether or not
he may go? A letter is handed out to him, over armed
heads: sixty thousand faces flash fixedly on his, there is
stillness and no bosom breathes, till he have read. By
heaven, he grows suddenly pale! Do the municipals per
mit? "Permit, and even order," since he can no other.
Clangor of approval rends the Avelkin. To your ranks,
then ; let us march !
It is, as we compute, toward three in the afternoon.
Indignant national guards may dine for once from their
haversack : dined or undined, they march with one heart.
Paris flings up her windows, "claps hands," as the
avengers, witli their shrilling drums and shalms tramp by;
she will then sit pensive, apprehensive, and pass rather a
sleepless night.* On the white charger, Lafayette, in
the slowest possible manner going and coming, and elo
quently haranguing among the ranks, rolls onward with
his thirty thousand. Saint-Antoine, with pike and can
non, has preceded him; a mixed multitude, of all and of
no arms, hovers on his flanks and skirts; the country
once more pauses agape: Paris marche sur nous.
CHAPTER VI.
TO VERSAILLES.
For, indeed, about this same moment, Maillard has
halted his draggled Menads on the last hill-top ; and now
Versailles, and the chateau of Versailles, and far and wide
the inheritance of royalty opens to the wondering eye.
*" Deux Amis," iii. 165.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 231
From far on the right, over Marly and Saint-Germain-en-
Laye; round toward Rambouillet, on the left; beautiful
all; softly embosomed; as if in sadness, in the dim moist
weather ! And near before us is Versailles, new and. old ;
with that broad frondent avenue de Versailles betAveen,
stately-frondent, broad, three hundred feet as men reckon,
with its four rows of elms; and then the chateau de
Versailles, ending in royal parks and pleasances, gleaming
lakelets, arbors, labyrinths, the Menage, and great and little
Trianon. High-towered dwellings, leafy pleasant places;
where the gods of this lower world abide : whence, never
theless, black care cannot be excluded ; whither Menadic
hunger is even now advancing, armed with pike-thyrsi !
Yes, yonder, mesdames, where our straight frondent ave
nue joined, as you note, by two frondent brother avenues
from this hand and from that, spreads out into Place
Royal and Palace Forecourt, yonder is the Salle des
Menus. Yonder an august assembly sits regenerating
France'. Forecourt, grand court, court of marble, court
narrowing into court you may discern next, or fancy: on
the extreme verge of which that glass-dome, visibly glitter
ing like a star of hope, is the d3il-de-Boeuf ! Yonder, or
nowhere in the world, is bread baked for us. But, oh,
mesdames, were not one thing good : That our cannons,
with Demoiselle Theroigne and all show of war, be put to
the rear? Submission beseems petitioners of a national
assembly; we are strangers in Versailles, whence, too audi
bly, there comes even now a sound as of tocsin and generate!
Also to put on, if possible, a cheerful countenance, hiding
our sorrows; and even to sing? Sorrow, pitied of the
heavens, is hateful, suspicious to the earth. So counsels
shifty Maillard; haranguing his Menads, on the heights
near Versailles.*
Cunning Maillard's dispositions are obeyed. The
draggled insurrectionists advance up the avenue, " in three
columns," among the four elm-rows; "singing Henri
Quatre," with what melody they can; and shouting Vive
le Roi. Versailles, though the elm-rows are dripping wet,
crowds from both sides, with: " Vivent nos Parisiennes,
Our Paris ones forever!"
Prickers, scouts have been out toward Paris, as the
*See "Hist. Pari." iii, 70 117; "Deux Amis," iii. 166-177, etc.

232 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
rumor deepened : whereby his majesty, gone to shoot in
the Woods of Meudon, has been happily discovered, and got
home; and the geuerale and tocsin set a-sounding. The
bodyguards are already drawn up in front of the palace
grates; and look down the avenue de Versailles; sulky, in
wet buckskins. Flander too is there, repentant of the
opera-repast. Also dragoons dismounted are there. Finally
Major Lecointre, and what he can gather of the Versailles
national guard; though it is to be observed, our colonel,
that same sleepless Count d'Estaing, giving neither order
nor ammunition, has vanished most improperly; one
supposes, into the CEil-de-Bceuf. Red-coated Swiss stand
within the grates, under arms. There likeAvise, in their
inner room, "all the ministers," Saint-Priests, Lamentation
Pompignan and the rest, are assembled with M. Necker:
they it with him there ; blank, expecting what the hour
Avill bring.

President Mounier, though he answered Mirabeau with
a tant mieux and affected to slight the matter, had his
OAvn forebodings. Surely, for these four weary hours he has
reclined not on roses ! The order of the day is getting for
ward: a deputation to his majesty seems proper, that it
might please him to grant " acceptance pure and simple"
to those constitution-articles of ours; the "mixed qualified
acceptance," with its perad ventures, is satisfactory to
neither gods nor men.
So much is clear. And yet there is more, which no man
speaks, which all men now vaguely understand. Dis
quietude, absence of mind is on every face; members
whisper, uneasily come and go : the order of the day is evi
dently not the day's want. Till at length, from the outer
gates, is heard a rustling and justling, shrill uproar and
squabbling, muffled by Walls ; which testifies that the hour
is come! Rushing and crushing one hears now; then enter
Usher Maillard, with a deputation of fifteen muddy
dripping women, having, by incredible industry, and aid
of all the macers, persuaded the rest to wait out of doors.
National assembly shall now, therefore, look its august
task directly in the face: regenerative constitutionalism
has an unregenerate Sansculottism bodily in front of it;
crying, "Bread! Bread!"

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 233
Shifty Maillard, translating frenzy into articulation;
repressive with the one hand, expostulative with the other,
does his best; and really, though not bred to public speak
ing, manages rather well : In the present dreadful rarity
of grains, a deputation of female citizens has, as the august
assembly can discern, come out from Paris to petition.
Plots of aristocrats are too evident in the matter; for
example, one miller has been bribed "by a bank-note of
two hundred livres" not to grind, name unknown to the
usher, but fact provable, at least indubitable. Further, it
seems, the national cockade has been trampled on: also
there are black cockades, or were. All which things will
not an august national assembly, the hope of France, take
into its wise immediate consideration ?
And Menadic hunger, irrepressible, crying " Black Cock
ades," crying "Bread, Bread," adds, after such fashion:
Will it not? Yes, messieurs, if a deputation to his maj
esty, for the "acceptance pure and simple," seemed proper,
hoAV much more now, for "the afflicting situation of
Paris;" for the calming of this effervescence! President
Mounier, with a speedy deputation, among whom we no
tice the respectable figure of Doctor Guillotin, gets himself
forward on march. Vice-president shall continue the
order of the day; Usher Maillard shall stay by him to
repress the women. It is four o'clock, of the miserablest
afternoon, when Mounier steps out.
Oh, experienced Mounier, what an afternoon; the last
of thy political existence! Better had it been to "fall
suddenly unwell," while it was yet time. For, behold,
the esplanade, over all its spacious expanse, is covered with
groups of squalid dripping women; of lankhaired male
rascality, armed with axes, rusty pikes, old muskets, iron-
shod clubs {batons ferres, which end in knives or sword-
blades, a kind of extempore billhook) ; looking nothing but
hungry revolt. The rain pours; Gardes-du-Corps go
caracoling through the groups "amid hisses;" irritating
and agitating what is but dispersed here to reunite there.
Innumerable squalid women beleaguer the president and
deputation; insist on going with him: has not his majesty
himself, looking from the window, sent out to ask, What
we wanted? "Bread, and speech with the king {Du
pain, et parler au roi"), that was the answer. Twelve
women are clamorously added to the deputation; and

234 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
march Avith it, across the esplanade; through dissipated
groups, caracoling bodyguards and the pouring rain.
Presidsnt Mounier, unexpectedly augmented by twelve
Avomen, copiously escorted by hunger and rascality, is
himself mistaken for a group: himself and his women are
dispersed by caracolers; rally again with difficulty, among
the mud.* Finally the grates are opened; the deputation
gets access, with the twelve women too in it; of which
latter, five shall even see the face of his majesty. Let
wet Menadism, in the best spirits it can, expect their
return.

CHAPTER VII.
AT VERSAILLES.
But already Pallas Athene (in the shape of Demoiselle
Theroigne) is busy Avith Flander and the dismounted
dragoons. She, and such women as are fittest, go through
the ranks; speak with an earnest jocosity; clasp rough
troopers to their patriot bosom, crush down spontoons and
musketoons with soft arms: can a man, that were worthy
of the name of man, attack famishing patriot women?
One reads that Theroigne had bags of money, which she
distributed over Flander: furnished by whom? Alas, with
money-bags one seldom sits on insurrectionary cannon.
Calumnious royalism! Theroigne had only the limited
earnings of her profession of unfortunate female; money
she had not, but brown locks, the figure of a heathen
goddess and an eloquent tongue and heart.
Meanwhile Saint-Antoine, in groups and troops, is
continually arriving; wetted, sulky; with pikes and im
promptu bill-hooks: driven thus far by popular fixed idea.
So many hirsute figures driven hither, in that manner:
figures that have come to do they know not what; figures
that have come to see it done! Distinguished among all
figures, who is this, of gaunt statute, with leaden breast
plate, though a small one; f bushy in red grizzled locks;
nay with long tile-beard ? It is Jourdan, unjust dealer in
* Mounier, " Expose Justificatif " (cited in " Deux Amis," iii. 185).
f See Weber, ii. 185-231.

THE FR ENCH R E VOL UTION. 235
mules; a dealer no longer, but a painter's model, playing
truant this day. From the necessities of art comes his
long tile-beard; whence his leaden breastplate (unless in
deed he were some hawker licensed by leaden badge) may
have come, will perhaps remain forever a historical
problem. Another Saul among the people we discern;
" Pere Adam, father Adam," as the groups name him; to
us better known as bull-voiced Marquis Saint-Huruge;
hero of the veto; a man that has had losses, and deserved
them. The tall marquis, emitted some days ago from
limbo, looks peripatetically on this scene from under his
umbrella, not without interest. All which persons and
things, hurled together as we see; Pallas Athene, busy
with Flander ; patriotic Versailles national guards, short of
ammunition, and deserted by D'Estaing their colonel,
and commanded by Lecointre their major; then caracoling
bodyguards, sour dispirited, with their buckskins wet ; and
finally this flowing sea of indignant squalor, may they
not give rise to occurrences?

Behold, however, the twelve she-deputies return from
the chateau. Without President Mounier, indeed; but
radiant with joy, shouting "Life to the king, and his
house." Apparently the neAvs are good, mesdames?
News of the best ! Five of us were admitted to the internal
splendors, to the royal presence. This slim damsel,
" Louison Chabray, worker in sculpture, aged only seven
teen," as being of the best looks and address, her we
appointed speaker. On whom, and indeed on all of us,
his majesty looked nothing but graciousness. Nay, Avhen
Louison, addressing him, was like to faint, he took her in
his royal arms, and said gallantly, " It was well worth while
{Elie en valut bien la peine)." Consider, oh women,
what a king ! His words were of comfort, and that only :
•there shall be provision sent to Paris, if provision is in the
world; grains shall circulate free as air; millers shall
grind, or do worse, while their millstones endure; and
nothing be left wrong Avhich a restorer of French liberty
can right.
Good news these ; but, to wet Menads, all too incredible !
There seems no proof, then ? Words of comfort, they are
words only; which will feed nothing. Oh miserable

23 6 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
people, betrayed by aristocrats, who corrupt thy very
messengers! In his royal arms, Mademoiselle Louison?
In his arms? Thou shameless minx, worthy of a name —
that shall be nameless! Yes, thy skin is soft; ours is
rough with hardship ; and well wetted, waiting here in the
rain. No children hast thou hungry at home; only alabaster
dolls, that weep not! The traitress! To the Lanterne!
And so poor Louison Chabray, no asseveration or shrieks
availing her, fair slim damsel, late in the arms of royalty,
has a garter round her neck, and furibund Amazons at
each end; is about to perish so, Avhen two bodyguards
gallop up, indignantly dissipating; and rescue her. The
miscredited twelve hasten back to the ch&teau, for an "an
swer in writing."
Nay, behold, a new flight of Menads, with "M. Brunout,
Bastille volunteer," as impressed-commmandant, at the
head of it. These also will advance to the grate of the
grand court, and see what is toward. . Human patience, in
wet buckskins, has its limits. Bodyguard Lieutenant M.
de Savonnieres for one moment lets his temper, long pro
voked, long pent, give way. He not only dissipates these
latter Menads; but caracoles and cuts, or indignantly
flourishes, at M. Brunout, the impressed-commandant ;
and, finding great relief in it, even chases him; Brunout
flying nimbly, though in a pirouette manner, and now
with sword also drawn. At which sight of wrath and vic
tory, two other bodyguards (for wrath is contagious, and'
to pent bodyguards is so solacing) do likewise give way;
give chase, with brandished saber, and in the air make
horrid circles. So that poor Brunout has nothing for it
but to retreat with accelerated nimbleness, through rank
after rank; Parthian-like, fencing as he flies; above all,
shouting lustily, " On nous laisse assassiner, They are
getting us assassinated !"
Shameful ! Three against one ! Growls come from the
Lecointrian ranks; bello wings, lastly shots. Savonnieres'
arm is raised to strike : the bullet of a Lecointrian musket
shatters it; the brandished saber jingles down harmless.
Brunout has escaped, this duel well ended : but the wild
howl of war is everyAvhere beginning to pipe!
The Amazons recoil; Saint-Antoine has its cannon
pointed (full of grapeshot) ; thrice applies the lit flambeau ;
Avhich thrice refuses to ' catch, the touchholes are so

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 237
wetted; and voices cry ; " Arretez,il n' est pas temps encore.
Stop, it is not yet time !" * Messieurs of the Garde-du-
Corps, ye had orders not to fire; nevertheless two of you
limp dismounted, and one war-horse lies slain. Were it
not well to draw back out of shot-range ; finally to file off,
into the interior? If in so filing off, there did a musketoon
or two discharge itself at these armed shop-keepers, hooting
and crowing, could man wonder? Draggled are your white
cockades of an enormous size; would to heaven they were
got exchanged for tricolor ones ! Your buckskins are wet,
your hearts heavy. Go, and return not!
The bodyguards file off, as we hint ; giving and receiving
shots; drawing no life-blood; leaving boundless indigna
tion. Some three times in the thickening dusk, a glimpse
of them is seen, at this or the other portal : saluted always
with execrations, with the wheAv of lead. Let but a body
guard show face, he is hunted by rascality ; for instance
poor "M. de Moucheton of the Scotch company," owner
of the slain war-horse ; and has to be smuggled off by Ver
sailles captains. Or rusty firelocks belch after him, shiver
ing asunder his — hat. In the end, by superior order, the
bodyguards, all but the few on immediate duty, disappear;
or as it were abscond ; and march, under cloud of night, to
Rambouillet.f We remark also that the Versaillese have now got ammu
nition: all afternoon, the official person could find none;
till, in these so critical moments, a patriotic sublieutenant
set a pistol to his ear, and would thank him to find some,
which he thereupon succeeded in doing. Likewise that
Flandre, disarmed by Pallas Athene, says openly, it will
not fight with citizens; and for token of peace has ex
changed cartridges with the Versaillese.
Sansculottism is now among mere friends; and can
"circulate freely;" indignant at bodyguards: complaining
also considerably of hunger.
* " Deux Amis," ii. 192-201. f Weber, ubi supra.

238 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER VIIL
THE EQUAL DIET.
But why lingers Mounier ; returns not with his deputa
tion? It is six, it is seven o'clock; and still no Mounier,
no acceptance pure and simple.
And, behold, the dripping Menads, not now in deputa
tion but in mass, have penetrated into the assembly; to
the shamefulest interruption of public speaking and order
of the day. Neither Maillard nor vice-president can
restrain them, except within wide limits; not even, except
for minutes, can the lion-voice of Mirabeau, though they
applaud it : but ever and anon they break in upon the
regeneration of France with cries of : " Bread ; not so much
discoursing ! Du pain; pas tant de longs discours!" So
insensible were these poor creatures to bursts of parlia
mentary eloquence!

One learns also that the royal carriages are getting
yoked, as if for Metz. Carriages, royal or not, have verily
showed themselves at the back gates. They even pro
duced, or quoted a written order from our Versailles
municipality, which is a monarchic not a democratic one.
However, Versailles patrols drove them in again; as the
vigilant Lecointre had strictly charged them to do.
A busy man, truly, is Major Lecointre, in these hours.
For Colonel d'Estaing loiters invisible in the 03il-de-Bceuf ;
invisible, or still more questionably visible for instants; then
also a too loyal municipality requires supervision : no order,
civil or military, taken about any of these thousand things !
Lecointre is at the Versailles townhall : he is at the gate of
the grand court; communing with Swiss and bodyguards.
He is in the ranks of Flandre; he is here, he is there:
studious to prevent bloodshed; to prevent the royal family
from flying to Metz; the Menads from plundering
Versailles. At the fall of night, we behold him advance to those
armed groups of Saint-Antoine, hovering all too grim near
the Salle des Menus. They receive him in a half -circle;
twelve speakers behind cannons with lighted torches in
hand, the cannon-mouths toward Lecointre : a picture for

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 239
Salvator ! He asks, in temperate but courageous language :
What they, by this their journey to Versailles, do specially
want? The twelve speakers reply, in few Avords inclusive
of much: "Bread, and the end of these brabbles; Du
pain, et la fin des affaires." When the affairs will end, no
Major Lecointre, nor no mortal, can say ; but as to bread,
he inquires, How many are you? learns" that they are six
hundred, that a loaf each will suffice; and rides off to the
municipality to get six hundred loaves.
Which loaves, however, a municipality of monarchic
temper will not give. It will give two tons of rice rather,
could you but knoAV whether it should be boiled or raw.
Nay when this too is accepted, the municipals have dis
appeared; ducked under, as the six-and-twenty long-
gowned of Paris did; and, leaving not the smallest vestige
of rice, in the boiled or raw state, they there vanish from
history. Rice comes not; one's hope of food is balked; even one's
hope of vengeance : is not M. de Moucheton of the Scotch
Company, as we said, deceitfully smuggled off? Failing
all which, behold only M. de Moucheton's slain war-horse,
lying on the esplanade there! Saint Antoine, balked,
esurient, pounces on the slain war-horse ; flays it ; roasts it,
with such fuel, of paling, gates, portable timber as can be
come at, not without shouting; and, after the manner of
ancient Greek heroes, they lifted their hands to the
daintily readied repast; such as it might be.* Other rascal
ity prowls discursive ; seeking what it may devour. Flandre
will retire to its barracks; Lecointre also with his Ver
saillese, all_ but the vigilant patrols, charged to be doubly
vigilant. So sink the shadows of night, blustering, rainy ; and all
paths grow dark. Strangest night ever seen in these
regions, perhaps since the Bartholomew night, when Ver
sailles, as Bassompierre writes of it, was a chetif chateau.
Oh, for the lyre of some Orpheus, to constrain, with touch
of melodious strings, these mad masses into order ! For
here all seems fallen asunder, in wide-yawning dislocation.
The highest, as in downrushing of a world, is come in con
tact with the lowest : the rascality of France beleaguering
the royalty of France; "iron-shod batons" lifted round the
* Weber; " Deux Amis," etc.

240 THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION.
diadem, not to guard it! With denunciations of blood
thirsty anti-national bodyguards, are heard dark growlings
against a queenly name.
The court sits tremulous, powerless; varies with the
varying temper of the esplanade, with the varying color of
the rumors from Paris. Thick -coming rumors; now of
peace, now of war. Necker and all the ministers consult
with a blank issue. The CEil-de-Bceuf is one tempest of
whispers: We will fly to Metz; we will not fly. The
royal carriages again attempt egress, though for trial
merely ; they are again driven in by Lecointre's patrols.
In six hours nothing has been resolved on ; not even the
acceptance pure and simple.
In six hours? Alas, he who, in such circumstances,
cannot resolve in six minutes, may give up the enterprise:
him fate has already resolved for. And Menadism, mean
while, and Sansculottism takes counsel with the national
assembly ; grows more and more tumultuous there. Mou
nier returns not; authority nowhere shows itself; the
authority of France lies, for the present, with Lecointre
and Usher Maillard. This then is the abomination of deso
lation; come suddenly, though long foreshadowed as
inevitable! For, to the blind, all things are sudden.
Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman,
no helper, will noAV be its own helper and speak for itself.
The dialect, one of the rudest, is, what it could be, this.
At eight o'clock there returns to our assembly not the
deputation ; but Doctor Guillotin announcing that it will
return ; also that there is hope of the acceptance pure and
simple. He himself has brought a royal letter, authorizing
and commanding the freest "circulation of grains."
Which royal letter Menadism with its whole heart
applauds. Conformably to which the assembly forthwith
passes a decree; also received with rapturous Menadio
plaudits: Only could not an august assembly contrive
farther to "fix the price of bread at eight sous the half-
quartern; butchers'-meat at six sous the pound;" which
seem fair rates? Such motion do "a multitude of men and
women," irrepressible by Usher Maillard, now make; does
an august assembly hear made. Usher Malliard himself is
not always perfectly measured in speech; but if rebuked,
he can justly excuse himself by the peculiarity of the
circumstances. " *
•"Moniteur," Qn "Hist Pari." iii. 105).

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 241
But finally, this decree well passed, and the disorder
continuing ; and members melting away, and no President
Mounier returning, what can the vice-president do but
also melt away? The assembly melts, under such pres
sure, into deliquium; or, as it is officially called, adjourns.
Maillard is despatched to Paris, with the " Decree concern
ing Grains" in his pocket; he and some women, in car
riages belonging to the king. Thitherward slim Louison
Chabray has already set forth, with that " written answer"
which the twelve she-deputies returned in to seek. Slim
sylph, she has set forth, through the black muddy country;
she has much to tell, her poor nerves so flurried; and
travels, as indeed to-day on this road all persons do, with
extreme slowness. President Mounier has not come,
nor the acceptance pure and simple ; though six hours with
their events have come ; though courier on courier reports
that Lafayette is coming. Coming, with war or with
peace? It is time that the chateau also should determine
on one thing or another; that the chateau also should
show itself alive, if it would continue living!
Victorious, joyful after such delay, Mounier does arrive
at last, and the hard-earned acceptance with him ; which
now, alas, is of small value. Fancy Mounier's surprise to
find his senate, whom he hoped to charm by the accept
ance pure and simple, all gone; and in its stead a senate
of Menads! For as Erasmus' ape, mimicked, say with
Avooden splint, Erasums shaving, so do these Amazons
hold, in mock majesty, some confused parody of national
assembly. They make motions; deliver speeches; pass
enactments ; productive at least of loud laughter. All gal
leries and benches are filled; a strong dame of the market
is in Mounier's chair. Not without difficulty, Mounier,
by aid of macers and .persuasive speaking, makes his way to
the female-president ; the strong dame, before abdicating,
signifies that, for one thing, she and indeed her whole
senate male and female (for what was one roasted war-
horse among so many?) are suffering very considerably
from hunger.
Experienced Mounier, in these circumstances, takes a
two-fold resolution: To reconvoke his assembly members
by sound of drum; also to procure a supply of food.
Swift messengers fly, to all bakers, cooks, pastry cooks,
vintners, restorers; drums beat, accompanied with shrill

242 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
vocal proclamation, through all streets. They come : the
assembly members come; what is still better, the provi
sions come. On tray and barrow come these latter; loaves,
wine, great store of sausages. The nourishing baskets
circulate harmoniously along the benches; nor, according
to the father of epics, did any soul lack a fair share of
victuals {daiTot iiiSni, an equal diet) ; highly desirable at
the moment.*
Gradually some hundred or so of assembly members get
edged in, Menadism making way a little, round Mounier's
chair ; listen to the acceptance pure and simple ; and begin,
what is the order of the night, " discussion of the penal
code." All benches are crowded; in the dusky galleries,
duskier Avith unwashed heads, is a strange "coruscation,"
of impromptu bill-hooks. \ It is exactly five months this
day since these same galleries were filled with high -plumed
jeweled beauty, raining bright influences; and now? To
such length have we got in regenerating France. Methinks
the travail-throes are of the sharpest! Menadism will
not be restrained from occasional remarks; asks, "What
is the use of penal code? The thing we want is bread."
Mirabeau turns round with lion-voiced rebuke; Menadism
applauds him ; but recommences.
Thus they, chewing tough sausages, discussing the
penal code, make night hideous. What the issue will be?
Lafayette with his thirty thousand must arrive first; him
who cannot now be distant, all men expect, as the mes
senger of destiny.

CHAPTER IX.
LAFAYETTE.
Toward midnight lights flare on the hill; Lafayette's
lights! The roll of his drums comes up the Avenue de
Versailles. With peace or with war? Patience, friends!
With neither. Lafayette is come, but not yet the catas
trophe. He has halted and harangued so often, on the march ;
spent nine hours on four leagues of road. At Montreuil,
*"Deux Amis," iii. 208.
f " Courrier de Provence " (Mirabeau's Newspaper), No. 50, p. 19.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 248
close oh Versailles, the whole host had to pause; and, with
uplifted right hand, in the murk of night, to these pour
ing skies, swear solemnly to respect the king's dwelling;
to be faithful to king and national assembly. Rage is
driven down out of sight, by the laggard march ; the thirst
of vengeance slaked in weariness and soaking clothes.
Flandre is again drawn out under arms: but Flandre,
grown so patriotic, now needs no "exterminating." The
wayworn battalions halt in the avenue : they have, for the
present, no wish so pressing as that of shelter and rest.
Anxious sits President Mounier; anxious the chateau.
There is a message coming from the cMteau, that M.
Mounier would please to return thither with a fresh depu
tation, swiftly ; and so at least unite our two anxieties.
Anxious Mounier does of himself send, meanwhile, to
apprise the general that his majesty has been so gracious
as to grant us the acceptance pure and simple. The
general, with a small advance column, makes answer in
passing; speaks vaguely some smooth words to the
national president, glances, only Avith the eye, at that so
mixtiform national assembly; then fares forward toward
the chateau. There are with him two Paris municipals;
they were chosen from the three hundred for that errand.
He gets admittance through the locked and padlocked
grates, through sentries and ushers, to the royal halls.
The court, male and female, crowds on his passage, to
read their doom on his face; which exhibits, say histo
rians, a mixture "of sorrow, of fervor and valor," singular
to behold.* The king, with monsieur, with ministers
and marshals, is waiting to receive him: He "is come,"
in his highflown chivalrous way, "to offer his head for the
safety of his majesty's." The two municipals state
the wish of Paris: four things: of quite pacific tenor.
First, that the honor of guarding his sacred person
be conferred on patriot national guards; say, the center
grenadiers, who as Gardes Francaises were wont to have
that privilege. Second, that provisions be got, if possible.
Third, that the prisons, all crowded with political delin
quents, may have judges sent them. Fourth, that it would
please his majesty to come and live in Paris. To all
*" Memoire de M. le Comte Lally-Tollendal " (Janvier 1790). pp.
161-165.

244 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
which four wishes, except the fourth, his majesty answers
readily, Yes ; or indeed may almost say that he has already
answered it. To the fourth he can answer only, Yes, or
No; would so gladly answer, Yes and No! But, in any
case, are not their dispositions, thank heaven, so entirely
pacific? There is time for deliberation. The brunt of the
danger seems past !
Lafayette and D'Estaing settle the watches; center
grenadiers are to take the guard-room they of old occupied
as Gardes Francaises; for indeed the Gardes-du-Corps, its
late ill-advised occupants, are gone mostly to Rambouillet.
That is the order of this night ; sufficient for the night is
the evil thereof. Whereupon Lafayette and the two
municipals, Avith highflown chivalry, take their leave.
So brief has the interivew been, Mounier and his depu
tation were not yet got up. So brief and satisfactory. A
stone is rolled from every heart. The fair palace dames
publicly declare that this Lafayette, detestable though he
be, is their savior for once. Even the ancient vinaigrous
Tantes admit it; the king's aunts, ancient Graille and
sisterhood, known to us of old. Queen Marie Antoinette
has been heard often say the like. She alone, among all
women and all men, wore a face of courage, of lofty calm
ness and resolve, this day. She alone saw clearly what she
meant to do; and Theresa's daughter dares do what she
means, were all France threatening her : abide where her
children are, where her husband is.

Toward three in the morning all things are settled : the
watches set, the center grenadiers put into their old guard
room, and harangued ; the Swiss, and few remaining body
guards harangued. The wayworn Paris battalions, con
signed to "the hospitality of Versailles," lie dormant in
spare-beds, spare-barracks, coffeehouses, empty churches.
A troop of them, on their way to the church of Saint-
Louis, awoke poor Weber, dreaming troublous, in the Rue
Sartory. Weber has Had his waistcoat-pocket full of balls
all day; "two hundred balls, and two pears of powder!"
For waistcoats were waistcoats then, and had flaps down to
mid-thigh. So many balls he has had all day; but no
opportunity of using them ; he turns over now, execrating
disloyal bandits ; swears a prayer or two, and straight to
sleep again.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 245
Finally the national assembly is harangued; which
thereupon, on motion of Mirabeau, discontinues the penal
code, and dismisses for this night. Menadism, Sanscu
lottism has cowered into guardhouses, barracks of Flandre,
to the light of cheerful fire; failing that, to churches,
officehouses, sentry-boxes, wheresoever wretchedness can
find a lair. The troublous day has brawled itself to rest ;
no lives yet lost but that of one war-horse. Insurrection
ary chaos lies slumbering round the palace, like ocean round
a diving-bell, no crevice yet disclosing itself.
Deep sleep has fallen promiscuously on the high and on
the low; suspending most things, even wrath and famine.
Darkness covers the earth. But, far on the north-east,
Paris flings up her great yellow gleam ; far into the wet
black night. For all is illuminated there, as in the old
July nights; the streets deserted, for alarm of war; the
municipals all wakeful ; patrols hailing, with their hoarse
who goes. There, as we discover, our poor slim Louison
Chabray, her poor nerves all fluttered, is arriving about
this very hour. There Usher Maillard will arrive, about
an hour hence, "toward four in the morning." They
report, successively, to a wakeful H6tel-de- Ville what com
fort they can; which again, with early dawn, large com
fortable placards shall impart to all men.
Lafayette, in the H6tel-de-Noailles, not far from the
chateau, having now finished haranguing, sits with his
officers consulting: at five o'clock the unanimous best
counsel is, that a man so tossed and toiled for twenty-four
hours and more, fling himself on a bed, and seek some rest.

Thus, then, has 'ended the first act of the insurrection
of women. How it will turn the morrow? The morrow,
as always, is with the fates ! But his majesty, one may
hope, will consent to come honorably to Paris; at all
events, he can visit Paris. Anti-national bodyguards, here
and elsewhere, must take the national oath; make repara
tion to the tricolor; Flandre will swear. There may be
much swearing; much public speaking there will infallibly
be; and so, with harangues and vows, may the matter in
some handsome way wind itself up.
Or, alas, may it not be all othenvise, Mwhandsome*, the con
sent not honorable, but extorted, ignominious? Boundless

246 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
chaos of insurrection presses slumbering round the palace,
like ocean round a diving-bell; and may penetrate at any
crevice. Let but that accumulated insurrectionary mass
find entrance! Like the infinite inburst of water; or say
rather, of inflammable, self -igniting fluid; for example,
" turpentine-and-phosphorus oil," fluid known to Spinola
Santerre !

CHAPTER X.
THE GRAND ENTRIES.
The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, had
but broken over Versailles, when it pleased destiny that
a bodyguard should look out of window, on the right wing
of the chateau, to see what prospect there was in heaven
and in earth. Rascality male and female is prowling in
view of him. His fasting stomach is, with good cause,
sour ; he perhaps cannot forbear a passing malison on them ;
least of all can he forbear answering such.
Ill words breed worse : till the worst word come ; and then
the ill deed. Did the maledicent bodyguard, getting (as
was too inevitable) better malediction than he gave, load
his musketoon, and threaten to fire; nay actually fire?
Were wise who wist ! It stands asserted ; to us not credi
bly. But be this as it may, menaced rascality, in whinny
ing scorn, is shaking at all grates; the fastening of one
(some write, it was a chain merely) gives way ; rascality is
in the grand court, whinnying louder still.
The maledicent bodyguard, more bodyguards than he do
now give fire; a man's arm is shattered. Lecointre will
depose * that " the Sieur Cardine, a national guard without
arms, was stabbed." But see, sure enough, poor Jer6me
1'Heritier, an unarmed national guard he too, "cabinet
maker, a saddler's son, of Paris," with the doAvn of youth-
hood still on his chin, he reels deathstricken ; rushes to the
pavement, scattering it Avith his blood and brains ! Alleleu !
Wilder than Irish wakes rises the howl; of pity, of infinite
revenge. In few moments, the grate of the inner and
inmost court, which they name Court of Marble, this too
is forced, or surprised, and bursts open : the court of mar-
* " Deposition de Lecointre " (in "Hist. Pari." iii. 111-115).

THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION. 24.7
ble too is overflowed ; up the grand staircase, up all stairs
and entrances rushes the living deluge! Deshuttes and
Varigny, the two sentry bodyguards, are trodden down, are
massacred with a hundred pikes. Women snatch their
cutlasses, or any weapon, and storm in, Menadic; other
women lift the corpse of shot Jerome ; lay it down on the
marble steps ; there shall the livid face and smashed head,
dumb forever, speak.
Woe now to all bodyguards, mercy is none for them !
Miomandre de Sainte-Marie pleads with soft words, oh the
grand staircase, "descending four steps;" to the roaring
tornado. His comrades snatch him up, by the skirts and
belts; literally, from the jaws of destruction; and slam to
their door. This also will stand few instants ; the panels
shivering in, like potsherds. Barricading serves not: fly
fast, ye bodyguards: rabid insurrection, like the hellhound
chase, uproaring at your heels !

The terror-struck bodyguards fly, bolting and barricad
ing; it follows. Whitherward? Through hall on hall;
woe now! toward the queen's suite of rooms, in the
farthest room of which the queen is now asleep. Five sen
tinels rush through that long suite ; they are in the ante
room knocking loud: "Save the queen!" Trembling
women fall at their feet with tears : are ansAvered ; " Yes,
we will die; save ye the queen!"
Tremble not, women, but haste: for, lo, another voice
shouts far through the outermost door, " Save the queen !"
and the door is shut. It is brave Miomandre's voice that
shouts this second Avarning. He has stormed across
immiment death to do it ; fronts imminent death, having
done it. Brave Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the same
desperate service, was borne down with pikes; his com-,
rades hardly snatched him in again alive. Miomandre
and Tardivet: let the names of these two bodyguards, as
the names of brave men should, live long.
Trembling maids-of-honor, one of whom from afar
caught glimpse of Miomandre as well as heard him, hastily
wrap the queen ; not in robes of state. She flies for her
life, across the (Eil-de-Boeuf; against the main door of
which too insurrection batters. She is in the king's apart
ment, in fhe king's arms; she clasps her children aniid a

248 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
faithful few. The imperial-hearted bursts into mother's
tears; "Oh my friend, save me and my children — 0 mes
amis, sauvez-moi et mes enfans!" The battering of insur
rectionary axes clangs audible across the G3il-de-Bceuf.
What an hour !

Yes, friends; a hideous fearful hour; shameful alike to
governed and governor; wherein governed and governor
ignominiously testify that their relation is at an end.
Rage, which had brewed itself in twenty thousand hearts
for the last four-and-twenty hours, has taken fire:
Jerome's brained corpse lies there as live-coal. It is, as
we said, the infinite element bursting in; wild-surging
through all corridors and conduits. Meanwhile the poor
bodyguards have got hunted mostly into the 03il-de-Bceuf.
They may die there, at the king's threshold; they can do
little to defend it. They are heaping tabourets (stools of
honor), benches and all movables against the door; at
which the axe of insurrection thunders. But did brave
Miomandre perish, then, at the queen's outer door? No,
he was fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead; he has
nevertheless crawled hither; and shall live, honored of
loyal France. Remark also, in fiat contradiction to much
which has been said and sung, that insurrection did not
burst that door he had defended : but hurried elsewither,
seeking new bodyguards.*
Poor bodyguards, with their Thyestes^ opera-repast!
Well for them that insurrection has only pikes and axes;
no right sieging-tools ! It shakes and thunders. Must
they all perish miserably, and royalty with them?
Deshuttes and Varigny, massacred at the first inbreak,
have been beheaded in the marble court; a sacrifice to
Jerome's manes; Jourdan with the tile-beard did that
duty willingly ; and asked, If there were no more? Another
captive they are leading round the corpse, with howl-
chantings: may not Jourdan again tuck up his sleeves?
And louder and louder rages insurrection within, plun
dering if it cannot kill ; louder and louder it thunders at
the CEil-de-Bceuf; what can now hinder its bursting-in?
On a sudden it ceases; the battering has ceased! Wild-
* Campan, ii. 75-87.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 249
rushing; the cries grow fainter; there is silence, or the
tramp of regular steps ; then a friendly knocking : " We
are the center grenadiers, old Gardes Francaises : open to
us, messieurs of the Garde-du-Corps ; we have not forgotten
how you saved us at Fontenoy!"* The door is opened ;
enter Captain Gondran and the center grenadiers; there
are military embracings ; there is sudden deliverance from
death into life.
Strange sons of Adam ! It was to " exterminate" these
Gardes-du-Corps that the center grenadiers left home:
and now they have rushed to save them from extermina
tion. The memory of common peril, of old help, melts
the rough heart; bosom is clasped to bosom, not in war.
The king shows himself, one moment through the door of
his apartment, with: "Do not hurt my guards!" " Soyons
freres, Let us be brothers!" cries Captain Gondran; and
again dashes off, with leveled bayonets, to sweep the
palace clear.
Now too Lafayette, suddenly roused, not from sleep (for
his eyes had not yet closed), arrives; with passionate popu
lar eloquence, with prompt military word of command.
National guards, suddenly roused, by sound of trumpet
and alarm-drum, are all arriving. The death-melly ceases :
the first sky-lambent blaze of insurrection is got damped
down; it burns noAV, if unextinguished yet flameless, as
charred coals do, and not inextinguishable. The king's
apartments are safe. Ministers, officials, and even some
loyal national deputies are assembling round their majesties.
The consternation will, with sobs and confusion, settle
down gradually, into plan and counsel, better or worse.

But glance noAV, for a moment, from the royal windows !
A roaring sea of human heads, inundating both courts;
billowing against all passages : Menadic women ; infuriated
men, mad with revenge, with love of mischief, love of
plunder ! Rascality has slipped its muzzle ; and now bays,
three-throated, like the dog of Erebus. Fourteen body
guards are wounded; two massacred, and as we saw, be
headed ; Jourdan asking, " Was it worth while to come so
far for two?" Hapless Deshuttes and Varigny! Their
* Toulongeon, j, 144,

250 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
fate surely Avas sad. Whirled down so suddenly to the
abyss; as men are, suddenly, by the wide thunder of the
mountain avalanche, awakened not by them, awakened
far off by others! When the chateau clock last struck,
they two were pacing languid, with poised musketoon;
anxious mainly that the next hour would strike. It has
struck; to them inaudible. Their .trunks lie mangled:
their heads parade, "on pikes twelve feet long," through
the streets of Versailles; and shall, about noon, reach the
barriers of Paris, a too ghastly contradiction to the large
comfortable placards that have been posted there !
The other captive bodyguard is still circling the corpse
of Jerome, amid Indian war-whooping; bloody Tilebeard,
with tucked sleeves, brandishing his bloody axe; when
Gondran and the grenadiers come in sight. " Comrades,
will you see a man massacred in cold blood?" "Off,
butchers!" answer they; and the poor bodyguard is free.
Busy runs Gondran, busy run guards and captains; scour
ing all corridors; dispersing rascality and robbery; sweep-
' ing the palace clear. The mangled carnage is removed ;
Jerome's body to the town hall, for inquest: the fire of
insurrection gets damped, more and more, into meas
urable, manageable heat.
Transcendant things of all sorts, as in the general out
burst of multitudinous passion, are huddled together; the
ludicrous, nay the ridiculous, with the horrible. Far over
the billowy sea of heads, may be seen rascality, caprioling
on horses from the royal stud. The spoilers these; for
patriotism is always infected so, with a proportion of mere
thieves and scoundrels. Gondran snatched their prey from
them in the chateau; whereupon they hurried to the
stables, and took horse there. But the generous Diomedes '
steeds, according to Weber, disdained such scoundrel-
burden; and, flinging up their royal heels, did soon project
most of it, in parabolic curves, to a distance, amid peals of
laughter; and were caught. Mounted national guards
secured the rest.
Now too is witnessed the touching last-flicker of eti
quette; which sinks not here, in the Cimmerian world
Avreckage, without a sign as the house-cricket might still
chirp in the pealing of a trump of doom. " Monsieur,"
said some master of ceremonies (one hopes it might be De
Breze), as Lafayette, in these fearful moments, was rusli-

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 251
ing toward the inner royal apartments, " Monsieur, le Roi
vous accorde les grandesentrees, Monsieur, the king grants
you the grand entries," not finding it convenient to refuse
them!*

CHAPTER XI.
FROM VERSAILLES.
However, the Paris national guard, wholly under arms,
has cleared the palace, and even occupies the nearer ex
ternal spaces; extruding miscellaneous patriotism, for
most part, into the grand court, or even into the forecourt.
The bodyguards, you can observe, have now of a verity
" hoisted the national cockade ;" for they step forward to
the windows or balconies, hat aloft in hand, on each hat a
huge tricolor; and fling over their bandoleers in sign of
surrender; and shout Vive la nation. To Avhich how can
the generous heart respond but with, Vive le Roi; vivent
les Gardes-du- Corps? His majesty himself has appeared
with Lafayette on the balcony, and again appears : Vive le
Roi greets him from all throats ; but also from some one
throat is heard, " Le Roi a Paris, the king to Paris !"J
Her majesty too, on demand, shoAvs herself, though
there is peril in it! she steps out on the balcony, with her
little boy and girl. "No children, Point d'enfants!" cry
the voices. She gently pushes back her children; and
stands alone, her hands serenely crossed on her breast:
"Should I die," she had said, "I will do it." Such
serenity of heroism has its effect. Lafayette, with ready
wit, in his highflown chivalrous way, takes that fair queenly
hand, and, reverently kneeling, kisses it; thereupon the
people do shout Vive le Reine. Nevertheless, poor Weber
"saw" (or even thought he saw; for hardly the third part
of poor Weber's experiences, in such hysterical days, will
stand scrutiny ) " one of these brigands level his musket at
her majesty," with or Avithout intention to shoot; for
another of the brigands "angrily struck it down."
So that all, and the queen herself, nay the very captain
of the bodyguards, have grown national! The very
captain of the bodyguards steps out now with Lafayette.
* Toulongeon, i. App. 120.

252 THE FR ENCH RE VOL U TION.
On the hat of the repentant man is an enormous tricolor;
large as a soup-platter or sunflower ; visible to the utmost
forecourt. He takes the national oath with a loud voice,
elevating his hat ; at which sight all the army raise their
bonnets on their bayonets, with shouts. Sweet is reconcile
ment to the heart of man. Lafayette has sworn Flandre;
he swears the remaining bodyguards, down in the marble
court; the people clasp them in their arms: Oh my
brothers, why would ye force us to slay you? Behold,
there is joy over you, as over returning prodigal sons!
The poor bodyguards, now national and tricolor, exchange
bonnets, exchange arms; there shall be peace and frater
nity. And still " Vive le Roi;" and also " Le Roi a Paris,"
not now from one throat, but from all throats as one, for
it is the heart's wish of all mortals.

Yes, the king to Paris; what else? Ministers may con
sult, and national deputies wag their heads; but there is
now no other possibility. You have forced him to go
willingly. "At one o'clock!" Lafayette gives audible
assurance to that purpose; and univeral insurrection, with
immeasurable shout, and a discharge of all the fire-arms,
clear and rusty, great and small, that it has, returns him
acceptance. What a sound; heard for leagues: a doom-
peal! That sound too rolls away; into the silence of ages.
And the chateau of Versailles stands ever since vacant,
hushed-still ; its spacious courts grassgrown, responsive to
the hoe of the weeder. Times and generations roll on,
in their confused gulf -current ; and buildings, like builders
have their destiny.
Till one o'clock, then, there will be three parties, na
tional assembly, national rascality, national royalty, all busy
enough. Rascality rejoices; women trim themselves with
tricolor. Nay motherly Paris has sent her avengers suffi
cient " cartloads of loaves ;" Avhich are shouted over, which
are gratefully consumed. The avengers, in return, are
searching for grain-stores; loading them in fifty wagons;
that so a national king, probable harbinger of all blessings,
may be the evident bringer of plenty, for one.
And thus has Sansculottism made prisoner its king;
revoking his parole. The monarchy has fallen ; and not so
much as honorably: no, ignominiously; with struggle,

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 253
indeed, oft repeated; but then with unwise struggle; wast
ing its strength in fits and paroxysms; at every new
paroxysm foiled more pitfully than before. Thus Broglie's
whiff of grapeshot, which might have been something,
has dwindled to the pot-valor of an opera repast, and Oh,
Richard, oh, mon Roi. Which, again, we shall see dwindle
to a Favras conspiracy, a thing to be settled by the hanging
of one chevalier.
Poor monarchy ! But what save foulest defeat can aAvait
that man, who wills, and yet wills not? Apparently the
king either has a right, assertible as such to the death,
before God and man; or else he has no right. Apparently,
the one or the other; could he but know which! May
heaven pity him! Were Louis wise, he would this day
abdicate. Is it not strange so few kings abdicate; and
none yet heard of has been known to commit suicide?
Fritz the First of Prussia, alone tried it; and they cut the
rope.* As for the national assembly, which decrees this morn
ing that it "is inseparable from his majesty," and will fol
low him to Paris, there may one thing be noted : its ex
treme want of bodily health. After the 14th of July there
was a certain sickliness observable among honorable mem
bers; so many demanding passports, on account of infirm
health. But now, for these following days, there is a per
fect murrain: President Mounier, Lally Tollendal, Cler
mont Tonnere, and all constitutional two-chamber royalists
needing change of air; as most no-chamber royalists had
formerly done.
For, in truth, it is the second emigration, this that has
now come; most extensive among commons deputies,
noblesse, clergy : so that " to SAvitzerland alone there go sixty
thousand." They will return in the day of accounts!
Yes, and have hot welcome. But emigration on emigra
tion is the peculiarity of France. One emigration follows
another; grounded on reasonable fear, unreasonable hope,
largely also on childish pet. The highflyers have gone
first, now the lower flyers; and ever the lower will go,
down to the crawlers. Whereby, however, cannot our na-
* Calumnious rumor, current long since, in loose vehicles
(Edinburgh Review " on Memoires de Bastile," for example), con
cerning Friedrich Wilhelm and his ways, then so mysterious and
miraculous to many — not the least truth in it! (Note of 1868.)

254 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
tional assembly so much the more commodiously make the
constitution; your two-chamber Anglomaniacs being all
safe, distant on foreign shores? Abbe Maury is seized
and sent back again; he, tough as tanned leather with elo
quent Captain Cazales and some others, will stand it out
for another year.
But here, meanwhile, the question arises : Was Philippe
d'Orleans seen, this day, "in the Bois de Boulogne, in
gray surtont;" waiting under the wet sere foliage, what
the day might bring forth? Alas, yes, the eidolon of him
was, in Weber's and other such brains. The chatelet
shall make large inquisition into the matter, examining a
hundred and seventy witnesses, and Deputy Chabroud pub
lish his report; but disclose nothing farther.* What,
then, has caused these two unparalleled October days?
For surely such dramatic exhibition never yet enacted
itself without dramatist and machinist. Wooden Punch
emerges not, with his domestic sorrows, into the light of
day, unless the wire be pulled: how can human mobs?
Was it not D'Orleans, then, and Laclos, Marquis Sillery,
Mirabeau and the sons of confusion; hoping to drive the
king to Metz, and gather the spoil? Nay was it not, quite
contrariwise, the 03il-de-Bceuf, bodyguard Colonel de
Guiche, Minister Saint-Priest and high flying loyalists;
hoping also to drive him to Metz, and try it by the sword
of civil war? Good Marquis Toulongeon, the historian
and deputy, feels constrained to admit that it was both. \
Alas, my friends, credulous incredulity is a strange mat
ter. But when a whole nation is smitten with suspicion,
and sees a dramatic miracle in the very operation of the
gastric juices, what help is there? Such nation is already
a mere hypochondriac bundle of diseases; as good as
changed into glass; atrabiliar, decadent; and will suffer
crises. Is not suspicion itself the one thing to be sus
pected, as Montaigne feared only fear?
Noav, however, the short hour has struck. His majesty
is in his carriage, with his queen, sister Elizabeth and two
royal children. Not for another hour can the infinite
procession get marshaled and under way. The weather
is dim drizzling; the mind confused; the noise great.
* "Rapport de Chabroud " (" Moniteur," du 31 Decembre (1789.)
t Toulongeon, i. 150. *

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 255
Processional marches not a few our world has seen;
Roman triumphs and ovations, Cabiric cymbal-beatings,
royal progresses, Irish funerals; but this of the French
monarchy marching to its bed remained to be seen. Miles
long, and of breadth losing itself in vagueness, for all the
neighboring country crowds to see. Slow; stagnating
along, like shoreless lake, yet with a noise like Niagara,
like Babel and Bedlam. A splashing and a tramping; a
hurrahing, uproaring, musk et- volleying ; the truest seg
ment of chaos seen in these latter ages! Till slowly it dis-
embouge itself in, the thickening dusk, into expectant
Paris, through a double row of faces all the way from
Passy to the H6tel-de-Ville.
Consider this: Vanguard of national troops; with trains
of artillery; of pikemen and pikewomen, mounted on
cannons, on carts, hackney-coaches, or on foot ; tripudiat-
ing, in tricolor ribbons from head to heel ; loaves stuck on
the point of bayonets, green boughs stuck in gun-barrels.*
Next, as main-march, "fifty cart-loads of corn," which
have been lent, for peace, from the stores of Versailles.
Behind which follow stragglers of the Garde-du-Corps; all
humiliated, in grenadier bonnets. Close on these comes
the royal carriage; come royal carriages for there are a
hundred national deputies too, among whom sits Mirabeau,
his remarks not given. Then finally, pell-mell, as rear
guard, Flandre, Swiss, hundred Swiss, other bodyguards,
brigands, whosoever cannot get before. Between and among
all which masses flow without limit Saint-Antoine and the
Menadic Cohort. Menadic especially about the royal car-
raige; tripudiating there, covered Avith tricolor; singing
"allusive songs;" pointing with one hand to the royal car
riage, which the allusions hit, and pointing to the provi
sion-wagons with the other hand, and these words : " Cour
age, friends! We shall not want bread now: we are
bringing you the baker, the bakeress and baker's boy {le
Boulanger, la Boulangere etlepetit Mitron.)" \
The wet day draggles the tricolor, but the joy is unex-
tinguishable. Is not all well now? "Ah, madame, notre
bonne Reine," said some of these strong women some days
hence, "Ah, madame, our good queen, don't be a traitor
* Mercier, "Nouveau Paris," iii. 21.
+ Toulongeon, i. 134-161; "Deux Amis," iii. c. 9; etc. etc.

256' THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
any more {ne soyez plus traitre), and we will all love
you!" Poor Weber went splashing along, close by the
royal carriage, with the tear in his eye : " their majesties
did me the honor," or I thought they did it, "to testify,
from time to time, by shrugging of the shoulders, by looks
directed to heaven, the emotions they felt." Thus, like
frail cockle, float the royal life-boat, helmless, on black
deluges of rascality.
Merci'er, in his loose way, estimates the procession and
assistants at two hundred thousand. He says it was one
boundless inarticulate haha; transcendent world-laugh
ter; comparable to the Saturnalia of the ancients. Why
not? Here too, as we said, is human nature once more
human; shudder at it whoso is of shuddering humor; yet,
behold, it is human. It has "swallowed all formulas;" it
tripudiates even so. For which reason they that collect
vases and antiques, with figures of Dancing Bacchantes "in
wild and ail-but impossible positions," may look with some
interest on it.

Thus, however, has the slow-moving chaos, or modern
Saturnalia of the ancients, reached the barrier; and must
halt, to be harangued by Mayor Bailly. Thereafter it has
to lumber along, between the double row of faces, in the
transcendent heaven-lashing haha; two hours longer,
toward the H6tel-de- Ville. Then again to be harangued
there, by several persons; by Moreau de Saint-Mery among
others; Moreau of the three thousand orders, now national
deputy for St. Domingo. To all which poor Louis, "who
seemed to experience a slight emotion" on entering this
town hall, can answer only that he "comes with pleasure,
with confidence among his people." Mayor Bailly, in
reporting it, forgets "confidence;" and the poor queen
says eagerly: "Add, with confidence." "Messieurs,"
rejoins Mayor Bailly, " you are happier than if I had not
forgotten." Finally, the king is shown on an upper balcony, by
torchlight, with a huge tricolor in his hat; "and all the
people," says Weber, "grasped one another's hand;"
thinking now surely the new era was born. Hardly till
eleven at night can royalty get to its vacant, long-deserted
palace of the Tuileries ; to lodge there, somewhat in stroll-

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 25?
ing-player fashion. It is Tuesday the 6th of October,
1789. Poor Louis has two other Paris processions to make:
one ludicrous-ignominious like this; the other not ludicrous
nor ignominious, but serious, nay sublime.

258 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

THE CONSTITUTION.

BOOK EIGHTH.
THE FEAST OF THE PIKES.

CHAPTER I.
IN THE TUILERIES.
The victim having once got his stroke of grace, the
catastrophe can be considered as almost come. There is
small interests now in watching his long low moans:
notable only are his sharper agonies, what convulsive
struggles he may make to cast the torture off from him;
and then finally the last departure of life itself, and how
he liese xtinct and ended, either wrapped like Caesar in decor
ous mantle-folds, or unseemly sunk together, like one that
had not the force even to die.
Was French royalty, when wrenched forth from its
tapestries in that fashion, on that 6th of October, 1789,
such a victim ? Universal France and royal proclamation
to all the provinces, answers anxiously, no. Nevertheless
one may fear the worst. Royalty was beforehand so
decrepit, moribund, there is little life in it to heal an
injury. Hoav much of its strength, which was of the im
agination merely, has fled ; rascality having looked plainly
in the king's face, and not died! When the assembled
crows can pluck up their scaercrow, and say to it, Here
shalt thou stand and not there; and can treat with it,
and make it, from an infinite, a quite finite constitutional
scarecrow, what is to be looked for? Not in the finite
constitutional scarecrow, but in what still unmeasured,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 259
infinite-seeming force may rally round it, is there hence
forth any hope. For it is most true that all available
authority is mystic in its conditions, and comes " by the
grace of God."
Cheerfuller than watching the death-struggles of royal-
ism will it be to watch the growth and gambolings of
Sansculottism; for, in human things, especially in human
society, all death is but a death-birth : thus if the scepter
is departing from Louis, it is only that, in other forms,
other scepters, were it even pike-scepters, may bear sway.
In a prurient element, rich with nutritive influences, Ave
shall find that Sansculottism grows lustily, and even frisks
in not ungraceful sport : as indeed most young creatures
are sportful ; nay, may it not be noted further, that as the
grown cat, and cat species generally, is the cruelest thing
known, so the merriest is precisely the kitten, or growing
cat?

But fancy the royal family risen from its truckle-beds on
the morrow of that mad day : fancy the muncipal inquiry,
"How would your majesty please to lodge?" and then that
the king's rough answer, " Each may lodge as he can, I
am well enough," is congeed and bowed away, in expressive
grins, by the town hall functionaries, with obsequious
upholsterers at their back; and how the chateau of the
Tuileries is repainted, regarnished into a golden royal resi
dence; and Lafayette with his blue national guards lies
encompassing it, as blue Neptune (in the language of
poets) does an island wooingly. Thither may the wrecks
of rehabilitated loyalty gather, if it will become constitu
tional ; for constitutionalism thinks no evil ; Sansculottism
itself rejoices in the king's countenance. The rubbish of
a Menadic insurrection, as in this ever-kindly world all
rubbish can and must be, is swept aside; and so again,
on clear arena, under new conditions, with something even
of a new stateliness, we begin a new course of action.
Arthur Young has witnessed the strangest scene : majesty
walking unattended in the Tuileries gardens; and miscel
laneous tricolor crowds, who cheer it, and reverently
make way for it; the very queen commands at lowest
respectful silence, regretful avoidance.* Simple ducks,
•Arthur Young's " Travels," i. 264-280.

260 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
in those royal waters, quackle for crumbs from young royal
fingers: the little dauphin has a little railed garden,
where he is seen delving, with ruddy cheeks and flaxen curled
hair; also a little hutch to put his tools in, and screen
himself against showers. What peaceable simplicity ! Is
it peace of a father restored to his children? Or of a task
master who has lost his whip? Lafayette and the
municipality and universal constitutionalism assert the for
mer, and do what is in them to realize it. Such patriot
ism as snarls dangerously and shows teeth, patroUotism,
shall suppress ; or far better, royalty shall soothe down the
angry hair of it, by gentle pattings; and, most effectual
of all, by fuller diet. Yes, not only shall Paris be fed,
but the king's hand be seen in that work. The household
goods of the poor shall, up to a certain amount, by royal
bounty, be disengaged from pawn, and that insatiable
Mont de Piete shall disgorge ; rides in the city with their
Vive le Roi need not fail ; and so, by substance and show,
shall royalty, if man's art can popularize it, be popularized.*
Or, alas, is it neither restored father nor diswhipped task
master that walks there: but an anomalous complex of
both these, and of innumerable other heterogeneities:
reducible to no rubric, if not to this newly-devised one :
King Louis restorer of French liberty? Man indeed, and
King Louis like other men, lives in this world to make
rule out of the ruleless; by his living energy, he shall force
the absurd itself to become less absurd. But then if there
be no living energy; living passivity only? King Serpent,
hurled into its unexpected watery dominion, did at least
bite, and assert credibly that he Avas there : but as for the
poor King Log, tumbled hither and thither as thousandfold
chance and other will than his might direct, how happy
for him that he was indeed Avooden; and, doing nothing
could also see and suffer nothing! It is a distracted
business. For his French majesty, meanwhile, one of the worst
things is, that he can get no hunting. Alas, no hunting
henceforth ; only a fatal being-hunted ! Scarcely, in the
next June weeks, shall he taste again the joys of the game-
destroyer; in next June, and never more. He sends for
his smith-tools; gives, in the course of the day, official or
* " Deux Amis," iii. c. 10.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 261
ceremonial business being ended, " a few strokes of the file,
quelques coups de lime. Innocent brother mortal, why
wert thou not an obscure substantial maker of locks; but
doomed in that other far-seen craft, to be a maker only of
Avorld-follies, unrealities; things self -destructive, which no
mortal hammering could rivet into coherence!
Poor Louis is not without insight, nor even without the
elements of will; some sharpness of temper, spurting at
times from a stagnating character. If harmless inertness
could save him, it were well; but he will slumber and
painfully dream, and to do aught is not given him.
Royalist antiquarians still show the rooms where majesty
and suite, in these extraordinary circumstances, had their
lodging. Here sat the queen ; reading, for she had her
library brought hither, though the king refused his ; tak
ing vehement counsel of the vehement uncounseled; sor
rowing over altered times ; yet with sure hope of better : in
her young rosy boy has she not the living emblem of hope?
It is a murky, working sky; yet with golden gleams of
dawn, or of deeper meteoric light? Here again this
chamber, on the other side of the main entrance, was the
king's: here his majesty breakfasted, and did official
work; here daily after breakfast he received the queen;
sometimes in pathetic friendliness; sometimes in human
sulkiness, for flesh is weak : and when questioned about
business, would answer: "Madame, your business is with
the children." Nay, sire, were it not better you, your
majesty's self, took the children? So asks impartial his
tory; scornful that the thicker vessel was not also the
stronger; pity-struck for the porcelain-clay of humanity
rather than for the tile-clay, though indeed both were
broken !
So, however, in this Medicean Tuileries, shall the
French king and queen now sit for one-and-f orty months ;
and see a wild-fermenting France work out its own destiny,
and theirs. Months bleak, ungenial, of rapid vicissitude;
yet with a mild pale splendor, here and there: as of an
April that were leading to leafiest summer; as of an Octo
ber that led only to everlasting frost. Medicean Tuileries,
how changed since it was a peaceful tile-field ! Or is the
ground itself fate-stricken, accursed; an Atreus' Palace;
for that Louvre window is still nigh, out of which a Capet,
whipped of the furies, fired his signal of the Saint Bartholo-

262 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
mew ! Dark is the way of the eternal as mirrored in this
Avorld of time: God's way is in the sea, and His path in
the great deep.

CHAPTER II.
IN THE SALLE DE MANEGE.
To believing patriots, however, it is now clear that
the constitution will march, marcher, had it once legs to
stand on. Quick, then, ye patriots, bestir yourselves, and
make it ; shape legs for it ! In the archeveche, or arch
bishop's palace, his grace himself having fled; and after-
Avard in the riding-hall, named Manege, close on the
Tuileries: there does a national assembly apply itself to
the miraculous work. Successfully, had there been any
heaven-scaling Prometheus among them ; not successfully,
since there was none! There, in noisy debate, for the
sessions are occasionally ,-' scandalous," and as many as
three speakers have been seen in the tribune at once, let
us continue to fancy it wearing the slow months.
Tough, dogmatic, long of wind is Abbe Maury; Cicer
onian pathetic is Cazales. Keen-trenchant, on the other
side, glitters "a young Barnave; abhorrent of sophistry;
shearing, like keen Damascus saber, all sophistry asunder,
reckless what else he shear with it. Simple seemest thou,
oh solid Dutch-built Petion; if solid, surely dull. Nor
lifegiving is that tone of thine, livelier polemical Eabaut.
With ineffable serenity sniffs great Sieyes, aloft, alone;
his constitution ye may babble over, ye may mar, but can
by no possibility mend : is not polity a science he has ex
hausted? Cool, slow, two military Lameths are visible,
with their quality sneer, or demi-sneer; they shall gallantly
refund theii mother's pension, when the red book is pro
duced ; gallantly be wounded in duels. A Marquis Tou
longeon, whose pen we yet thank, sits there; in stoical
meditative humor, oftenest silent, accepts what destiny
will send. Thouret and parlementary Duport produce
mountains of reformed law; liberal, Anglomaniac; avail
able and unavailable. Mortals rise and fall. Shall goose ¦
Gobel, for example, or Gobel, for he is of Strasburg Ger
man breed, be a constitutional archbishop?

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 263
Alone of all men there, Mirabeau may begin to discern
clearly whither all this is tending. Patriotism, accord
ingly, regrets that his zeal seems to be getting cool. In
that famed Pentecost-night of the 4th of August, when
new faith rose suddenly into miraculous fire, and old
feudality was burned up, men remarked that Mirabeau took
no hand in it; that, in fact, he luckily happened to be
absent. But did he not defend the veto — nay veto absolu;
and tell vehement Barnave that six hundred irresponsible
senators would make of all tyrannies the insupportablest?
Again, how anxious was he that the king's ministers should
have seat and voice in the national assembly; doubtless
with an eye to being minister himself! Whereupon the
national assembly decides, what is very momentous, that no
deputy shall be minister; he, in his haughty stormful
manner, advising us to make it, " no deputy called Mira
beau." * A man of perhaps inveterate feudalisms; of
strategems; too often visible leanings toward the royalist
side: a man suspect; whom patriotism will unmask ! Thus,
in these June days, when the question, Who shall have
right to declare war? comes on, you hear hoarse hawkers
sound dolefully through the streets, "Grand treason of
Count Mirabeau, price only one sou;" because he pleads
that it shall be not the assembly, but the king! Pleads;
nay prevails; for in spite of the hoarse hawkers, and an
endless populace raised by them to the pitch even of
"Lanterne," he mounts the tribune next day; grim-reso
lute; murmuring aside to his friends that speak of danger:
" I know it : I must come hence either in triumph, or else
torn in fragments;" and it was in triumph that he came.
A man stout of heart; whose popularity is not of the
populace, "pas populaciere;" whom no clamor of unwashed
mobs without doors, or of washed mobs within, can scare
from his way! Dumont remembers hearing him deliver
a report on Marsailles; "every word was interrupted on
the part of the Cote Droit by abusive epithets; calum
niator, liar, assassin, scoundrel {scelerat) : Mirabeau pauses
a moment, and, in a honeyed tone, addressing the most
furious, says: 'I wait, messieurs, till these amenities be
exhausted.' " f A man enigmatic, difficult to unmask!
*" Moniteur " Nos. 65, 86 (29th September, 7th November, 1789).
1 Dumont, " Souvenirs," p. 278.

264 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
For example, whence comes his money? Can the profit
of a newspaper, "sorely eaten into by Dame Le Jay; can
this, and the eighteen francs a day your national deputy
has, be supposed equal to this expenditure? House in the
Chaussee d'Antin; country-house at Argenteuil; splen
dors, sumptuosities, orgies ; living as if he had a mint ! All
saloons, barred against Adventurer Mirabeau, are flung
wide-open to King Mirabeau, the cynosure of Europe,
whom female France flutters to behold, though the man
Mirabeau is one and the same. As for money, one may
conjecture that royalism furnishes it; Avhich if royalism
do, will not the same be welcome, as money always is to
him? "Sold," whatever patriotism thinks, he cannot readily
be : the spiritual fire which is in that man ; which shining
through such confusions is nevertheless conviction, and
makes him strong, and without which he had no strength,
is not buyable nor saleable; in such transference of barter,
it would vanish and not be. Perhaps "paid and not sold,
page pas vendu;" as poor Rivarol, in the unhappier con
verse way, calls himself " sold and not paid !" A man
traveling, comet-like, in splendor and nebulosity, his
wild way; whom telescopic patriotism may long watch,
but, without higher mathematics, will not make out. A
questionable, most blamable man ; yet to us the far nota-
blest of all. With rich munificence, as we often say, in a
most blinkard, bespectacled, logic-chopping generation,
nature has gifted this man with an eye. Welcome is his
word, there where he speaks and works; and growing ever
welcomer; for it alone goes to the heart of the business:
logical cobwebbery shrinks itself together; and thouseesta
thing, how it is, how it may be worked with.
Unhappily our national assembly has much to do; a
France to regenerate; and France is short of so many
requisites, short even of cash. These same finances give
trouble enough; no choking of the deficit; which gapes
ever, give, give! To appease the deficit we venture on a
hazardous step, sale of the clergy's lands and superfluous
edifices; most hazardous. Nay, given the sale, who is to
buy them, ready-money having fled? Wherefore, on the
19th day of December, a paper-money of " Assignats,"
of bonds secured, or assigned on that clerico-national
property, and unquestionable at least in payment of that,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 265
is decreed: the first of a long series of like financial per
formances, which shall astonish mankind. So that now,
while old rags last, there shall be no lack of circulating
medium : whether of commodities to circulate thereon, is
another question. But, after all, does not this assignat
business speak volumes for modern science? Bankruptcy,
we may say, was come, as the end of all delusions needs
must come: yet how gently, in softening diffusion, in
mild succession, was it hereby made to fall; like no all-
destroying avalanche; like gentle showers of a powdery
impalpable snow, shower after shower, till all was indeed
buried, and yet little was destroyed that could not be
replaced, be dispensed with ! To such length has modern
machinery reached. Bankruptcy, we said, was great;
but indeed money itself is a standing miracle.
On the whole, it is a matter of endless difficulty, that of
the clergy. Clerical property may be made the nation's,
and the clergy hired servants of the state; but if so, is it
not an altered church? Adjustment enough, of the most
confused sort has become unavoidable. Old landmarks, in
any sense, avail not in a new France. Nay literally, the
very ground is new divided ; your old particolored provinces
become new uniform departments eighty-three in number ;
whereby, as in some sudden shifting of the earth's axis,
no mortal knows his new latitude at once. The twelve old
parlements too, what is to be done with them? The old
parlements are declared to be all "in permanent vacation,"
till once the new equal-justice, of departmental courts,
national appeal-court, of elective justices, justices of
peace, and other Thouret and Duport apparatus be got
ready. They have to sit there, these old parlements,
uneasily waiting; as it were, with the rope round their
neck; crying as they can, Is there none to deliver us? But
happily the answer being, none, none, they are a manage
able class, these parlements. They can be bullied even,
into silence; the Paris parlement, wiser than most, has
never whimpered. They will and must sit there, in such
vacation as is fit; their chamber of vacation distributes in
the interim what little justice is going. With the rope
round their neck, their destiny may be succinct! On the
13th of November, 1790, Mayor Bailly shall Avalk to the
Palais de Justice, few even heeding him; and with
-municipal seal stamp and a little hot wax, seal up the par-

266 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
lementary paper-rooms, and the dread parlement of
Paris pass away, into chaos, gently as does a dream ! So
shall the parlements perish, succinctly; and innumerable
eyes be dry.
Not so the clergy. For, granting even that religion
Avere dead; that it had died, half-centuries ago, with
unutterable Dubois; or emigrated lately to Alsace, with
necklace-cardinal Rohan; or that it now walked as goblin
revenant, AvithBishop Talleyrand of Autun ; yet does not
the shadow of religion, the cant of religion, still linger?
The clergy have means and material : means, of number,
organization, social weight; a material, at lowest, of public
ignorance, known to be the mother of devotion. Nay
Avithal, is it incredible that there might, in simple hearts,
latent here and there like gold-grains in the mud-beach,
still dwell some real faith in God, of so singular and
tenacious a sort that even a Maury or a Talleyrand could
still be the symbol for it? Enough, the clergy has
strength, the clergy has craft and indignation. It is a
most fatal business this of the clergy. A weltering hydra-
coil, Avhich the national assembly has stirred up about its
ears; hissing, stinging; which cannot be appeased, alive;
which cannot be trampled dead! fatal, from first to last!
Scarcely after fifteen month's debating, can a civil con
stitution of the clergy be so much as got to paper; and
then for getting it into reality? Alas, such civil constitu
tion is but an agreement to disagree. It divides France
from end to end, with a new split, infinitely complicating
all the other splits: Catholicism, what of it there is left,
Avith the cant of Catholicism, raging on the one side, and
skeptic heathenism on the other; both, by contradiction,
waxing fanatic. What endless jarring, of refractory hated
priests, and constitutional despised ones; of tender con
sciences, like the king's, and consciences hot-seared, like
certain of his people's: the whole to end in feasts of reason
and a war of La Vendee! So deep-seated is religion in the
heart of man, and holds of all infinite passions. If the
dead echo of it still did so much, what could not the living
voice of it once do?
Finance and constitution, law and gospel: this surely
were work enough ; yet this is not all. In fact, the min
istry, and Necker himself, whom a brass inscription, "fas
tened by the people over his door -lintel," testifies to be

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 267
the "ministre adore," are dwindling into clearer and
clearer nullity. Execution or legislation, arrangement or
detail, from their nerveless fingers all drops undone; all
lights at last on the toiled shoulders of an august repre
sentative body. Heavy-laden national assembly ! It has
to hear of innumerable fresh revolts, brigand expeditions ;
of ch&teaus in the west, especially of charter chests,
chartiers, set on fire ; for there too the overloaded ass fright
fully recalcitrates. Of cities in the south full of heats and
jealousies; which will end in crossed sabers, Marseilles
against Toulon, and Carpentras beleaguered by Avignon;
of so much royalist collision in a career of freedom ; nay of
patriot collision, which a mere difference of velocity will
bring about! Of a Jourdan Coup-tete, who has sulked
thitherward, to those southern regions, from the claws of
the ch&telet; and will raise whole scoundrel regiments.
Also it has to hear of royalist Camp of Jales, Jales moun
tain-girdled plain, amid the rocks of the Cevennes ; whence
royalism, as is feared and hoped, may dash down like a
mountain deluge, and submerge France ! A singular thing
this Camp of Jales; existing mostly on paper. For the
soldiers at Jales, being peasants or national guards, Avere
in heart sworn Sansculottes ; and all that the royalist cap
tains could do, was with false words, to keep them, or
rather keep the report of them, drawn up there, visible
to all imaginations, for a terror and a sign, if peradventure
France might be reconquered by theatrical machinery, by
the picture of a royalist army, done to the life ! * Not till
the third summer was this portent, burning out by fits and
then fading, got finally extinguished; was the old Castle
of Jales, no camp being visible to the bodily eye, got bloAvn
asunder by some national guards.
Also it has to hear not only of Brissot and his friends of
the blacks, but by and by of a whole St. Domingo
blazing skyward ; blazing in literal fire, and in far worse
metaphorical; beaconing the nightly main. Also of the
shipping interest, and the landed interest, and all manner
of interests, reduced to distress. Of industry everywhere
manacled, beAvildered; and only rebellion thriving. Of
sub-officers, soldiers and sailors in mutiny by land and
water. Of soldiers, at Nanci, as we shall see, needing to
* Dampmartin, " Evenemens," i., 208,

268 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
be cannonaded by a brave Bouille. Of sailors, nay the
very galley-slaves, at Brest, needing also to be cannonaded,
but with no Bouille to do it. For indeed, to say it in a
word, in those days there was no king in Israel, and every
man did that which was right in his own eyes.*
Such things has an august national assembly to hear of,
as it goes on regenerating France. Sad and stern; but
what remedy? Get the constitution ready; and all men
will swear to it : for do not " addresses of adhesion" arrive
by the cartload? In this manner, by heaven's blessing,
and a constitution got ready, shall the bottomless fire-gulf
be vaulted in, withj#g-paper; and order will wed freedom,
and live with her there, till it grow too hot for them. Oh
Cote Gauche, worthy are ye, as the adhesive addresses
generally say, to "fix the regards of the universe;" the
regards of this one poor planet, at lowest !
Nay, it must be owned, the Cote Droit makes a still
madder figure. An irrational generation; irrational, im
becile, and with the vehement obstinacy characteristic of
that; a generation which will not learn. Falling Bastilles,
insurrections of women, thousands of smoking manor
houses, a country bristling with no crop but that of Sanscu-
lottic steel: these were tolerably didactic lessons; but
them they have not taught. There are still men, of whom
it was of old written, Bray them in a mortar! Or, in
milder language, They have wedded their delusions: fire
nor steel nor any sharpness of experience, shall sever the
bond ; till death do us part ! On such may the heavens
have mercy; for the earth, with her rigorous necessity,
will have none.
Admit, at the same time, that it was most natural.
Man lives by hope: Pandora, Avhen her box of god's-
gifts flew all out, and became god's-curses, still retained
hope. How shall an irrational mortal, when his high place
is never so evidently pulled down, and he, being irrational
is left resourceless, part with the belief that it will be
rebuilt? It would make all so straight again; it seems so
unspeakably desirable ; so reasonable, would you- but look
at it aright ! For, must not the thing which was continue
* See " Deux Amis," iii. c. 14; iv. c. 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 14. Expedition
des Volontaires de Brest sur Lannion;" "Les Lyonnais Sauveurs
des Dauphinois;" "Massacre au Mans;" "Troubles du Maine"
(Pamphlets and Excerpts, in " Hist. Pari." iii. 251; iv. 162-168), etc.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 269
to be; or else the solid world dissolve? Yes, persist, oh,
infatuated Sansculottes of France! Revolt against con
stituted authorities; hunt out your rightful seigneurs,
who at bottom so loved you, and readily shed their blood
for you, in country's battles as at Rossbach and elsewhere;
and, even in preserving game, were preserving you, could
ye but have understood it; hunt them out, as if they were
wild wolves; set fire to their chateaus and chartiers as to
wolf-dens; and what then? Why, then turn every man his
hand against his fellow! In confusion, famine, desolation,
regret the days that are gone; rueful recall them, recall
us with them. To repentant prayers we will not be deaf.
So, with dimmer or clearer consciousness, must the
right side reason and act. An inevitable position perhaps;
but a most false one for them. Evil, be thou our good:
this henceforth must virtually be their prayer. The
fiercer the effervescence grows, the sooner will it pass ; for,
after all, it is but some mad effervescence; the world i8
solid, and cannot dissolve.
For the rest, if they have any positive industry, it ia
that of plots, and backstairs conclaves. Plots which can
not be executed; which are mostly theoretic on their part;
of which nevertheless this and the other practical Sieur
Augeard, Sieur Maillebois, Sieur Bonne Savardin, gets
into trouble, gets imprisoned, and escapes with difficulty.
Nay there is a poor practical Chevalier Favras, who, not
without some passing reflex on monsieur himself, gets
hanged for them, amid loud uproar of the world. Poor
Favras, he keeps dictating his last will "at the H6tel-de-
Ville, through the whole remainder of the day," a weary
February day; offers to reveal secrets, if they will save
him ; handsomely declines since they will not ; then dies,
in the flare of torchlight, with politest composure; remark
ing rather than exclaiming, with outspread hands : " People,
I die innocent ; pray for me. " * Poor Favras ; type of so
much that has prowled indefatigable over France, in days
now ending; and, in freer field, might have earned instead
of prowling, to thee it is no theory !
In the senate-house again, the attitude of the right side
is that of calm unbelief. Let an august national assembly
make a 4th of August abolition of feudality; declare the
*See " Deux Amis,"iv. c. 14, 7; "Hist. Pari." vi. 384.

270 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
clergy state-servants, who shall have wages; vote suspen
sive votes, new law-courts; vote or decree what contested
thing it will; have it responded to from the four corners
of France, nay get king's sanction, and what other accept
ance were conceivable, the right side, as we find, persists,
Avith imperturbablest tenacity, in considering, and ever and
anon shows that it still considers, all these so-called
decrees as mere temporary whims, which indeed stand on
paper, but in practice and fact are not, and cannot be.
Figure the brass head of. an Abbe Maury flooding forth
Jesuitic eloquence in this strain; dusky D'Espremenil,
Barrel Mirabeau (probably in liquor), and enough of
others, cheering him from the right; and for example,
with what visage a seagreen Robespierre eyes him from the
left. And how Sieyes ineffably sniffs on him, or does not
deign to sniff; and how the galleries groan in spirit, or
bark rabid on him: so that to escape the Lanterne, on
stepping forth, he needs presence of mind, and a pair of
pistols in his girdle! For he is one of the toughest of
men. Here indeed becomes notable one great difference between
our two kinds of civil Avar; between the modern lingual or
parlementary-logical kind, and the ancient or manual kind
in the steel battlefield ; much to the disadvantage of the
former. In the manual kind, where you front your foe
with drawn weapon, one right stroke is final; for, physic
ally speaking, when the brains are out the man does
honestly die, and trouble you no more. But how different
when it is with arguments you fight ! Here no victory
yet definable can be considered as final. Beat him down
with parlementary invective, till sense be fled; cut him in
two, hanging one-half on this dilemma-horn, the other on
that ; blow the brains or thinking-faculty quite out of him
for the time : it skills not ; he rallies and revives on the
morrow ; to-morrow he repairs his golden fires ! The thing
that will logically extinguish him is perhaps still a desider
atum in constitutional civilization. For how, till a man
know, in some measure, at what point he becomes logically
defunct, can parlementary business be carried on, and talk
cease or slake?
Doubtless it was some feeling of this difficulty; and the
clear insight how little such knowledge yet existed in the
French nation, new in the constitutional career, and how

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 271
defunct aristocrats would continue t& walk for unlimited
periods, as Partridge the almanac-maker did, that had
sunk into the deep mind of people's-friend Marat, an emi
nently practical mind ; and had grown there, in that richest
putrescent soil, into the most original plan of action ever
submitted to a people. Not yet has it grown ; but it has
germinated, it is growing; rooting itself into Tartarus,
branching toward heaven: the second season hence, we
shall see it risen out of the bottomless darkness, full-
grown, into disastrous twilight, a hemlock-tree, great as
the world; on or under whose boughs all the people's
friends of the world may lodge. "Two hundred and sixty
thousand aristocrat heads;" that is the precisest calcula
tion, though one would not stand on a few hundreds ; yet
we never rise as high as the round three hundred thou
sand. Shudder at it, oh people; but it is as true as that
ye yourselves, and your people's friend, are alive.
These prating senators of yours hover ineffectual on the
barren letter, and will never save the revolution. A
Cassandra-Marat cannot do it, with his single shrunk arm ;
but with a few determined men it were possible. " Give
me," said the people's friend, in his cold way, when young
Barbaroux, once his pupil in a course of what Avas called
optics, went to see him, " Give me two hundred Naples
bravoes, armed each with a good dirk, and a muff on his
left arm by way of shield: with them I will traverse
France, and accomplish the revolution." * Nay, be grave,
young Barbaroux; for thou seest there is no jesting in
those rheumy eyes, in that soot-bleared figure, most earnest
of created things; neither indeed is there madness, of the
strait-waistcoat sort.
Such produce shall the time ripen in cavernous Marat,
the man forbid; living in Paris cellars, lone as fanatic
anchorite in his Thebaid; say, as far-seen Simon on bis
pillar, taking peculiar views thereform. Patriots may
smile ; and, using him as bandog now to be muzzled, now to
be let bark, name him, as Desmoulins does, " Maximum
of patriotism" and "Cassandra-Marat;" but were it not
singular if this dirk and muff plan of his (with superficial
modifications) proved to be precisely the plan adopted?
After this manner, in these circumstances, do august
* " Memoires de Barbaroux " (Paris 1822), p. 57.

272 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
senators regenerate France. Nay, they are, in very deed,
believed to be regenerating it; on account of which great
fact, main fact of their history, the wearied eye can never
be permitted wholly to ignore them.

But, looking away now from these precincts of the
Tuileries, where constitutional royalty, let Lafayette water
it as he will, languishes too like a cut branch ; and august
senators are perhaps at bottom only perfecting their
"theory of defective verbs," how does the young reality,
young Sansculottism thrive? The attentive observer can
answer: It thrives bravely, putting forth new buds; ex
panding the old buds into leaves, into boughs. Is not
French existence, as before, most prurient, all loosened,
most nutrient for it? Sansculottism has the property of
growing by what other things die of : by agitation, conten
tion, disarrangement; nay in a Avord, by Avhat is the sym
bol and fruit of all these : hunger.
In such a France as this, hunger, as we have remarked,
can hardly fail. The provinces, the southern cities feel it
in their turn ; and what it brings : Exasperation, preter
natural suspicion. In Paris some halcyon days of abun
dance followed the Menadic insurrection, with its Versailles
grain-carts, and recovered restorer of liberty; but they
could not continue. The month is still October, when
famishing Saint-Antoine, in a moment of passion, seizes a
poor baker, innocent "Frangois the Baker;"* and hangs
him, in Constantinople wise; but even this, singular as it
may seem, does not cheapen bread! Too clear it is, no
royal bounty, no municipal dexterity can adequately feed
a Bastille-destroying Paris. Wherefore, on view of the
hanged baker, constitutionalism in sorrow and anger
demands " Loi martiale" a kind of riot act; and indeed
gets it most readily, almost before the sun goes down.
This is that famed martial law, with its red flag, its
"Drapeau rouge," in virtue of which Mayor Bailly, or any
mayor, has but henceforth to hang out that new ori-
flarnme of his; then to read or mumble something about
the king's peace; and, after certain pauses, serve any
undispersing assemblage with musket-shot, or " whatever
*21st October, 1789 ("Moniteur," No. 76.)

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTlON. 273
shot will disperse it. A decisive law ; and most just on
one proviso; that patroUotism be of God, and all mob-
assembling be of the devil ; otherwise not so just. Mayor
Bailly, be unwilling to use it ! Hang not out that new
oriflamme, flame not of gold but of the want of gold ! The
thrice-blessed revolution is done, thou thinkest? If so, it
will be well with thee.
But now let no mortal say henceforth that an august na
tional assembly wants riot: all it ever wanted was riot
enough to balance court-plotting; all it now wants, of
heaven or of earth, is to get its theory of defective verbs
perfected.

CHAPTER III.
THE MUSTER.
With famine and a constitutional theory of defective
verbs going on, all other excitement is conceivable. A
universal shaking and sifting of French existence this is :
in the course of which, for one thing, what a multitude
of low-lying figures are sifted to the top, and set busily to
work there!
Dogleech Marat, now far-seen as Simon Stylifes, we
already know; him and others, raised aloft. The mere
sample these of Avhat is coming, of what continues coming
upward from the realm of night! Chaumette, by and
by Anaxagoras Chaumette, one already descries: melli
fluous in street-groups; not now a seaboy on the high
and giddy mast; a mellifluous tribune of the common
people, with long curling locks, on bournestone of the thor
oughfares; able sub-editor too; who shall rise, to the very
gallows. Clerk Tallien, he also is become sub-editor;
shall become able-editor; and more. Bibliopolic Momoro,
Typographic Prudhomme see new trades opening. Collot
d'Herbois, tearing a passion to rags, pauses on the Thespian
boards; listens, with that black bushy head, to the sound
of the world's drama: shall the mimetic become real?
Did ye hiss him, oh men of Lyons? * Better had ye
clapped !
Happy now, indeed, for all manner of mimetic, half-
*Buzot, " Memoires " (Paris, 1823), p. 90.

2 74 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION
original men! Timid blustering, with more or less of sin
cerity, Avhich need not be entirely sincere, yet the sincerer
the better, is like to go far. Shall we say, the revolution
element works itself rarer and rarer; so that only lighter
and lighter bodies will float in it; till at last the mere
blown-bladder is your only swimmer? Limitation of mind,
then vehemence, promptitude, audacity, shall all be avail
able; to which add only these two; cunning and good
lungs. Good fortune must be presupposed. Accordingly,
of all classes the rising one, we observe, is now the at
torney class: witness Bazires, Carriers, Fouquier-Tinvilles,
Basoche-Captain Bourdons: more than enough. Such
figures shall night, from her Avonder-bearing bosom emit;
swarm after swarm. Of another deeper and deepest
swarm, not yet dawned on the astonished eye; of pilfering
candle-snuffers, thief-valets, disfrocked Capuchins, and so
many Heberts, Henriots, Ronsins, Rossignols, let us, as
long as possible, forbear speaking.
Thus, over France, all stirs that has what the physiolo
gists call irritability in it; how much more all wherein
irritability has perfected itself into vitality, into actual
vision, and force that can will ! All stirs ; and if not in
Paris, flocks thither. Great and greater waxes President
Danton in his cordeliers section ; his rhetorical tropes are
all "gigantic;" energy flashes from his black brows,
menaces in his athletic figure, rolls in the sound of his
voice "reverberating from the domes;" this man also like
Mirabeau, has a natural eye, and begins to see whither con
stitutionalism is tending, though with a wish in it differ
ent from Mirabeau's.
Remark, on the other hand, how General Dumouriez has
quitted Normandy and the Cherbourg breakwater, to
come whither we may guess. It is his second or even
third trial at Paris, since this new era began ; but now it
is in right earnest, for he has quitted all else. Wiry,
elastic, unwearied man ; whose life was but a battle and a
march! No, not a creature of Choiseul's; "the creature
of God and of my sword," he fiercely answered in old days.
Overf ailing Corsican batteries in the deadly fire-hail;
wriggling invincible from under his horse, at Closterkamp
of the Netherlands, though tethered with " crushed stirrup-
iron and nineteen wounds ;" tough, minatory, standing at
bay, as forlorn hope, on the skirts of Poland; intriguing,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 275
battling in cabinet and field; roaming far out, obscure,
as king's spial, or sitting sealed up, enchanted in Bastille ;
fencing, pamphleteering, scheming and struggling from
the very birth of him,* the man has come thus far. How
repressed, how irrepressible! Like some incarnate spirit
in prison, which indeed he was; hewing on granite walls
for deliverance; striking fire-flashes from them. And now
has the general earthquake rent his cavern too? Twenty
years younger, what might he not have done! But his
hair has a shade of gray ; his way of thought is all fixed,
military. He can grow no further, and the new world is
in such groAvth. We will name him, on the whole, one of
heaven's Swiss; without faith; wanting above all things
work, work on any side. Work also is appointed him ;
and he will do it.

Not from over France only are the unrestful flocking to
ward Paris; but from all sides of Europe. Where the
carcass is, thither will the eagles gather. Think how
many a Spanish Guzman, Martinico Founder named
"Founder V Americain" Engineer Miranda from the very
Andes, were flocking or had flocked. Walloon Peryra
might boast of the strangest parentage: him, they say,
Prince Kaunitz the diplomatist heedlessly dropped; like
ostrich egg, to be hatched of chance, into an ostrich-ea^er/
Jewish or German Freys do business in the great cesspool
of Agio; which cesspool this assignat-fi&t has quickened
into a mother of dead dogs. Swiss Claviere could found
no Socinian Genevese Colony in Ireland; but he paused,
years ago, prophetic, before the Minister's Hotel at Paris ;
and said, it was borne on his mind that he one day was
to be minister, and laughed, f Swiss Pache, on the other
hand, sits sleekheaded, frugal; the wonder of his own
alley, and even of neighboring ones, for humility of mind,
and a thought deeper than most men's; sit there, Tartuffe
till wanted! Ye Italian Dufournys, Flemish Prolys, flit
hither all ye bipeds of prey ! Come whosesoever head is
hot; thou of mind ungoverned, be it chaos as of undevelop-
ment or chaos as of ruin ; the man who cannot get known,
•Dumouriez, "Memoires," i. 28, etc.
\ Dumont, " Souvenirs sur Mirabeau," p. 399.

276 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
the man who is too well known ; if thou have any vendible
faculty, nay if thou have but edacity and loquacity, come!
They come; with hot unutterabilities in their heart; as
pilgrims toward a miraculous shrine. Nay how many come
as vacant strollers, aimless, of whom Europe is full, merely
toward something! For benighted fowls, when you beat
their bushes, rush toward any light. Thus Frederick,
Baron Trenck too is here ; mazed, purblind, from the cells
of Magdeburg; Minotauric cells, and his Ariadne lost!
Singular to say, Trenck, in these years, sells wine; not
indeed in bottle, but in wood.
Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has
her life-saving Needham ; * to whom was solemnly pre
sented a "civic sword," long since rusted into nothingness.
Her Paine: rebellious staymaker; unkempt; who feels that
he, a single needleman, did, by his common-sense pam
phlet, free America; that he can and will free all this
world ; perhaps even the other. Price-Stanhope constitu
tional association sends over to congratulate; f welcomed
by national assembly, though they are but a London Club;
whom Burke and Toryism eye askance.
On thee too, for country's sake, oh, Chevalier John
Paul, be a word spent, or misspent! In faded naval uni
form, Paul Jones lingers visible here; like a wineskin from
which the wine is all drawn. Like the ghost of himself !
Low is his once loud bruit; scarcely audible, save, with
extreme tedium, in ministerial ante-chambers, in this or
the other charitable dining-room, mindful of the past.
What changes; culminatings and declinings! Not now,
poor Paul, thou lookest wistful over the Solway brine, by
the foot of native Criffel, into blue mountainous Cum
berland, into blue infinitude; environed with thrift, with
humble friendliness; thyself, young fool, longing to be
aloft from it, or even to be away from it. Yes, beyond
that sapphire promontory which men name St. Bees,
*A trustworthy gentleman writes to me, three years ago, with a
feeling which I cannot but respect; that his father, " the late Ad
miral Nesham " (not Needham, as the French Journalists give it) is
the Englishman meant; and furthermore that the sword is "not
rusted at all, " but still lies, with the due memory attached to it, in
his (the son's) possession, at Plymouth, in a clear state. (Note
0/1857.) \ "Moniteur," 10 Novembre, 7 Decembre, 1789.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 277
which is not sapphire either, but dull sandstone, Avhen one
gets close to it, there is a world. Which world thou too
shalt taste of! From yonder Avhite haven rise his smoke-
clouds; ominous though ineffectual. Proud Forth quakes
at his bellying sails; had not the wind suddenly shifted.
Flamborough reapers, homegoing, pause on the hillside;
for what sulphur-cloud is that that defaces the sleek sea;
sulphur-cloud spitting streaks of fire? A sea cock-fight it
is, and of the hottest ; where British Serapis and French-
American Bonne Homme Richard do lash and throttle each
other, in their fashion; and lo the desperate valor has
suffocated the deliberate, and Paul Jones too is of the kings
of the sea !
The Euxine, the Meotian waters felt thee next, and long-
skirted Turks, oh Paul ; and thy fiery soul has wasted it
self in thousand contradictions; to no purpose. For, in
far lands, with scarlet Nassau -Siegens, with sinful Im
perial Catherines, is not the heart broken, even as at home
Avith the mean? Poor Paul! hunger and dispiritment
track thy sinking footsteps : once, or at most twice, in this
revolution-tumult the figure of thee emerges; mute, ghost
like, as "with stars dim -twinkling through." And then,
when the light is gone quite out, a national legislature
grants "ceremonial funeral!" As good had been the
natural Presbyterian kirk-bell, and six feet of Scottish
earth, among the dust of thy loved ones. Such world
lay beyond the promontory of St. Bees. Such is the life
of sinful mankind here below.

But of all strangers far the notablest for us is Baron
Jean Baptiste de Clootz ; or dropping baptisms and feudal
isms, world-citizen Anacharsis Clootz, from Cleves. Him
mark, judicious reader. Thou hast known his uncle,
sharp-sighted, thorough-going Cornelius de Pauw, who
mercilessly cuts down cherished illusions; and of the finest
antique Spartans will make mere modern cutthroat
Mainots.* The like stuff is in Anacharsis: hot metal; full
of scoria;, which should and could have been smelted out,
but which will not. He has wandered over this terra
queous planet ; seeking, one may say, the paradise we lost
* De Pauw, " Recherches sur les Grecs," etc.

278 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
long ago. He has seen English Burke ; has been seen of
the Portugal Inquisition; has roamed, and fought, and
Avritten; is writing, among other things, "Evidences of
the Mohammedan Religion." But now, like his Scythian
adoptive godfather, he finds himself in the Paris Athens;
surely, at last, the haven of his soul. A dashing man,
beloved at patriotic dinner- tables ; with gayety, nay with
humor; headlong, trenchant, of free purse; in suitable
costume; though what mortal ever more despised cos
tumes? Under all costumes Anacharsis seeks the man;
not Stylites Marat will more freely trample costumes, if
they hold no man. This is the faith of Anarcharsis:
That there is a paradise discoverable; that all costumes
ought to hold men. Oh, Anacharsis, it is a headlong,
swift-going faith. Mounted thereon, meseems, thou art
bound hastily for the city of Nowhere; and wilt arrive!
At best, we may say, arrive in good riding attitude; which
indeed is something.
So many new persons and new things have come to
occupy this France. Her old speech and thought, and
activity which springs from these, are all changing; fer
menting toward unknown issues. To the dullest peasant,
as he sits sluggish, overtoiled, by his evening hearth, one
idea has come; that of chateaus burned; of chateaus com
bustible. How altered all coffeehouses,, in province or
capital! The Antre de Procope has now other questions
than the three Stagyrite unities to settle; not theater-con
troversies, but a world-controversy : there, in the ancient
pigtail mode, or Avith modern Brutus' heads, do well-
frizzed logicians hold hubbub, and chaos umpire sits.
The ever-enduring melody of Paris saloons has got a new
groundtone: ever-enduring; which has been heard, and
by the listening heaven too, since Julian the apostate's
time and earlier; mad noAV as formerly.
Ex-Censor Suard, ez-censor, for we have freedom of
the press; he may be seen there; impartial, even neutral.
Tyrant Grimm rolls large eyes, over a questionable coming
time. Atheist Naigeou, beloved-disciple of Diderot,
crows, in his small difficult way, heralding glad daAvn.*
*Naigeon, " Adresse a l'Assemblee Nationale " (Paris, 1790), sur
la liberie des opinions.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 279
But on the other hand, hoAV many Morellets, Marmontels,
who had sat all their life hatching philosophe eggs, cackle
now, in a state bordering on distraction, at the brood they
have brought out ! * It was so delightful to have one's
philosophe Theorem demonstrated, crowned in the saloons;
and now an infatuated people will not continue specula
tive, but have practice !
There also observe preceptress Genlis, or Sillery or
Sillrey-Genlis, for our husband is both count and marquis,
and we have more than one title. Pretentious, frothy ; a
puritan yet creedless ; darkening counsel by words without
wisdom! For, it is in that thin element of the senti
mentalist and distinguished female that Sillery-Genlis
works; she would gladly be sincere, yet can grow no
sincerer than sincere-cant; sincere-cant of many forms,
ending in the devotional form. For the present, on a neck
still of moderate whiteness, she wears as jewel a miniature
Bastille cut on mere sandstone, but then actual Bastille
sandstone. M. le Marquis is one of D'Orleans' errand-
men; in national assembly and elsewhere. Madame, for
her part, trains up a youthful D'Orleans generation in
what superfinest morality one can ; gives meanwhile rather
enigmatic account of fair Mademoiselle Pamela, the daugh
ter whom she has adopted. Thus she, in Palais Royal
saloon; whither, we remark, D' Orleans himself, spite of
Lafayette, has returned from that English " mission" of his :
surely no pleasant mission: for the English would not
speak to him; and Saint Hannah More of England, so
unlike Saint Sillery Genlis of France, saw him shunned,
in Vauxhall Gardens, like one peststruck,f and his red-
blue impassive visage waxing hardly a shade bluer.

CHAPTER IV.
JOURNALISM.
As for constitutionalism, with its national guards, it is
doing what it can ; and has enough ; to do it must, as ever,
with one hand wave persuasively, repressing patriotism;
*SeeMarmontel, "Memoires," passim; Mcrellett, "Memoires," etc.
\ Hannah More's " Life and Correspondence," ii. c. 5.

380 THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION.
and keep the other clinched to menace royalist plotters.
A most delicate task ; requiring tact.
Thus, if people's friend Marat has to-day his writ of,
"prise dee corps or seizure of body," served on him, and
dives out of sight, to-morrow he is left at large; or is even
encouraged, as a sort of bandog whose baying may be use
ful. President Danton, in open hall, with reverberating
voice, declares that, in a case like Marat's, " force may be
resisted by force." Whereupon the chatelet serves Danton
also with a writ; which however, as the whole cordelier
* district responds to it, what constable will be prompt to
execute? Twice more, on new occasions, does the chatelet
launch its writ; and twice more in vain: the body of Dan
ton cannot be seized by chatelet; he unseized, should he
even fly for a season, shall behold the chatelet itself flung
into limbo.
Municipality and Brissot, meanwhile, are far on with
their municipal constitution. The sixty districts shall
become forty eight sections; much shall be adjusted, and
Paris have its constitution. A constitution wholly elec
tive ; as indeed all French government shall and must be.
And yet, one fatal element has been introduced; that of
citoyen actif No man who does not pay the marc de
argent, or yearly tax equal to three-days labor, shall be
other than a passive citizen : not the slightest vote for him ;
were he acting, all the year round, with sledge-hammer,
with forest-leveling axe ! Unheard of ! cry patriot journals.
Yes truly, my patriot friends, if liberty, the passion and
prayer of all men's souls, means liberty to send your fifty-
thousandth part of a new tongue-fencer into national
debating-club, then, be the gods witness, ye are hardly
entreated. Oh, if in national Palaver (as the Africans
name it), such blessedness is verily found, what tyrant
would deny it to son of Adam ! Nay, might there not be
a female parlement too, with " screams from the opposition
benches," an'd " the honorable member borne out in hys
terics?" To a children's parlement would I gladly consent;
or even lower if ye wished it. Beloved brothers ! liberty,
one may fear, is actually, as the ancient wise men said,
of heaven. On this earth, where, thinks the enlightened
public, did a brave little Dame de Staal (not Necker's
daughter, but a far shrewder than she) find the nearest
approach to liberty? After mature computation, cool as

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 281
Dilworth's, her answer is in the Bastille.* "Of heaven?"
answer many asking. Woe that they should ask; for that
is the very misery ! "Of heaven," means much; share in
the national palaver it may, or may as probably not mean.
One Sansculottic bough that cannot fail to flourish is
journalism. The voice of the people being the voice of
God, shall not such divine voice make itself heard? To
the ends of France; and in as many dialects as when the
first great babel was to be built! Some loud as the lion;
some small as the sucking dove. Mirabeau himself has
his instructive journal or journals, with Geneva hodmen
working in them ; and withal has quarrels enough with
Dame le Jay, his female bookseller, so ultra-compliant
otherwise.* King's friend Royou still prints himself. Barr&re sheds
tears of loyal sensibility in break-of-day journal, though
with declining sale. But why is Freron so hot, demo
cratic; Fr6ron, the king's friend's nephew? He has it by
kind, that heat of his; wasp Freron begot him; Vol
taire's Frelon; who fought stinging, while sting and
poison-bag were left, were it only as reviewer, and over
printed waste-paper. Constant, illuminative, as the nightly
lamplighter, issues the useful Moniteur, for it is now be
come diurnal: with facts and few commentaries; officials,
safe in the middle; its able editors sunk long since,
recoverably or irrecoverably, in deep darkness. Acid
Loustalot, with his "vigor," as of young sloes, shall never
ripen, but die untimely: his Prudhomme, however, will
not let that Revolutions de Paris die ; but edit it himself,
with much else, dull-blustering printer though he be.
Of Cassandra-Marat we have spoken often ; yet the most
surprising truth remains to be spoken: that he actually
does not want sense ; but, with croaking gelid throat, croaks
out masses of the truth, on several things. Nay some
times, one might almost fancy he had a perception of
humor, and were laughing a little, far down in his inner
man. Camille is wittier than ever, and more outspoken,
cynical; yet sunny as ever. A light melodious creature;
"born," as he shall yet say with bitter tears, "to write
* De Staal, " Memoires " (Paris 1821), i. 169-280,
f Dumont, "Souvenirs," 6-

282 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
verses;" light Appolo, so clear, soft-lucent, in this war of
the Titans, wherein he shall not conquer !
Folded and haAvked neAvspapers exist in all countries;
but in such a journalistic element as this of France, other
and stranger sorts are to be anticipated. What says the
English reader to a Journal- Affiche, placard journal;
legible to him that has no halfpenny; in bright prismatic
colors, calling the eye from afar? Such, in the coming
months, as patriot associations public and private, advance,
and can subscribe funds, shall plenteously hang themselves
out : leaves, limed leaves, to catch what they can ! The
very government shall have its pasted journal; Louvet,
busy yet with a new "charming romance," shall write
sentinelles, and post them with effect; nay Bertrand de
Moleville, in his extremity, shall still more cunningly try
it.* Great is journalism. Is not every able editor a ruler
of the world, being a persuader of it; though self-elected,
yet sanctioned, by the sale of his numbers? Whom indeed
the world has the readiest method of deposing, should
need be : that of merely doing nothing to him ; which ends
in starvation.
Nor esteem it small what those bill-stickers had to do
in Paris : above threescore of them : all with their cross-
poles, haversacks, pastepots; nay with leaden badges, for
the municipality licenses them. A sacred college, properly
of world-ruler's heralds, though not respected as such in
an era still incipient and raw. They made the walls of
Paris didactic, suasive, with an ever-fresh periodical litera
ture, Avherein he that ran might read; placard journals,
placard lampoons, municipal ordinances, royal proclama
tions; the whole other or vulgar placard department super
added, or omitted from contempt! What unutterable
things the stone-walls spoke, during these five years! But
it is all gone; To-day swallowing yesterday, and then
being in its turn swallowed of to-morrow, even as speech
ever is. Nay what, Oh thou immortal man of letters, is
writing itself but speech conserved for a time? The
placard journal conserved it for one day; some books con
serve it for the matter of ten years ; nay some for three
thousand; but what then? Why, then, the years being
all run, it also dies, and the world is rid of it. Oh, were
* See Bertrand-Moleville, " Memoires," ii. 100. etc.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 283
there not a spirit in the word of man, as in man himself,
that survived the audible bodied word,and tended either god-
ward or else devilward forevermore, why should he trouble
himself much with the truth of it, or the falsehood of it,
except for commercial purposes? His immortality indeed,
and whether it shall last half a life-time or a life-time and
half; is not that a very considerable thing? immortality,
mortality: there were certain runaways whom Fritz the
Great bullied back into the battle with a : " R  , wollt
ihr ewig leben, unprintable off-scourging of scoundrels,
Avould ye live forever!"
This is the comrfrrrViication of thought ; how happy when
there is any thought to communicate! Neither let the
simpler old methods be neglected, in their sphere. The
Palais-Royal tent, a tyrannous patroUotism has removed;
but can it remove the lungs of man? Anaxagroas Chau
mette we saw mounted on bourne-stones, while Tallien
worked sedentary at the sub-editorial desk. In any corner
of the civilized world, a tub can be inverted, and an
articulate-speaking biped mount thereon. Nay, with
contrivance, a portable trestle, or folding-stool, can be
procured, for love or money; this the peripatetic orator
can take in his hand, and driven out here, set it up again
there : saying mildly, with a sage bias, Om nia mea mecum
porto. Such is journalism, hawked, pasted, spoken. How
changed since one old Metra walked this same Tuileries
Garden, in gilt cocked-hat, with journal at his nose or
held loose-folded behind his back ; and was a notability of
Paris, "Metar the. newsman;" * and Louis himself was
wont to say : Qu' en dit Metra? Since the first Venetian
news-sheet was sold for a gazza, or farthing, and named
gazette! We live in a fertile world.

CHAPTER V.
CLUBBISM.
Where the heart is full, it seeks, for a thousand reasons
in a thousand ways, to impart itself. How sweet, indis-
*Dulaure, "Histoire de Paris," viii. 483; Mercier, "Nouveau
Paris," etc.

284 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
pensable, in such cases, is fellowship; soul mystiscally
strengthening soul ! The meditative Germans, some think,
have been of opinion that enthusiasm in general means
simply excessive congregating — Schwdrmerey, or swarm
ing. At any rate, do we not see glimmering half-red
embers, if laid together, get into the brightest white glow?
In such a France, gregarious reunions will needs multi
ply, intensify; French life will step out of doors, and
from domestic become a public club life. Old clubs,
Avhich already germinated, grow and flourish; new every
where bud forth. It is the sure symptom of social unrest;
in such way, most infallibly of all, does social unrest ex
hibit itself; find solacement, and also nutriment. In every
French head there hangs now, whether for terror or for
hope, some prophetic picture of a New France: prophecy
which brings, nay which almost is, its own fulfillment;
and in all ways, consciously and unconsciously, works
toward that.
Observe, moreover, how the aggregative principle, let it
be but deep enough, goes on aggregating, and this even in
a geometrical progression; how when the whole world, in
such a plastic time, is forming itself into clubs, some one
club, the strongest or luckiest, shall by friendly attracting,
by victorious compeling, grow ever stronger, till it become
immeasurably strong; and all the others, with their
strength, be either lovingly absorbed into it, or hostilely
abolished by it. This if the club-spirit is universal; if
the time is plastic. Plastic enough is the time, universal
the club-spirit : such an all-absorbing, paramount one club
cannot be wanting.
What a progress, since the first salient point of the
Breton Committee! It worked long in secret, not lan
guidly; it has come with the national assembly to Paris;
calls itself club; calls itself, in imitation, as is thought, of
those generous Price-Stanhope English who sent over to
congratulate — French Revolution club; but soon, with
more originality, club of friends of the constitution. More
over it has leased for itself, at a fair rent, the hall of the
Jacobins convent, one of our "superfluous edifices;" and
does there from now, in these spring months, begin shining
out on an admiring Paris. And so, by degrees, under the
shorter popular title of Jacobins Club, it shall become
memorable to all times and lands. Glance into the

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 285
interior; strongly yet modestly benched and seated; as
many as thirteen hundred chosen patriots; assembly mem
bers not a few. Barnave, the two Lameths are seen there ;
occasionally Mirabeau, perpetually Robespierre; also the
ferret- visage of Fouquier-Tinville with other attorneys;
Anacharsis of Prussian Scythia, and miscellaneous patriots,
though all is yet in the most perfectly clean-washed state;
decent, nay dignified. President on platform, presidents'
bell are not wanting; oratorical tribune high -raised; nor
strangers' galleries, wherein also sit women. Has any
French antiquarian society preserved that written lease of
the Jacobins Convent Hall? Or was it, unluckier even
than Magna Charta, dipt by sacrilegious tailors? Uni
versal history is not indifferent to it.

These friends of the constitution have met mainly, as
their name may foreshadow, to look after elections when
an election comes, and procure fit men: but likewise to
consult generally that the commonAveal take no damage ;
one as yet sees not how. For indeed let two or three
gather together anywhere, if it be not in church, where all
are bound to the passive state ; no mortal can say accur
ately, themselves as little as any, for what they are
gathered. How often has the broached barrel proved not
to be for joy and heart-effusion, but for duel and head-
breakage; and the promised feast become a feast of the
Lapithse ! The Jacobins club, which at first shone replen-
dent, and was thought to be a new clestial sun for enlight
ening the nation, had, as things all have, to work through
its appointed phases; it burned unfortunately more and
more lurid, more sulphurous, distracted ; and swam at last,
through the astonished heaven, like a Tartarean Portent,
and lurid-burning prison of spirits in pain.
Its style of eloquence? Rejoice, reader, that thou
knowest it not, that thou canst never perfectly know.
The Jacobins published a journal of debates, where they
that have the heart may examine : impassioned, dull-dron
ing patriotic eloquence; implacable, unfertile — save for
destruction, Avhich was indeed its work; most wearisome,
though most deadly. Be thankful that oblivion covers so
much ; that all carrion is by and by buried in the green
earth's bosom, and even makes her grow the greener. The

286 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Jacobins are buried; but their work is not; it continues
"making the tour of the world," as it can. It might be
seen lately, for instance, with bared bosom and death-
defiant eye, as far on as Greek Missolonghi; strange
enough, old slumbering Hellas was resuscitated, into
somnambulism Avhich will become clear wakefulness, by a
voice from the Rue St. Honore ! All dies, as we often
say; except the spirit of man, of Avhat man does. Thus
has not the very house of the Jacobins vanished; scarcely
lingering in a few old men's memories? The St. Honore
Market has brushed it away, and now Avhere dull-droning
eloquence, like a trump of doom, once shook the world
there is pacific chaffering for poultry and greens. The
sacred national assembly hall itself has become common
ground : president's platforrrTpermeable to wain and dust
cart ; for the Rue de Riolvi runs there. Verily, at cock-
croAV (of this cock or the other), all apparitions do melt
and dissolve in space.
The Paris Jacobins became " the mother society, societe
mere" and had as many as " three hundred" shrill-tongued
daughters in "direct correspondence" Avith her. Of
indirectly corresponding, what we may call granddaugh
ters and minute progeny, she counted "forty-four thou
sand!" But for the present we note only two things: the
first of them a mere anecdote. One night, a couple of
brother Jacobins are door-keepers ; for the members take
this post of duty and honor in rotation, and admit none
that have not tickets: one door-keeper was the worthy
Sieur Lais, a patriotic opera-singer, sticken in years, whose
windpipe is long since closed without result; the other,
young, and named Louis Philippe, D' Orleans's first born,
has in this latter time, after unheard of destinies, become
citizen-king and struggles to rule for a season. All flesh
is grass; higher reedgrass, or creeping herb.
The second thing we have to note is historical: that
the mother society, even in this its effulgent period, can
not content all patriots. Already it must throw off, so to
speak, two dissatisfied swarms; a swarm to the right, a
swarm to the left. One party, which thinks the Jacobins
lukewarm constitutes itself into Club of the Cordeliers; a
hotter club; it is Danton's element; with whom goes
Desmoulins. The other party, again, which thinks the
Jacobins scalding hot, flies off to the right, and becomes

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 287
"club of 1789, friends of the monarchic constitution."
They are afterwards named "Feuillans Club;" their place
of meeting being the Feuillans Convent. Lafayette is, or
becomes, their chief man supported by the respectable
patriot everywhere, by the mass of property and intelli
gence, with the most flourishing prospects. They, in
these June days of 1790, do, in the Palais Royal, dine
solemnly with open windows; to the cheers of the people;
with toasts, with inspiriting songs, with one song at least,
among the feeblest ever sung.* They shall, in due time
be hooted forth, over the borders, into Cimmerian night.
Another expressly monarchic or royalist club, " Club des
monarchiens" though a club of ample funds, and all sitting
on damask sofas, cannot realize the smallest momentary
cheer: realizes only scoffs and groans; till, ere long, cer
tain patriots in disorderly sufficient number, proceed
thither, for a night or for nights, and groan it out of
pain. Vivacious alone shall the mother society and her
family be. The very Cordeliers may, as it were, return
into her bosom, which will have grown warm enough.
Fatal-looking! Are not such societies an incipient
new order of society itself? The aggregative principle
anew at work in a society grown obsolete, cracked asunder
dissolving into rubbish and primary atoms?

CHAPTER VI.
JE LE JURE.
With these signs of the times, is it not surprising that
the dominant feeling all over France was still continually
hope? Oh, blessed hope, sole boon of man : whereby, on
his strait prison-walls, are painted beautiful far-stretching
landscapes ; and into the night of very death is shed holiest
dawn ! Thou art to all an indefeasible possession in this
God's world; to the wise a sacred Constantine's banner,
written on the eternal skies; under which they shall con
quer, for the battle itself is victory : to the foolish some
secular mirage, or shadow of still waters, painted on the
parched earth; whereby at least their dusty pilgrimage,
if devious, becomes cheerfuler, becomes possible.
*"Hist. Parl."vi. 334.

288 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
In the death tumults of a sinking society, French hope
sees only the birth-struggles of a new unspeakably better
society ; and sings, with full assurance of faith, her brisk
melody, which some inspired fiddler has in these very days
composed for her, the world-famous Ca-ira. Yes; "that
will go;" and then there will come? All men hope;
even Marat hopes — that patriotism will take muff and
dirk. King Louis is not without hope; in the chapter of
chances ; in a flight to some Bouille ; in getting popular
ized at Paris. But what a hoping people he had, judge
by the fact, and series of facts, now to be noted.
Poor Louis, meaning the best, with little insight and
even less determination of his own, has to follow, in that
dim wayfaring of his, such signal as may be given him ; by
backstairs royalism by official or backstairs constitutional
ism, whichever for the month may have convinced the
royal mind. If flight to Bouille, and (horrible to think!)
a drawing of the civil sword do hang as theory, portentous
in the background, much nearer is this fact of these twelve
hundred kings, who sit in the Salle de Manege. Kings
uncontrollable by him, not yet irreverent to him. Could
kind management of these but prosper, how much better
were it than armed emigrants, Turin intrigues, and the
help of Austria! Nay are the two hopes inconsistent?
Rides in the suburbs, we have found, cost little; yet
they always brought vivats.* Still cheaper is a soft word;
such as has many times turned away wrath. In these rapid
days, while France is all getting divided into departments,
clergy about to be remodelled; popular societies rising,
and feudalism and so much else is ready to be hurled into
the melting-pot, might not one try?
On the 4th of February, accordingly, M. le President
reads to his national assembly a short autograph, announc
ing that his majesty will step over, quite in an uncere
monious way, probably about noon. Think, therefore
messieurs, what it may mean; especially, how ye will get
the hall decorated a little. The secretaries' bureau can
be shifted down from the platform; on the president's
chair be slipped this cover of velvet, " of a violet color
sprigged with gold fleur-de-lys;" for indeed M. le Presi
dent has had previous notice underhand, and taken coun-
* See Bertrand-Moleville, i. 241, etc.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 289
sel with Doctor Guillotin. Then some fraction of "velvet
carpet," of like texture and color, cannot that be spread in
front of the chair, where the secretaries usually sit? So
has judicious Guillotin advised: and the effect is found
satisfactory. Moreover, as it is probable that his majesty,
in spite of the fleur-de-lys velvet, will stand and not sit at
all, the president himself, in the interim, presides stand
ing. And so, while some honorable member is discussing,
say, the division of a department, ushers announce : " His
majesty!" In person, with small suite, enter majesty: the
honorable member stops short; the assembly starts to its
feet: the twelve hundred kings "almost all," and the
galleries no less, do Avelcome the restorer of French liberty
with loyal shouts. His majesty's speech, in diluted con
ventional phraseology, expresses this mainly: that he,
most of all Frenchmen, rejoices to see France getting
regenerated; is sure, at the same time, that they will deal
gently with her in the process, and not regenerate her
roughly. Such was his majesty's speech : the feat he per
formed was coming to speak it, and going back again.
Surely, except to a very hoping people, there was not
much here to build upon. Yet what did they not build !
The fact that the king has spoken, that he has voluntarily
come to speak, hoAv inexpressibly encouraging! Did not
the glance of his royal countenance, like concentrated sun
beams, kindle all hearts in an august assembly ; nay thereby
in an inflammable enthusiastic France? To move "depu
tation of thanks" can be the happy lot of but one man; to
go in such deputation the lot of not many. The deputed
have gone, and returned with what highest-flown compli
ment they could; whom also the queen met, dauphin in
hand. And still do not our hearts burn with insatiable
gratitude; and to one other man a still higher blessedness
suggests itself : To move that we all renew the national oath.
Happiest honorable member, with his Avord so in season
as word seldom was; magic Fugleman of a whole national
assembly, which sat there bursting to do somewhat;
Fugleman of a whole onlooking France ! The president
swears; declares that every one shall swear, in distinct je
le jure. Nay the very gallery sends him down a written
slip signed, with their oath on it; and as the assembly now
casts an eye that way, the gallery all stands up and swears
again. And then out of doors, consider at the Hotel-de-

290 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
Ville how Bailly, the great tennis court swearer, again
swears, toward nightfall, with all the municipals, and
heads of districts assembled there. And "M. Danton
suggest that the public would like to partake;" whereupon
Bailly, with escort of twelve, steps forth to the great outer
staircase; sways the ebullient multitude with stretched
hand; takes their oath, with a " thunder of rolling drums,"
with shouts that rend the welkin. And on all streets
the glad people, with moisture and fire in their eyes,
"spontaneously formed groups, and swore one another," *
and the whole city was illuminated. This was the 4th of
February, 1790: a day to be marked white in constitutional
annals. Nor is the illumination for a night only, but partially or
totally it lasts a series of nights. For each district, the
electors of each district will swear specially ; and always as
the district swears, it illuminates itself. Behold them,
district after district, in some open square, where the non-
electing people can all see and join : with their uplifted
right-hands, and je le jure; with rolling drums, with em-
bracings, and that infinite hurrah of the enfranchised,
which any tyrant that there may be can consider! Faith
ful to the king, to the law, to the constitution which the
national assembly shall make.
Fancy, for example, the professors of universities parad
ing the streets with their young France, and swearing, " in
an enthusiastic manner, not without tumult. By a larger
exercise of fancy, expand duly this little word : The like
was repeated in every town and district in France! Nay
one patriot mother, in Lagnon of Brittany, assembles her
ten children; and, with her own aged hand, swears them
all herself, the high-souled venerable woman. Of all
which, moreover, a national assembly must be eloquently
apprised. Such three weeks of SAvearing ! Saw the sun
ever such a swearing people? Have they been bit by a
swearing tarantula? No; but they are men and French
men; they have hope; and, singular to say, they have
faith, were it only in the Gospel according to Jean
Jacques. Oh, my brothers, would to heaven it were even
as we think and have sworn! But there are lover's oaths,
which, had they been true as love itself, cannot be kept;
not to speak of dicer's oaths, also a known sort. 
* Newspapers (in "Hist. Pari." iv. 445).

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 291
CHAPTER VII.
PRODIGIES.
To SUCH length had the contrat social brought it, in
believing hearts. Man, as is well said, lives by faith; each
generation has its own faith, more or less; and laughs at
the faith of its predecessor, most unwisely. Grant indeed
that this faith in the social contract belongs to the stranger
sorts that an unborn generation may very wisely, if not
laugh, yet stare at it, and piously consider. For, alas,
what is contrat? If all men were such that a mere spoken
or SAVorn contract would blind them, all men were then
true men, and government a superfluity. Not what thou
and I have promised to each other, but what the balance
of our forces can make us perform to each other: that in,
so sinful a world as ours, is the thing to be counted on.
But above all, a people and a sovereign promising to one
another; as if a whole people, changing from generation to
generation, nay from hour to hour, could ever by any
method be made to speak or promise; and to speak mere
solecisms: "We, be the heavens witness, which heavens
however, do no miracles now ; we, ever-changing millions,
will allow thee, changeful unit, to force us or govern us!"
The world has perhaps seen few faiths comparable to that.
So nevertheless had the world then construed the matter.
Had they not so construed it, how different had their
hopes, been their attempts, their results! But so and not
otherwise did the upper powers will it to be. Freedom by
social contract; such was verily the gospel of that era.
And all men had believed in it, as in a heaven's glad-
tidings men should : and with overflowing heart and up
lifted voice clave to it, and stood fronting time and
eternity on it. Nay smile not; or only with a smile sadder
than tears! This too was a better faith than the one it
had replaced ; than faith merely in the everlasting nothing
and man's digestive power; lower than which no faith
can go.

Not that such universally prevalent, universally jurant,
feeling of hope could be a unanimous one. Far from that.
The time was ominous : social dissolution near and certain ;
social renovation still a problem, difficult and distant,

292 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
even though sure. But if ominous to some clearest on
looker, Avhose faith stood not with the one side or with the
other, nor in the ever-vexed jarring of Greek with Greek
at all, how unspeakably ominous to dim royalist partici
pators; for whom royalism was mankind's palladium; for
whom, with the abolition of Most Christian kingship and
Most Talleyrand Bishopship, all loyal obedience, all
religious faith was to expire, and final night envelop the
destinies of man! On serious hearts, of that persuasion,
the matter sinks down deep; prompting, as we have seen,
to backstairs plots, to emigration with pledge of war, to
monarchic clubs; nay to still madder things. .
The spirit of prophecy, for instance, had been considered
extinct for some centuries: nevertheless these last-times,
as indeed is the tendency of last-times, do revive it; tha^
so, of French mad things, we might have sample also of
the maddest. In remote rural districts, whither philoso
phism has not yet radiated, where a heterodox constitution
of the clergy is bringing strife round the altar itself, and
the very church-bells are getting melted into a small
money-coin, it appears probable that the end of the world
cannot be far off. Deep-musing atrabiliar old men,
especially old women, hint in an obscure way that they
know what they know. The Holy Virgin, silent so long,
has not gone dumb; and truly now, if ever more in this
world, were the time for her to speak. One prophetess,
though careless historians have omitted her name, condi
tion and Avhereabouts, becomes audible to the general ear;
credible to not a few; credible to Friar Gerle, poor Patriot
Chartreux, in the national assembly itself! She, in
Pythoness recitative, with wild-staring eye, sings that there
shall be a sign; that the heavenly sun himself will hang
out a sign, or mock sun, which, many say, shall be stamped
with the head of hanged Favras. List, Dom Gerle, with
that poor addled poll of thine; list, oh list; and hear
nothing. *
Notable, however, was that "magnetic vellum, velin
magnet i que" of the Sieurs d'Hozier and Petit-Jean, parle
menteers of Rouen. Sweet young D'Hozier, "bred in the
faith of his missal, and of parchment geneaolgies," and of
parchment generally; adust, melancholic, middle-aged
* " Deux Amis," v. 7.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 293
Petit-Jean : why came these two to Saint-Cloud, where his
majesty was hunting, on the festival of St. Peter and St.
Paul; and waited there, in antechambers, a wonder to
whispering Swiss, the livelong day; and even waited with
out the grates, when turned out, and had dismissed their
valets to Paris, as with purpose of endless waiting? They
have a magnetic vellum, these two; whereon the virgin,
wonderfully clothing herself in Mesmerean Cagliostric
occult-philosophy, has inspired them to jot doAvn instruc
tions and predictions for a much straitened king. To
whom, by higher order, they will this day present it; and
save the monarchy and world. Unaccountable pair of
visual-objects! Ye should be men, and of the eighteenth
century : but your magnetic vellum forbids us so to inter
pret. Say, are ye aught? Thus ask the guard-house cap
tains the mayor of Saint Cloud ; nay, at great length, thus
asks the committee of researches, and not the municipal,
but the national assembly one. No distinct answer, for
weeks. At last it becomes plain that the right answer is
negative. Go, ye chimeras, with your magnetic vellum;
sweet young chimers, adust middle-aged one! The prison-
doors are open. Hardly again shall ye preside the Rouen
chamber of accounts; but vanish obscurely into Limbo.*

CHAPTER VIII.
SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
Such dim masses, and specks of even deepest black, work
in that white-hot glow of the French mind now wholly in
fusion and confusion. Old women here swearing their ten
children on the new Evangel of Jean Jacques; old women
there looking up for Favras' heads in the celestial lumi
nary ; these are preternatural signs, prefiguring someivhat.
In fact, to the patriot children of hope themselves it is
undeniable that difficulties exist: emigrating seigneurs;
parlements in sneaking but most malicious mutiny (though
the rope is round their neck) ; above all, the most decided
"deficiency of grains." Sorrowful; but to a nation that
hopes, not irremediable. To a nation which is in fusion
and ardent communion of thought; which, for example,
* See " Deux Amis," v. 199.

294 the prenCh Revolution.
on signal of one Fugleman, will lift its right-hand like
a drilled regiment, and swear and illuminate, till every
village from Ardennes to the Pyrenees has rolled its village-
drum, and sent up its little oath, and glimmer of tallow-
illumination some fathoms into the reign of night!
If grains are defective, the fault is not of nature or
national assembly, but of art and anti-national intriguers.
Such malign individuals, of the scoundrel species, have
power to vex us, Avhile the constitution is a making.
Endure it, ye heroic patriots; nay rather, why not cure it?
Grains do grow, they lie extant there in sheaf or sack;
only that regraters and royalist plotters, to provoke the
people into illegality, obstruct the transport of grains.
Quick, ye organized patriot authorities, armed national
guards, meet together; unite your goodwill; in union is
tenfold strength : let the concentered flash of your patriot
ism strike stealthy scoundrelism blind, paralytic, as with a
coup de soleil.
Under which hat or nightcap of the twenty-five millions
this pregnant idea first arose, for in some one head it did
rise, no man can now say. A most small idea, near at
hand for the whole world ; but a living one, fit ; and which
waxed, whether into greatness or not, into immeasurable
size. When a nation is in this state that the Fulgeman
can operate on it, what will the word in season, the act in
season, not do! It will grow verily, like the boy's bean, in
the fairy-tale, heaven-high, Avith habitations and adven
tures on it, in one night. It is nevertheless unfortunately
still a bean (for your long-lived oak grows not so); and
the next night, it may lie felled, horizontal, trodden into
common mud. But remark, at least, how natural to any
agitated nation, which has faith, this business of covenant
ing is. The Scotch, believing in a righteous heaven above
them, and also in a Gospel far other than the Jean-Jacques
one, swore, in their extreme need, a solemn league and
covenant, as brothers on the forlorn hope, and imminence
of battle, Avho embrace, looking god ward: and got the
whole isle to swear it; and even, in their tough Old-Saxon
Hebrew- Presbyterian way, to keep it more or less; for the
thing, as such things are, was heard in heaven and par
tially ratified there: neither is it yet dead, if thou wilt
look, nor like to die. The French too, with their Gallic-
Ethnic excitability and effervescence, have, as Ave have seen,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 295
real faith, of a sort; they are hard bested, though in the
middle of hope; a national solemn league and covenant
there may be in France too; under how different condi
tions; with how different development and issue!
Note, accordingly, the small commencement ; first spark
of a mighty firework ; for if the particular hat cannot be
fixed upon, the particular district can. On the 29th day
of last November, were national guards by the thousand
seen filing from far and near, with military music, with
municipal officers in tricolor sashes, toward and along the
Rhone stream, to the little town of Etoile. There with
ceremonial evolution and manceuver, with fanfaronading,
musketry salvoes, and what else the patriot genius could
devise, they made oath and obtestation to stand faithfully
by one another, under law and king ; in particular, to have
all manner of grains, while grains there were, freely circu
lated, in spite both of robber and regrater. This was the
meeting of Etoile, in the mild end of November, 1789.
But now, if a mere empty review, followed by review-
dinner, ball, and such gesticulation and flirtation as there
may be, interests the happy country-town, and makes it
the envy of surrounding country-towns, how much more
might this! In a fortnight, larger Montelimart, half
ashamed of itself, will do as good, and better. On the
Plain of Montelimart, or what is equally sonorous, " under
the walls of Montelimart, the 13th of December sees new
gathering and obtestation ; six thousand strong; and noAV
indeed, with these three remarkable improvements, as unan
imously resolved on there. First, that the men of
Montliemart do federate with the already federated men of
Etoil. Second, that, implying not expressing the circula-
- tion of grain, they " swear in the face of God and their
country" with much more emphasis and comprehensive
ness, "to obey all decrees of the national assembly, and
see them obeyed, till death, jusqu' a la mart." Third,
and most important, that official record of all this be sol
emnly delivered in, to the national assembly, to M. de
Lafayette, and " to the restorer of French liberty ;" Avho
shall all take what comfort from it they can. Thus does
larger Montelimart vindicate its patriot importance, and
maintain its rank in the municipal scale.*
* " Histoire Parlementaire," vii. 4,

296 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
And so, Avith the new year, the signal is hoisted ; for is
not a national assembly, and solemn deliverance there, at
lowest a national telegraph? Not only grain shall circu
late, while there is grain, on highways or the Rhone waters,
over all that southeastern region, where also if Monseigneur
d'Artois saw good to break in from Turin, hot welcome
might aAvait him; but whatsoever province of France is
straitened for grain, or vexed with a mutinous parlement,
unconstitutional ploters, monarchic clubs, or any other
patriot ailment, can go and do likeAvise, or even do better.
And now, especially, when the February swearing has set
them all agog ! From Brittany to Burgundy, on most
plains of France, under most city walls, it is a blaring of
trumpets, waving of banners, a constitutional manceuver -
ing: under the vernal skies, while nature too is putting
forth her green hopes, under bright sunshine defaced by
the stormful east; like patriotism victorious, though with
difficulty, over aristocracy and defect of grain! There
march and constitutionally wheel, to the ca-ira-mg mood
of fife and drum, under their tricolor municipals, our
clear-gleaming phalanxes; or halt, with uplifted right
hand, and artillery salvoes that imitate Jove's thunder;
and all the country, and metaphorically all " the universe,"
is looking on. Wholly, in their best apparel, brave men,
and beautifully dizened women, most of whom have lovers
there; swearing, by the eternal heavens and this green-
growing ball-nutritive earth, that France is free!
Sweetest days, when (astonishing to say) mortals have
actually met together in communion and fellowship; and
man, were it only once through long despicable centuries,
is for moments verily the brother of man ! And then the
deputations to the national assembly, with high-flown
descriptive harangue; to M. de Lafayette, and the restorer;
very frequently more over to the mother of patriotism,
sitting on her stout benches in that hall of the Jacobins!
The general ear is filled with federation. NeAV names
of patriots emerge, which shall one day become familiar:
Boyer-Fonfrede eloquent denunciator of a rebelious Bour-
deaux parlement; Max Isnard eloquent reporter of the
Federation of Draguignan ; eloquent pair, separated by the
Avhole breadth of France, who are nevertheless to meet.
Ever wider burns the flame of federation; ever wider and
also brighter. Thus the Brittany and Anjou brethren

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 297
mention a fraternity of all true Frenchmen ; and go the
length of invoking " perdition and death" on any renegade :
moreover, if in their national assembly harangue, they
glance plaintively at the marc d' argent which makes so
many citizens passive, they, over in the mother society,
ask, being henceforth themselves "neither Bretons nor
Angevins but French," Why all France has not one federa
tion, and universal oath of brotherhood, once for all? *
A most pertinent suggestion; dating from the end of
March. Which pertinent suggestion the whole patriot
world cannot but catch, and reverberate and agitate till it
become loud; which in that case the town hall municipals
had better take up, and meditate.
Some universal federation seem inevitable : the where is
given; clearly Paris: only the when, the how? These
also productive time will give; is already giving. For
always as the federative work goes on, it perfects itself,
and patriot genius adds contribution after contribution.
Thus, at Lyons, in the end of the May month, we behold
as many as fifty, or some say sixty thousand, met to feder
ate; and a multitude looking on, which it would be diffi
cult to number. From dawn to dusk ! For our Lyons
guardsmen took rank, at five in the bright deAvy morning ;
came pouring in, bright-gleaming, to the quai de Rhone, to
march thence to the federation field ; amid wavings of hats
and lady-handkerchiefs ; glad shoutings of some two hun
dred thousand patriot voices and hearts; the beautiful and
brave! Among whom, courting no notice, and yet the
notablest of all, what queen-like figure is this; with her
escort of house friends and Champagneux the patriot
editor; come abroad with the earliest? Radiant with
enthusiasm are those dark eyes, is that strong Minerva-
face, looking dignity and earnest joy; joyf ulest she where
all are joyful. It is Roland de la Platri^re's wife! f Strict
elderly Roland, king's inspector of manufactures here;
and now likewise, by popular choice, the strictest of our
new Lyons municipals: a man who has gained much, if
worth and faculty be gain: but, above all things, has
gained to wife Phlipon the Paris engraver's daughter.
Reader, mark that queen-like burgher-woman; beautiful,
* Reports, etc. (in " Hist. Pari." ix. 122-147).
f Madame Roland, "Memoires," i. (Discours Prgliminaire, p. 23).

298 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
Amazonian graceful to the eye; more so to the mind.
Unconscious of her worth (as all worth is), of her great
ness, of her crystal clearness ; genuine, the creature of sin
cerity and nature, in an age of artificiality, pollution and
cant; there, in her still completeness, in her still invinci
bility, she, if thou knew it, is the noblest of all living
FrenchAvomen, and will be seen, one day. Oh, blessed
rather while M«seen, even of herself! for the present she
gazes, nothing doubting, into this grand theatricality; and
thinks her young dreams are to be fulfilled.
From dawn to dusk, as we said, it lasts; and truly a
sight like few. Flourishes of drums and trumpets are
something: but think of an "artificial rock fifty feet
high," all cut into crag-steps, not without the similitude
of "shrubs!" The interior cavity, for in sooth it is made
of deal, stands solemn, a "Temple of Concord:" on the
outer summit rises "a statue of liberty," colossal, seen for
miles, with her pike and Phrygian cap, and civic column ;
at her feet a country's altar, " Autel de la Patrie:" on all
which neither deal-timber nor lath-and-plaster, with paint
of various colors, have been spared. But fancy then the
banners all placed on the steps of the rock; high-mass
chanted; and the civic oath of fifty thousand; with what
volcanic outburst of sound from iron and other throats,
enough to frighten back the very Soane and Rhone; and
how the brightest fireworks, and balls, and even repasts
closed in that night of the gods ! * And so the Lyons
federation vanishes too, swalloAvedof darkness; and yet not
wholly, for our brave fair Roland was there; also she,
though in the deepest privacy, writes her narrative of it in
Champagneux's Courier de Lyons; a piece which "circulates
to the extent of sixty thousand ;" which one would like
now to read.
But on the whole, Paris, we may see, will have little to
devise; will only have to borrow and apply. And then as
to the day, what day of all the calendar is fit, if the Bas
tille anniversary be not? The particular spot too, it is
easy to see, must be the Champ-de-Mars; where many a
Julian the Apostate has been lifted on bucklers, to
France's or the world's sovereignty; and iron Franks, loud
clanging, have responded to the voice of a Charlemagne;
and from of old mere sublimities have been familiar.
* "Histoire Parlementaire" xii, 274.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 299
CHAPTER IX.
SYMBOLIC.
How natural, in all decisive circumstances, is symbolic
representation to all kinds of men! Nay, what is man's
whole terrestrial life but a symbolic representation, and
making visible, of the celestial invisible force that is in
him? By act and word he strives to do it; with sincerity,
if, possible; failing that, with theatricality, which latter
also may have its meaning. An almacks masquerade is
not nothing; in more genial ages, your Christmas guisings,
feasts of the ass, abbots of unreason, were a considerable
something : sincere sport they were ; as almacks may still
be sincere wish for sport. But what, on the other hand,
must not sincere earnest have been ; say, a Hebrew feast of
tabernacles, have been ! A whole nation gathered, in the
name of the highest, under the eye of the highest ; imag
ination herself flagging under the reality ; and all noblest
ceremony as yet not grown ceremonial, but solemn, signifi
cant to the outmost fringe! Neither, in modern private
life, are theatrical scenes, of tearful women wetting whole
ells of cambric in concert, of impassioned bushy-whiskered
youth threatening suicide, and such-like, to be entirely
detested : drop thou a tear over them thyself rather.
At any rate, one can remark' that no nation will throw
by its work, and deliberately go out to make a scene, with
out meaning something thereby. For indeed no scenic
individual, with knavish hypocritical views, will take the
trouble to soliloquize a scene ; and- now consider, is not a
scenic nation placed precisely in that predicament of solil
oquizing; for its own behoof alone; to solace its own sensi
bilities, maudlin or other? Yet in this respect, of readi
ness for scenes, the difference of nations, as of men, is very
great. If our Saxon Puritanic friends, for example, swore
and signed their national covenant, without discharge of
gunpowder, or the beating of any drum, in a dingy cove
nant-close of the Edinburgh High street, in a mean room,
where men now drink mean liquor, it was consistent
with their ways so to swear it. Our Gallic-encyclopedio
friends, again, must have a Champ-de-Mars, seen of all the
world, or universe; and such a scenic exhibition, to which
the Coliseum ampitheatre was but a strollers' barn, as this.

300 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
old globe of ours had never or hardly ever beheld. Which
method also we reckon natural, then and there. Nor per
haps Avas the respective keeping of these two oaths far out
of due proportion to such respective display in taking
them; inverse proportion, namely. For the theatricality
of a people goes in a compound ratio ; ratio indeed of their
trustfulness, sociability, fervency ; hut then also of their
excitability, of their porosity, not continent; or say, of
their explosiveness, hot-flashing, but which does not last.
How true also, once more, is it that no man or nation of
men, conscious of doing a great thing, was ever, in that
thing, doing other than a small one ! Oh Champ-de-Mars
federation, with three hundred drummers, twelve hundred
wind-musicians, and artillery planted on height after
height to boom the tidings of it all over France, in few
minutes ! Could no Atheist-Naigeon contrive to discern,
eighteen centuries off, those thirteen most poor mean-
dressed men, at frugal supper, in a mean Jewish dwelling,
with no symbol but hearts god-initiated into the " divine
depth of sorrow," and a Do this in rememberance of wze—
and so cease that small difficult crowing of his, if he were
not doomed to it?

CHAPTER X.
MANKIND.
Pardonable are human theatricalities; nay, perhaps
touching, like the passionate utterance of a tongue which
with sincerity stammers; of a head which with insincerity
babbles, having gone distracted. Yet, in comparison with
unpremeditated outbursts of nature, such as an insurrec
tion of women, how foisonless, unedifying, undelightful ;
like small ale palled, like an effervescence that has effer
vesced! Such scenes, coming of forethought, were they
world-great and never so cunningly devised, are at bottom
mainly pasteboard and paint. But the others are original;
emitted from the great everliving heart of nature herself;
what figure they will assume is unspeakably significant.
To us, therefore, let the French national solemn league
and federation be the highest recorded triumph of the
Thespian art: triumphant surely, since the whole pit,
Which was of twenty-five millions, not only claps hands,

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 301
but does itself spring on the boards and passionately set to
playing there. And being such, be it treated as such;
with sincere cursory admiration; with wonder from afar.
A whole nation gone mumming deserves so much; but
deserves not that loving minuteness a Menadic insurrection
did. Much more let prior, and as it were rehearsal scenes
of federation come and go, henceforward, as they list;
and, on plains and under city walls, innumerable regi
mental bands blare off into the inane, without note from us.
One scene, however, the hastiest reader will momentarily
pause on: that of Anacharsis Clootz and the collective
sinful posterity of Adam. For a patriot municipality has
now, on the 4th of June, got its plan concocted, and got
it sanctioned by national assembly ; a patriot king assent
ing; to whom, were he even free to dissent, federative
harangues, overflowing with loyalty, have doubtless a tran
sient sweetness. There shall come deputed national guards,
so many in the hundred, from each of the eighty-three
departments of France. Likewise from all naval and
military king's forces shall deputed quotas come; such
federation of national with royal soldier has, taking place
spontaneously, been already seen and sanctioned. For the
rest, it is hoped, as many as forty thousand may arrive :
expenses to be borne by the deputing district ; of all which
let district and department take thought, and elect fit men,
whom the Paris brethren will fly to meet and welcome.
Now, therefore, judge if our patriot artists are busy;
taking deep counsel how to make the scene worthy of a
look from the universe ! As many as fifteen thousand men,
spadesmen, barrow-men, stonebuilders, rammers, with
their engineers, are at work on the Champ-de-Mars;
hollowing it out into a national amphitheater, fit for such
solemnity. For one may hope it will be annual and peren
nial; "feast of pikes, Fete des Piques," notablest among
the hightides of the year : in any case ought not a scenic
free nation to have some permanent national amphitheater?
The Champ-de-Mars is getting hollowed out; and the
daily talk and the nightly dream in most Parisian heads is
of federation and that only. Federate deputies are already
under way. National assembly, what with its natural
work, Avhat with hearing and answering harangues of these
federates, of this federation, will have enough to do!
Harangue of "American committee," among whom is that

302 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
faint figure of Paul Jones as " Avith the stars dim-twinkling
through it," come to congratulate us on the prospect of
such auspicious day. Harangue of Bastille conquerors,
come to " renounce" any special recompense, any peculiar
place at the solemnity ; since the center grenadiers rather
grumble. Harangue of "tennis-court club," who enter
with far-gleaming brass-plate, aloft on a pole, and the
tennis court oath engraved thereon; which far-gleaming
brass plate they purpose to affix solemnly in the Versailles
original locality, on the 20th of this month, which is the
anniversary, as a deathless memorial, for some years: they
will then dine, as they come back, in the Bois de
Boulogne ; * cannot, however, do it without apprising the
world. To such things does the august national assembly
ever and anon cheerfully listen, suspending its regenera
tive labors ; and with some touch of impromptu eloquence,
make friendly reply; as indeed the wont has long been;
for it is a gesticulating, sympathetic people, and has a
heart, and Avears it on its sleeve.
In which circumstances, it occurred to the mind of
Anacharsis Clootz, that while so much was embodying
itself into club or committee, and perorating applauded,
there yet remained a greater and greatest; of which, if it
also took body and perorated, what might not the effect
be: Humankind namely, le Genre Humain itself ! In what
rapt creative moment the thought rose in Anacharsis' soul;
all his throes, while he went about giving shape and birth to
it; how he was sneered at by cold worldings; but did sneer
again, being a man of polished sarcasm; and moved to and
fro persuasive in coffeehouse and soiree, and dived down
assiduous-obscure in the great deep of Paris, making his
thought a fact ; of all this the spiritual biographies of that
period say nothing. Enough that on the 19th evening of
June, 1790, the sun's slant rays lighted a spectacle such as
our foolish little planet has not often had to show:
Anacharsis Clootz entering the august Salle de Manege,
with the human species at his heels, Swedes, Spaniards,
Polaks; Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, dwellers in Mesopo
tamia; behold them all; they have come to claim place in
the grand federation, having an undoubted interest in it.
"Our ambassador titles," said the fervid Clootz, "are
*See "Deux Amis," v. 122; " Hist. Pari." etc.,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 303
not written on parchment, but on the living hearts of all
men." These whiskered Polacks, long-flowing turbaned
Ishmaelites, astrological Chaldeans, who stand so mute
here, let them plead with you, august senators, more elo
quently than eloquence could. They are the mute repre
sentatives of their tongue-tied, befettered, heavy laden
nations; who from out of that dark bewilderment gaze
wistful amazed, with half-incredulous hope, toward you,
and this your bright light of a French federation; bright
particular day star, the herald of universal day. We claim
to stand there, as mute monuments, pathetically adumbra
tive of much. From bench and gallery comes "repeated
applause ;" for what august senator but is flattered even
by the very shadow of human species depending on him?
From President Sieyes, who presides this remarkable fort
night, in spite of his small voice, there comes eloquent
though shrill reply. Anacharsis and the " foreigners com
mittee" shall have place at the federation ; on condition of
telling their respective peoples what they see there. In
the meantime, we invite them to the " honors of the sitting,
honneur de la seance." A long-flowing Turk, for rejoinder,
bows with eastern solemnity, and utters articulate sounds ;
but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the French
dialect,* his words are like spilt water, the thought he
had in him remains conjectural to this day.
Anacharsis and mankind accept the honors of the sitting ;
and have forthwith, as the old newspapers still testify,
the satisfaction to see several things. First and chief, on
the motion of Lameth, Lafayette, Saint-Fargeau and other
patriot nobles, let the others repugn as they will : all titles
of nobility, from duke to esquire, or lower, are henceforth
abolished. Then, in like manner, livery servants, or
rather the livery of servants. Neither, for the future,
shall any man or woman, self-styled noble, be "incensed,"
foolishly fumigated with incense, in church ; as the wont
has been. In a word, feudalism being dead these ten
months, why should her empty trappings and scutcheons
survive? The very coats-of-arms will require to be
obliterated ; and yet Cassandra-Marat on this and the other
coach -pan el notices that they "are but painted over," and
threaten to peer through again.
* " Moniteur," etc. (in " Hist. Pari." xii. 283).

304 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
So that henceforth De Lafayette is but the Sieur Motier,
and Saint-Fargeau is plain Michel Lepelletier; and Mira
beau soon after has to say huffingly, " With your Riquetti
you have set Europe at cross-purposes for three days."
For his counthood is not indifferent to this man; which
indeed the admiring people treat him with to the last. But
let extreme patriotism rejoice, and chiefly Anacharsis and
mankind ; for now it seems to be taken for granted that
one Adam is father of us all!
Such was, in historical accuracy, the famed feat of
Anacharsis. Thus did the most extensive of public
bodies find a sort of spokesman. Whereby at least we may
judge of one thing : what a humor the once sniffing mock
ing city of Paris and Baron Clootz had got into; when
such exhibition could appear a propriety, next door to a
sublimity. It is true, envy did, in after-times, pervert
this success of Anacharsis; making him, from incidental
"speaker of the foreign national committee," claim to be
official permanent " speaker, orateur, of the human species,"
which he only deserved to be; and alleging, calumniously
that his astrological Chaldeans, and the rest, were a mere
French tagrag-and-bobtail disguised for the nonce; and,
in short, sneering and peering at him in her cold barren
way : all which however, he, the man he was, could receive
on thick enough panoply, or even rebound therefrom, and
also go his way.
Most extensive of public bodies, we may call it; and also
the most unexpected : for who could have thought to see
all nations in the Tuileries riding hall? But so it is; and
truly as strange things may happen when a whole people
goes mumming and miming. Hast not thou thyself per
chance seen diademed Cleopatra, daughter of the Ptolemies,
pleading, almost with bended knee, in unheroic tea-parlor,
or dimlit retail shop, to inflexible gross burghal dignitary,
for leaye to reign and die ; being dressed for it, and money
less, with small children ; while suddenly constables have
shut the Thespian barn, and her Antony pleaded in vain?
Such visual spectra flit across this earth, if the Thespian
stage be rudely interfered with ; but much more, when, as
was said, pit jumps on stage, then is it verily, as in Herr
Tieck's drama, a Verkehrte Welt or world topsy-turvied !
Having seen the human species itself, to have seen the

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 305
"Dean of the human species" ceased now to be a miracle.
Such "Doyen du Genre Humain, eldest of men," had
shown himself there, in these weeks : Jean Claude Jacob,
a born serf, deputed from his native Jura mountains to
thank the national assembly for enfranchising them. On
his bleached worn face are ploAved the furrowings of one
hundred and twenty years. He has heard dim patois-talk,
of immortal grand monarch victories ; of a burned Palati
nate, as he toiled and moiled to make a little speck of this
earth greener; of Cevennes dragoonings; of Marlborough
going to the war. Four generations have bloomed out, and
loved and hated, and rustled off; he was forty-six when
Louis Fourteenth died. The assembly, as one man,
spontaneously rose, and . did reverence to the eldest of the
world; old Jean is to take seance among them, honorably
Avith covered head. He gazes feebly there, with his old eyes,
on that new wonder scene; dreamlike to him, and uncer
tain, wavering amid fragments of old memories and jdreams.
For time is all growing unsubstantial dreamlike; Jean's
eyes and mind are weary, and about to close, and open on
a far other wonder scene, which shall be real. Patriot
subscription, royal pension was got for him, and he
returned home glad; but in two months more he left it all,
and went on his unknown way.*

CHAPTER XI.
AS IN THE AGE OF GOLD.
Meanwhile to Paris, ever going and returning, day
after day, and all day long, toward that Field of Mars, it
becomes painfully apparent that the spadework there can
not be got done in time. There is such an area of it;
three hundred thousand square feet: for from the Ecole
Militaire (which will need to be done up in wood with
balconies and galleries) westward to the gate by the river
(where also shall be wood, in triumphal arches), we count
some thousand yards of length ; and for breadth, from this
umbrageous avenue of eight rows, on the south side, to
that corresponding one on the north, some thousand feet
more or less. All this to be scooped out, and wheeled up
* "Deux Amis," iv. iii.

306 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
in slope along the sides; high enough; for it must be
rammed down there, and shaped stair-Avise into as many
as "thirty ranges of convenient seats," firm-trimmed with
turf, covered with enduring timber; and then our huge
pyramidal fatherland's altar, Autel de la Patrie, in the
center, also to be raised and stair-stepped. Force-work
with a vengeance; it is a world's amphitheater! There
are but fifteen days good; and at this languid rate, it
might take half as many weeks. What is singular too,
the spadesmen seem to work lazily; they will not work
double-tides, even for offer of more wages, though their
tide is but seven hours ; they declare angrily that the hu
man tabernacle requires occasional rest !
Is it aristocrats secretly bribing? Aristocrats were
capable of that. Only six months since, did not evidence
get afloat that subterranean Paris, for we stand over
quarries and catacombs, dangerously, as it were midway
between heaven and the abyss, and are hollow underground,
was charged Avith gunpowder, which should make us
"leap?" Till a Cordeliers deputation actually went to
examine, and found it — carried off again ! * An accursed,
incurable brood; all asking for "passports," in these sacred
days. Trouble, of rioting, chateau-burning, is in the
Limousin and elsewhere ; for they are busy !. Between the
best of peoples and the best of restorer kings they would
sow grudges; with what a fiend's grin would they see this
federation, looked for by the universe, fail.

Fail for want of spadework, however, it shall not. He
that has four limbs and a French heart can do spadework ;
and will! On the 1st of July, Monday, scarcely has the
signal-cannon boomed ; scarcely have the languescent mer
cenary fifteen thousand laid down their tools, and the eyes
of onlookers turned sorrowfully to the still high sun ; when
this and the other patriot, fire in his eye, snatches barrow
and mattock, and himself begins indignantly wheeling.
Whom scores and then hundreds follow; and soon a
volunteer fifteen thousand are shoveling and trundling;
with the heart of giants; and all in right order, with that
extemporaneous adroitness of theirs; whereby such a lift
has been given, worth three mercenary ones; which may
* 23d December, 1789 (Newspapers in " Hist. Pari." iv. 44).

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 307
end when the late twilight thickens, in triumph-shouts,
heard or heard of beyond Montmartre !
A sympathetic population will wait, next day, with
eagerness, till the tools are free. Or why wait? Spades
elsewhere exist ! And so now burst forth that effulgence
of Parisian enthusiasm, good-heartedness and brotherly
love; such, if chroniclers are trustworthy, as was not
witnessed since the age of gold. Paris, male and female,
precipitates itself toward its southwest extremity, spade on
shoulder. Streams of men, without order; or in order,
as ranked fellow-craftsmen, as natural or accidental
reunions, march toward the Field of Mars. Three-deep
these march ; to the sound of stringed music ; preceded by
young girls with green boughs and tricolor streamers; they
have shouldered, soldier-wise, their shovels and picks; and
with one throat are singing ca-ira. Yes, pardieu ca-ira,
cry the passengers on the streets. All corporate guilds,
and public and private bodies of citizens, from the highest
to the lowest, march; the very hawkers, one finds, have
ceased bawling for one day. The neighboring villages
turn out; their able men come, marching to village fiddle
or tamborine and triangle, under their m'ayor or mayor
and curate, who also walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash.
As many as one hundred and fifty thousand workers; nay
at certain seasons, as some count, two hundred and fifty
thousand; for, in' the afternoon especially, what mortal
but, finishing his hasty day's work, would run ! A stirring
city; from the time you reach the Place Louis-Quinze,
southward over the river, by all avenues, it is one living
throng. So many workers; and no mercenary mock-
workers, but real ones that lie freely to it ; each patriot
stretches himself against the stubborn glebe; hews and
wheels with the whole weight that is in him.
Amiable infants, aimables enfants! They do the "police
de V atelier" too, the guidance and governance, themselves;
with that ready will of theirs, with that extemporaneous
adroitness. It is a true brethren's work; all distinctions
confounded, abolished; as it was in the beginning, when
Adam himself delved. Long-frocked tonsured monks,
with short-skirted water-carriers, with swallow-tailed well-
frizzled Incroyables of a patriot turn; dark charcoalmen,
meal- white peruke-makers; or peruke-wearers, for advo
cate and judge are there, and all heads of districts: sober

308 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
nuns sister-like with flaunting nypmhs of the opera, and
female in common circumstances named unfortunate: the
patriot ragpicker, and perfumed dweller in palaces; for
patriotism, like new-birth, and also like death, levels all.
The printers have come marching, Prudhomme's all in
papercaps with Revolutions de Paris printed on them; as
Camille notes; wishing that in these great days there
should be a Pacte des Ecrivains, too, or federation of able
editors.* Beautiful to see ! The snoAvy linen and delicate
pantaloon alternates with the soiled check-shirt and bushel-
breeches; for both have cast their coats, and under both
are four limbs and a set of patriot muscles. There do
they pick and shovel; or bend forward, yoked in long
strings to box -barrow or overloaded tumbril; joyous, with
one mind. Abbe Sieyes is seen pulling, wiry, vehement,
if too light for draught ; by the side of Beauharnais, who
shall get kings though he be none. Abbe Maury did
not pull ; but the charcoalmen brought a mummer guised
like him, and he had to pull in effigy. Let no august
senator disdain the work: Mayor Bailly, Generalissimo
Lafayette are there ; and, alas, shall be there again another
day ! The king himself comes to see : sky-rending Vive-
le-roi! "and suddenly with shouldered spades they form a
guard of honor round him." Whosoever can come comes;
to work, or to look, and bless the work.
Whole families have come. One whole family we see
clearly of three generations ; the father picking, the mother
shoveling, the young ones wheeling assiduous; old grand
father, hoary with ninety-three years, holds in his arm the
youngest of all; \ frisky, not helpful this one; who never
theless may tell it to his grandchildren and how the
future and the past alike looked on, and with failing or
with half -formed voice, faltered their ca-ira. A vintner
has wheeled in, on patriot truck, beverage of wine; "drink
not, my brothers, if ye are not thirsty; that your cask may
last the longer;" neither did any drink but men "evi
dently exhausted." A dapper abb6 looks on, sneering;
"To the barrow!" cry several; whom he, lest a worse
thing befall him, obeys : nevertheless one wiser patriot bar-
rowman, arriving noAV, interposes his "arretez;" setting
* See Newspapers, etc. (in " Hist. Pari." vi. 381-406).
\ Mercier, ii. 76, etc.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 509
down his own barrow, he snatches the abbe's; trundles it
fast, like an infected thing, forth of the Champ-de-Mars cir
cuit, and discharges it there. Thus too a certain person
(of some quality, or private capital, to appearance), enter
ing hastily, flings down his coat, waistcoat and two
watches, and is rushing to the thick of the work : " But
your watches?" cries the general voice. "Does one dis
trust his brothers?" answers he; nor were the watches
stolen. How beautiful is noble sentiment; like gossamer
gauze, beautiful and cheap ; which will stand no tear and
wear ! Beautiful cheap gossamer gauze, thou film shadow
of a raw-material of virtue, which art not woven, nor likely
to be, into duty; thou art better than nothing, and also
worse !
Young boarding-school boys, college students, shout Vive
la nation, and regret that they have yet " only their sweat
to give." What say we of boys? Beautiful Hebes; the
loveliest of Paris, in their light air-robes, with ribbon-girdle
of tricolor, are there; shoveling and wheeling with the
rest; their Hebe eyes brighter with enthusiasm, and long
hair in beautiful dishevelment; broad-pressed are their
small fingers ; but they make the patriot barrow go, and
even force it to the summit of the slope (with a little
tracing, which what man's arm were not too happy to
lend?) then bound down with it again, and go for more;
with their long locks and tricolors blown back; graceful
as the rosy hours. Oh, as that evening sun fell over the
Champ-de-Mars, and tinted with fire the thick umbrageous
boscage that shelters it on this hand and on that, and
struck direct on those domes and two-and-forty windows
of the Ecole Militaire, and made them all of burnished
gold, saw he on his wide zodiac road other such sight? A
living garden spotted and dotted With such flowerage; all
color of the prism; the beautifulest blent friendly with
the usef ulest ; all growing and working brotherlike there
under one warm feeling, Avere it but for days ; once and
no second time! But night is sinking; these nights, too,
into eternity. The hastiest traveler Versailles-ward has
drawn bridle on the heights of Chaillot ; and looked for
moments over the river; reporting at Versailles what he
saw, not without tears.* * Mercier, "ii. 81.

310 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
Meanwhile, from all points of the compass, federates are
arriving: fervid children of the south, "who glory in their
Mirabeau;" considerate north-blooded mountaineers of
Jura; sharp Bretons, with their Gaelic suddenness; Nor
mans, not to be overreached in bargain : all now animated
Avith one noblest fire of patriotism. Whom the Paris
brethren march forth to receive; with military solemnities,
Avith fraternal embracing, and a hospitality worthy of the
heroic ages. They assist at the assembly's debates, these
federates; the galleries are reserved for them. .They assist
in the toils of the Champ-de-Mars ; each new troop will
put its hand to the spade; lift a hod of earth on the altar
of the fatherland. But the flourishes of rhetoric, for it
is a gesticulating people; the moral-sublime of those
addresses to an august assembly, to a patriot restorer!
Our Breton captain of federates kneels even, in a fit of
enthusiasm, and ' gives up his sword ; he wet-eyed to a
king wet-eyed. Poor Louis! These, as he said afterward,
Avere among the bright days oi his life.
Reviews also there must be ; royal federate-reviews, with
king, queen and tricolor court looking on : at lowest, if, as
is too coram on, it rains, our federate volunteers will file
through the inner gateways, royalty standing dry. Nay
there, should some stop occur, the beautifulest fingers in
France may take you softly by the lapel, and, in mild
flute-voice, ask; "Monsieur, of what province are you?"
Happy he who can reply, chivalrously lowering his sword's
point, " Madame, from the province your ancestors reigned
over." He that happy "provincial advocate," now pro
vincial federate, shall be rewarded by a sun-smile, and such
melodious glad words addressed to a king; "Sire, these
are your faithful Lorrainers." Cheerier verily, in these
holidays, is this " skyblue faced with red " of a national
guardsman, than the dull black and gray of a provincial
advocate, which in workdays one was used to. For the
same thrice-blessed Lorrainer shall, this evening, stand
sentry at a queen's door; and feel that he could die a
thousand deaths for her: then again, at the outer gate,
and even a third time, she shall see him ; nay he Avill make
her do it; presenting arms with emphasis, "making his
musket jingle again-;" and in her salute there shall again
be a sun smile, and that little blonde-locked, too hasty
dauphin shall he admonished, "Salute, then, monsieur;

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 3H
don't be unpolite;" and therewith she, like a bright sky
wanderer or planet with her little moon, issues forth
peculiar.* But at night, when patriot spadework is over, figure the
sacred rites of hospitality! Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, a
mere private senator, but with great possessions, has daily
his "hundred dinner-guests;" the table of Generalissimo
Lafayette may double that number. In lowly parlor, as
in lofty saloon, the wine-cup passes round ; crowded by the
smiles of beauty— be it of lightly-tripping grisette or of
high sailing dame, for both equally have beauty, and
smiles precious to the brave.

CHAPTER XII.
SOUND AND SMOKE.
And so now, in spite of plotting aristocrats, lazy hired
spademen, and almost destiny itself (for there has been
much rain too), the Ohamp-de-Mars, on the 13th of the
month, is fairly ready : trimmed, rammed, buttressed with
firm masonry; and patriotism can stroll over it admiring;
and as it were rehearsing, for in every head is some
unutterable image of the morrow. Pray heaven there be
not clouds. Nay what far worse cloud is this, of a mis
guided municipality that talks of admitting patriotism to
the solemnity by tickets! Was it by tickets we Avere ad
mitted to the work; and to what brought the work? Did
we take the Bastille by tickets? A misguided municipality
sees the error; at late midnight, rolling drums announce
to patriotism starting half out of its bed-clothes, that it is
to be ticketless. Pull down thy nightcap therefore; and,
.with demi-articnlate grumble, significant of several things,
go pacified to sleep again. To-morrow is Wednesday
morning; unforgettable among the fasti of the world.
The morning comes, cold for a July one; but such a
festivity would make Greenland smile. Through every
inlet of that national amphitheater (for it is a league in
circuit, cut with openings at due intervals), floods in the
living throng; covers, Avithout tumult, space after space.
* Narrative by a Lorraine Federate (given in "Hist. Pari." vi.
389-91).

31-2 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
The Ecole Militaire has galleries and overvaulting canopies,
wherein carpentry and painting have vied, for the upper
authorities ; triumphal arches, at the gate by the river bear
inscriptions, if weak, yet well-meant and orthodox. Far
aloft, over the altar of the fatherland, on their tall crane
standards of iron, swing pensile our antique Casolettes or
pans of incense; dispensing sweet incense-fumes, unless
for the heathen mythology, one sees not for whom. Two
hundred thousand patriotic men ; and, twice as good, one
hundred thousand patriotic women, all decked and glori-
* fled as one can fancy, sit waiting in this Champ-de-Mars.
What a picture : that circle of bright-dyed life, spread
up there, on its thirty-seated slope ; leaning, one would say,
on the thick umbrage of those avenue trees, for the stems
of them are hidden by the height; and all beyond it mere
greenness of summer earth, with the gleams of waters, or
white sparklings of stone edifices; little circular enamel
picture in the center of such a vase — of emerald ! A vase
not empty : the Invalides cupolas want not their population,
nor the distant windmills of Montmartre; on remotest
steeple and invisible village belfry stand men with spy
glasses. On the heights of Chaillot are many-colored
undulating groups ; round and far on, over all the circling
heights that embosom Paris, it is as one more or less
peopled amphitheater; which the eye grows dim with
measuring. Nay heights, as was before hinted, have
cannon; and a floating-battery of cannon is on the Seine.
When eye fails, ear shall serve; and all France properly
is but one amphitheater; for in paved town and unpaved
hamlet men walk listening ; till the muffled thunder sound
audible on their horizon, that they too may begin swearing
and firing ! * But now, to streams of music, come feder
ates enough, for they have assembled on the Boulevard
Saint-Antoine or thereby, and come marching through the
city, with their eighty-three department banners, and
blessings not loud but deep ; comes national assembly, and
takes seat under its canopy; comes royalty, and takes seat
on a throne beside it. And Lafayette, on white charger,
is here, and all the civic functionaries ; and the federates
form dances, till their strictly military evolutions and
manoeuvers can begin. * "Deux Amis," v. 168.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 313
Evolutions and manceuvers? Task not the pen of mor
tal to describe them; truant imagination droops; declares
that it is not worth while. There is wheeling and sweep
ing, to sIoav, to quick and double-quick time ! Sieur Motier,
or Generalissimo Lafayette, for they are one and the same,
and he is general of France, in the king's stead, for four-
and-twenty hours; Sieur Motier must step forth, with
that sublime chivalrous gait of his ; solemnly ascend the
steps of the fatherland's altar, in sight of heaven and of the
scarcely breathing earth; and, under the creak of those
swinging Cassolettes, "pressing his sword's point firmly
there," pronounce the oath, to king, to law, and nation
(not to mention "grains" with their circulating), in his
own name and that of armed France. Whereat there is
waving of banners, and acclaim sufficient. The national
assembly must swear, standing in its place the king him
self audibly. The king swears; and now be the welkin
split with vivats: let citizens enfranchised embrace, each
smiting heartily his palm into his fellow's; and armed
federates clang their arms ; above all, that floating battery
speak! It has spoken, to the four corners of France.
From eminence to eminence bursts the thunder; faint-
heard, loud-repeated. What a stone, cast into what a
lake; in circles that do not grow fainter. From Arras to
Avignon ; from Metz to Bayonne ! Over Orleans and Blois
it rolls, in cannon-recitative ; Puy bellows of it amid his
granite mountains; Pau where is the shell-cradle of Great
Henri. At far Marseilles, one can think, the ruddy even
ing witnesses it; over the deep-blue Mediterranean waters,
the castle of If ruddy-tinted darts forth, from every
cannon's mouth, its tongue of fire, and all that people
shout: Yes, France is free. Oh glorious France, that has
burst out so; into universal sound and smoke; and
attained — the Phrygian cap of liberty ! In all towns, trees
of liberty also may be planted ; with or without advantage.
Said we not, it was the highest stretch attained by the
Thespian art on this planet, or perhaps attainable?
The Thespian art, unfortunately one must still call it;
for behold there, on this Field of Mars, the national
banners, before there could be any swearing, were to be
all blessed. A most proper operation ; since surely with
out heaven's blessing bestowed, say even, audibly or
inaudibly sought, no earthly banner or contrivance can

314 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
prove victorious: but now the means of doing it? By
what thrice-divine Franklin thunder-rod shall miraculous
fire be drawn out of heaven ; and descend gently, lifegiving
Avith health to the souls of men? Alas, by the simplest:
by two hundred shaven-crowned individuals, "in snow-
white albs, with'tricolor girdles," arranged on the steps of
fatherland's altar; and, at their head for spokesman,
Soul's Overseer Talleyrand-Perigord ! These shall act as
miraculous thunder-rod, to such length as they can. Oh
ye deep azure heavens, and thou green all-nursing earth;
ye streams everflowing; deciduous forests that die and are
born again, continually, like the sons of men; stone moun
tains that die daily with every rain-shower, yet are not
dead and leveled for ages of ages, nor born again (it
seems) but with new world-explosions, and such tumult
uous seething and tumbling, steam half-way to the moon;
Oh thou unfathomable mystic All, garment and dwelling-
place of the unnamed; and thou, articulate speaking spirit
of man, who moldest and modelest that unfathomable,
unnameable even as we see, is not there a miracle: That
some French mortal should, we say not have believed, but
pretended to imagine he believed that Talleyrand and two
hundred pieces of white calico could do it !
Here, however, we are to remark with the sorrowing
historians of that day, that suddenly, while Episcopus
Talleyrand, long-stoled, with miter and tricolor belt, was
yet but hitching up the altar steps to do his miracle, the
material heaven grew black; a north wind, moaning cold
moisture, began to sing; and there descended a very
deluge of rain. Sad to see ! The thirty-staired seats, all
round our amphitheater, get instantaneously slated with
mere umbrellas, fallacious when so thick set; our antique
Cassolettes become water-pots; their incense-smoke gone
hissing, in a whiff of muddy vapor. Alas, instead of
vivats, there is nothing now but the furious peppering and
rattling. From three to four hundred thousand human in-
dividualsfeel that they have a skin ; happily impervious.
The general's sash runs water; how all military banners
droop ; and will not Avave,but lazily flap, as if metamorphosed
into painted tin-banners ! Worse, far worse, these hundred
thousand, such is the historian's testimony, of the fairest
of France! Their snowy muslins all splashed and
draggled; the ostrich-feather shrunk shamefully to the

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 315
backbone of a feather : all caps are ruined ; innermost paste
board molten into its original pap : beauty no longer swims
decorated in her garniture, like love goddess hidden-
revealed in her Paphian clouds, but struggles in disastrous
imprisonment in it, for " the shape was noticeable ;" and
now only sympathetic interjections, titterings, teheeings,
and resolute good-humor will avail . A deluge ; an incessant
sheet or fluid-column of rain; such that our overseer's
very miter must be filled; not a miter, but a filled and
leaky fire-bucket on his reverend head! Regardless of
which, Overseer Talleyrand performs his miracle: the bless
ing of Talleyrand, another than that of Jacob, is on all
the eighty-three departmental flags of France ; which wave
or flap, with such thankfulness as needs. Toward three
o'clock, the sun beams out again; the remaining evolutions
can be transacted under bright heavens, though with decora
tions much damaged.*
On Wednesday our federation is consummated; but the
festivities last out the week, and over into the next. Fes
tivities such as no Bagdad Caliph, or Aladdin with the
lamp, could have equaled. There is a jousting on the
river; with its water-somersets, splashing and haha-ing:
Abbe Fauchet, Te Deum Fauchet, preaches, for his part,
in the "rotunda of the cornmarket," a funeral harangue
on Franklin ; for whom the national assembly has lately
gone three days in black. The Motier and Lepelletier tables
still groan with viands ; roofs ringing with patriotic toasts.
On the fifth evening, which is the Christian Sabbath, there
is a universal ball. Paris, out of doors and in, man, woman
and child, is jigging it, to the sound of harp and four-
stringed fiddle. The hoariest-headed man will tread one
other measure, under this nether moon; speechless
nurselings, infants as we call them, vijuta ziuva, crow
in arms; and sprawl out numb-plump little limbs, impa
tient for muscularity, they know not why. The stiffest
balk bends more or less ; all joists creak.
Or out, on the earth's breast itself, behold the ruins of
the Bastille. All lamplit, all egorically decorated ; a tree
of liberty sixty feet high ; and Phrygian cap on it, of size
enormous, under which King Authur and his round-table
might have dined ! In the depths of the background is a
* " Deux Amis," v. 148-179.

316 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
single lugubrious lamp, rendering dim-visible one of your
iron cages, half -buried, and some prison stones, tyranny
vanishing doAvmvard, all gone but the skirt: the rest
wholly lamp-festoons, trees real or of pasteboard ; in the
similitude of a fairy grove ; with this inscription, readable
to runner: " Ici I' on danse." As indeed had been obscurely
foreshadowed by Cagliostro * prophetic quack of quacks,
when he, four years ago, quitted the grim durance; to
fall into a grimmer, of the Roman Inquisition, and not
quit it.
But, after all, what is this Bastille business to that of
the Champs Elysees! Thither, to these fields well named
Elysian, all feet tend. It is radiant as day with festooned
lamps; little oil-cups, like variegated fire-flies, daintily
illumine the highest leaves: trees there are all sheeted
Avith variegated fire, shedding far a glimmer into the
dubious wood. There, under the free sky, do tight-limbed
federates, with fairest new-found sweethearts, elastic as
Diana, and not of that coyness and tart humor of Diana,
thread their jocund mazes, all through the ambrosial night;
and hearts were touched and fired; and seldom surely had
our old planet, in that huge comic shadow of hers, " which
goes beyond the moon, and is named night," curtained
such a ball-room . Oh if, according to Seneca, the very
gods look down on a good man, struggling with adversity,
and smile; what must they think of five-and-twenty mil
lion indifferent ones victorious over it, for eight days and
more?

In this way, and such ways, however, has the feast of
pikes danced itself off; gallant federates wending home-
Avard, toward every point of the compass, with feverish
nerves, heart and head much heated; some of them, indeed,
as Dampmartin's elderly respectable friend from Strasburg,
quite " burned out with liquors," and flickering toward
extinction, f The feast of pikes has danced itself off, and
become defunct, and the ghost of a feast; nothing of it
now remaining but this vision in men's memory; and the
place that knew it (for the slope of that Champ-de-Mars is
* See his " Lettre au Peuple Francais " (London, 1786).
f Dampmartin, " Evenemens," i. 144-184.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 3 1 7
crumbled to half the original height) * now knowing it no
more. Undoubtedly one of the memorablest national
high tides. Never 01 hardly evei, as we said, was oath
sworn with such heart-effusion, emphasis and expenditure
of joyance; and then it was broken irremediably within
year and day. Ah, why? When the swearing of it was
so heavenly joyful, bosom clasped to bosom, and five-and-
twenty million hearts all burning together; oh, ye inexor
able destinies, why? Partly because it was sworn with such
overjoyance; but chiefly, indeed for an older reason: that
sin had come into the world, and misery by sin ! These
five-and-twenty millions, if we will consider it, have noAV
henceforth, with that Phrygian cap of theirs, no force
over them, to bind and guide; neither in them, more than
heretofore, is guiding force, or rule of just living: how
then, while they all go rushing at such a pace, on unknown
ways, with no bridle, toward no aim, can hurlyburly
unutterable fail? For verily not federation -rosepink is
the color of this earth and her work; not by outbursts of
noble-sentiment, but with far other ammunition, shall a
man front the world.
But how wise, in all cases, to "husband your fire;" to
keep it deep down, rather, as genial radical-heat ! Ex
plosions, the forciblest, and never so well directed, are ques
tionable; far oftenest futile, always frightfully wasteful;
but think of a man, of a nation of men, spending its
whole stock of fire in one artificial firework ! So have we
seen fond weddings (for individuals, like nations, have
their hightides) celebrated with an outburst of triumph
and deray, at which the elderly shook their heads. Better
had a serious cheerfulness been; for the enterprise was
great. Fond pair! the more triumphant ye feel, and vic
torious over terrestrial evil, which seems all abolished,
the wider-eyed will your disappointment be to find terres
trial evil still extant. "And why extant?" will each of
you cry; "Because my false mate has played the traitor:
evil was abolished; I, for one, meant faithfully, and did
or would have done !" Whereby the over-sweet moon of
honey changes itself into long years of vinegar : perhaps
divulsive vinegar, like Hannibal's.
* Dulaure, " Histoire de Paris," viii. 25.

318 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
Shall we say, then, the French nation has led royalty, or
wooed and teased poor royalty tolead/ter, to the hymeneal
fatherland's altar, in such over-sweet manner; and has,
most thoughtlessly, to celebrate the nuptials with due
shine and demonstration, burned her bed?

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 319

BOOK NINTH.
NANCI.

CHAPTER I.
BOUILLE.

Dimly visible, at Metz on the north-eastern frontier, a
certain brave Bouille, last refuge of royalty in all straits
and meditations of flight, has for many months hovered
occasionally in our eye; some name or shadow of a brave
Bouille: let us now, for a little, look fixedly at him, till
he become a substance and person for us. The man him
self is worth a glance ; his position and procedure there, in
these days, will throw light on many things.
For it is with Bouille as with all French commanding
officers; only in a more emphatic degree. The grand
national federation, we already guess, was but empty sound,
or worse : a last loudest universal Hep-hep-hurrah, with
full bumpers, in that national Lapithas-feast of constitu
tion-making; as in loud denial of the palpably existing;
as if, with hurrahings, you would shut out notice of the
inevitable, already knocking at the gates! Which new
national bumper, one may say, can but deepen the drnnk-
enness; and so, the louder it swears brotherhood, will the
sooner and the more surely lead to cannibalism. Ah,
under that fraternal shine and clangor, what a deep world
of irreconcilable discords lie momentarily assuaged, damped-
doAvn for one moment! Respectable military federates
have barely got home to their quarters; and the inflam-
mablest, "dying, burned up with liquors and kindness," has
not yet got extinct; the shine is hardly out of men's eyes,
and still blazes, filling all men's memories, when your dis-

320 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
cords burst forth again, very considerably darker than
ever. Let us look at Bouille, and see how.
Bouille for the present commands in the garrison of
Metz, and far and wide over the east and north; being
indeed, by a late act of government with sanction of na
tional assembly, appointed one of our four supreme
generals. Rochambeau and Mailly, men and marshals of
note in these days, though to us of small moment, are two
of his colleagues; tough old babbling Liickner, also of
small moment for us, will probably be the third. Marquis
de Bouille is a determined loyalist ; not indeed disinclined to
moderate reform, but resolute again immoderate. A man
long suspect to patriotism ; who has more than once given
the august assembly trouble; who would not, for example,
take the national oath, as he was bound to do, but always
put it off on this or the other pretext, till an autograph of
majesty requested him to do it as a favor. There, in this
post, if not of honor yet of eminence and danger, he waits,
in a silent concentered manner; very dubious of the
future. "Alone," as he says, or almost alone, of all the
old military notabilities, he has not emigrated; but thinks
always, in atrabiliar moments, that there will be nothing
for him too but to cross the marches. He might cross, say,
to Treves or Coblentz, where exiled princes will be one day
ranking; or say, over into Luxemburg, where old Broglie
loiters and languishes. Or is there not the great dim deep
of European diplomacy; Avhere your Calonnes, your
Breteuils are beginning to hover, dimly discernible?
With immeasurable confused outlooks and purposes,
with no clear purpose but this of still trying to do his maj
esty a service, Bouille Avaits ; struggling what he can to
keep his district loyal, his troops faithful, his garrisons
furnished. He maintains, as yet, with his Cousin Lafay
ette some thin diplomatic correspondence, by letter and
messenger ; chivalrous constitutional professions on the one
side, military gravity and brevity on the other; which thin
correspondence one can see growing ever the thinner and
hollower, toward the verge of entire vacuity.* A quick,
choleric, sharply discerning, stubbornly endeavoring man;
with suppressed-explosive resolution, with valor, nay head
long audacity: a man who was more in his place, lionlike
* Bouille, "Memoires " (London, 1797), i. C. 8.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 321
defending those windward isles, or, as with military tiger-
spring, clutching Nevis and Montserrat from the English,
than here in this suppressed condition, muzzled and
fettered by diplomatic packthreads; looking out for a civil
war, which may never arrive. Few years ago Bouille
was to have led a French East-Indian expedition, and
reconquered or conquered Pondicherry and the kingdoms
of the sun; but the whole world is suddenly changed, and
he with it; destiny willed it not in that way, but in this.

CHAPTER II.
ARREARS AND ARISTOCRATS.
Indeed, as to the general outlook of things, Bouille
himself augurs not well of it. The French army, ever
since those old Bastille days, and earlier, has been univer
sally in the questionablest state, and growing daily worse.
Discipline, which is at all times a kind of miracle, and
works by faith, broke down then; one sees not with what
near prospect of recovering itself . The Gardes Francaises
played a deadly game; but how they won it, and wear the
prizes of it, all men know. In that general overturn, he
saw the hired fighters refuse to fight. The very Swiss of
Chateau-Vieux, which indeed is a kind of French Swiss,
from Geneva and the Pays de Vaud, are understood to
have declined. Deserters glided over; Royal Allemand
itself looked disconsolate, though stanch of purpose. In a
word, we there saw military rule, in the shape of poor
Besenval with that convulsive unmanageable camp of his,
pass two martyr days on the Champ-de-Mars; and then,
veiling itself, so to speak, "under cloud of night," depart
"down the left bank of the Seine," to seek refuge else
where; this ground having clearly become too hot for it.
But what new ground to seek, what remedy to try
quarters that were "uninfected;" this doubless, with judi
cious strictness of drilling, were the plan. Alas, in all
quarters and places, from Paris onward to the remotest
hamlet, is infection, is seditious contagion: inhaled, propo-
gated by contact and converse, till the dullest soldier catch
it! There is speech of men in uniform with men not in
uniform; men in uniform read journals, and even write

322 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
in them.* There are public petitions or remonstrances,
private emissaries and associations; there is discontent,
jealousy, uncertainty, sullen suspicious humor. The whole
'French army, fermenting in dark heat, glooms ominous,
boding good to no one.
So that, in the general social dissolution and revolt, we
are to have this deepest and dismalest kind of it, a revolt
ing soldiery? Barren, desolate to look upon is this same
business of revolt under all its aspects ; but hoAv infinitely
more so, when it takes the aspect of military mutiny! The
very implement of rule and restraint, whereby all the rest
was managed and held in order, has become precisely the
frightf ulest immeasurable implement of misrule; like the
element of fire, our indispensable all-ministering servant,
when it gets the mastery, and becomes conflagration. Dis
cipline we called a kind of miracle: in fact, is it not mi
raculous how one man moves hundreds of thousands;
each unit of whom, it may be, loves him not, and singly
fears him not, yet has to obey him, to go hither or go
thither, to march and halt, to give death, and even to
receive it, as if a fate had spoken ; and the word-of-com-
mand becomes, almost in the literal sense, a magic-word?
Which magic-word, again, if it be once forgotten; the
spell of it once broken ! The legions of assiduous minis
tering spirits rise on you now as menacing fiends; your
free orderly arena becomes a tumult-place of the nether
pit, and the hapless magician is rent limb from limb. Mili
tary mobs are mobs with muskets in their hands; and also
with death hanging over their heads, for death is the
penalty of disobedience, and they have disobeyed. And now
if all mobs are properly frenzies, and work frenetically
with mad fits of hot and of cold, fierce rage alternating so
incoherently with panic terror, consider what your military
mob will be, with such a conflict of duties and penalties,
whirled between remorse and fury, and, for the hot fit,
loaded fire-arms in its hand! To the soldier himself, revolt
is frightful, and oftenest perhaps pitiable; and yet so dan
gerous, it can only be hated, cannot be pitied. An anoma
lous class of mortals these poor hired killers! With a
frankness, which to the moralist in these times seems surpris
ing, they have SAVorn to become machines; and neverthe-
* See Newspapers of July 1789 (in " Hist Pari." ii. 35), etc.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 323
less they are still partly men. Let no prudent person in
authority remind them of this latter fact; but always let
force, let injustice above all, stop short clearly on this
side of the rebounding-point ! Soldiers, as we often say,
do revolt : were it not so, several things which are transient
in this world might be perennial.

Over and above the general quarrel which all sons of
Adam maintain with their lot here below, the grievances
of the French soldiery reduce themselves to two. First,
that their officers are aristocrats ; secondly, that they cheat
them of their pay. Two grievances; or rather we might
say one, capable of becoming a hundred ; for in that single
first proposition, that the officers are aristocrats, what a
multitude of corollaries lie ready ! It is a bottomless ever-
flowing fountain of grievances this; what you may call a
general raw-material of grievance, wherefrom individual
grievance after grievance will daily body itself forth. Nay
there will even be a kind of comfort in getting it, from
time to time, so embodied. Peculation of one's pay ! It
is embodied, made tangible, made denounceable; exhalable,
if only in angry words.
For unluckily that grand fountain of grievances does
exist: aristocrats almost all our officers necessarily are;
they have it in the blood and bone. By the law of the
case, no man can pretend to be the pitifulest lieutenant
of militia till he have first verified, to the satisfaction of
the lion-king, a nobility of four generations. Not nobility
only, but four generations of it; this latter is the improve
ment hit upon, in comparatively late years, by a certain
war-minister much pressed for commissions.*
An improvement which did relieve the oppressed war-
minister, but which split France still further into yawning
contrasts of commonalty and nobility, nay of new nobility
and old; as if already with your new and old, and then
with your old, older and oldest, there were not contrasts
and discrepancies enough ; the general clash whereof men
now see and hear, and in the singular whirlpool, all con
trasts gone together to the bottom ! Gone to the bottom
or going; with uproar, Avithout return; going everywhere
* Dampmartin, " Evenemens," i. 80.

324 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
save in the military section of things; and there, it may
be asked, can they hope to continue always at the top?
Apparently, not.
It is true, in a time of external peace, when there is no
fighting, but only drilling, this question, how you rise
from the ranks, may seem theoretical rather. But in refer
ence to the rights of man it is continually practical. The
soldier has sworn to be faithful not to the king only, but
to the law and the nation. Do our commanders love the
revolution? ask all soldiers. Unhappily no, they hate it,
and love the counter-revolution. Young epauletted men,
quality-blood in them, poisoned with quality-pride, do sniff
openly, with indignation struggling to become contempt,
at our rights of man, as at some newfangled cobweb, which
shall be brushed down again. Old officers, more cautious,
keep silent, with closed uncurled lips; but one guesses what
is passing within. Nay, who knows, hoAV, under the
plausiblest word of command, might lie counter-revolution
itself, sale to exiled princes and the Austrian kaiser:
treacherous aristocrats hoodAvinking the small insight of us
common men? In such manner works that general war-
material of grievance; disastrous; instead of trust and
reverence, breeding hate, endless suspicion, the impossibility
of commanding and obeying. And now when this second
more tangible grievance has articulated itself universally in
the mind of the common man: Peculation of his pay!
Peculation of the despicablest sort does exist, and has
long existed; but, unless the new-declared rights of man,
and all rights whatsoever, are a cobweb it shall no longer
exist. The French military system seems dying a sorrowful
suicidal death. Nay more, citizen, as is natural, ranks
himself against citizen in this cause. The soldier finds
audience, of numbers and sympathy unlimited, among
the patriot lower classes. Nor are the higher wanting to
the officer. The officer still dresses and perfumes himself
for such sad unemigrated soiree as there may still be; and
speaks his Avoes, Avhich woes, are they not majesty's and
nature's? Speaks, at the same time, his gay defiance, his
firm-set resolution. Citizens, still more citizenesses, see
the right and the wrong; not the military system alone
will die by suicide, but much along with it. As was said,
there is yet possible a deeper overturn than any yet wit-

THE FRENCH REVOL UTlON. 325
nessed : that deepest w^turn of the black -burning sulphur
ous stratum whereon all rests and grows !
But how these things may act on the rude soldier mine?
with its military pedantries, its inexperience of all that lies
off the parade ground; inexpereince as of a child, yet
fierceness of a man, and vehemence of a Frenchman ! It
is long that secret communings in mess-room and guard
room, sour looks, thousandfold petty vexations between
commander and commanded, measure everywhere the
weary military day. Ask Captain Dampmartin; an
authentic, ingenuous literary officer of horse; who loves
the reign of liberty, after a sort : yet has had his heart
grieved to the quick many times, in the hot south-western
region and elsewhere; and has seen riot, civil battle by
daylight and by torchlight, and anarchy hatefuler than
death. ' How insubordinate troopers, with drink in their
heads, meet Captain Dampmartin and another on the ram
parts, where there is no escape or side-path; and make
military salute punctually, for we look calm on them ; yet
make it in a snappish, almost insulting manner: how one
morning they "leave all their chamois-shirts" and super
fluous buffs, which they are tired of, laid in piles at the
captain's doors; whereat "Ave laugh," as the ass does
eating thistles: nay, how they "knot two forage-cords
together," with universal noisy cursing, with evident
intent to hang" the quartermaster: all this the worthy cap
tain, looking on it through the ruddy-and-sable of fond
regretful memory, has flowingly written down.* Men
growl in vague discontent; officers fling up their commis
sions and emigrate in disgust.
Or let us ask another literary officer; not yet captain;
sublieutenant only, in the artillery regiment La Fere : a
young man of twenty-one; not unentitled to speak; the
name of him is Napoleon Bounaparte. To such height of
sublieutenancy has he now got promoted, from Brienne
School, five years ago; "being found qualified in mathe
matics by La Place." He is lying at Auxonne, in the
west, in these months; not sumptuously lodged, "in the
house of a barber, to whose wife he did not pay the cus
tomary degree of respect ;" or even over at the pavillion, in a
chamber with bare walls; the only furniture an indifferent
•Dampmartin, " Evenemens," i. 122-146.

326 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
" bed without curtains, two chairs, and in the recess of a
window a table covered with books and papers; his
brother Louis sleeps on a coarse mattress in an adjoining
room." However, he is doing something great: writing
his first book or pamphlet, eloquent vehement, "Letter to
M. Matteo Buttafuoco," our Corsican deputy, who is not a
patriot, but an aristocrat unworthy of deputyship. Joly
of D61e is publisher. The literary sublieutenant corrects
the proofs; "sets out on foot from Auxonne every morn
ing at four o'clock, for Dole; after looking over the proofs,
he partakes of an extremely frugal breakfast with Joly,
and immediately prepares for returning to his garrison;
where he arrives before noon, having thus walked above
twenty miles in the course of the morning."
This sublieutenant can remark that, in drawing-rooms,
on streets, on highways, at inns, everywhere men's minds
are ready to kindle into a flame. That a patriot, if he
appear in the drawing-room, or amid a group of officers, is
liable enough to be discouraged, so great is the majority
against him : but no sooner does he get into the street, or
among the soldiers, than he feels again as if the whole
nation were with him. That after the famous oath, to
the king, to the nation, and law, there was a great change;
that before this, if ordered to fire on the people, he for
one would have done it in the king's name; but that after
this, in the nation's name, he would not have done it.
Likewise that the patriot officers, more numerous too,, in
the artillery and engineers than elsewhere, were few in
number; yet that having the soldiers on their side, they
ruled the regiment; and did often deliver the aristocrat
brother officer out of peril and strait. One day, for exam
ple, " a member of our own mess roused the mob, by sing
ing from the windows of our dining-room, Oh, Richard,
Oh, my king; and I had to snatch him from their fury." *
All which let the reader multiply by ten thousand; and
spread it, with slight variations, over all the camps and
garrisons of France. The French army seems on the verge
of universal mutiny.
Universal mutiny ! There is in that what may well make
patriot constitutionalism and an august assembly shudder.
*Norvin's, "Histoire de Napoleon," i. 47; Las Cases, "Memoires"
(translated into Hazlitt's "Life of Napoleon," i. 23-31).

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 327
Something behoves to be done ; yet what to do no man can
tell. Mirabeau proposes even that the soldiery, having
come to such a pass, be forthwith disbanded, the whole
two hundred and eighty thousand of them ; and organized
anew.* Impossible this, in so sudden a manner! cry all
men. And yet literally, answer we, it is inevitable, in
one manner or another. Such an army, with its four-
generation nobles, its peculated pay, and men knotting
forage-cords to hang their quartermaster, cannot subsist
beside such a revolution. Your alternative is a slow-pining
chronic dissolution and new organization ; or a swift deci
sive one; the agonies spread over years, or concentrated into
an hour. With a Mirabeau for minister or governor, the
latter had been the choice; with no Mirabeau for governor,
it will naturally be the former.

CHAPTER III.
BOUILLE AT METZ.
To Bouille, in his north-eastern circle, none of these
things are altogether hid. Many times flight over the
marches gleams out on him as a last guidance in such
bewilderment; nevertheless he continues here; struggling
always to hope the best, not from new organization, but
from happy counter-revolution and return to the old. For
the rest, it is clear to him that this same national federa
tion, and universal swearing and fraternizing of people and
soldiers, has done "incalculable mischief." So much that
fermented secretly has hereby got vent, and become open :
national guards and soldiers of the line, solemnly embrac
ing one another on all parade-fields, drinking, swearing
patriotic oaths, fall into disorderly street-processions, con
stitutional unmilitary exclamations and hurrahings. On
which account the regiment Picardie, for one, has to be
drawn out in the square of the barracks, here at Metz, and
sharply harangued by the general himself; but expresses
penitence, f
Far and near, as accounts testify, insubordination has
begun grumbling louder and louder. Officers have been
*" Moniteur," 1790, No. 233.
f Bouille, "Memoires," i. 118.

328 THE FRENCH R E VOL UTION.
seen shut up in their mess-rooms ; assaulted with clamorous
demands, not without menaces. The insubordinate ring
leader is dismissed with "yellow furlough," yellow infamous
thing they call cartouche jaune: but ten new ringleaders rise
in his stead, and the yellow cartouche ceases to be thought
disgraceful. " Within a fortnight," or at furthest a month,
of that sublime feast of pikes, the whole French army,
demanding arrears, forming reading clubs, frequenting
popular societies, is in a state which Bouille can call by no
name but that of mutiny. Bouille knows it as few do;
and speaks by dire experience. Take one instance instead
of many.
It is still an early day of August, the precise date now
undiscoverable, when Bouille, about to set out for the
waters of Aix-la-Chapelle, is once more suddenly summoned
to the barracks of Metz. The soldiers stand ranged in
fighting order, muskets loaded, the officers all there on
compulsion; and required with many-voiced emphasis to
have their arrears paid. Picardie was penitent; but we
see it has relapsed : the wide space bristles and lours with
mere mutinous armed men. Brave Bouille advances to
the nearest regiment, opens his commanding lips to ha
rangue; obtains nothing but querulous-indignant discord
ance and the sound of so many thousand livres legally due.
The moment is trying; there are some ten thousand sol
diers now in Metz, and one spirit seems to have spread
among them.
Bouille is firm as the adamant; but what shall he do? -
A German regiment, named of Salm, is thought t» be of
better temper; nevertheless Salm too may have heard of
the precept, Thou shalt not steal; Salm too may know that
money is money. Bouille walks trustfully toward the
Regiment de Salm, speaks trustful words ; but here again is
answered by the cry of forty-four thousand livres odd sous.
A cry waxing more and more vociferous, as Salm's humor
mounts; which cry, as it will produce no cash or promise
of cash, ends in the wide simultaneous whirr of shouldered
muskets, and a determined quick-time march on the
part of Salm — toward its colonel's house, in the next
street, there to seize the colors and military chest. Thus
does Salm, for its part ; strong in the faith that meum is
not tuum, that fair speeches are not forty-four thousand
livres odd sous.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 329
Unrestrainable! Salm tramps to military time, quick
consuming the way. Bouille and the officers, drawing
sword, have to dash into double-quick pas-de-charge, or
unmilitary running; to get the start; to station them
selves on the outer staircase, and stand there with what of
death-defiance and sharp steel they have; Salm truculently
coiling itself up, rank after rank, opposite them, in such
humor as we can fancy, which happily has not yet mounted
to the murder-pitch. There will Bouille stand, certain at
least of one man's purpose: in grim calmness, awaiting the
issue. What the interpidest of men and generals can do is
done. Bouille, though there is a barricading picket at
each end of the street, and death under his eyes, contrives
to send for a dragoon regiment with orders to charge; the
dragoon officers mount; the dragoon men will not: hope
is none there for him. The street, as we say, barricaded;
the earth all shut out, only the indifferent heavenly vault
overhead : perhaps here or there a timorous householder
peering out of window, with prayer for Bouille ; copious
rascality, on the pavement, with prayer for Salm;
there do the two parties stand; like chariots locked
in a narrow thoroughfare; like locked wrestlers at a
dead -grip! For two hours they stand: Bouille' s sword
glittering in his hand, adamantine resolution clouding his
brows : for two hours by the clock of Metz. Moody-silent
stands Salm, with occasional clangor; but does not fire.
Rascality, from time to time, urges some grenadier to
level his musket at the general ; who looks on it as a bronze
general would : and always some corporal or other strikes
it up.
In such remarkable attitude, standing on that staircase
for two hours, does brave Bouille, long a shadow, dawn
on us visibly out of the dimness, and become a person.
For the rest, since Salm has not shot him at the first
instant, and since in himself there is no variableness, the
danger will diminish. The mayor, "a man infinitely
respectable," with his municipals and tricolor sashes,
finally gains entrance ; remonstrates, perorates, promises ;
gets Salm persuaded home to its barracks. Next day,
our respectable mayor lending the money, the officers pay
down the half of the demand in ready cash. With which
liquidation Salm pacifies itself; and for the present all is
hushed up, as much as may be.*
* Bouille, i. 140-5.

330 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Such scenes as this of Metz, or preparations and demon
strations toward such, are -universal over France: Damp
martin, with his knotted forage-cords and piled chamois-
jackets, is at Strasburg, in the south-east; in these same
days or rather nights, royal Champagne is "shouting Vive
la nation, au diable les aristocrates, with some thirty lit
candles," at Hesdin, on the far north-west. "The garri-
on of Bitche, " Deputy Rewbell is sorry to state, " went out
of the town with drums beating; deposed its officers; and
then returned into the town, saber in hand." * Ought
not a national assembly to occupy itself with these objects?
Military France is everywhere full of sour inflammatory
humor, which exhales itself fuliginously, this way or that:
a whole continent of smoking flax ; which, blown on here
or there by any angry wind, might so easily start into a
blaze, into a continent of fire.
Constitutional patriotism is in deep natural alarm at
these things. The august assembly sits diligently deliber
ating; dare nowise resolve, with Mirabeau, on an instan
taneous disbandment and extinction ; finds that a course of
palliatives is easier. But at least and lowest, this grievance
of the arrears shall be rectified. A plan, much noised of
in those days, under the name "Decree of the 6th of
August," has been devised for that. Inspectors shall visit
all armies; and, with certain elected corporals and "sol
diers able to write," verify what arrears and peculations
do lie due, and make them good. Well if in this way the
smoky heat be cooled down; if it be not, as we say,
ventilated overmuch, or, by sparks and collision some
where, sent up!

CHAPTER IV.
ARREARS AT NANCI.
We are to remark, however, that of all districts, this of
Bouille's seems the- inflammablest. It was always to
Bouille and Metz that royalty would fly; Austria lies near;
here more than elsewhere must the disunited people look
over the borders, into a dim sea of foreign politics and
f " Moniteur " (in ' ' Hist. Pari." vii. 29).

THE FR ENCH REVOL UTION. 33 1
diplomacies, with hope or apprehension, with mutual
exasperation. It was but in these days that certain Austrian troops,
marching peaceably across an angle of this region, seemed
an invasion realized; and there rushed toward Sfcenai,
with musket on shouder, from all the winds, some thirty
thousand national guards, to inquire what the matter was.*
A matter of mere diplomacy it proved; the Austrian
kaiser, in haste to get to Belgium, had bargained for this
short cut. The infinite dim movement of European poli
tics waved a skirt over these spaces, passing on its way;
like the passing shadoAV of a condor; and such a winged
flight of thirty thousand, with mixed cackling and crow
ing, rose in consequence! For, in addition to all, this
people, as we said, is much divided: aristocrats abound;
patriotism has both aristocrats and Austrians to watch.
It is Lorraine, this region; not so illuminated as old
France: it remembers ancient feudalisms; nay, within
man's memory it had a court and king of its own, or
indeed the splendor of a court and king, without the bur
den. Then, contrariwise, the mother society, which sits
in the Jacobin's Church at Paris, has daughters in the towns
here ; shrill-tongued, driven acrid ; consider how the memory
of good King Stanislaus, and ages of imperial feudalism,
may comport with this new acrid evangel, and what a viru
lence of discord there may be ! In all which, the soldiery,
officers on one side, private men on the other, takes part,
and now indeed principal part; a soldiery, moreover, all
the hotter here as it lies the denser, the frontier province
requiring more of it.
So stands Lorraine : but the capital city more especially
so. The pleasant city of Nanci, which faded "feudalism
loves, where King Stanislaus personally dwelt and shone,
has an aristocrat municipality, and then also a daughter
society : it has some forty thousand divided souls of popu
lation ; and three large regiments, one of which is Swiss
Chateau-Vieux, dear to patriotism ever since it refused
fighting, or was thought to refuse, in the Bastille days.
Here unhappily all evil influences seem to meet concen
tered ; here, of all places, may jealousy and heat evolve
itself. These many months, accordingly, man has been
* " Moniteur," Seance du 9 Aoiit, 1790,

332 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
set against man, washed against unwashed ; patriot soldier
against aristocrat captain, ever the more bitterly; and' a
long score of grudges has been running up.
Nameable grudges, and likewise unnameable : for there
is a punctual nature in wrath ; and daily, were there but
glances of the eye, tones of the voice, and minutest com
missions or omissions, it will jot down somewhat, to
account, under the head of sundries, which always swells
the sum-total. For example, in April last, in those times
of preliminary federation, when national guards and sol
diers were everywhere swearing brotherhood, and all France
was locally federating, preparing for the grand national
feast of pikes, it was observed that these Nanci officers
threw cold water on the whole brotherly business; that
they first hung back from appearing at the Nanci federa
tion ; then did appear, but in mere redingote and undress,
with scarcely a clean shirt on ; nay that one of them, as
the national colors flaunted by in that solemn moment,
did, without visible necessity, take occasion to spit*
Small "sundries as per journal," but then incessant
ones ! The aristocrat municipality, pretending to be con
stitutional, keeps mostly quiet; not so the daughter
society, the five thousand adult male patriots of the place,
still less the five thousand female: not so the young,
whiskered or whisk erless, four-generation noblesse in
epaulettes; the grim patriot Swiss of Chateau -Vieux,
effervescent infantry of Regiment du Roi, hot troopers of
Mestre-de-Camp ! Walled Nanci, which stands so bright
and trim, with its straight streets, spacious squares, and
Stanislaus' architecture, on the fruitful alluvium of the
Meurthe; so bright, amid the yellow cornfields in these
reaper months, is inwardly but a den of discord, anxiety,
inflammability, not far from exploding. Let Bouille look
to it. If that universal military heat, which we liken to a
vast continent of smoking flax, do anywhere take fire, his
beard, here in Lorraine and Nanci, may the most readily
of all get singed by it.

Bouille, for his part, is busy enough, but only with the
general superintendence; getting his pacified Salm, and
all other still tolerable regiments, marched out of Metz, to
* " Peux Amis," v. 217.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 333
southward towns and villages; to rural cantonments as at
Vic, Marsal and thereabout, by the still waters ; where is
plenty of horse-forage, sequestered parade ground, and the
soldier's speculative faculty can be stilled by drilling.
Salm, as we said, received only half payment of arrears;
naturally not without grumbling. Nevertheless that scene
of the drawn sword may, after all, have raised Bouille
in the mind of Salm ; for men and soldiers love intrepidity
and swift inflexible decision, even when they suffer by it.
As indeed is not this fundamentally the quality of quali
ties for a man? A quality which by itself is next to
nothing, since inferior animals, asses, dogs, even mules
have it; yet, in due combination, it is the indispensable
basis of all.
Of Nanci and its heats, Bouille, commander of the whole,
knows nothing special: understands generally that the
troops in that city are perhaps the worst.* The officers
there have it all, as they have long had it, to themselves;
and unhappily seem to manage it ill. "Fifty yellow
furloughs," given out in one batch, do surely betoken
difficulties. But what was patriotism to think of certain
light-fencing fusileers "set on," or supposed to be set on,
"to insult the grenadier club," considerate speculative grena
diers and that reading-room of theirs? With shoutings,
with hootings; till the speculative grenadier drew his side-
arms too ; and there ensued battery and duels ! Nay more,
are not swashbucklers of the same stamp "sent out" visibly,
or sent out presumably, in the dress of soldiers, to pick
quarrels with the citizens; now, disguised as citizens, to
pick quarrels with the soldiers? For a certain Roussiere,
expert in fence, was taken in the very fact; four officers
(presumably of tender years hounding him on, who there
upon fled precipitately! Fence-master Roussiere, haled
to the guard house, had sentence of three months' imprison
ment: but his comrades demanded "yellow furlough" for
him of all persons ; nay thereafter they produced him on
parade; capped him in paper-helmet, inscribed Iscariot;
marched him to the gate of the city; and there sternly
commanded him to vanish for evermore.
On all which suspicions, accusations and noisy procedure,
and on enough of the like continually accumulating, the
* Bouille, i. C. 9.

334 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
officer could not but look with disdainful indignation; per
haps disdainfully express the same in words, and "soon
after fly over to the Austrians."
So that when it here, as elsewhere, comes to the ques
tion of arrears, the humor and procedure is of the bitterest.
Regiment Mestre-de-Camp getting, amid loud clamor,
some three gold louis a man, which have, as usual, to be
borrowed from the municipality; Swiss Chateau-Vieux
applying for the like but getting instead instantaneous
courrois, or cat-o'-nine-tails, with subsequent unsufferable
hisses from the women and children: Regiment du Roi,
sick of hope deferred, at length seizing its military chest,
and marching it to quarters, but next day marching it
back again, through streets all struck silent; unordered
paradings and clamors, not without strong liquor ; objurga
tion, insubordination; your military ranked arrangement
going all (as the typographers say of set types, in a simi
lar case) rapidly to pie! * Such is Nanci in these early
days of August ; the sublime feast of pikes not yet a month
old. Constitutional patriotism, at Paris and elsewhere, may
well quake at the news. War-minister Latour du Pin
runs breathless to the national assembly, with a written
message that "all is burning, tout brule tout pr esse." The
national assembly, on the spur of the instant, renders such
decret, and "order to submit and repent," as he requires;
if it will avail anything. On the other hand, journalism,
through all its throats, gives hoarse outcry, condemnatory,
elegiac-applausive. The forty-eight sections lift up voices;
sonorous Brewer, or call him now Colonel Santerre, is not
silent, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. For, meanwhile,
the Nanci soldiers have sent a deputation of ten, furnished
Avith documents and proofs; who will tell another story
than the " all-is-burning" one. Which deputed ten, before
ever they reach the assembly hall, assiduous Latour du Pin
picks up, and, on warrant of Mayor Bailly, claps in prison.
Most unconstitutionally; for they had officers' furloughs.
Whereupon Saint-Antoine, in indignant uncertainty of the
future, closes its shops. Is Bouille a traitor, then, sold to
Austria? In that case, these poor private sentinels have
revolted mainly out of patriotism?
* " Deux Amis," v. C. 8,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 33§
New deputation, deputation of national guardsmen now,
Sets forth from Nanci to enlighten the assembly. It meets
the old deputed ten returning, quite unexpectedly
smhanged ; and proceeds thereupon with better prospects ;
but effects nothing. Deputations, government messengers,
orderlies at hand-gallop, alarms, thousand-voiced rumors,
go vibrating continually ; backward and forward, scatter
ing distraction. Not till the last week of August does M.
de Malseigne, selected as inspector, get down to the scene
of mutiny; with authority, with cash, and "Decree of the
6th of August." He now shall see these arrears liquidated,
justice done, or at least tumult quashed.

CHAPTER V.
INSPECTOR MALSEIGNE.
Of Inspector Malseigne we discern, by direct light,
that he is " of Herculean stature ;" and infer, with proba
bility, that he is of truculent mustachioed aspect, for
royalist officers now leave the upper lip unshaven ; that he
is of indomitable bull -heart; and also, unfortunately, of
thick bull-head.
On Tuesday the 24th of August, 1790, he opens session
as inspecting commissioner; meets those "elected cor
porals, and soldiers that can write." He finds the
accounts of Chateau -Vieux to be complex; to require
delay and reference: he takes to haranguing, to repri
manding; ends amid audible grumbling. Next morning,
he resumes session, not at the town hall as prudent
municipals counseled, but once more at the barracks.
Unfortunately Chateau-Vieux, grumbling all night, will
now hear of no delay or reference ; from reprimanding on
his part, it goes to bullying, answered with continual cries
of "Jugez tout de suite, judge it at once;" whereupon M.
de Mallseigne will off in a huff. But lo, Chateau-Vieux,
swarming all about the barrack-court, has sentries at every
gate; M. de Malseigne, demanding egress, cannot get it,
not though Commandant Denoue backs him, can get only
"Jugez tout de suite." Here is a nodus!
Bull-hearted M. de Malseigne draws his sword; and
will force egress. Confused splutter. M. de Malseigne's
8word breaks: he snatches Commandant Denoue's; the

336 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
sentry is wounded. M. de Malseigne, whom one is loth to
kill, does force egress, followed by Chateau-Vieux all in
disarray; a spectacle to Nanci. M. de Malseigne Avalks at
a sharp pace, yet never runs; wheeling from time to time,
with menaces and movements of fence ; and so reaches
Denoue's house, unhurt; which house Chateau-Vieux, in
an agitated manner, invests, hindered as yet from entering,
by a crowd of officers formed on the staircase. M. de
Malseigne retreats by back ways to the town hall, flustered
though undaunted; amid an escort of national guards.
From the town hall he, on the morrow, emits fresh orders,
fresh plans of settlement with Chateau-Vieux; to none of
which will Chateau-Vieux listen : whereupon he finally,
amid noise enough, emits order that Chateau-Vieux shall
march on the morrow morning, and quarter at Sane Louis.
Chateau-Vieux flatly refuses marching; M. de Malseigne
"takes act," due notarial protest, of such refusal, if
happily that may avail him.
This is the end of Thursday; and, indeed, of M. de
Malseigne's inspectorship, which has lasted some fifty
hours. To such length, in fifty hours, has he unfortu
nately brought it. Mestre-de-Camp and Regiment du Roi
hang, as it were, fluttering ; Chateau-Vieux is clean gone,
in what way we see. Over night, an aide-de-camp of
Lafayette's stationed here for such emergency, sends swift
emissaries far and wide to summon national guards. The
slumber of the country is broken by clattering hoofs, by
loud fraternal knockings; everywhere the constitutional
patriot must clutch his fighting-gear, and take the road
for Nanci.
And thus the Herculean inspector has sat all Thursday,
among terror-struck municipals, a center of confused noise :
all Thursday, Friday, and till Saturday toward noon.
Chateau-Vieux, in spite of the notarial protest, will not
march a step. As many as four thousand national guards
are dropping or pouring in; uncertain what is expected of
them, still more uncertain what will be obtained of them.
For all is uncertainty, commotion and suspicion; there
goes a word that Bouille, beginning to bestir himself in
the rural Cantonments eastward, is but a royalist traitor;
that Ch&teau-Vieux and patriotism are sold to Austria, of
Avhich latter M. de Malseigne is probably some agent.
Mestre-de-Camp and Roi flutter still more questionably;

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 337
Chateau-Vieux, far from marching, "waves red flags out
of tAVO carriages," in a passionate manner, along the streets;
and next morning answers its officers ; " Pay us, then ; and
we will march with you to the world's end !"
Under which circumstances, toward noon on Saturday,
M. de Malseigne thinks it were good perhaps to inspect
the ramparts, on horseback. He mounts, accordingly,
with escort of three troopers. At the gate of the city, he
bids two of them wait for his return; and with the third,
a trooper to be depended upon, he — gallops off for Lune-
ville; where lies a certain carbineer regiment not yet in a
mutinous state ! The two left troopers soon got uneasy ;
discover how it is, and give the alarm. Mestre-de-Camp,
to the number of a hundred, saddles in frantic haste, as if
sold to Austria; gallops out pellmell in chase of its
inspector. And so they spur, and the inspector spurs;
careering, with noise and jingle, up the valley of the
River Meurthe, toward Luneville and the midday sun:
through an astonished country ; indeed almost to their own
astonishment. What a hunt; Actseon-like ; which Actseon de Malseigne
happily gains. To arms, ye carbineers of Luneville: to
chastise the mutinous men, insulting your general officer,
insulting your own quarters; above all things, fire soon,
lest there be parleying and ye refuse to fire ! The carbi
neers fire soon, exploding upon the first stragglers of
Mestre-de-Camp; who shriek at the very flash, and fall
back hastily on Nanci, in a state not far from distraction.
Panic and fury ; sold to Austria without an if; so much per
regiment, the very sums can be specified; and traitorous
Malseigne is fled! Help, oh heaven; help, thou earth,
ye unwashed patriots ; ye too are sold like us !
Effervescent Regiment du Roi primes its firelocks, Mestre-
de-Camp saddles wholly : Commandant Denoue is seized,
is flung in prison with a "canvas-shirt {sarreau de toile)"-
about him; Chateau-Vieux bursts up the magazines; dis
tributes "three thousand fusils" to a patriot people:
Austria shall have a hot bargain. Alas, the unhappy
hunting-dogs, as we said, have hunted away their hunts
man ; and do now run howling and baying, on what trail
they know not; nigh rabid!
And so there is tumultuous march of men, through the
night; with halt on the heights of Flinval, whence Lune-

338 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
ville can be seen all illuminated. Then there is parley, at
four in the morning ; and re-parley ; finally there is agree
ment: the carbineers gave in; Malseigne is surrendered,
with apologies on all sides. After weary confused hours,
he is even got under way; the Lunevillers all turning out,
in the idle Sunday, to see such departure : home-going of
mutinous Mestre-de-Camp with its inspector captive.
Mestre-de-Camp accordingly marches; the Lunevillers
look. See ! at the corner of the first stre'et, our inspector
bounds off again, bull -hearted as he is; amid the slash of
sabers, the crackle of musketry ; and escapes, full gallop,
with only a ball lodged in his huS-jerkin. The Herculean
man ! And yet it is an escape to no purpose. For the
carbineers, to whom after the hardest Sunday's ride on
record, he has come circling back, "stand deliberating by
their nocturnal watch-fires;" deliberating of Austria, of
traitors, and the rage of Mestre-de-Camp. So that, on the
Avhole, the next sight we have is that of M. de Malseigne,
on the Monday afternoon, faring bull-hearted through the
streets of Nanci ; in open carriage, a soldier standing over
him with drawn sword; amid the "furies of the women,"
hedges of national guards, and confusion of Babel; to the
prison beside Commandant Denoue ! That finally is the
lodging of Inspector Malseigne.*
Surely it is time Bouille were drawing near. The coun
try all round, alarmed with Avatch-fires, illuminated towns,
and marching and rout, has ¦ been sleepless these several
nights. Nanci, with its uncertain national guards, with
its distributed fusils, mutinous soldiers, black panic and
redhot ire, is not a city but a Bedlam.

CHAPTER VI.
BOUILLE AT NANCI.
Haste with help, thou brave Bouille: if swift help
come not, all is now verily " burning" ; and may burn, to
Avhat lengths and breadths! Much, in these hours, depends
on Bouille; as it shall now fare with him, the whole future
may be this way or be that. If, for example, he were to
*" Deux Amis," v. 206-251; Newspapers and Documents (in "Hist.
Pari." vii. 59-162).

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 339
loiter dubitating, and not come; if he were to come, and
fail : the whole soldiery of France to blaze into mutiny,
national guards going some this way, some that ; and royal
ism to draw its rapier, and Sansculottism to snatch its pike ;
and the spirit of Jacobinism, as yet young, girt with sun-
rays, to grow instantaneously mature, girt with hell-fire, as
mortals, in one night of deadly crisis, have had their heads
turned gray !

Brave Bouille is advancing fast, with the old inflexi
bility; gathering himself, unhappily "in small affluences,"
from east, from west and north; and now on Tuesday
morning, the last day of the month, he stands all con
certed, unhappily still in small force, at the village of
Frouarde, within some few miles. Son of Adam with a
more dubious task before him is not in the Avorld this
Tuesday morning. A weltering inflammable sea of doubt
and peril, and Bouille sure of simply one thing, his own
determination. Which one thing, indeed, may be Avorth
many. He puts a most firm face on the matter ; " Sub
mission, or unsparing battle and destruction; twenty-
four hours to make your choice ;" this was the tenor of his
proclamation ; thirty copies of which he sent yesterday to
Nanci: all which, we find, were intercepted and not
posted.* Nevertheless, at half-past eleven this morning, seemingly
by way of answer, there does wait on him at Frouarde some
deputation from the mutinous regiments, from the Nanci
municipals, to see what can be done. Bouille receives this
deputation "in a large open court adjoining his lodging;"
pacified Salm, and the rest, attend also, being invited to
do it, all happily still in the right humor. The mutineers
pronounce themselves with a decisiveness, which to Bouille
seems insolence; and happily to Salm also. Salm, forget
ful of the Metz staircase and saber, demands that the
scoundrels " be hanged" there and then. Bouille represses
the hanging; but answers that mutinous soldiers have one
course, and not more than one: To liberate, with heart
felt contrition, Messieurs Denoue and De Malseigne; to get
* Compare Bouille, "Memoires," i. 153-176; " Deux Amis," v. 251-
271; "Hist. Pari." ubi supr,a.

340 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
ready forthwith for marching off, whither he shall order;
and "submit and repent," as the national assembly has
decreed, as he yesterday did in thirty printed placards
proclaim. These are his terms, unalterable as the decrees
of destiny. Which terms as they, the mutineer deputies,
seemingly do not accept, it were good for them to vanish
from this spot, and even to do it promptly ; with him
too, in few instants, the word will be, forward! The
mutineer deputies vanish, not unpromptly; the municipal
ones, anxious beyond right for their own individualities,
prefer abiding with Bouille.
Brave Bouille, though he puts a most firm face on
the matter, knows his position full well; how at Nanci,
what with rebellious soldiers, with uncertain national
guards, and so many distributed fusils, there rage and roar
some ten thousand fighting men ; while with himself is
scarcely the third part of that number, in national guards
also uncertain, in mere pacified regiments, for the present
full of rage, and clamor to march ; but whose rage and
clamor may next moment take such a fatal new figure.
On the top of one uncertain billow, therewith to calm
billows! Bouille must "abandon himself to Fortune;"
who is said sometimes to favor the brave. At half-past
twelve, the mutineer deputies having vanished, our drums
beat; we march; for Nanci! Let Nanci bethink itself,
then ; for Bouille has thought and determined.
And yet how shall Nanci think; not a city but a
Bedlam! Grim CMteau-Vieux is for defense to the
death ; forces the municipality to order, by tap of drum,
all citizens acquainted with artillery to turn out, and
assist in managing the cannon. On the other hand, effer
vescent Regiment du Roi is drawn up in its barracks; quite
disconsolate, hearing the humor Salm is in ; and ejaculates
dolefully from its thousand throats ; " La loi, la loi, law,
law!" Mestre-de-Camp blusters, with profane swearing,
in mixed terror and furor ; national guards look this way
and that, not knowing what to do. What a Bedlam city;
as many plans as heads; all ordering, none obeying;
quiet none, except the dead, who sleep underground,
having done their fighting.
And, behold, Bouille proves as good as his word: "at
half-past two" scouts report that he is within half a
league of the gates; rattling along, with cannon and

THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION. 341
array; breathing nothing but destruction. A new depu
tation, municipals, mutineers, officers, goes out to meet
him; with passionate entreaty for yet ope other hour.
Bouille grants an hour. Then, at the end thereof, no
Denoue or Malseigne appearing as promised, he rolls his
drums, and again takes the road. Toward four o'clock,
the terror-struck townsmen may see him face to face.
His cannons rattle there, in their carriages; his vanguard
is within thirty paces of the gate Stanislaus. Onward like
a planet, by appointed times, by law of nature! What
next? Lo, flag of truce and chamade, conjuration to
halt: Malseigne and Denoue are on the street, coming
hither; the soldiers all repentant, ready to submit and
march! Adamantine Bouille's look alters not; yet the
word halt is given: gladder moment he never saw. Joy of
joys! Malseigne and Denoue do verily issue; escorted by
national guards; from streets all frantic, with sale to
Austria and so forth; they salute Bouille, unscathed.
Bouille steps aside to speak with them, and with other
heads of the town there; having already ordered by what
gates and routes the mutineer regiments shall file out.
Such colloquy with these two general officers and other
principal townsmen was natural enough ; nevertheless one
wishes Bouille had postponed it, and not stepped aside.
Such tumultuous inflammable masses, tumbling along,
making way for each other ; this of keen nitrous oxide,
that of sulphurous firedamp, were it not well to stand
between them, keeping them well separate, till the space be
cleared? Numerous stragglers- of Chateau-Vieux and the
rest have not marched with their main columns, which are
filing out by the appointed gates, taking station in the open
meadows. National guards are in a state of nearly dis
tracted uncertainty ; the populace, armed and unarmed, roll
openly delirious, betrayed, sold to the Austrians, sold to
the aristocrats. There are loaded cannon, with lit matches,
among them, and Bouille's vanguard is halted within thirty
paces of the gate. Command dwells not in that mad
inflammable mass; which smolders and tumbles there, in
blind smoky rage; which will not open the gate when sum
moned; says it will open the cannon's throat sooner!
Cannonade not, oh friends, or be it through my body!
cries heroic young Desilles, young captain of Roi, clasping
the murderous engine in his arms, and holding it.

342 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Chateau-Vieux Swiss, by main force, with oaths and
menaces, wrench off the heroic youth; who undaunted,
amid still louder oaths, seats himself on the touch-hole.
Amid still louder oaths, with ever louder clangor, and,
alas, with the loud crackle of first one, and then of three
other muskets; which explode into his body; which roll it
in the dust, and do also, in the loud madness of such
moment, bring lit cannon-match to ready priming; and so,
with one thunderous belch of grapeshot, blast some fifty
of Bouille's vanguard into air!
Fatal ! That sputter of the first musket-shot has kindled
such a cannon-shot, such a death -blaze; and all is noiv
red-hot madness, conflagration as of Tophet. With
demoniac rage, the Bouille vanguard storms through that
gate Stanislaus; with fiery sweep, sweeps mutiny clear
away, to death, or into shelters and cellars; from which
latter, again, mutiny continues firing. The ranked, regi
ments hear it in their meadow; they rush back again
through the nearest gate; Bouille gallops in, distracted,
inaudible; and now has begun in Nanci, as in that
doomed Hall of the Nibelungen, "a murder grim and
great." Miserable; such scene of dismal aimless madness as the
anger of heaven but rarely permits among men! From
cellar or from garret, from open street in front, from
successive corners of cross-streets on each hand, Chateau-
Vieux and patriotism keep up the murderous rolling-fire,
on murderous not unpatriotic fires. Your blue national
captain, riddled with balls, one hardly knows on whose
side fighting, requests to be laid on the colors to die; the
patriotic woman (name not given, deed surviving) screams
to Chateau -Vieux that it must not fire the other cannon ;
and even flings a pail of water on it, since screaming
avails not.* Thou shalt fight; thou shalt not fight;
and with whom shalt thou fight! Could tumult awaken
the old dead Burgundian Charles the Bold might stir
from under that rotunda of his ; never since he, raging,
sank in the ditches, and lost life and diamond, was such a
noise heard here.
Three thousand, as some count, lie mangled, gory:
the half of Chateau-Vieux has been shot, without need of
*" Deux Amis," v. 268.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 343
court-martial. Cavalry, of Mestre-de-Camp, or their foes,
can do little. Regiment du Roi was persuaded to its
barracks; stands there palpitating. Bouille, armed with
the terrors of the laAV, and favored of fortune, finally
triumphs. In two murderous hours, he has penetrated to the
grand squares, dauntless, though with loss of forty officers
and five hundred men : the shattered remnants of Chateau-
Vieux, are seeking covert. Regiment du Roi, not effer
vescent now, alas no, but having effervesced, will offer to
ground its arms; will "march in a quarter of an hour."
Nay these poor effervesced require " escort" to march with,
and get it; though they are thousands strong, and have
thirty ball-cartridges a man! The sun is not yet down,
when peace, which might have come bloodless, has come
bloody: the mutinous regiments are on march, doleful,
on their three routes; and from Nanci rises wail of women
and men, the voice of weeping and desolation; the city
weeping for its slain who awaken not. These streets are
empty but for victorious patrols.

Thus has fortune, favoring the brave, dragged Bouille,
as himself says, out of such a frightful peril "by the hair
of the head." An intrepid adamantine man, this Bouille:
had he stood in old Broglie's place in those Bastille days,
it might have been all different! He has extinguished
mutiny, and immeasurable civil war. Not for nothing, as
we see; yet at a rate which he and constitutional patriotism
consider cheap. Nay, as for Bouille, he, urged by subse
quent contradiction which arose, declares coldly, it was
rather against his own private mind, and more by public
military rule of duty, that he did extinguish it,* immeas
urable civil war being now the only chance. Urged, Ave
say, by subsequent contradiction! Civil war, indeed, is
chaos; and in all vital chaos there is new order shaping
itself free; but what a faith this, that of all new orders out
of chaos and possibility of man and his universe, Louis Six
teenth and two-chamber monarchy were precisely the one
that would shape itself! It is like undertaking to throw
deuce-ace, say only five hundred successive times, and any
other throw to be fatal for Bouille. Rather thank fortune,
* Bouille, i. 175,

344 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION
and heaven, always, thou intrepid Bouille; and let contra
diction go its way! Civil war, conflagrating universally
over France at this moment, might have led to one thing
or to another thing: meanwhile, to quench conflagration,
wheresoever one finds it, wheresoever one can; this, in all
times, is the rule for man and general officer.
But at Paris, so agitated and divided, fancy how it went,
when the continually vibrating orderlies vibrated thither
at hand-gallop, with such questionable news ! High is the
gratulation; and also deep the indignation. An august
assembly, by overwhelming majorities, passionately thanks
Bouill<3 ; a king's autograph, the voices of all loyal, all
constitutional men run to the same tenor. A solemn na
tional funeral-service, for the law-defenders slain at Nanci,
is said and sung in the Champ-de-Mars; Bailly, Lafay
ette and national guards, all except the few that protested,
assist. With pomp and circumstance, with episcopal
calicoes in tricolor girdles, altar of fatherland smoking
with cassolettes, or incense-kettles; the vast Champ-de-
Mars wholly hung round with back . mortcloth, which
mortcloth and expenditure Marat thinks had better have
been laid out in bread, in these dear days, and given to the
hungry living patriot.* On the other hand, living patriot
ism, and Saint-Antoine, which we have seen noisily closing
its shops and such-like, assembles now "to the number of
forty thousand;" and, with loud cries, under the very
Avindows of the thanking national assembly, demands
revenge for murdered brothers, judgment on Bouille, and
instant dismissal of War-Minister Latour du Pin.
At sound and sight of which things, if not War-Minister
Latour, yet " Adored Minister " Necker sees good, on the
3d of September, 1790, to withdraw softly, almost privily,
with an eye to the "recovery of his health." Home to na
tive Switzerland; not as he last came; lucky to reach it
alive! Fifteen months ago, we saw him coming, with
escort of horse, with sound of clarion and trumpet; and
now, at Arcis-sur-Aube, while he departs, unescorted,
soundless, the populace and municipals stop him as a fugitive
are not unlike massacring him as a traitor ; the national
assembly, consulted on the matter, gives him free egress
as a nullity. Such an unstable " drift-mold of accident"
* " Ami du Peuple " (in "Hist. Pari." ubi supra).

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 345
is the substance of this lower world, for them that dwell
in houses of clay ; so, especially in hot regions and times,
do the proudest palaces we build of it take wings, and be
came Sahara sand-palaces, spinning many-pillared in the
whirlwind, and bury us under their sand !
In spite of the forty thousand, the national assembly
persists in its thanks ; and royalist Latour du Pin continues
minister. The forty thousand assemble next day, as loud
as ever; roll toward Latour's hotel; find cannon on the
porch-steps with flambeau lit; and have to retire else
whither, and digest their spleen, or reabsorb it into the
blood. Over in Lorraine, meanwhile, they of the distributed
fusils, ringleaders of Mestre-de-Camp, of Roi, have got
. marked out for judgment; yet shall never get judged.
Briefer is the doom of Ch£teau-Vieux. Chateau-Vieux is,
by Saviss law, given up for instant trial in court-martial of
its own officers. Which court-martial, with all brevity
(in not many hours), has hanged some tAventy-three on
conspicuous gibbets; marched some three score in chains
to the galleys; and so, to appearance, finished the matter
off. Hanged men do cease forever from this earth; but
out of chains and the galleys there may be resuscitation in
triumph. Resuscitation for the chained hero; and even
for the chained scoundrel or semi-scoundrel! Scottish
John Knox, such world hero as we know, sat once never
theless pulling grim-tactiturn at the oar of French galley,
" in the Water of Lore" and even flung their Virgin Mary
over, instead of kissing her, as a "pented bredd," or
timber Virgin, who could naturally swim.* So, ye of
Chateau-Vieux, tug patiently, not without hope!
But indeed at Nanci generally, aristocracy rides
triumphant, rough. Bouille is gone again, the second day ;
an aristocrat municipality, Avith free course, is as cruel as
it had before been cowardly. The daughter society, as the
mother of the whole mischief, lies ignominiously suppressed ;
the prisons can hold no more; bereaved down-beaten
patriotism murmurs, not loud but deep. Here and in the
neighboring towns, "flattened balls" picked from the
streets of Nanci are worn at buttonholes : balls flattened in
carrying death to patriotism; men wear them there, in
* Knox's " History of the Reformation," b. i.

346 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
perpetual memento of revenge. Mutineer deserters roam
the woods; have to demand charity at the musket's end.
All is dissolution, mutual rancor, gloom and despair: till
national assembly commissioners arrive, with a steady gen
tle flame of constitutionalism in their hearts ; who gently
lift up the down-trodden, gently pull down the too up
lifted; reinstate the daughter society, recall the mutineer
deserter; gradually leveling, strive in all wise ways to
smoothe and soothe. With such gradual mild leveling on
the one side; as with solemn funeral-service, cassolettes,
courts-martial, national thanks, on the other, all that
officiality can do is done. The buttonhole will drop its flat
ball ; the black ashes, so far as may be, get green again.

This is the " affair of Nanci ;" by some called the " mas
sacre of Nanci;" properly speaking, the unsightly ivrong-
side of that thrice-glorious feast of pikes, the right-side of
which formed a spectacle for the very gods. Right side
and wrong lie always so near ; the one was in July, in
August the other! Theaters, the theaters over in London,
are bright with their pasteboard simulacrum of that
"Federation of the French people," brought out as drama;
this of Nanci, we may say, though not played in any paste
board theater, did for many months enact itself, and even
walk spectrally, in all French heads. For the news of it
flying pealing through all France ; awakening, in town and
village, in clubroom, messroom, to the utmost borders,
some mimic reflex or imaginative repetition of the business;
always with the angry questionable assertion: It was right;
It was wrong. Whereby come controversies, duels, em-
bitterment, vain jargon; the hastening forward, the
augmenting and intensifying of whatever new explosions
lie in store for us.
Meanwhile, at this cost or at that, the mutiny, as we say,
is stilled. The French army has neither burst up in uni
versal simultaneous delirium; nor been at once disbanded,
put an end to, and made new again. It must die in the
chronic manner, through years, by inches; with partial
revolts, as of Brest sailors or the like, which dare not spread ;
with men unhappy, insubordinate ; officers unhappier, in
royalist mustachioes, taking horse, singly or in bodies,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 347
across the Rhine: * sick dissatisfaction, sick disgust on
both sides; the army moribund, fit for no duty; till it do,
in that unexpected manner, phcenix-like, with long throes,
get both dead and new-born; then start forth strong, nay
stronger and even strongest.
Thus much was the brave Bouille hitherto fated to do.
Wherewith let him again fade into dimness; and, at Metz
or the rural cantonments, assiduously drilling, mysteri
ously diplomatizing, in scheme within scheme, hover as
formerly, a faint shadow, the hope of royalty.
* See Dampmartin, i. 249, etc. etc.

348 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.

BOOK TENTH.
THE TUILERIES.

CHAPTER I.
EPIMENIDES.

How true, that there is nothing dead in this universe;
that what we call dead is only changed, its forces working
in inverse order ! " The leaf that lies rotting in moist
winds," says one, "has still force, else how could it rot?"
Our Avhole universe is but an infinite complex of forces;
thousandfold, from gravitation up to thought and will;
man's freedom environed with necessity of nature: in all
which nothing at any moment slumbers, but all is forever
awake and busy. The thing that lies isolated, inactive
thou shalt nowhere discover; seek everywhere, from the
granite mountain, slow-moldering since creation, to the
passing cloud-vapor, to the living man ; to the action, to
the spoken word of man. The word that is spoken, as we
know, flies irrevocable; not less, but more, the action
that is done. " The gods themselves," sings Pindar, "can
not annihilate the action that is done." No: this, once
done, is done always; cast forth into endless time; and,
long conspicuous or soon hidden, must verily work and grow
forever there, an indestructible new element in the infinite
of things. Or, indeed, what is this infinite of things
itself, which men name universe, but an action, a sum-total
of actions and activities? The living ready-made sum-total
of these three, which calculation cannot add, cannot bring
on its tablets; yet the sum, we say, is written visible: All
that has been done, all that is doing, all that will be done!

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 349
Understand it well, the thing thou beholdest, that thing is
an action, the product and expression of exerted force : the
all of things is an infinite conjugation of the verb to do.
Shoreless fountain-ocean of force, power to do; wherein
force rolls and circles, billowing, ma*ny-streamed, har
monious; wide as immensity, deep as eternity; beautiful
and terrible, not to be comprehended; this is what man
names existence and universe; this thousand-tinted flame-
image, at once veil and revelation, reflex such as he, in his
poor brain and heart, can paint, of one unnameable, dwell
ing in inaccessible light! From beyond the star-galaxies,
from before the beginning of days, it billows and rolls,
round thee, nay thyself art of it, in this point of space
where thou now standest, in this moment which thy clock
measures. Or, apart from all transcendentalism, is it not a plain
truth of sense, which the duller mind can even consider
as a truism, that human things wholly are in continual
movement, and action and reaction; working continually
forward, phasis after phasis, by unalterable laws, toward
prescribed issues? How often must we say, and yet not
rightly lay to heart : The seed that is sown, it will spring !
Given the summer's blossoming, then there is also given
the autumnal withering; so is it ordered not with seed-
fields only, but with transactions, arrangements, philoso
phies, societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever man
works with in this lower world. The beginning holds in
it the end, and all that leads thereto ; as the acorn does
the oak and its fortunes. Solemn enough, did we think
of it, which unhappily, and also happily, we do not very
much! Thou there canst begin; the beginning is for
thee, and there: but where, and of what sort, and for
whom will the end be? All grows, and seeks and endures
its destinies: consider likewise how much grows, as the
trees do, whether we think of it or not. So that when
your Epimenides, your somnolent Peter Klaus, since
named Rip van Winkle, awakens again, he finds it a
changed world. In that seven-years sleep of his, so much
has changed ! All that is without us will change while we
think not of it ; much even that is within us. The truth
that was yesterday a restless problem, has to-day grown a
belief burning to be uttered; on the morrow, contradiction
has exasperated it into mad fanaticism; obstruction has

350 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
dulled it into sick inertness; it is sinking toward silence,
of satisfaction or of resignation. To-day is not yesterday,
for man or for thing. Yesterday there was the oath of
love; to-day has come the curse of hate. Not willingly;
ah, no; but it could not help coming. The golden
radiance of youth, would it willingly have tarnished itself
into the dimness of old age? Fearful: how we stand
enveloped, deep-sunk, in that mystery of time; and are
sons of time; fashioned and woven out of time; and onus,
and on all that we have, or see, or do, is written; rest not,
continue not, forward to thy doom !

But in seasons of revolution, which indeed distinguish
themselves from common seasons by their velocity mainly,
your miraculous seven-sleeper might, with miracle enough,
awake sooner: not by the century, or seven years, need he
sleep ; often not by the seven months. Fancy, for exam
ple, some neAV Peter Klaus, sated Avith the jubilee of that
federation day, had lain down, say directly after the blessing
of Talleyrand; and, reckoning it all safe now, had fallen
composedly asleep under the timber-work of the fatherland's
altar ; to sleep there, not twenty-one years,_ but as it were
year and day. The cannonading of Nanci, so far off, does
not disturb him; nor does the black mortcloth, close at
hand, nor the requiems chanted, and minute guns, incense-
pans and concourse right over his head; none of these; but
Peter sleeps through them all. Through one circling year,
as we say; from July the 14th of 1790, till July the 17th
of 1791 ; but on that latter day, no Klaus, nor most leaden
Epimenides, only the dead could continue sleeping: and so
our miraculous Peter Klaus awakens. With what eyes,
0 Peter! Earth and sky have still their joyous July
look, and the Champ-de-Mars is multitudinous with men :
but the jubilee-huzzahing has become Bedlam^shrieking,
of terror and revenge; not blessing of Talleyrand, or any
blessing, but cursing, imprecation and shrill wail ; our can
non salvoes are turned to sharp shot; for swinging of
incense-pans and eighty-three departmental banners, Ave
have waving of the one sanguineous Drapeau Rougi. Thou
foolish Klaus ! The one lay in the other, the one was the
other minus time; even as Hannibal's rock-rending vinegar
lay in the sweet new wine. That sweet federation was of

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 35I
last year; this sour divulsion is the selfsame substance,
only older by the appointed days.
No miraculous Klaus or Epimenides sleeps in these
times; and yet, may not many a man, if of due opacity and
levity, act the same miracle in a natural way; we mean,
with his eyes open? Eyes has he, but he sees not, except
what is under his nose. With a sparkling briskness of
glance, as if he not only saw but saw through, such a one
goes whisking, assiduous, in his circle of officialities; not
dreaming but that it is the whole world; as indeed, where
your vision terminates, does not inanity begin there, and
the world's end clearly disclose itself — to you? Whereby
our brisk -sparkling assiduous official person (call him, for
instance, Lafayette), suddenly started, after year and day,
by huge grapeshot tumult, stares not less astonished at it
than Peter Klaus would have done. Such natural miracle
can Lafayette perform; and indeed not he only but most
other officials, non-officials, and generally the whole French
people can perform it; and do bounce up, ever and anon,
like amazed seven sleepers awakening; awakening amazed
at the noise they themsevles make. So strangely is freedom,
as we say, environed in necessity; such a singular som
nambulism, of conscious and unconscious, of voluntary and
involuntary, is this life of man. If anywhere in the world
there was astonishment that the federation oath went into
grapeshot, surely of all persons the French, first swearers
and then shooters, felt astonished the most.
Alas, offenses must come. The sublime feast of pikes
with its effulgence of brotherly love, unknown since the
age of gold, has changed nothing. That prurient heat
in twenty-five millions of hearts is not cooled thereby; but
is still hot, nay hotter. Lift off the pressure of command
from so many millions; all pressure or binding rule,
except such melodramatic federation oath as they have
bound themselves with! For Thou shalt was from of
old the condition of man's being, and his weal and blessed
ness was in obeying that. Woe for him when, were it on
the hest of the clearest necessity, rebellion, disloyal isola
tion, and mere i" will, becomes his rule ! But the Gospel
of Jean Jacques has come, and the first sacrament of it has
been celebrated: all things, as we say, are got into hot
and hotter prurience; and must go on pruriently ferment
ing, in continual change noted or unnoted.

352 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
"Worn out with disgusts," captain after captain, in
royalist mustachioes, mounts his war-horse, or his
Rozinante war-garron, and rides minatory across the
Rhine; till all have ridden. Neither does civic emigra
tion cease; seigneur after seigneur must, in like manner,
ride or roll ; impelled to it, and even compelled. For the
very peasants despise him, in that he dare not join his
order and fight.* Can he bear to have a distaff, a
Quenouille sent to him; say in copper-plate shadow, by
post; or fixed up in wooden reality over his gate-lintel:
as if he were no Hercules, but an Omphale? Such
scutcheon they forward to him diligently from beyond the
Rhine; till he too bestir himself and march, and in sour
humor another lord of land is gone, not taking the land
with him. Nay, what of captains and emigrating seigneurs?
There is not an angry word on any of those twenty-five
million French tongues, and indeed not an angry thought in
their hearts, but is some fraction of the great battle.
Add many successions of angry words together, you have
the manual brawl; add brawls together, with the festering
sorrows they leave, and they rise to riots and revolts.
One reverend thing after another ceases to meet reverence:
in visible material combustion, chateau after chateau
mounts up; in spiritual invisible combustion, one authority
after another. With noise and glare, or noiselessly and
unnoted, a whole old system of things is vanishing piece
meal ; the morrow thou shalt look, and it is not.

CHAPTER II.
THE WAKEFUL.
Sleep who will, cradled in hope and short vision, like
Lafayette, who " always in the danger done sees the last
danger that will threaten him," time is not sleeping, noi
time's seed-field.
That sacred Herald's College of a new dynasty; wt
mean the sixty and odd billstickers with their leaden
badges, are not sleeping. Daily they, with pastepot auCi
cross-staff, new clothe the walls of Paris in colors of tut
* Dampmartin, passim.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 353
rainbow : authoritative-heraldic, as Ave say, or indeed almost
magical-thaumaturgic; for no placard-journal that they
paste but will convince some soul or souls of men. The
hawkers bawl; and the ballad-singers : great journalism
blows and blusters, through all its throats, forth from
Paris toward all corners of France, like an iEolus' Cave;
keeping alive all manner of fires.
Throats or journals there are, as men count,* to the
number of some hundred and thirty-three. Of various
caliber; from your Cheniers, Gorsases, Camilles, down to
your Marat, doAvn now to your incipient Hebert of the
Pere Duchesne these blow, with fierce weight Of argument
or quick light banter, for the rights of man: Durosoys,
Royous, Peltiers, Sulleaus, equally with mixed tactics (in
clusive, singular to say, of much profane parody), f are
blowing for altar and throne. As for Marat the people's
friend, his voice is as that of the bullfrog, or bittern by the
solitary pools; he, unseen of men, croaks harsh thunder,
and that alone continually — of indignation, suspicion, incur
able sorrow. The people are sinking toward ruin, near
starvation itself: "My dear friends," cries he, "your
indigence is not the fruit of vices nor of idleness; you
have a right to life, as good as Louis XIV., or the hap
piest of the century. What man can say he has a right to
dine, when you have no bread?" J The people sinking
on the one hand : on the other hand, nothing but wretched
Sieur Motiers, treasonous Riquetti Mirabeaus: traitors, or
else shadows and simulacra of quacks to be seen in high
places, look where you will! Men _that go mincing,
grimacing, with plausible speech and brushed raiment;
holloAv Avithin: quacks political; quacks scientific, academ
ical : and all with a felloAV -feeling for each other, and kind
of quack public-spirit! Not great Lavoisier himself, or
any of the forty can escape this rough tongue ; which wants
not fanatic sincerity, nor, strangest of all, a certain rough
caustic sense. And then the "three thousand gaming
houses" that are in Paris ;_ cesspools for the scoundrelism
of the world; sinks of iniquity and debauchery, whereas
without good morals liberty is impossible! There, in
* Mercier, iii. 163. f See " Hist. Pari." vii. 51.
X " Ami du Peuple," No. 306. See otber Excerpts in " Hist. Pari."
viii. 139-149, 428-433; ix. 85-93, etc.

354 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
these dens of Satan, which one knows, and perseveringly
denounces, do Sieur Motier's Mouchards consort and col
league; battening vampire-like on a people next door to
starvation. " 0 peuple!" cries he ofttimes, with heart
rending accent. Treason, delusion, vampirism, scoun
drelism, from Dan to Beersheba! The soul of Marat is
sick with the sight: but what remedy? To erect "eight
hundred gibbets," in convenient rows, and proceed to
hoisting; "Riquetti on the first of them!" Such is the
brief recipe of Marat, friend of the people.
So blow and bluster the hundred and thirty-three : nor,
as would seem, are these sufficient; for there are benighted
nooks in France, to which newspapers do not reach ; and
everywhere is " such an appetite for news as was never
seen in any country." Let an expeditious Dampmartin,
on furlough, set out to return home from Paris,* he can
not get along for "peasants stopping him on the highway;
overwhelming him with questions;" the Maitre de Poste
will not send out the horses till you have well-nigh quar
reled with him, but asks always, What news? At Autun,
in spite of the dark night and "rigorous frost," for it is
now January, 1791, nothing will serve but you must gather
your wayworn limbs and thoughts, and "speak to the mul
titudes from a window opening into the market place." It
is the shortest method: This, good Christian people, is
verily what an august assembly seemed to me to be doing;
this and no other is the neAvs :
Now my weary lips I close;
Leave me, leave me to repose!
The good Dampmartin ! But, on the whole, are not na
tions astonishingly true to their national character; which
indeed runs in the blood? Nineteen hundred years ago,
Julius Caesar, with his quick sure eye, took note how the
Gauls waylaid men. " It is a habit of theirs," says he, "to
stop travelers, were it even by constraint, and inquire
whatsoever each of them may have heard or known about
any sort of matter : in their towns, the common people
beset the passing trader; demanding to hear from what
regions he came, what things he got acquainted with
there. Excited by which rumors and hearsays, they will
* Dampmartin, i. 184.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 355
decide about the weightiest matters; and necessarily
repent next moment that they did it, on such guidance of
uncertain reports, and many a traveler answering with
mere fictions to please them, and get off." * Nineteen
hundred years; and good Dampmartin, wayworn, in win
ter frost, probably with scant light of stars and fish oil,
still perorates from the inn-window ! This people is no
longer called Gaulish ; and it has wholly become braccatus,
has got breeches, and suffered change enough: certain
fierce German Franken came storming over; and, so to
speak, vaulted on the back of it ; and always after, in their
grim tenacious way, have ridden it bridled; for German
is, by his very name, Guerre-man, or man that wars and
gars. And so the people, as we say, is now called French
or Frankish: nevertheless, does not the old Gaulish and
Gaelic Celthood, with its vehemence, effervescent promp
titude, and what good and ill it had, still vindicate itself
little adulterated?
For the rest, that in such prurient confusion, clubbism
thrives and spreads, need not be said. Already the mother
of patriotism, sitting in the Jacobins, shines supreme over
all ; and has paled the poor lunar light of that Monarchic
Club near to final extinction. She, we say, shines
supreme, girt with sunlight, not yet Avith infernal light
ning; reverenced, not without fear, by municipal author
ities; counting her Barnaves, Lameths, Petions, of a
national assembly; most gladly of all, her Robespierre.
Cordeliers, again, your Hebert, Vincent, Bilibopolist
Momoro, groan audibly that a tyrannous mayor and Sieur
Motier harrow them with the sharp tribula of law, intent
apparently to suppress them by tribulation. Hoav the
Jacobin mother society, as hinted formerly, sheds forth
Cordeliers on this hand, and then Feuillans on that; the
Cordeliers "an elixir or double distillation of Jacobin
Eatriotism;" the other a widespread weak dilution thereof;
ow she will reabsorb the former into her mother bosom,
and stormfully dissipate the latter into nonentity ; how she
breeds and brings forth three hundred daughter societies;
her rearing of them, her correspondence, her endeavorings
and continual travail; how, under an old figure, Jacobin
ism shoots forth organic filaments to the utmost corners
* " De Bello Gallico," lib. iv. 5.

356 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
of confused dissolved France; organizing it anew; this
properly is the grand fact of the time.
To passionate constitutionalism, still more to royalism,
which see all their own clubs fail and die, clubbism will
naturally grow to seem the root of all evil. Nevertheless
clubbism is not death, but rather new organization, and
life out of death ; destructive, indeed, of the remnants of
the old; but to the new important, indispensable. That
man can co-operate and hold communion with man, herein
lies his miraculous strength. In hut or hamlet, patriotism
mourns not now like voice in the desert : it can walk to the
nearest town; and there, in the daughter society, make its
ejaculation into an articulate oration, into an action, guided
forward by the mother of patriotism herself. All clubs of
constitutionalists, and such-like, fail, one after another, as
shallow fountains ; Jacobinism alone has gone doAvn to the
deep subterranean lake of Avaters; and may unless filled in,
flow there, copious, continual, like an artesian well. Till
the great deep have drained itself up ; and all be flooded
and submerged, and Noah's deluge out-deluged!
On the other hand, Claude Fauchet, preparing mankind
for a golden age, now apparently just at hand, has opened
his Cercle Social, Avith clerks, corresponding boards, and
so forth; in the precints of the Palais Royal. It is Te
Deum Fauchet; the same who preached on Franklin's
death, in that huge Medicean rotunda of the Halle-aux-
bleds. He here, this winter, by printing-press and
melodious colloquy, spreads bruit of himself to the utmost
city barriers. "Ten thousand persons of respectability"
attend there; and listen to this " Procureur- General de la
Verite, attorney-general of truth," so has he dubbed him
self; to his sage Condorcet, or other eloquent coadjutor.
Eloquent attorney-general! He blows out from him,
better or worse, what crude or ripe thing he holds; not
without result to himself ; for it leads to a bishopric, though
only a constitutional one. Fauchet approves himself a
glib-tongued, strong-lunged, whole-hearted human indi
vidual : much flowing matter there is, and really of the
better sort, about right, nature, benevolence, progress;
which flowing matter, whether "it is pan-theistic," or is
pot-theistic, only the greener mind, in these days, need
examine. Busy Brissot was long ago of purpose to estab
lish precisely some such regenerative Social circle: nay he

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 357
had tried it in " NeAvman-street Oxford-street," of the Fog
Babylon; and failed, as some say, surreptiously pocketing
the cash. Fauchet, not Brissot, was fated to be the
happy man; whereat, however, generous Brissot Avill with
sincere heart sing a timber-toned Nunc Domine.* But
"ten thousand persons of respectability;" Avhat a bulk
have many things in proportion to their magnitude ! This
Cercle Social, for which Brissot chants in sincere timber-
tones such Nunc Domine, what is it? Unfortunately wind
and shadow. The main reality one finds in it now, is
perhaps this; that an "attorney-general of truth" did
once take shape of a body, as son of Adam, on our earth,
though but for months or moments; and ten thousand
persons of respectability attended, ere yet chaos and nox
had reabsorbed him.
Hundred and thirty-three Paris journals; regenerative
social circle; oratory, in mother and daughter societies,
from the balconies of inns, by chimney-nook, at dinner-
table, polemical, ending many times in duel! And ever,
like a constant growling accompaniment of bass discord;
scarcity of work, scarcity of food. The winter is hard
and cold; ragged bakers'-queues, like a black tattered flag
of distress, wave out ever and anon. It is the third of our
hunger years, this new year of a glorious revolution. The
rich man when invited to dinner, in such distress-seasons,
feels bound in politeness to carry his own bread in his
pocket; how the poor dine? And your glorious revolution
has done it, cries one. And our glorious revolution is sub-
tilely, by black traitors worthy of the lamp -iron, perverted
to do it, cries another. Who will paint the huge whirlpool
wherein France, all shivered into wild incoherence,
whirls? The jarring that Avent on under every French
roof, in every French heart; the diseased things that were
spoken, done, the sum-total Avhereof is the French Revolu
tion, tongue of man cannot tell. Nor the laws of action
that work unseen in the depths of that huge blind inco
herence! With amazement, not Avith measurement, men
look on the immeasurable; not knowing its laws; seeing,
with all different degrees of knowledge, what new phases,
and results of event, its laAvs bring forth. France is as
* See Brissot, ' Patriote- Francois ' Newspaper; Fauchet, " Bouche-
de-Fer. etc. (excerpted in " Hist. Pari. " viii., ix. et seqq.)

358 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
a monstrous galvanic mass, wherein all sorts of far stranger
than chemical galvanic or electric forces and substances are
at work ; electrifying one another, positive and negative ;
filling with electricty your Leyden-jars, twenty-five millions
in number ! As the jars get full, there will, from time to
time, be, on slight hint, an explosion.

CHAPTER III.
SWORD IN HAND.
On such wonderful basis, however, has law, royalty,
authority, and whatever yet exists of visible order, to main
tain itself, while it can. Here, as in that commixture of
the four elements did the anarch old, has an august assem
bly spread its pavilion ; curtained by the dark infinite of
discords; founded the wavering bottomless of the abyss;
and keeps continual hubbub. Time is around it, and eter
nity, and the inane; and it does what it can, what is given
it to do. '
Glancing reluctantly in, once more,1 we discern little
that is edifying : a constitutional theory of defective verbs
struggling forward, with perseverance, amid endless inter
ruptions: Mirabeau, from his tribune, with the weight of
his name and genius, awing-down much Jacobin violence;
which in return vents itself the louder over in its Jacobins
Hall, and even reads him sharp lectures there.* This
man's path is mysterious, questionable; difficult, and he
walks Arithout companion in it. Pure patriotism does not
now count him among her chosen; pure royalism abhors
him; yet his weight with the world is overwhelming...
Let him travel on, companionless, unwavering, whither he
is bound, while it is yet day with him, and the night has
not come.
But the chosen band of pure patriot brothers is small;
counting only some thirty, seated now on the extreme tip
of the left, separate from the world. A virtuous Petion;
an incorruptible Robespierre, most consistent, incorruptible
of thin acrid men; Triumvirs Barnave, Duport, Lameth,
great in speech, thought, action, each according to his
* Camille's Journal (in "Hist. Parl.'Mx. 366-85).

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 359
kind; a lean old Goupil de Prefeln; on these and what
will follow them has pure patriotism to depend.
There too, conspicuous among the thirty, if seldom
audible, Philippe d'Orleans may be seen sitting: in dim
fuliginous bewilderment; having, one might say, arrived
at chaos ! Gleams there are, at once of a lieutenancy and
regency; debates in the assembly itself, of succession to
the throne "in case the present branch should fail;" and
Philippe, they say, walked anxiously, in silence, through
the corridors, till such high argument were done; but it
came all to nothing; Mirabeau, glaring into the man,
and through him, had to ejaculate in strong untranslatable
language : " Cej — / — ne vaut pas la peine qu'on se donne
pour lui." It came all to nothing; and in the meanwhile
Philippe's money, they say, is gone! Could he refuse a
little cash to the gifted patriot, in want only of that; he
himself in want of all but that? Not a pamphlet can be
printed without cash ; or indeed written without food pur
chasable by cash. Without cash your hopefulest projector
cannot stir from the spot; individual patriotic or other
projects require cash: how much more do widespread
intrigues, which live and exist by cash ; lying widespread,
with dragon-appetite for cash; fit to swallow princedoms!
And so Prince Philippe, amid his Sillerys, Lacloses and
confused sons of night, has rolled along; the center of
the strangest cloudy coil ; out of which has visibly come,
as we often say, an epic preternatural machinery of sus
picion; and within which there has dwelt and worked,
Avhat specialities of treason, stratagem, aimed or aimless
endeavor toward mischief, no party living (if it be not
the presiding genius of it, prince of the power of the air)
has now any chance to know. Camille's conjecture is the
likeliest: that poor Philippe did mount up, a little way
in treasonable speculation, as he mounted formerly in one
of the earliest balloons ; but, frightened at the new position
he was getting into, had soon turned the cock again, and
comedown. More fool than he rose! To create preter
natural suspicion, this was his function in the revolution
ary epos. But now if he have lost his cornucopia of ready-
money, what else had he to lose? In thick darkness,
inward and outward, he must Avelter and flounder on, in
that piteous death-element, the hapless man. Once, or
even twice, we shall still behold him emerged ; struggling

360 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
out of the thick death-element; in vain. For one moment,
it is the last moment, he starts aloft,- or is flung aloft,
even into clearness and a kind of memorability, to sink then
for evermore !
The Cote Droit persists no less ; nay with more animation
than ever, though hope has now well-nigh fled. Tough
Abbe Maury, when the obscure country royalist grasps his
hand with transport of thanks, answers, rolling his indomi
table brazen head : " Helas, Monsieur, all that I do here is
as good as simply nothing." Gallant Faussigny, visible
this one time in history, advances frantic into the middle
of the hall, exclaiming : " There is but one way of dealing
with it, and that is to fall sword in hand on those gentry
there, sabre a la main surces gaillards la," * frantically
indicating our chosen thirty on the extreme tip of the left !
Whereupon is clangor and clamor, debate, repentance,
evaporation. Things ripen toward downright incompati
bility, and what is called " scission" ; that fierce theoretic
onslaught of Faussigny 's was in August, 1790 ; next August
will not have come, till a famed two hundred and ninety-
two, the chosen of royalism, make solemn final "scission"
from an assembly given up to faction; and departs, shaking
the dust off their feet.

Connected with this matter of sword in hand, there is
yet another thing to be noted. Of duels we have some
times spoken: how, in all parts of France, innumerable
duels were fought; and argumentative men and messmates,
flinging down the wine-cup and weapons of reason and
repartee, met in the measured field; to part bleeding;
or perhaps not to part, but to fall mutually skewered
through with iron, their wrath and life alike ending, and
die as fools die. Long has this lasted, and still lasts. But
now it would seem as if in an august assembly itself,
traitorous royalism, in its despair, had taken to a new
course : that of cutting off patriotism by systematic duel !
Bully swordsmen, " Spadassins" of that party, go swag
gering ; or indeed they can be had for a trifle of money.
"Twelve Spadassins" were seen, by the yellow eye of
Journalism, "arriving recently out of Switzerland;" also
* " Moniteur," Seance du 21 Aout 1790.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 361
" a considerable number of assassins, nombre considerable
d'assassins, exercising in fencing-schools and at pistol
targets. " Any patriot deputy of mark can be called out ; let
him escape one time, or ten times, a time there necessarily is
when he must fall, and France mourn. How many cartels
has Mirabeau had; especially while he was the people's
champion ! Cartels by the hundred : Avhich he, since the
constitution must be made first, and his time is precious, an
swers now always with a kind of stereotyped formula ;
" Monsieur, you are put upon my list ; but I warn you
that it is long, and I grant no preferences."
Then, in autumn, had we not the duel of Cazales and
Barnave; the two chief masters of tongue-shot meeting
now to exchange pistol-shot? For Cazales, chief of the
royalists, whom we call "Blacks or Noirs," said, in a mo
ment of passion, "the patriots were sheer brigands," nay
in so speaking, he darted, or seemed to dart, a fire-glance
specially at Barnave ; who thereupon could not but reply
by fire-glances, by adjournment to the Bois-de-Boulogne.
Barnave's second shot took effect; on Cazales' hat. The
"front nook" of a triangular felt, such as mortals then
wore, deadened, the ball, and saved that fine brow from
more than temporary injury. But how easily might the lot
have fallen the other way, and Barnave's hat not been so
good ! Patriotism raises its loud denunciation of dueling
in general; petitions an august assembly to stop such
feudal barbarism by law. Barbarism and solecism; for
Avill it convince or convict any man to blow half an ounce
of lead through the head of him? Surely not. Barnave
was received at the Jacobins with embraces, yet with
rebukes.

Mindful of which, and also that his reputation in
America was that of headlong foolhardiness rather, and
•vant of brain, not of heart, Charles Lameth does, on the
11th day of November, with little emotion, decline
attending some hot young gentleman from Artois, come
expressly to challenge him ; nay indeed he first coldly engages
to attend; then coldly permits two friends to attend-
instead of him, and shame the young gentleman out of it,
which they successfully do. A cold procedure ; satisfactory
to the two friends, to Lameth and the hot young gentla

362 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
man ; whereby, one might have fancied, the whole matter
Avas cooled down.
Not so, however; Lameth, proceeding to his senatorial
duties, in the decline of the day, is met in those assembly
corridors by nothing but royalist brocards; sniffs, huffs,
and open insults. Human patience has its limits; "Mon
sieur," said Lameth, breaking silence to one Lautrec, a
man with hunchback, or natural deformity, but sharp of
tongue, and a Black of the deepest tint, "Monsieur, if
you were a man to be fought with!" "I am one," cries
the young Duke de Castries. Fast as fire-flash Lameth
replies, " Tout a Vheure, On the instant, then !" And so,
as the shades of dusk thicken in that Bois-de-Boulogne,
we behold two men with lion-look, with alert attitude,
side foremost, right foot advanced ; flourishing and thrust
ing, stoccado and passado, in tierce and quart; intent to
skewer one another. See, with most skewering purpose,
headlong Lameth with his Avhole weight, makes a furious
lunge; but deft Castries whisks aside; Lameth skewers
only the air, and slits deep and far, on Castrie's sword's
point, his own extended left arm! Whereupon, with
bleeding, pallor, surgeon's lint and formalities, the duel is
considered satisfactorily done.
But will there be no end, then? Beloved Lameth lies
deep slit, not out of danger. Black traitorous aristocrats
kill the people's defenders, cut up not Avith arguments,
but with rapier-slits. And the twelve Spadassins out of
Switzerland, and the considerable number of assassins
exercising at the pistol target? So meditates and ejacu
lates hurt patriotism, with ever-deepening, ever-widening
fervor, for the space of six-and-thirty hours.
The thirty-six hours past, on Saturday the 13th, one
beholds a new spectacle: The Rue de Varennes, and
neighboring Boulevard des Invalides, covered with a mixed
flowing multitude: the Castries H6tel gone distracted,
devil-ridden, belching from every window, "beds with
clothes and curtains," plate of silver and gold with filigree,
mirrors, pictures, images, commodes, chiffoniers, and end
less crockery and jingle ; amid steady popular cheers, abso
lutely without theft ; for there goes a cry, " He shall be
hanged that steals a nail." It is a Plebiscitum, or informal
iconoclastic decree of the common people, in the course of
being executed! The municipality sits tremulous; deliber-

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 363
ating whether they will hang out the Drapeau Rouge and
martial law: National assembly, part in loud wail, part
in hardly suppressed applause; Abbe Maury unable to
decide whether the iconoclastic Plebs amount to forty
thousand or to two hundred thousand.
Deputations, swift messengers, for it is at a distance
over the river, come and go. Lafayette and national
guards, though without Drapeau Rouge, get under way;
apparently in no hot haste. Nay, arrived on the scene,
Lafayette salutes with doffed hat, before ordering to fix
bayonets. What avails it? The plebeian "Court of
Cassation," as Camille might cunningly name it, has done
its work; steps forth, with unbuttoned vest, with pockets
turned inside out: sack, and just ravage not plunder!
With inexhaustible patience, the hero of two worlds
remonstrates; persuasively, with a kind of sweet con
straint, though also with fixed bayonets, dissipates, hushes
down ; on the morrow it is once more all as usual.

Considering which things, however, Duke Castries may
justly "write to the president," justly transport himself
across the marches; to raise a corps, or do what else is in
him. Royalism totally abandons that Bobadilian method
of contest, and the twelve Spadassins return to Switzer
land — or even to dreamland through the Horn-gate, which
soever their true home is. Nay Editor Prudhomme is
authorized to publish a curious thing: "We are authorized
to publish," says he, dull-blustering publisher, "that M.
Boyer, champion of good patriots, is at the head " of fifty
Spadassinicides or bully -killers. His address is : Passage
du Bois-de-Boulogne, Faubourg St. Denis." * One of
the strangest institutes, this of Champion Boyer and the
bully-killers! Whose services, however, are not wanted;
royalism having abandoned the rapier method, as plainly
impracticable. * " Revolutions de Paris " (in " Hist Pari." viii. 440).

364 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
CHAPTER IV.
TO FLY OT NOT TO FLY.
The truth is, royalism sees itself verging toward sad
extremities; nearer and nearer daily. From over the
Rhine it comes asserted that the king in his Tuileries is
not free : this the poor king may contradict, with the official
mouth, but in his heart feels often to be undeniable. Civil
constitution of the clergy; decree of ejectment against
dissidents from it; not even to this latter, though almost
his conscience rebels, can he say nay; but, after two
months' hesitating, signs this also. It was "on January
21st," of this 1791, that he . signed it; to the sorrow
of his poor heart yet, on another 21st of January!
Whereby come dissident ejected priests; unconquerable
martyrs according to some, incurable chicaning traitors
according to others. And so there has arrived what we
once foreshadowed : with religion, or with the cant and
echo of religion, all France is rent asunder in a new rup
ture of continuity; complicating, embittering all the older;
to be cured only by stern surgery, in La Vendee !
Unhappy royalty, unhappy majesty, hereditary repre
sentative, Representant Hereditaire, or howsoever they
may name him; of whom much is expected, to whom
little is given! Blue national guards encircle that
Tuileries; a Lafayette, thin constitutional pedant; clear,
thin, inflexible, as water turned to thin ice; whom no
queen's heart can love. National assembly, its pavilion
spread Avhere we know, sits near by, keeping continual
hubbub. From without, nothing but Nanci revolts, sack
of Castries Hdtels, riots and seditions; riots north and
south, at Aix, at Douai, at Befort, Usez, Perpignan, at
Nismes, and that incurable Avignon of the pope's; a con
tinual crackling and sputtering of riots from the whole
face of France; testifying how electric it grows. Add
only the hard winter, the famished strikes of operatives;
that continual running-bass of scarcity, ground-tone and
basis of all other discords !

The plan of royalty, so far as it can be said to have any
fixed plan, is still, as ever, that of flying toward the iron-

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 365
tiers. In very truth, the only plan of the smallest promise
for it! Fly to Bouille; bristle yourself round with
cannon, served by your "forty thousand undebauched
Germans;" summon the national assembly to follow you,
summon what of it is royalist, constitutional, gainable by
money; dissolve the rest, by grapeshot if need be. Let
Jacobinism and revolt, with one wild wail, fly into infinite
space; driven by grapeshot. Thunder over France with
the cannon's mouth; commanding, not entreating, that
this riot cease. And then to rule afterward with utmost
possible constitutionality; doing justice, loving mercy;
being shepherd of this indigent people, not shearer merely,
and shepherd's-similitude ! All this, if ye dare. If ye
dare not, then, in heaven's name, go to sleep ; other hand
some alternative seems none.
Nay, it were perhaps possible; with a man to do it.
For if such inexpressible whirlpool of Babylonish confusions
(which our era is) cannot be stilled by man, but only by
time and men, a man may moderate its paroxysms, may
balance and sway and keep himself unswallowed on the top
of it, as several men and kings in these days do. Much
is possible for a man; men will obey a man that kens
and cans, and name him reverently their Kenning or king.
Did not Charlemagne rule? Consider, too, whether he
had smooth times of it; hanging "four thousand Saxons
over the Weser-Bridge," at one dread swoop! So like
wise, who knows but, in this same distracted fanatic
France, the right man may verily exist? An olive-com-
plexioned tacitnur man; for the present, lieutenant in
the artillery service, who once sat studying mathematics at
Brienne? The same who walked in the morning to cor
rect proof-sheets at D61e, and enjoyed a frugal breakfast
with M. Joly? Such a one is gone, whither also famed
General Paoli his friend is gone, in these very days, to see
old scenes in native Corsica, and what democratic good
can be done there.

Royalty never executes the evasion plan, yet never aban-
ions it; living in variable hope; indecisive till fortune
jhall decide. In utmost secrecy, a brisk correspondence
^oes on with Bouille ; there is also a plot, which emerges

365 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
more than once, for carrying the king to Rouen : * plot
after plot emerging and submerging, like ignis fatui in
foul weather, which lead nowhither. " About ten o'clock
at night," the hereditary representative, in par tie quarrie,
Avith the queen, with brother monsieur, and madame,
sits playing "ivisk," or whist. Usher Campan enters
mysteriously, with a message he only half comprehends:
How a certain Comte D'Inisdal waits anxious in the
outer antechamber; national colonel, captain of the watch
for this night, is gained over; post-horses ready all the
way; party of noblesse sitting armed, determined; will
his majetsy, before midnight, consent to go? Profound
silence; Campan waiting with upturned ear. "Did your
majesty hear what Campan said?" asks the queen. "Yes,
I heard," answers majesty, and plays on. " 'Twas a pretty
couplet, that of Campan's," hints monsieur, who at times
showed a pleasant wit : majesty still unresponsive,plays wisk.
"After all, one must say something to Campan," remarks
the queen. "Tell M. D'Inisdal," said the king, and the
queen puts an emphasis on it, " That the king cannot con
sent to be forced away." "I see!" said D'Inisdal, whisk
ing round, peaking himself into flame of irritancy: "we
have the risk; we are to have alrthe blame if it fail," f
and vanishes, he and his plot, as will-o'-wisps do. The
queen sat till far in the night, packing jewels; but it came
to nothing; in that peaked flame of irritancy the will-o'-
wisp had gone out.
Little hope there is in all this. Alas, with whom to fly?
Our loyal Garde-du- Corps, ever since the insurrection of
women, are disbanded; gone to their homes; gone, many
of them, across the Rhine toward Coblentz and exiled
princes: brave Miomandre and brave Tardivet, these faith
ful two, have received, in nocturnal interview with both
majesties, their viaticum of gold louis, of heartfelt thanks
from a queen's lips, though unluckily " his majesty stood,
back to fire, not speaking;" X and do now dine through
the provinces; recounting hairsbreadth escapes, insurrec
tionary horrors. Great horrors to be swallowed yet of
greater. But, on the whole, what a falling-off from the
old splendor of Versailles! Here in this poor Tuileries
*See " Hist. Pari." vii. 316s; Bertrand Moleville, etc.
f Campan, ii. 105. X Ibid-. "• 199-201,

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 367
a national brewer-colonel, sonorous Santerre, parades
officially behind her majesty's chair. Our high dignitaries
all fled over the Rhine : nothing now to be gained at court ;
but hopes, for which life itself must be risked ! Obscure
busy men frequent the back stairs; with hearsays, wind-
projects, unfruitful fanfaronades. Young royalists, at the
Theatre de Vaudeville, " sing couplets ;" if that could do
anything. Royalists enough, captains on furlough, burned-
out seigneurs, may likewise be met with, "in the Cafe de
Valois, and at Meot the restaurateur's." There they fan
one another into high loyal glow; drink, in such wine as
can be procured, confusion to Sansculottism; show pur
chased dirks, of an improved structure, made to order;
and, greatly daring, dine.* It is in these places, in these
months, that the epithet Sansculotte first gets applied to
indigent patriotism ; in the last age we had Gilbert Sans
culotte, the indigent poet, f Destitute-of -breeches ; a
mournful destitution; which however, if twenty millions
share it, may become more effective than most possessions!
Meanwhile, amid this vague dim whirl of fanfaronades,
wind-projects, poniards made to order, there does disclose
itself one punctum saliens of life and feasibility; the finger
of Mirabeau ! Mirabeau and the queen of France have met ;
have parted with mutual trust ! It is strange ; secret as the
mysteries; but it is indubitable". Mirabeau took horse,
one evening; and rode westward, unattended, to see
Friend Claviere in that country-house of his? Before
getting to Claviere, the much-musing horseman struck
aside to a back gate of the garden of Saint-Cloud : some
Duke D'Aremberg, or the like, was there to introduce
him; the queen was not far; on a "round knoll, rond
point, the highest of the Garden of Saint-Cloud," he beheld
the queen's face; spake with her, alone, under the void
canopy of night. What an interview; fateful, secret for
us, after all searching; like the colloquies of the gods! J
She called him "a Mirabeau;" elsewhere Ave read that she
"was charmed with him," the wild submitted Titan; as
indeed it is among the honorable tokens of this high ill-
fated heart that no mind of any endowment, no Mirabeau,
?Dampmartin, ii. 129. f Mercier, "Nouveau Paris," iii. 204.
\ Campan, ii. c. 17.

368 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
nay no Barnave, no Dumouriez, ever came face to face
with her but, in spite of all prepossessions, she was forced
to recognize it, to draw nigh to it, with trust. High im
perial heart ; with the instinctive attraction toward all that
had any height ! "You know not the queen," said Mira
beau once in confidence, "her force of mind is prodigious;
she is a man for courage." * And, so under the void night,
on the crown of that knoll, she has spoken with a Mira
beau; he has kissed loyally the queenly hand, and said
with enthusiasm: "Madame, the monarchy is saved!"
Possible? The foreign powers, mysteriously sounded,
gave favorable guarded response; f Bouille is at Metz, and
could find forty-thousand sure Germans. With a Mira
beau for head, and a Bouille for hand, something verily
is possible, if fate intervene not.
But figure under what thousandfold wrappages, and cloaks
of darkness, royalty, meditating these things, must in
volve itself. There are men with "tickets of entrance;"
there are chivalrous consultings, mysterious plottings.
Consider also whether, involve as it like, plotting royalty
can escape the glance of patriotism ; lynx-eyes, by the ten
thousand, fixed on it, which see in the dark ! Patriotism
knows much; knows the dirks made to order, and can
specify the shops; knows S^eur Motier's legions of
Mouchards; the tickets of entree, and men in black; and
how plan of evasion succeeds plan, or may be supposed to
succeed it. Then conceive the couplets chanted at the
Theatre de Vaudeville; or worse the whispers, significant
nods of traitors in mustachioes. Conceive, on the other
hand, the loud cry of alarm that came through the hun
dred and thirty journals ; the Dionysius' ear of each of the
forty-eight sections, wakeful night and day.
Patriotism is patient of much; not patient of all. The
Cafe de Procope has sent, visibly along the streets, a depu
tation of patriots, "to expostulate with bad editors," by
trustful word of mouth: singular to see and hear. The
bad editors promise to amend, but do not. Deputations
for change of ministry were many ; Mayor Bailly joining even
with Cordelier Danton in such ; and they have prevailed.
With what profit? Of quacks, willing or constrained
*Dumont, p. 211.
¦J " Correspondance Secrete " (hi "Hist. Pari." viii. 169-78).

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 369
to be quacks, the race is everlasting : ministers Duportail
and Dutertre will have to manage much as Ministers
Latour-du-Pin and Cice did. So welters the confused
.world. But now, beaten on forever by such inextricable contra
dictory influences and evidences, what is the indigent
French patriot, in these unhappy days, to believe, and
walk by? Uncertainty all; except that he is wretched, in
digent; that a glorious revolution, the Avonder of the uni
verse, has hitherto brought neither bread nor peace ; being
marred by traitors, difficult to discover. Traitors that
dwell in the dark, invisible there ; or seen for moments, in
pallid dubious twilight, stealthily vanishing thither!
Preternatural suspicion once more rules the minds of men.
"Nobody here," writes Carra, of the Annates Patriot
iques, so early as the 1st of February, " can entertain a
doubt of the constant obstinate project these people have
on foot to get the king away ; or of the perpetual succession
of manceuvers they employ for that." Nobody: the
watchful mother of patriotism deputed two members to
her daughter at Versailles, to examine how the matter
looked there. Well, and there? Patriotic Carra con
tinues: " The report of these two deputies we all heard
with our own ears last Saturday. They went Avith others
of Versailles, to inspect the king's stables, also the stables
of the whilom Gar des-du- Corps: they found there from
seven to eight hundred horses standing always saddled and
bridled, ready for the road at a moment's notice. The
same deputies, moreover, saw with their own two eyes
several royal carriages, which men were even then busy
loading with large „w ell-stuffed luggage-bags," leather
cows, as we call them, "vachesde cuir; the royal arms on
the panels almost entirely effaced." Momentous enough!
Also " on the same day the whole Marechaussee or cavalry
police, did assemble with arms, horses and baggage," and-
disperse again. They want the king over the marches,
that so Emperor Leopold and the German princes, whose
troops are ready, may have a pretext for beginning:
"this," adds Carra, "is the word of the riddle: this is the
reason why our fugitive aristocrats are now making
levies of men on the frontiers; expecting that, one of
these mornings, the executive chief magistrate will be
brought over to them, and the civil war commence." *
*Carra'B Newspaper, 1st Feb. 1791 (in " Hist. Pari." is. 39).

370 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
If indeed the executive chief magistrate, bagged, say in
one of these leather cows, were once brought safe over to
them ! But the strangest thing of all is, that patriotism,
whether barking at a venture, or guided by some instinct
of preternatural sagacity, is actually barking aright this
time; at something, not at nothing. Bouille's secret cor
respondence, since made public, tesifies as much.
Nay, it is undeniable, visible to all, that mesdames the
king's aunts are taking steps for departure ; asking pass
ports of the ministry, safe-conducts of the muncipality;
which Marat warns all men to beware of. They will carry
gold with them, "these old Beguines;" nay they will carry
the little dauphin, "having nursed a changeling, for some
time, to leave in his stead!" Besides, they are as some
light substance flung up, to show how the wind sits; a
kind of proof -kite you fly off to ascertain whether the grand
paper-kite, evasion of the king, may mount !
In these alarming circumstances, patriotism is not
wanting to itself. Municipality deputes to the king; sec
tions depute to the municipality; a national assembly will
soon stir. Meanwhile, behold, on the 19th of February,
1791, mesdames, quitting Bellevue and Versailles with all
privacy, are off ! Toward Rome, seemingly ; or one knows
not whither. They are not without king's passports,
countersigned ; and what is more to the purpose, a serv
iceable escort. The patriotic mayor or mayorlet of the
village of Moret tried to detain them ; but brisk Louis de
Narbonne, of the escort, dashed off at hand-gallop;
returned soon with thirty dragoons, and victoriously cut
them out. And so the poor ancient women go their way;
to the terror of France and Paris, whose nervous excita
bility is become extreme. Who else would hinder poor
Loque and Graille, now grown so old, and fallen into such
unexpected circumstances, when gossip itself turning only on
terrors and horrors is no longer pleasant to the mind, and
you cannot get so much as an orthodox confessor in peace,
from going what way soever the hope of any solacement
might lead them?
They go, poor ancient dames, whom the heart were hard
that did not pity: they go; with palpitations, with
unmelodious suppressed screechings; all France screeching
and cackling, in loud wwsuppressed terror, behind and on
both hands of them ; such mutual suspicion is among men.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 371
At Arnay le Due, above halfway to the frontiers, a patriotic
municipality and populace again takes courage to stop
them: Louis Narbonne must now back to Paris, must
consult the national assembly. National assembly an
swers, not without an effort, that mesdames may go.
Whereupon Paris rises worse than ever, screeching half-
distracted. Tuileries and precincts are filled with women
and men, while the national assembly debates this question
of questions ; Lafayette is needed at night for dispersing
them, and the streets are to be illuminated. Commandant
Berthier, a Berthier before whom are great things
unknown, lies for the present under blockade at Bellevue
in Versailles. By no tactics could he get mesdames'
luggage stirred from. the courts there; frantic Versaillese
women came screaming about him ; his very troops cut the
wagon-traces; he "retired to the interior," waiting better
times.* Nay in these same hours, while mesdames, hardly cut
out from Moret by the saber's edge, are driving rapidly,
to foreign parts, and not yet stopped at Arnay, their
august nephew poor monsieur, at Paris, has dived deep
into his cellars of the Luxembourg for shelter; and, accord
ing to Montgaillard, can hardly be persuaded up again.
Screeching multitudes environ that Luxembourg of his;
drawn thither by report of his departure : but at sight and
sound of monsieur, they become crowing multitudes; and
escort madame and him to the Tuileries with vivats.f It
is a state of nervous excitability such as few nations know.

CHAPTER V.
THE DAY OF PONIARDS.
Or, again, what means this visible reparation of the
castle of Vincennes? Other jails being all croAvded with
prisoners, neAV space is wanted here : that is the municipal
account. For in such changing of judicatures, parle
ments being abolished, and neAV courts but just set up,
prisoners have accumulated. Not to say that in these
* Campan, ii. 132.
\ Montgaillard, ii. 282; " Deux Amis," vi. c. 1.

372 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
times of discord and club-law, offenses and committals are,
at any rate, more numerous. Which municipal account,
does it not sufficiently explain the phenomenon? Surely
to repair the castle of Vincennes was of all enterprises
that an enlightened municipality could undertake the most
innocent. Not so, however, does neighboring Saint-Antoine look
on it : Saint-Antoine, to whom these peaked turrets and
grim donjons, all too near her own dark dwelling, are of
themselves an offense. Was not Vincennes a kind of
minor Bastille? Great Diderot and philosophes have lain
in durance here; great Mirabeau, in disastrous eclipse, for
forty-two months. And now when the old Bastille1 has
become a dancing-ground (had any one the mirth to dance),
and its stones are getting built into the Pont-Louis-Seize,
does this minor, comparative insignificance of a Bastille
flank itself with fresh-hewn mullions, spread out tyrannous
wings; menacing patriotism? New space for prisoners;
and what prisoners? A D'Orleans, with the chief patriots
on the tip of the left? It is said, there runs "a subter
ranean passage" all the way from the Tuileries hither.
Who knows? Paris, mined with quarries and catacombs,
does hang wondrous over the abyss; Paris was once to be
blown up, though the powder, when we went to look, had
got Avithdrawn. A Tuileries, sold to Austria and Coblentz,
should have no subterranean passage. Out of Avhich might
not Coblentz or Austria issue, some morning; and, with
cannon of long range, "foudroyer," bethunder a patriotic
Saint-Antoine into smolder and ruin !
So meditates the benighted soul of Saint-Antoine; as it
sees the aproned workmen, in early spring, busy on these
towers. An official-speaking municipality, a Sieur Motier
with his legions of Mouchards, deserve no trust at all.
Were patriot Santerre, indeed commander! But the
sonorous brewer commands only our own battalion ; of such
secrets he can explain nothing, knows nothing, perhaps"
suspects much. And so the work goes on; and afflicted
benighted Saint-Antoine hears rattle of hammers, sees
stones suspended in air.*
Saint-Antoine prostrated the first great Bastille; will it
falter over this comparative insignificance of a Bastille ''.
•Montgaillard, ii. 285.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 373
Friends, what if we took pikes, firelocks, sledge ham
mers; and helped ourselves! Speedier is no remedy; nor
so certain. On the 28th day of February, Saint-Antoine
turns out, as it has now often done; and, apparently
with little superfluous tumult, moves eastward to that eye-
sorrow of Vincennes. With grave voice of authority, no
need of bullying and shouting, Saint-Antoine signifies to
parties concerned there, that its purpose is, To have this
suspicious stronghold razed level with the general soil of
the country. Remonstrance may be proffered, with zeal;
but it avails not. The outer gate goes up, drawbridges
tumble; iron window-stanchions, smitten out Avith sledge
hammers, become iron-crowbars : it rains a rain of furni
ture, stone-masses, slates : with chaotic clatter and rattle,
demolition clatters down. And now hasty expresses rush
through the agitated streets, to warn Lafayette, and the
municipal and departmental authorities; rumor warns a
national assembly a royal Tuileries, and all men who care
to hear it ; that Saint-Antoine is up ; that Vincennes, and
probably the last remaining institution of the country, is
coming down.*
Quick, then ! Let Lafayette roll his drums and fly east
ward ; for to all constitutional patriots this is again bad
news. And you, ye friends of royalty, snatch your poniards
of improved structure, made to order; your sword-canes,
secret arms, and tickets of entry; quick, by backstairs
passages, rally round the sons of sixty kings. An effer
vescence probably got up by D'Orleans and company, for
the overthrow of throne and altar: it is said her majesty
shall be put in prison, put out of the way; what then will
his majesty be? Clay for the Sansculottic potter! Or
were it impossible to fly this day ; a brave noblesse sud
denly all rallying? Peril threatens, hope invites: Dukes
de Villequier, de Duras, gentlemen of the chamber give
tickets and admittance; a brave noblesse is suddenly all
rallying. Now were the time to " fall sword in hand on
those gentry there," could it be done with effect.
The hero of two worlds is on his white charger; blue na
tionals, horse and foot, hurrying eastAvard ; Santerre, with
the Saint Antoine battalion, is already there, apparently
*"Deux Amis," vi. 11-15; Newspapers (in "Hist. Pari." ix.
111-17).

374 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
indisposed to act. Heavy-leaden hero of two worlds, what
tasks are these! The jeerings, provocative gambolings
of that patriot suburb, which is all out on the streets now,
are hard to endure; unwashed patriots jeering in sulky
sport; one unwashed patriot "seizing the general by the
boot," to unhorse him. Santerre, ordered to fire, makes
answer obliquely, "These are the men that took the
Bastille," and not a trigger stirs. Neither dare the Vin
cennes magistracy give warrant of arrestment, or the
smallest countenance: Avherefore the general " will take it
on himself" to arrest. By promptitude, by cheerful adroit
ness, patience and brisk valor without limits, the riot may
be again bloodlessly appeased.
Meanwhile the rest of Paris, with more or less uncon
cern, may mind the rest of its business : for what is this
but an effervescence, of which there are now so many?
The national assembly, in one of its stormiest moods, is
debating a law against emigration; Mirabeau declaring
aloud, "I swear beforehand that I will not obey it."
Mirabeau is often at the tribune this day; with endless
impediments from without; Avith the old unabated energy
from within. What can murmurs and clamors, from left
or from right, do to this man; like Teneriffe or Atlas
unremoved? With clear thought; with strong bass voice,
though at first low, uncertain, he claims audience, sways
the storm of men: anon the sound of him waxes, softens;
he rises into far-sounding melody of strength, triumphant,
which subdues all hearts; his rude seamed face, desolate,
fire-scathed, becomes fire-lit, and radiates; once again men
feel, in these beggarly ages, what is the potency and
omnipotency of man's word on the souls of men. "I will
triumph, or be torn in fragments," he was once heard to
say. " Silence," he cries noAV, in strong word of command,
in imperial consciousness of strength, " Silence, the thirty
voices, Silence aux trente voix," and Robespierre and the
thirty voices die into mutterings; and the law is once more
as Mirabeau would have it.
How different, at the same instant, is General Lafayette's
street eloquence; wrangling with sonorous brewers, with
an ungrammatical Saint-Antoine! Most different, again
from both is the Cafe-de-Valois eloquence, and suppressed
fanfaronade, of this multitude of men with tickets of
entry; who are now inundating the corridors of the

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 375
Tuileries. Such things can go on simultaneously in one
city. How much more in one country; in one planet with
its discrepancies, every day a mere crackling infinitude of
discrepancies, which nevertheless do yield some coherent
net product, though an infinitesimally small one !
But be this as it may, Lafayette has saved Vincennes;
and is marching homeward with some dozen of arrested
demolitionists. Royalty is not yet saved; nor indeed
specially endangered. But to the king's constitutional
guard, to these old Gardes Francaises, or center grenadiers,
as it chaencd to be, this affluence of men with tickets of
entry is becoming more and more unintelligible. Is his
majesty verily for Metz then; to be carried off by these
men on the spur of the instant? That revolt of Saint-
Antoine got up by traitor royalists for a stalking horse?
Keep a sharp lookout, ye center grenadiers on duty here ;
good never came from the "men in black." Nay they have
cloaks, redingotes; some of them leather breeches, boots,
as if for instant riding! Or what is this that sticks visible
from the lapel of Chevalier de Court? * Too like the
handle of some cutting or stabbing instrument! He glides
and goes; and still the dudgeon sticks from his left lapel.
"Hold, monsieur!" a center grenadier clutches him;
clutches the protrusive dudgeon, whisks it out in the face
of the world: by heaven, a very dagger; hunting-knife or
whatsoever you will call it; fit to drink the life of
patriotism !
So fared it with Chevalier de Court, early in the day;
not without noise; not without commentaries. And now
this continually increasing multitude at nighfall? Have
they daggers too? Alas, with them too, after angry parley -
ings, there has begun a groping and a rummaging; all
men in black, spite of their tickets of entry, are clutched
by the collar, and groped. Scandalous to think of: for
always, as the dirk, sword-cane, pistol, or were it but a
tailor's bodkin, is found on him, and Avith loud scorn
drawn forth from him, he, the hapless man in black, is
flung all too rapidly downstairs. Flung; and ignomin
iously descends, head foremost; accelerated by ignominious
shovings from sentry after sentry; nay, as it is written,
by smitings, twitchings, spurnings a posteriori, not to be
* Weber, ii. 286,

37(5 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
named. In this accelerated way emerges, uncertain which
end uppermost, man after man in black, through all issues
into the Tuileries Garden; emerges, alas, into the arms of
an indignant multitude, now gathered and gathering
there, in the hour of dusk, to see Avhat is toward, ana
whether the hereditary representative is carried off or not.
Hapless men in black; at last convicted of poniards made
to order; convicted " Chevaliers of the Poniard!" Within
is as the burning ship ; without is as the deep sea. Within
is no help; his majesty, looking forth, one moment, from
* his interior sanctuaries, coldly bids all visitors "give up
their weapons;" and shuts the door again. The weapons
given up form a heap: the convicted chevaliers of the
poniard keep descending pell-mell, . with impetuous
velocity ; and at the bottom of all staircases the mixed mul
titude receives them, hustles, buffets, chases, and disperses
them.* Such sight meets Lafayette, in the dusk- of the evening,
as he returns, successful with difficulty at Vincennes:
Sansculotte Scylla hardly weathered, here is aristocrat
Charybdis gurgling under his lee! The patient hero of two
worlds almost loses temper. He accelerates, does not
retard, the flying chevaliers; delivers, indeed, this or the
other hunted loyalist of quality, but rates him in bitter
words, such as the hour suggested: such as no saloon could
pardon. Hero ill-bested; hanging, so to speak, in mid-air;
hateful to rich divinities above; hateful to indigent mor
tals below ! Duke de Villequier, gentlemen of the cham
ber, gets such contumelious rating, in presence of all
people there, that he may see good first to exculpate himself
in the newspapers; then, that not prospering, to retire
over the frontiers, and begin plotting at Brussels, f His
apartment will stand vacant; usefuller, as we may find,
than when it stood occupied.
So fly the chevaliers of the poniard; hunted of patriotic
men, shamefully in the thickening dusk. A dim miserable
business; born of darkness; dying away there in the thick
ening dusk and dimness. In the midst of which, how
ever, let the reader discern clearly one figure running for
its life: Crispin-Catiline d'Espremenil, for the last time,
or the last but one. It is not yet three years since these
* " Hist. Pari." ix. 139-48. tMont&aillard. "• 286.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 377
same center grenadiers, Gardes Francaises then, marched
him toward the Calypso Isles, in the gray of the May
morning ; and he and they have got thus far. Buffeted,
beaten down, delivered by popular Petion, he might well
answer bitterly ; " And I too, monsieur, have been carried
on the people's shoulders." * A fact which popular Petion,
if he like can meditate.
But happily, one way and another, the speedy night
covers up this ignominious day of poniards; and the cheva
liers escape, though maltreated, with torn coat-skirts and
heavy hearts, to their respective dwelling houses. Riot
twofold is quelled ; and little blood shed if it be not insig
nificant blood from the nose : Vincennes stands undemol-
ished, reparable; and the hereditary representative has
uot been stolen, nor the queen smuggled into prison. A
day long remembered : commented on with loud hahas and
deep grumblings; Avith bitter scornfulness of triumph,
bitter rancor of defeat. Royalism, as usual, imputes it
to D'Orleans and the anarchists intent on insulting maj
esty; patriotism, as usual, to royalists, and even constitu
tionalists, intent on stealing majesty to Metz; we, also as
usual, to preternatural suspicion, and Phoebus Apollo
having made himself like the night.

Thus, however, has the reader seen, in an unexpected
arena, "on this last day of February, 1791, the three
long-contending elements of French society dashed forth
into singular comico-tragical collision ; acting and reacting
openly to the eye. Constitutionalism, at once quelling
Sansculottic riot at Vincennes, and royalist treachery in
the Tuileries, is great, this day , and prevails. As for poor
royalism, tossed to and fro in that manner, its daggers all
left in a heap, what can one think of it? Every dog, the
adage says, has its day; has it; has had it; or will have
it. For the present, the day is Lafayette's and the con
stitution's. Nevertheless hunger and Jacobinism, fast
growing fanatical, still work; their day, were they once
fanatical, will come. Hitherto, in all tempests, Lafay
ette, like some divine sea-ruler, raises his serene head : the
upper ^Eolus blasts fly back to their caves, like foolish
* See Mercier, ii. 40, 203,

378 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
unbidden Avinds: the under sea-billows they had vexed
into froth allay themselves. But if, as we often write,
the submarine Titanic fire poAvers came into play, the
ocean bed from beneath being burst? If they hurled
Poseidon Lafayette and his constitution out of space; and,
in the Titanic melly, sea were mixed with sky?

CHAPTER VI.
MIRABEAU.
The spirit of France waxes ever more acrid, fever-
sick: toward the final outburst of dissolution and delirium.
Suspicion rules all minds: contending parties cannot now
commingle; stand separated sheer asunder, eying one
another, in most anguish mood, of cold terror or hot rage.
Counter-revolution, days of poniards, Castries duels;
Flight of mesdames, of monsieur and royalty ! Journal
ism shrills ever louder its cry of alarm. The sleepless
Dionysius-ear of the forty-eight sections, how feverishly
quick has it grown; convulsing with strange pangs the
whole sick body, as in such sleeplessness and sickness the
ear will do!
Since royalists get poniards made to order, and a Sieur
Motier is no better than he should be, shall not patriotism
too even of the indigent sort, have pikes, secondhand fire
locks, in readiness for the Avorst? The anvils ring, during
this March month, with hammering of pikes. A consti
tutional municipality promulgated its placard, that no
citizen except the " active" or cash-citizen was entitled to
have arms; but there rose, instantly responsive, such a
tempest of astonishment from club and section, that the
constitutional placard, almost next morning, had to cover
itself up, and die away into inanity, in a second improved
edition. * So the hammering continues; as all that it
betokens does.
Mark, again, how the extreme tip of the left is mount
ing in favor, if not in its own national hall, yet with the
nation, especially with Paris. For in such universal panic
of doubt, the opinion that is sure of itself, as the meagerest
*Qrdonnance du 17 Mars 1791 ("Hist. Pari." ix. 2,57).

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 379
opinion may the soonest be, is the one to which all men
will rally. Great is belief, Avere it never so meager; and
leads captive the doubting heart. Incorruptible Robes
pierre has been elected public accuser in our neAV courts
of judicature; virtuous Petion, it is thought, may rise to
be mayor. Cordelier Danton, called also by triumphant
majorities, sits at the departmental council-table ; colleague
there of Mirabeau. Of incorruptible Robespierre it was
long ago predicted that he might go far, mean meager
mortal though he was; for doubt dwelt not in him.
Under which circumstances ought not royalty likewise
to cease doubting, and begin deciding and acting? Royalty
has always that sure trump-card in its hand : flight out
of Paris. Which sure trump-card royalty, as we see, keeps
ever and anon clutching at, grasping; and SAvashes it forth
tentatively; yet never tables it, still puts it back again.
Play it, oh royalty ! If there be a chance left, this seems
it, and verily the last chance ; and now every hour is ren
dering this a doubtfuler. Alas, one would so fain both fly
and not fly; play one's card and have it to play. Royalty,
in all human likelihood, will not play its trump-card till
the honors, one after one, be mainly lost; and such trump
ing of it prove to be the sudden finish of the game !
Here accordingly a question always arises; of the
prophetic sort ; which cannot now be answered. Suppose
Mirabeau, with whom royalty takes deep counsel, as with
a prime minister that cannot yet legally avow himself as
such, had got his arrangements completed? Arrangements
he has; far-stretching plans that dawn fitfully on us, by
fragments, in the confused darkness. Thirty departments
ready to sign loyal addresses, of prescribed tenor: king
carried out of Paris, but only to Compiegne and Rouen,
hardly to Metz, since, once for all, no emigrant rabble
shall take the lead in it: national assembly consenting,
by dint of loyal addresses, by management, by force of
Bouille, to hear reason, and folloAV thither ! * Was it so,
on these terms, that Jacobinism and Mirabeau Avere then
to grapple, in their Hercules and Typhon duel; death
inevitable for the one or the other? The duel itself is
determined on, and sure: but on what terms — much more,
with what issue we in vain guess. It is vague darkness
•See " Fils Adoptif," vii. 1. 6; Dumont, c. 11, 12, 14.

380 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
all: unknoAvn what is to be; unknown even Avhat has
already been. The giant Mirabeau walks in darkness, as
we said; companionless, on wild ways; what his thoughts
during these months were, no record of biographer, nor
vague Fils Adoptif, will now ever disclose.
To us, endeavoring to cast his horoscope, it of course
remains doubly vague. There is one Herculean man;
in internecine duel with him, there is monster after mon
ster. Emigrant noblesse return, sword on thigh, vaunting
of their loyalty never sullied; descending from the air,
like harpy-swarms with ferocity, with obscene greed.
Earthward there is the typhon of anarchy, political,
religious; sprawling hundred-headed, say with twenty-
five million heads; wide as the area of France; fierce as
frenzy; strong in very hunger. With these shall the
serpent-queller do battle continually, and expect no rest.
As for the king, he as usual will go wavering chameleon
like ; changing color and purpose with the color of his
environment; good for no kingly use. On one royal per
son, on the queen only, can Mirabeau perhaps place
dependence. It is possible, the greatness of this man,
not unskilled too in blandishments, courtiership,and grace
ful adroitness, might, with most legitimate sorcery, fasci
nate the volatile queen, and fix her to him. She has cour
age for all noble daring; an eye and a heart: the soul of
Theresa's daughter. "Faut-il done, Is it fated then," she
passionately writes to her brother, "that I Avith the blood
I am come of, with the sentiments I have, must live and
die among such mortals?" * Alas, poor princess, yes.
"She is the only mem" as Mirabeau ohserves, "whom his
majesty has about him." Of one other man Mirabeau is
still surer : of himself. There lie his resources ; sufficient
or insufficient.
Dim and great to the eye of prophecy looks that future.
A perpetual life and death battle; confusion from above
and from below; mere confused darkness for us; with
here and there some streak of faint lurid light. We see a
king perhaps laid aside ; not tonsured, tonsuring is out of
fashion now, but say, sent aAvay any whither, with hand
some annual alloAvance, and stock of smith-tools. We see
a queen and dauphin, regent and minor; a queen
* " Fils Adoptif," ubi supra.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 331
"mounted on horseback," in the din of battles, with
Moriamur pro rege nostra! "Such a day," Mirabeau writes,
"may come."
Din of battles, wars more than civil, confusion from
above and from below : in such environment the eye of
prophecy sees Comte de Mirabeau, like some Cardinal de
Retz, stormfully maintain himself; with head all-devising,
heart all-daring, if not victorious, yet unvanquished,
while life is left him. The specialities and issues of it, no
eye of prophecy can guess at; it is clouds, we repeat, and
tempestuous night; and in the middle of it, now visible, far
darting, now laboring in eclipse, is Mirabeau indomitably
struggling to be cloud-compeller ! One can say that, had
Mirabeau lived, the history of France and of the world had
been different. Further, that the man would have
needed, as feAv men ever did, the whole compass of that
same "Art of daring, Art d'oser," which he so prized;
and likewise that he, above all men then living, would have
practiced and manifested it. Finally that some substan
tiality, and no empty simulacrum of a formula, would have
been the result realized by him: a result you could have
loved, a result you could have hated; by no likelihood,
a result you could only have rejected with closed lips, and
swept into quick forgetfulness forever. Had Mirabeau
lived one other year !

CHAPTER VII.
DEATH OF MIRABEAU.
But Mirabeau could not live another year, any more
than he could live another thousand years. Men's years
are numbered, and the tale of Mirabeau 's was now com
plete. Important 0: unimportant; to be mentioned in
world history for soma centuries, or not to be mentioned
there beyond a day or two, it matters not to peremptory
fate. From amid the press of ruddy busy life, the pale
messenger beckons silently; wide-spreading interests, pro
jects, salvation of French monarchies, what thing soever
man has on hand, he must suddenly quit it all, and go.
Wert thou saving French monarchies ; wert thou blacking
shoes on the Pont Neuf ! The most important of men
cannot stay; did the world's history depend on an hour,

382 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
that hour is not to be given. Whereby, indeed, it comes that
these same would-have-beens are mostly a vanity ; and the
world's history could never in the least be what it would,
or might, or should, by any manner of potentiality, but
simply and altogether Avhat it is.

The fierce wear and tear of such an existence has wasted
out the giant oaken strength of Mirabeau. A fret and
fever that keeps heart and brain on fire : excess of effort, of
excitement; excess of all kinds: labor incessant, almost
beyond credibility ! "If I had not lived with him," says
Dumont, " I never should have known Avhat a man can
make of one day, what things may be placed within the
interval of twelve hours. A day for this man was more
than a week or a month is for others : the mass of things
he guided on together was prodigious; from the scheming
to the executing not a moment lost." "Monsieur le
Comte," said his secretary to him once, "Avhat you require
is impossible. " " Impossible !" answered he, starting from
his chair, " Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot, Never name
to me that blockhead of a word." * And then the social
repasts; the dinner which he gives as commandant of
national guards, which "cost five hundred pounds;" alas,
and "the sirens of the opera;" and all the ginger that
is hot in the mouth: down what a course is this man
hurled! Cannot Mirabeau stop; cannot he fly, and save
himself alive? No! there is a Nessus-shirt on this
Hercules; he must storm and burn there, without rest,
till he be consumed. Human strength, never so Hercu
lean, has its measure. Herald shadows flit pale across the
fire-brain of Mirabeau ; heralds of the pale repose. While
he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of
ambition and confusion, there comes, somber and still, a
monition that for him the issue of it will be swift death.
In January last, you might see him as president of the
assembly ; " his neck wrapped in linen cloths, at the evening
session;" there was sick heat of the blood, alternate
darkening and flashing in the eyesight; he had to apply
leeches, after the morning labor, and preside bandaged.
"At parting he embraced me," says Dumont, "with an
emotion I have never seen in him : ' I am dying, my
* Dumont, p. 311.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 383
friend ; dying as by slow fire ; we shall perhaps not meet
again. When I am gone, they will know what the value
of me was. The miseries I have held back will burst from
all sides on France."'* Sickness gives louder warning:
but cannot be listened to. On the 27th day of March,
proceeding toward the assembly, he had to seek rest and
help in Friend de Lamarck's by the road; and lay there,
for an hour, half-fainted, stretched on a sofa. To the
assembly nevertheless he went, as if in spite of destiny
itself; spoke, loud and eager, five several times; then
quitted the tribune — forever. He steps out, utterly ex
hausted, into the Tuileries gardens; many people press
round him as usual, with applications, memorials; he
says to the friend who was with him ; " Take me out of
this!" And so, on the last day of March, 1791, endless anxious
multitudes beset the Rue de la Ohaussee d'Antin; inces
santly inquiring : within doors there, in that house num
bered, in our time, forty-two, the overwearied giant has
fallen down, to die.f Crowds of all parties and kinds;
of all ranks from the king to the meanest man! The
king sends publicly twice a day to inquire ; privately be
sides: from the world at large there is no end of inquiring.
"A written bulletin is handed out every three hours," is
copied and circulated ; in the end, it is printed. The
people spontaneously keep silence; no carriage shall enter
with its noise ; there is crowding pressure : but the sister
of Mirabeau is reverently recognized, and has free way
made for her. The people stand mute, heart-stricken ; to
all it seems as if a great calamity were nigh : as if the last
man of France, who could have swayed these coming
troubles, lay there at hand-grips with the unearthly power.
The silence of a whole people, the wakeful toil of
Cabanis, friend and physician, skills not: on Saturday, the
second day of April, Mirabeau feels that the last of the
days has risen for him ; that on this day he has to depart
and be no more. His death is Titanic, as his life has
been ! Lit up, for the last time, in the glare of coming
dissolution, the mind of the man is all glowing and burn
ing; utters itself in sayings, such as men long remember.
He longs to live, yet acquiesces in death, argues not with
the inexorable. His speech is wild and wondrous : unearthly
* Dumont, p. 267. \ " Fils Adoptif," viii. 420-79.

384 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
phantasms dancing now their torch dance, round his soul;
the soul itself looking out, fire-radiant, motionless, girt
together for that great hour ! At times comes a beam of
light from him on the world he is quitting. " I carry
in my heart the death-dirge of the French monarchy;
the dead remains of it will now be the spoil of the fac
tious." Or again, when he heard the cannon fire, what is
characteristic too: "Have we the Achilles' funeral
already?" So likewise, while some friend is supporting
him : " Yes, support that head ; would I could bequeath
it thee!" For the man dies as he has lived; self-conscious,
conscious of a world looking on. He gazes forth on the
young spring, which for him will never be summer. The
sun has risen; he says, "Si ce n'est pasld Dieu, c'est du
mains son cousin germain." * Death has mastered the
outworks; power of speech is gone; the citadel of the
heart still holding out : the moribund giant, passionately,
by sign, demands paper and pen; writes his passionate
demand for opuim, to end these agonies. The sorrowful
doctor shakes his head: Dormir, "To sleep," writes the
other, passionately pointing" at it! So dies a gigantic
heathen and Titan; stumbling blindly, undismayed, down
to his rest. At half-past eight in the morning, Doctor
Petit, standing at the foot of the bed, says, "II ne souffre
plus." His suffering and his Avorking are now ended.
Even so, ye silent patriot multitudes, all ye men of
France; this man is rapt away from you. He has fallen
suddenly, without bending till he broke; as a tower falls,
smitten by sudden lightning. His word ye shall hear no
more, his guidance follow no more. The multitudes de
part, heartstruck; spread the sad tidings. How touching
is the loyalty of men to their sovereign man ! All theaters,
public amusements close; no joyful meeting can beheld
in these nights, joy is not for them : the people break in
upon private dancing-parties, and sullenly command that
they cease. Of such dancing parties apparently but two
came to light; and these also have gone out. The gloom
is universal ; never in this city was such sorrow for one
death; never since that old night when Louis XII.,
departed, "and the Crieurs des Corps went sounding
* " Fils Adoptif," viii. 450; " Journal de la maladie et de la mort
de Mirabeau," par P. J. G. Cabanis (Paris 1803).

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTlON. 385
their bells, and crying along the streets : Le bon Roi Louis,
pere du peuple, est mort, The good King Louis, father of
the people is dead !" * King Mirabeau is noAV the lost
king; and one may say with little exaggeration, all the
people mourn for him.
For three days there is low wide moan ; weeping in the
national assembly itself. The streets are all mournful;
orators mounted on the bornes, Avith large silent audience,
preaching the funeral sermon of the dead. Let no coach
man whip fast, distractively with his rolling wheels, or
almost at all, through these groups! His traces may
be cut; himself and his fare, as incurable aristocrats,
hurled sulkily into the kennels. The bourne-stone orators
speak as it is given them ; the Sansculottic people, with
its rude soul, listens eager, as men will to any sermon or
sermo, when it is a spoken word meaning a thing, and not
a babblement meaning no-thing. In the restaurateur's of
the Palais-Royal, the waiter remarks, "Fine Aveather,
monsieur." "Yes, my friend," answers the ancient man
of letters, "very fine; but Mirabeau is dead." Hoarse
rhythmic threnodies come also from the throats of ballad f
singers; are sold on gray-white paper at a sou each.-
But of portraits, engraved, painted, hewn and written;
of eulogies, reminiscences, biographies, nay vaudevilles,
dramas and melodramas, in all provinces of France, there
will, through these coming months, be the due immeasur
able crop; thick as the leaves of spring. Nor, that a
tincture of burlesque might be in it, is Gobel's Episcopal
mandement wanting; goose Gobel, who has just been
made constitutional bishop of Paris. A mandement
wherein Ca-ira alternates very strangely with Nomine
Domini, and you are, with a grave countenance, invited to
" rejoice at possessing in the midst of you a body of
prelates created by Mirabeau, zealous followers of his doc
trine, faithful imitators of his virtues."^; So speaks, and
cackles manifold, the sorrow of France; Availing articulately
inarticulately, as it can, that a sovereign man is snatched
away. In the national assembly, when difficult questions

* Henault, " Abrege Chronologique," p. 429.
f " Fils Adoptif," viii. 1.
•arl." ix. 366-402).
X "Hist. Parl."ix. 405.

+ " Fils Adoptif," viii. 1. 10; Newspapers and Excerpts (in Hist.
Pari." ix. 366-402).

386 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
are astir, all eyes will "turn mechanically to the place
Avhere Mirabeau sat," and Mirabeau is absent now.
On the third evening of the lamentation, the 4th of
April, there is solemn public funeral; such as deceased
mortal seldom had. Procession of a league in length ; of
mourners reckoned loosely at a hundred thousand. All
roofs are thronged with on-lookers, all windows, lamp-
irons, branches of trees. " Sadness is painted on every
countenance; many persons weep." There is double
hedge of national guards; there is national assembly in a
body; Jacobin society, and societies; kings' ministers,
municipals, and all notabilities, patriot or aristocrat.
Bouille is noticeable there, "with his hat on;" say, hat
drawn over his brow, hiding many thoughts! Slow- wend
ing, in religious silence, the procession of a league in
length, under the level sun-rays, for it is five o'clock,
moves and marches: with its sable plumes; itself in a
religious silence; but, by fits with the muffled roll of
drums, by fits with some long-drawn wail of music, and
strange new clangor of trombones, and metallic dirge-
voice; amid the infinite hum of men. In the church of
Saint-Eustache, there is funeral oration by Cerutti; and
discharge of firearms, which "brings down pieces of the
plaster." Thence, forward again to the church of Sainte-
GenevieA'e; Avhich has been consecrated, by supreme
decree, on the spur of this time, into a Pantheon for the
great men of the fatherland, Aux grandes homines la
Patrie reconnaissante. Hardly at midnight is the busi
ness done ; and Mirabeau left in his dark dwelling : first
tenant of that Fatherland's Pantheon.
Tenant, alas, who inhabits but at will, and shall be cast
out. For, in these days of convulsion and disjection, not
even the dust of the dead is permitted to rest. Voltaire's
bones are, by and by, to be carried from their stolen grave
in the Abbey of Scel'lieres, to an eager stealing grave, in
Paris, his birth-city : all mortals processioning and perorat
ing there; cars drawn by eight white horses, goadsters in
classical costume, with fillets and wheat-ears enough;
though the weather is of the wettest. * Evangelist Jean
Jacques too, as is most proper, must be dug up from
Ermenonville, and processioned, with pomp, with sensi-
* " Moniteur," du 13 Juillett, 1791.

the French revolution. 337
bility, to the Pantheon of the fatherland. * He and
others: while again Mirabeau, we say, is cast forth from
it, happily incapable of being replaced; and rests now,
irrecognizable, reburied hastily at dead of night " in the
central part of the churchyard Sainte-Catherine, in the
suburb Saint- Marceau," to be disturbed no farther.
So blazes out, far-seen, a man's life, and becomes ashes
and a caput mortuum, in this world-pyre, which we name
French Revolution : not the first that consumed itself there,
nor, by thousands and many millions, the last! A man
who "had swallowed all formulas;" Avho, in these strange
times and circumstances, felt called to live Titanically,
and also to die so. As he, for his part, had swallowed all
formulas, what formula is there, never so comprehensive,
that will express truly the plus and the minus of him, give
us the accurate net-result of him? There is hitherto none
such. Moralities not a few must shriek condemnatory over
this Mirabeau ; the morality by which he could be judged
has not yet got uttered in the speech of men. We will
say this of him again: That he is a reality and no simula
crum ; a living son of Nature our general mother ; not a
hollow artifice, and mechanism of conventionalities, son
of nothing, brother to nothing. In which little word, let
the earnest man, walking sorrowful in a world mostly of
"stuffed clothes-suits," that chatter and grin meaningless
on him, quite ghastly to the earnest soul, think what sig
nificance there is!
Of men who, in such sense, are alive, and see with eyes,
the number is now not great; it may be well, if in this
huge French Revolution itself, with its all-developing fury,
Ave find some three. Mortals driven rabid we find; sput
tering the acridest logic ; baring their breast to the battle
hail, their neck to the guillotine : of whom it is so painful
to say that they too are still, in good part, manufactured
formalities, not facts but hearsays!
Honor to the strong man, in these ages, who has shaken
himself loose of shams, and is something. For in the way
of being worthy, the first condition surely is that one be.
Let cant cease, at all risks and at all costs : till cant cease,
nothing else can begin. Of human criminals, in these
centuries, writes the moralist : I find but one unforgivable,
•"Moniteur," du 18 Septembre, 1794. See also du 30 Aoiit,
etc., 1791.

388 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
the quack. "Hateful to God," as divine Dante sings,
"and to the enemies of God,
" ' A Dio spiacente ed a' nemici sui ! ' "
But whoever will, Avith sympathy, which is the first
essential toward insight, look at this questionable Mira
beau, may find that there lay verily in him, as the basis of
all, a sincerity, a great free earnestness; nay call it honesty
for the man did before all things see, Avith that clear flash
ing vision, into what was, into Avhat existed as fact; and
did, with his wild heart, follow that and no other. Where
by on what ways soever he travels and struggles, often
enough falling, he is still a brother man. Hate him not;
thou canst not hate him ! Shining through such soil and
tarnish, and now victorious effulgent, and oftenest strug
gling eclipsed, the light of genius itself is in this man;
which Avas never yet base and hateful; but at worst was
lamentable, lovable with pity. They say that he was am
bitious, that he wanted to be minister. It is most true.
And was he not simply the one man in France Avho cpuld
have done any good as minister? Not vanity alone, not
pride alone; far from that! Wild burstings of affection
were in this great heart; of fierce-lightning, and soft dew
of pity. So sunk bemired in wretchedest defacements, it
may be said of him, like the Magdalen of old, that he loved
much : his father, the harshest of old crabbed men, he loved
with warmth, with veneration.
Be it that his falls and follies are manifold, as himself
often lamented even with tears.* Alas, is not the life of
every such man already a poetic tragedy; made up "of
fate and of one's own deservings," of Schicksal und eigene
Schuld; full of the elements of pity and fear? This
brother man, if not epic for us, is tragic; if not great, is
large; large in his qualities, world-large in his destinies.
Whom other men, recognizing him as such, may, through
long times, remember, and draw nigh to examine and con
sider: these, in their several dialects, will say of him and
sing of him, till the right thing be said; and so the formula
that can judge him be no longer an undiscovered one.
Here then the wild Gabriel Honore drops from the
* Dumont, p. 287.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 389
tissue of our history; not Avithout a tragic farewell. He
is gone: the floAver of the Avild Riquetti or Arrighetti kin
dred; which seems as if in him, with one last effort, it had
done its best, and then expired, or sunk down to the
undistinguished level. Crabbed old Marquis Mirabeau,
the friend of men, sleeps sound. The Bailli Mirabeau,
worthy uncle, will soon die forlorn, alone. Barrel-Mira-
beau, already gone across the Rhine, his regiment of emi
grants Avill drive nigh desperate. " Barrel-Mirabeau," says
a biographer of his, " went indignantly across the Rhine,
and drilled emigrant regiments. But as he sat one
morning in his tent, sour of stomach doubtless, and of
heart, meditating in Tartarean humor on the turn things
took, a certain captain or subaltern demanded admittance
on business. Such captain is refused; he again demands,
with refusal ; and then again ; till Colonel Viscount Barrel-
Mirabeau, blazing up into a mere burning brandy-barrel,
clutches his sword, and tumbles out on this canaille of an
intruder, alas, on the canaille of an intruder's sword-point,
who had drawn with swift dexterity; and dies, and the
newspapers name it apoplexy and alarming accident." So
die the Mirabeaus.
New Mirabeaus one hears not of : the wild kindred, as we
said, is gone out with this its greatest. As families and
kindreds sometimes do; producing, after long ages of un
noted notability, some living quintessence of all the qualities
they had, to flame forth as a man world-noted ; after whom
they rest as if exhausted; the scepter passing to others.
The chosen last of the Mirabeaus is gone; the chosen man
of France is gone. It was he Avho shook old France from
its basis; and, as if Avith his single hand, has held it
toppling there, still unfallen. What things depended on
that one man ! He is as a ship suddenly shivered on sunk
rocks: much swims on the Avaste waters, far from help.

390 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

BOOK ELEVENTH.
VARENNES.

CHAPTER I.

EASTER AT SAINT-CLOUD.

The French monarchy may now therefore be considered
as, in all human probability lost ; as struggling henceforth
in blindness as well as weakness, the last light of reasonable
guidance having gone out. What remains of resources their
poor majesties will waste still further, in uncertain loitering
and wavering. Mirabeau himself had to complain that they
only gave him half confidence, and always had some plan
within his plan. Had they fled frankly with him to Rouen
or any whither, long ago ! They may fly now with chance
immeasurably lessened ; which will go on lessening toward
absolute zero. Decide, 0 queen; poor Louis can decide
nothing: execute this flight-project, or at least abandon
it. Correspondence Avith Bouille there has been enough ;
what profits consulting and hypothesis, while all around is
in fierce activity of practice? The rustic sits waiting till
the river run dry ; alas, with you it is not a common river,
but a Nile inundation ; snows melting in the unseen moun
tains; till all, and you Avhere you sit, be submerged.
Many things invite to flight. The voice of journals in
vites; royalist journals proudly hinting it as a threat,
patriot journals rabidly denouncing it as a terror. Mother
society, waxing more and more emphatic, invites; so em
phatic that, as was prophesied, Lafayette and your limited
patriots have ere long to branch off from her, and form
themselves into Feuillans; Avith infinite public controversy;
the victory in Avhich, doubtful though it look, will remain

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 391
with the WHlimited mother. Moreover, ever since the day of
poniards, we have seen unlimited patriotism openly equip
ping itself with arms. Citizens denied "activity," which
is facetiously made to signify a certain weight of purse,
cannot buy blue uniforms, and be guardsmen; but man is
greater than blue cloth ; man can fight, if need be, in mul
tiform cloth, or even almost without cloth, as Sansculotte.
So pikes continue to be hammered, whether those dirks
of improved structure with barbs be " meant for the West-
India market," or not meant. Men beat, the wrong way,
their ploAvshares into swords. Is there not what we may
call an "Austrian committee," Comite Autrichien, sitting
daily and nightly in the Tuileries? Patriotism, by vision
and suspicion, knows it too well ! If the king fly, will
there not be aristocrat Austrian invasion; butchery;
replacement of feudalism; wars more than civil? The
hearts of men are saddened and maddened.
Dissident priests likeAvise give trouble enough. Expelled
from their parish churches, where constitutional priests,
elected by the public, have replaced them, these unhappy
persons resort to convents of nuns, or other such recep
tacles; and there, on Sabbath, collecting assemblages of
anti-constitutional individuals, who have grown devout all
on a sudden, * they worship or pretend to worship in their
strait-laced contumacious manner; to the scandal of
patriotism. Dissident priests, passing along with their
sacred wafer for the dying, seem wishful to be massacred
in the streets; wherein patriotism will not gratify them.
Slighter palm of martyrdom, however, shall not be denied :
martyrdom not of massacre, yet of fustigation. At the
refractory places of worship, patriot men appear; patriot
women with strong hazel wands, which they apply. Shut
thy eyes, 0 reader ; see not this misery, peculiar to these
later times, of martyrdom without sincerity, with only
cant and contumacy! A dead Catholic Church is not
allowed to lie dead ; no, it is galvanized into the detest-
ablest death-life; whereat humanity, we say, shuts its eyes.
For the patriot women take their hazel wands, and
fustigate, amid laughter of bystanders, with alacrity;
broad bottom of priests; alas, nuns too, reversed and
cotillons retrousses! The national guard doesAvhat it can:
municipality " invokes the principles of toleration ;" grants
* Toulongeon, L 262.

392 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
dissident worshipers the church of the Theatins: prom
ising protection. But it is to no purpose: at the door of
that TJieatins church appears a placard, and suspended
atop, like plebeian consular fasces — a bundle of rods!
The principles of toleration must do the best they may :
but no dissident man shall Avorship contumaciously; there
is a Plebiscitum to that effect; which, though unspoken
is like the laAvs of the Medes and Persians. Dissident
contumacious priests ought not to be harbored, even in
private, by any man: the club of the cordeliers openly
denounces majesty himself as doing it.*
Many things invite to flight: but probably this thing
above all others, that it has become impossible! On the
15th of April, notice is given that his majesty, who has
suffered much from catarrh lately, will enjoy the spring
weather, for a few days, at Saint-Cloud. Out at Saint-
Cloud? Wishing to celebrate his Easter, his Pdques or
Pasch, there; with refactory anti-constitutional dissidents?
Wishing rather to make off for Compiegne, and thence to
the frontiers? As were, in good sooth, perhaps feasible,
or Avould once have been ; nothing but some two chasseurs
attending you ; chasseurs easily corrupted ! It is a pleas
ant possibility, execute it or not. Men say there are
thirty thousand chevaliers of the poniard lurking in the
woods there: lurking in the woods, and thirty thousand,
for the human imagination is not fettered. But noAV, how
easily might these, dashing out on Lafayette, snatch off
the hereditary representative; and roll away with him,
after the manner of a whirl-blast, whither they listed !
Enough, it were well the king did not go. Lafayette is
foreAvarned and forearmed; but, indeed, is the risk his
only; or his and all France's?
Monday the 18th of April is come; the Easter journey
to Saint-Cloud shall take effect. National guard has got
its orders; a first division, as advanced guard, has even
marched, and probably arrived. His majesty's Maison-
bouche, they say, is all busy stewing and frying at Saint-
Cloud; the king's dinner not far from ready there. About
one o'clock, the royal carriage, with its eight royal blacks,
shoots stately into the Place du Carrousel; draws up to
* Newspapers of April and June, 1791 (in "Hist. Pari." ix. 449;
x. 217.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 393
receive its royal burden. But hark ! From the neighbor
ing church of Saint-Roch, the tocsin begins ding-dong
ing. Is the king stolen, then; is he going; gone? Multi
tudes of persons crowd the Carrousel : the royal carriage
still stands there, and, by heaven's strength, shall stand!
Lafayette comes up, with aides-de-camp and oratory;
pervading the groups: " Taisez-vous," answer the groups;
"the king shall not go." Monsieur appears, at an upper
window: ten thousand voices bray and shriek, "Nous
ne voulons pas que le Roiparte." Their majesties have
mounted. Crack go the whips; but twenty patriot arms
have seized each of the eight bridles: there is rearing,
rocking, vociferation ; not the smallest headway. In vain
does Lafayette fret, indignant; and perorate and strive:
Patriots in the passion of terror bellow round the royal
carriage; it is one bellowing sea of patriot terror run
frantic. Will royalty fly off toward Austria; like a lit
rocket, toward endless conflagation of civil war? Stop it,
ye patriots, in the name of heaven! Rude voices pas
sionately apostrophize royalty itself. Usher Campan, and
other the like official persons, pressing forward with help
or advice, are clutched by the sashes, and hurled and
whirled, in a confused perilous manner; so that her maj
esty has to plead passionately from the carriage window.
Order cannot be heard, cannot be followed; national
guards know not how to act. Center grenadiers, of the
observatoire battalion, are there; not on duty; alas, in
quasi-mutiny; speaking rude disobedient Avords; threaten
ing the mounted guards with sharp shot if they hurt the
people. Lafayette mounts and dismounts; runs harangu
ing, panting; on the verge of despair. For an hour and
three-quarters; seven-quarters of an hour," by the Tuileries
clock ! Desperate Lafayette will open a passage, were it by
the cannon's mouth, if his majesty will order. Their majes
ties counseled to it by royalist friends, by patriot foes, dis
mount; and retire in, with heavy indignant heart; giving
up the enterprise. Maison-bouche may eat that cooked
dinner themselves: his majesty shall not see Saint-Cloud
this day, nor any day.*
The pathetic fable of imprisonment in one's own palace
* " Deux Amis," vi. c. 1.: " Hist. Pari." ix. 407-14

394 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
has become a sad fact, then? Majesty complains to assem
bly; Municipality deliberates, proposes to petition or
address; sections respond with sullen brevity of negation.
Lafayette flings down his commission; appears in civic
pepper and salt frock; and cannot be flattered back again;
not in less than three days; and by unheard-of entreaty;
national guards kneeling to him, and declaring that it is
not sycophancy, that they are free men kneeling here to
the statue of liberty. For the rest, those center grenadiers
of the observatoire are disbanded, yet indeed are reinlisted,
all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new quar
ters. The king must keep his Easter in Paris ; meditating
much on this singular posture of things; but as good as
determined now to fly from it, desire being whetted by
difficulty.

CHAPTER II.
EASTER AT PARIS.
For above a year, ever since March, 1790, it would seem,
there has hovered a project of flight before the royal
mind ; and ever and anon has been condensing itself into
something like a purpose; but this or the other difficulty
always vaporized it again. It seems so full of risks, per
haps of civil war itself; above all, it cannot be done with
out effort. Somnolent laziness will not serve : to fly, if not
in a leather vache, one must verily stir one's self. Better to
adopt that constitution of theirs ; execute it so as to show
all men that it is ^executable? Better or not so good ;
surely it is easier. To all difficulties you need only say,
there is a lion in the path, behold your constitution will
not act! For a somnolent person it requires no effort to
counterfeit death, as Dame de Stael and friends of liberty
can see the king's government long doing, faisant la mort.
Nay now, when desire whetted by difficulty has brought
the matter to a head, and the royal mind no longer halts
between two, what can come of it? Grant that poor Louis
were safe with Bouille, Avhat, on the whole, could he look
for there? Exasperated tickets of entry answer: Much,
all. But cold reason answers: Little, almost nothing.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 395
Is not loyalty a law of nature? ask the tickets of entry.
Is not love of your king, and even death for him, the glory
of all Frenchmen, except these few democrats? Let
Democrat constitution-builders see what they Avill do with
out their keystone ; and France rend its hair, having lost
the hereditary representative !
Thus will King Louis fly; one sees not reasonably
toward what. As a maltreated boy, shall Ave say, who
having a stepmother, rushes sulky into the wide world;
and will wring the paternal heart? Poor Louis escapes
from known unsupportable evils, to an unknown mixture
of good and evil colored by hope. He goes, as Rabelais
did when dying, to seek a great may -be je vais chercher un
grand Peut-etre! As not only the sulky boy but the wise
grown man is obliged to do, so often, in emergencies.
For the rest, there is still no lack of stimulants, and step-
dame maltreatments, to keep one's resolution at the due
pitch. Factious disturbances cease not: as indeed how can
they, unless authoritatively conjur, in a revolt Avhich is by
nature bottomless? If the ceasing of faction be the price of
the king's somnolence, he may awake when he will and
take wing.
Remark, in any case, what somersets and contortions a
dead Catholicism is making, skillfully galvanized : hideous,
and even piteous, to behold ! Jurant and dissident, with
their shaved crowns, argue frothing everywhere; or are
ceasing to argue, and stripping for battle. In Paris was
scourging Avhile need continued: contariwise, in the
Morbihan of Brittany, without scourging, armed peasants
are up, roused by pulpit drum, they know not why. Gen
eral Dumouriez, who has got missioned thitherward, finds
all in sour heat of darkness; finds also that explanation
and conciliation will still do much.*
But again, consider this: that his holiness, Pius Sixth,
has seen good to excommunicate Bishop Talleyrand!
Surely, we will say then, considering it, there is no living
or dead church in the earth that has not the indubitablest
right to excommunicate Talleyrand. Pope Pius has right
and might, in his way. But truly so likewise has Father
Adam, ci-devant Marquis Saint-Huruge, in his way. Be
hold, therefore, on the 4th of May, in the Palais Royal, a

* " Deux Amis," v. 410-21; Dumouriez, ii. c, 5.

396 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
mixed loud-sounding multitude ; in the middle of Avhom
Father Adam, bull-voiced Saint-Huruge, in white hat-
towers visible and audible. With him, it is said, walks
journalist Gorsas, walk many others of the washed sort;
for no authority will interfere. Pius Sixth, with his plush
and tiara, and power of the Keys, they bear aloft: of
natural size, made of lath and combustible gum. Royou,
the king's friend, is borne too in effigy; with a pile of
newspaper kings friends, condemned numbers of the
ami-du-Roi fit fuel of the sacrifice. Speeches are spoken ;
a judgment is held, a doom proclaimed, audible in bull-
voice, toward the four winds. And thus amid great shout
ing, the holocaust is consummated, under the summer sky;
and our lath-and-gum holiness, with the attendant vic
tims mounts up in flame, and sinks down in ashes; a
decomposed pope; and right or might, among all the
parties, has better or worse accomplished itself, as it could.*
But, on the whole, reckoning from Martin Luther in the
market place of Wittenberg to Marquis Saint-Huruge in
this Palais Royal of Paris, what a journey have we gone;
into what strange territories has it carried us! No
authority can noAV interfere. Nay religion herself, mourn
ing for such things may after all ask, What have I to do
Avith them?
In such extraordinary manner does dead Catholicism
somerset and caper, skillfully galvanized. For, does the
reader inquire into the subject-matter of controversy in
this case ; what the difference between orthodoxy or my-
doxy and heterodoxy or thy -doxy might here be? My-
doxy is, that an august national assembly can equalize the
extent of bishoprics; that an equalized bishop, his creed
and formularies being left quite as they were, can swear
fidelity to king, law and nation, and so become a constitu
tional bishop. Thy-doxy, if thou be dissident, is that he
cannot; but that he must become an accursed thing.
Human ill-nature needs but some Homoiousian iota, or
even the pretense of one; and will flow copiously through
the eye of a needle : thus always must mortals go jargon-
ing and fuming, And, like tbe ancient Stoics in their porches,
With fierce dispute maintain their churches.
*"Bist. Pari." x. 99-103.

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 397
This Auto-da-fe of Saint-Huruge's was on the 4th of
May, 1791. Royalty sees it;. but says nothing.

CHAPTER III.
COUNT FERSEN.
Royalty, in fact, should, by this time, be far on with
its preparations. Unhappily much preparation is needful.
Could a hereditary representative be carried in leather
vache, how easy were it! But it is not so.
Ne\y clothes are needed; as usual, in all epic transactions,
were it in the grimmest iron ages; consider "Queen
Chrimhilde, with her sixty sempstresses," in that iron
Nibelungen song. No queen can stir without new clothes.
Therefore, now, Dame Campan whisks assiduous to this
mantua-maker and to that: and there is clipping of
frocks and gowns, upper clothes and under, great and small ;
such a clipping and sewing as — might have been dispensed
with. Moreover, her majesty cannot go a step anywhither
without her Necessaire; dear Necessaire, of inlaid ivory
and rosewood ; cunningly devised ; which holds perfumes,
toilette-implements, infinite small queenlike furnitures:
necessary to terrestrial life. Not Avithout a cost of some
five hundred louis, of much precious time, and difficult
hoodwinking which does not blind, can this same neces
sary of life be forwarded by the Flanders carriers, never
to get to hand.* All which, you would say, augurs ill
for the prospering of the enterprise. But the whims of
women and queens must be humored.
Bouille, on his side, is making a fortified camp at Mont-
medi; gathering Royal-Allemand, and all manner of other
German and true French troops thither, "to watch the
Austrians." His majesty will not cross ihe frontiers,
unless on compulsion. Neither shall the emigrants be
much employed, hateful as they are to all people, f Nor
shall old war-god Broglie have any hand in the business ;
but solely our brave Bouille; to whom, on the day of meet
ing, a marshal's baton shall be delivered, by a rescued
king, amid the shouting of all the troops. In the mean-
* Campan, ii. c. 18. f Bouille, "Memoires," ii, c. 10.

398 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Avhile, Paris being so suspicious, were it not perhaps good
to write your foreign ambassadors an ostensible constitu
tional letter; desiring all kings and men to take heed that
King Louis loves the constitution, that he has voluntarily
sworn, and does again swear, to maintain the same, and
Avill reckon those his enemies who affect to say other
wise? Such a constitutional circular is despatched by
couriers, is communicated confidentially to the assembly,
and printed in all newpsapers; with the finest effect.*
Similation and dissimulation mingle extensively in human
affairs.

We observe, however, that Count Fersen is often using
his ticket of entry; which surely he has clear right to do.
A gallant soldier and Swede, devoted to this fair queen; as
indeed the highest Swede now is. Has not King Gustav,
famed fiery Chevalier du Nord, sworn himself, by the old
laws of chivalry, her knight? He will descend on fire-
wings of Swedish musketry, and deliver her from these
foul dragons, if, alas, the assassin's pistol intervene not!
But, in fact, Count Fersen does seem a likely young
soldier, of alert decisive ways: he circulates widely, seen,
unseen; and has business on hand. Also Colonel the
Duke de Choiseul, nephew of Choiseul the great, of
Choiseul the now deceased; he and Engineer Goguelat
are passing and repassing between Metz and the Tuileries :
and letters go in cipher, one of them, a most important
one, hard to decipher; Fersen having ciphered it in haste, f
As for Duke de Villequier, he is gone ever since the
day of poniards; but his apartment is useful for her
majesty. On the other side, poor Commandant Gouvion, watching
at the Tuileries, second in national command, sees several
things hard to interpret. It is the same Gouvion who
sat, long months ago, at the town hall, gazing helpless
into that insurrection of women; motionless, as the brave
stabled steed Avhen conflagration rises, till Usher Maillard
snatched his drum. Sincerer patriot there is not; but
many a shiftier. He, if Dame Campan gossip credibly, is
* " Moniteur," Seance du 23 Avril, 1791.
t Choiseul, "Relation du Departe de Louis XVI " (Paris, 1822),
p 39.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 399
paying some similitude of love court to a certain false
chambermaid of the palace, who betrays much to him : the
Necessaire, the clothes, the packing of jewels,* could he
understand it when betrayed. Helpless Gouvion gazes
Avith sincere glassy eyes into it; stirs up his sentries to
vigilance; Avalks restless to and fro; and hopes the best.
But, on the whole, one finds that, in the second week of
June, Colonel de Choiseul is privately in Paris; having
come "to see his children." Also that Fersen has got a
stupendous new coach built, of the kind named Berline,
done by the first artists ; according to a model ; they bring
it home to him, in Choiseul's presence; the two friends
take a proof-drive in it, along the streets; in meditative
mood; then send it up to "Madame Sullivan's, in the Rue
de Clichy," far north, to wait there till wanted. Appar
ently a certain Russian Baroness de Korff, with waiting-
woman, valet, and two children, will travel homeward
with some state : in whom these young military gentlemen
take interest? A passport has been procured for her; and
much assistance shown, with coachbuilders and suchlike;
so helpful polite are young military men. Fersen has
likewise purchased a chaise fit for two, at least for two
waiting maids; further, certain necessary horses; one
would say, he is himself quitting France, not without
outlay? We observe finally that their majesties, heaven
willing, will assist at Corpus- Christi Day, this blessed
summer solstice, in Assumption Church, here at Paris, to
the joy of all the world. For which same day, moreover,
brave Bouille, at Metz, as we find, has invited a party of
friends to dinner ; but indeed is gone from home, in the
interim, over to Montmedi.
These are of the phenomena, or visual appearances, of
this wide-working terrestrial world: which truly is all
phenomenal, what can they call spectral; and never rests
at any moment; one never at any moment can know why.

On Monday night, the 20th of June, 1791, about eleven
o'clock, there is many a hackney-coach, and glass-coach
{carrosse de remise), still rumbling, or at rest, on the
streets of Paris. But of all glass-coaches, we recommend
this to thee, 0 reader, which stands drawn up in the
* Campan, ii. 141.

400 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
Rue de I'Echelle, hard by the Carrousel and outgate of
the Tuileries; in the Rue de I'Echelle that then was;
"opposite Ronsin the saddler's door," as if waiting for a
fare there ! Not long does it Avait ; a hooded dame, with
two hooded children has issued from Villequier's door,
where no sentry walks, into the Tuileries court of princes;
into the Carrousel; into the Rue de I'Echelle; Avhere the
glass coachman readily admits them; and again waits.
Not long; another dame, likeAvise hooded or shrouded,
leaning on a servant, issues in the same manner; bids the
servant good-night; and is, in the same manner, by the
glass-coachman, cheerfully admitted. Whither go so many
dames? 'Tis his majesty's Couchee, majesty just gone
to bed, and all the palace world is retiring home. But
the glass-coachman still waits; his fare seemingly
incomplete. By and by, we note a thickset individual, in round hat
and peruke, arm and arm with some servant, seemingly
of the runner or courier sort; he also issues through
Villequier's door; starts a shoebuckle as he passes one of
the sentries, stoops down to clasp it again; is however, by
the glass-coachman, still more cheerfully admitted. And
now, is his fare complete? Not yet; the glass-coachman
still waits. Alas! and the false chambermaid has warned
Gouvion that she thinks the royal family will fly this very
night; and Gouvion, distrusting his own glazed eyes, has
sent express for Lafayette; and Lafayette's carriage,
flaring with lights, rolls this moment through the inner
arch of the Carrousel, where a lady shaded in broad
gypsy hat, and leaning on the arm of a servant, also of the
runner or courier sort, stands aside to let it pass, and has even
the whim to touch a spoke of it with her badine, light little
magic rod which she calls badine, such as the beautiful
then Avore. The flare of Lafayette's carriage rolls past: all
is found quiet in the court of princes; sentries at their
post; majesties' apartments closed in smooth rest. Your
false chambermaid must have been mistaken ? Watch thou,
Gouvion, with Argus' vigilance; for of a truth, treachery
is within these walls. But where is the lady that stood
aside in gypsy hat, and touched the wheel -spoke with her
badine? Oh reader, that lady that touched the wheel-
spoke was the queen of France! She has issued safe
through that inner arch, in' to the Carrousel itself j but

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 401
not into the Rue de I'Echelle. Flurried by the rattle and
rencounter, she took the right hand not the left; neither
she nor her courier knows Paris; he indeed is no courier,
but a loyal stupid ci-devant bodyguard disguised as one.
They are off, quite wrong, over the Pont Royal and river ;
roaming disconsolate in the Rue du Bac; far from the
glass-coachman, avIio still waits. Waits, with flutter of
heart; with thoughts — which he must button close up,
under his jarvie-surtout!
Midnight clangs from all the city steeples; one precious
hour has been spent so; most mortals are asleep. The
glass-coachman waits; and in what mood! A brother
jarvie drives up, enters into conversation; is answered
cheerfully in jarvie-dialect : the brothers of the whip ex
change a pinch of snuff ; * decline drinking together ; and
part with good-night. Be the heavens blest! here at
length is the queen lady, in gypsy hat; safe after perils;
Avho has had to inquire her way. She too is admitted;
her courier jumps aloft, as the other, who is also a dis
guised bodyguard, has done: and now, oh, glass-coachman
of a thousand, Count Fersen, for the reader sees it is thou,
drive !
Dust shall not stick to the hoofs of Fersen: crack! crack!
the glass-coach rattles, and every soul breathes lighter.
But is Fersen on the right road? North-eastward, to the
barrier of Saint Martin and Metz highway, thither were
we bound ; and lo, he drives right northward ! The royal
individual, in round hat .and peruke, sits astonished ; but
right or 'wrong, there is no remedy. Crack, crack, we
go incessant, thorugh the slumbering city. Seldom,
since Paris rose out of mud, or the longhaired kings went
in bullock carts, was there such a drive. Mortals on
each hand of you, close by, stretched out horizontal, dor
mant; and we alive and quaking! Crack, crack, through
the Rue de Grammont; across theboulevard; up the Rue 4,
de la ChaussSe d'Antin, these windows, all silent, of num
ber 42, were Mirabeau 's. Toward the barrier not of Saint
Martin, but of Clichy on the utmost north ! Patience, ye
royal individuals; Fersen understands Avhat he is about.
Passing up the Rue de Clichy, he alights for one moment
at Madame Sullivan's; "Did Count Fersen's coachman
* Weber, ii. 340-2; Choiseul, pp. 44-56.

402 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
get the Baroness de Korff's new Berline?" "Gone with
it an hour and a half ago," grumbles responsive the drowsy
porter. " O'est bien. " Yes, it is well ; though had not-
such hour and half been lost, it were still better. Forth
therefore, 0 Fersen, fast by the Barrier de Clichy;
then eastward along the outer boulevard, what horses and
whipcord can do !
Thus Fersen drives, through the ambrosial night.
Sleeping Paris is now all on the right-hand of him ; silent
except for some snoring hum ; and now he is eastward as
far as the Barrier de Saint Martin; looking earnestly for
Baroness de Korff's Berline. This heaven's Berline he
at length does descry, drawn up with its six horses, his
own German coachman waiting on the box. Right, thou
good German: now haste, whither thou knowest! And
as foi us of the glass-coach, haste too, 0, haste; much
time is already lost! The august glass-coach fare, six in-
sides, hastily packs itself into the new Berline; two body
guard couriers behind. The glass-coach itself is turned
adrift, its head toward the city; to wander whither it
lists, and be found next morning tumbled in a ditch.
But Fersen is on the neAV box, with its brave new hammer
cloths; flourishing his whip; he bolts forward toward
Bondy. There a third and final bodyguard courier of
ours ought surely to be, with post horses ready ordered.
There likeAvise ought that purchased chaise, with the
two Avaiting maids and their bandboxes, to be; whom also
her majesty could not travel without. Swift thou deft
Fersen, and may the heavens turn it well !
Once more, by heaven's blessing, it is all well. Here is
the sleeping hamlet of Bondy ; chaise with waiting women ;
horses all ready, and postillions with their churn boots,
impatient in the dewy dawn. Brief harnessing done, the
postillions with their churn boots vault into the saddles;
brandish circularly their little noisy whips. Fersen, under
his jarvie surtout bends in lowly silent reverence of adieu ;
royal hands Avave speechless inexpressible response ; Baroness
de Korff's Berline, with the royalty of France bounds off:
forever, as it proved. Deft Fersen dashes obliquely north
ward, through the country, toward Bougret ; gains Bougret,
finds his German coachman and chariot waiting there ; cracks
off and drives undiscovered into unknown space. A deft
active man, we say ; what he undertook to do is nimbly
and successfully done.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 403
And so the royalty of France is actually fled? This
precious night, the shortest of the year, it flies, and drives !
Baroness de Korff is, at bottom, Dame de Tourzel, govern
ess of the royal children : she who came hooded with the
two hooded little ones; little dauphin; little Madame
Royale, known long afterward as Duchesse d'Angouleme.
Baroness de Korff's ivaiting maid is the queen in gypsy
hat. The royal individual in round hat and peruke, he
is valet for the time being. That other hooded dame,
styled traveling companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth; she
had sworn, long since, when the insurrection of women
was, that only death should part her and them. And so
they rush there, not too impetuously, through the Wood
of Bondy : over a Rubicon in their own and France's history.
Great; though the future is all vague! If we reach
Bouille? we do not reach him? Oh Louis! and this all
round thee is the great shimmering earth (and overhead,
the great watchful heaven); the slumbering Wood of
Bondy, where longhaired Childeric Donothing was struck
through with iron; * not unreasonable, in a world like
ours. These peaked stone-towers are Raincy; towers of
wicked D'Orleans. All slumbers save the multiplex rustle
of our new Berline. Loose-skirted scarecrow of an herb-
merchant, with his ass and early greens, toilsomely plod
ding, seems the only creature we meet. But right ahead
the great northwest sends up evermore his gray brindled
dawn: from dewy branch, birds here and there, with short
deep warble, salute the coming sun. Stars fade out, and
galaxies; street lamps of the city of God. The universe
oh, my brothers, is flinging wide its portal for the levee of
the great high King. Thou, poor King Louis, farest
nevertheless, as mortals do, toward orient lands of hope;
and the Tuileries with its levees, and France and the
earth itself, is but a larger kind of doghutch, occasionally
going rabid. *Hehault, " Abrege Chronologique," p. 36.

404 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER IV.
ATTITUDE.
But in Paris, at six in the morning; when some patriot
deputy, warned by a billet, awoke Lafayette, and they
Avent to the Tuileries? Imagination may paint, but
words cannot, the surprise of Lafayette; or with what
bewilderment helpless Gouvion rolled glassy Argus' eyes,
discerning now that his false chambermaid had told true!
However, it is to be recorded that Paris, thanks to an
august national assembly, did, on this seeming doomsday,
surpass itself. Never, according to historian eye-witnesses,
was there seen such an "imposing attitude."* Sections
all "in permanence;" our town hall too, having first,
about ten o'clock, fired three solemn alarm -cannons: above
all, our national assembly! National assembly, likewise
permanent, decides what is needful; with unanimous
consent, for the C6te Droit sits dumb, afraid of the Lan-
terne. Decides with a calm promptitude, which rises
toward the sublime. One must needs vote, for the thing is
self-evident, that his majesty has been abducted, or spirited
away, "enleve," by some person or persons unknown:
in which case, what will the constitution have us do? Let
us return to first principles, as we always say ; " revenons
aux principes."
By first or by* second principles, much is promptly
decided : ministers are sent for, instructed how to continue
their functions; Lafayette is examined; and Gouvion,
Avho gives a most helpless account, the best he can. Letters
are found written; one letter, of immense magnitude; all
in his majesty's hand, and evidently of his majesty's own
composition; addressed to the national assembly. It de
tails with earnestness, with a childlike simplicity, what
woes his majesty has suffered. Woes great and small: A
Necker seen applauded, a majesty not; then insurrection;
want of due furniture in Tuileries Palace; want of due
cash in civil list ; general want of cash, of furniture and
order; anarchy everywhere: deficit never yet, in the
smallest, "choked or comble:" wherefore, in brief, his maj-
*"Deux Amis," vi. 67-178; Toulongeon, ii. 1-38; Camille, Prud-
hommeand Editors (in "Hist. Pari. " x. 240-4).

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 405
esty has retired toward a place of liberty; and, leaving
sanctions, federation, and Avhat oaths there may be, to
shift for themselves, does now refer to what, thinks an
august assembly? To that "declaration of the 23rd of
June," with its " Seul it fera, He alone will make his
people happy." As if that were not buried, deep enough,
under two irrevocable twelvemonths, and the wreck and
rubbish of a whole feudal world ! This strange autograph
letter the national assembly decides on printing; on trans
mitting to the eighty- three departments, with exegetic
commentary, short but pithy. Commissioners also shall
go forth on all sides ; the people be exhorted ; the armies be
increased ; care taken that the commonweal suffer no dam
age. And now, with a sublime air of calmness, nay of in
difference, we " pass to the order of the day !"
By such sublime calmness, the terror of the people is
calmed. These gleaming pike forests, which bristled fate
ful in the early sun, dissappear again; the far-sounding
street orators cease, x>r spout milder. We are to have a
civil war; let us have it then. The king is gone; but na
tional assembly, but France and we remain. The people
also takes a great attitude ; the people also is calm ; motion
less as a couchant lion. With but a few broolings, some
waggings of the tail : to show what it will do ! Cazales,
for instance, was beset by street groups, and cries of
Lanterne; but national patrols easily delivered him.
Likewise all king's effigies and statues, at least stucco
ones, get abolished. Even king's names; the word Roi
fades suddenly out of all shop signs; the royal Bengal
Tiger itself, on the boulevards, becomes the national
Bengal one, Tigre National. *
How great is a calm couchant people ! On the morroAV,
men will say to one another : " We have no king, yet we
slept sound enough." On the morrow, fervent Achille de
Chatelet, and Thomas Paine the rebellious needleman,
shall have the walls of Paris profusely plastered with their
placard; announcing that there must be a republic. \
Need we add, that Lafayette too, though at first menaced
by pikes, has taken a great attitude, or indeed the greatest
of all? Scouts and aides-de-camp fly forth vague, in
quest and pursuit; young Romoeuf toward Valenciennes,
though with small hope.
* " Walpoliana." + Dumont, c. 16.

406 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
Thus Paris; sublimely calmed, in its bereavement. But
from the Messageries Royales, in all mail-bags, radiates
forth far-darting the electric news : Our hereditary repre
sentative is floAvn. Laugh, black royalists : yet be it in
your sleeve only; lest patriotism notice, and waxing
frantic, lower the Lanterne ! In Paris alone is a sublime
national assembly with its calmness; truly, other places
must take it as they can; with open mouth and eyes; with
panic cackling, with wrath, Avith conjecture. How each
one of those dull leathern diligences, with its leathern bag
and "the king is fled," furrows up smooth France as it
goes ; through town and hamlet, ruffles the smooth public
mind into quivering agitation of death-terror; then lum
bers on, as if nothing had happened! Along all highways;
toAvard the utmost borders; till all France is ruffled,
roughened up (metaphorically speaking) into one enor
mous, desperate-minded, red guggling turkey cock !
For example, it is under cloud of night that the leathern
monster reaches Nantes; deep sunk -in sleep. The word
spoken rouses all patriot men: General Dumouriez, envel
oped in roquelaures, has to descend from his bedroom;
finds the street covered with " four or five thousand citi
zens in their shirts. " * Here and there a faint farthing
rushlight, hastily kindled; and so many swart-featured
haggard faces with nightcaps pushed back ; and the more
or less flowing drapery of nightshirt: openmouthed till the
general say his Avord ! And overhead, as always, the Great
Bear is turning so quiet round Bootes; steady, indifferent
as the leathern diligence itself. Take comfort, ye men of
Nantes ; Bootes and the steady Bear are turning ; ancient
Atlantic still sends his brine, loud billowing, up your
Loire stream ; brandy shall be hot in the stomach : this
is not the last of the days, but one before the last. The
fools! If they knew Avhat was doing, in these very
instants, also by candle-light, in the far north-east !
Perhaps, we may say, the most terrified man in Paris or
France is — who thinks the reader? seagreen Robespierre.
Double paleness, with the shadow of gibbets and halters,
overcasts the seagreen features; it is too clear to him that
there is to be "a Saint-Bartholomew of patriots," that in
four-and-twenty hours he will not be in life. These horrid
* Dumouriez, " Memoires," ii. 109.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 407
anticipations of the soul he is heard uttering at Petion's:
by a notable witness. By Madame Roland, namely; her
whom we saw, last year, radiant at the Lyons federation.
These four months, the Rolands have been in Paris;
arranging with assembly committees the municipal affairs
of Lyons, affairs all sunk in debt; communing, the while,
as was most natural, with the best patriots to be found
here, with our Brissots, Petions, Buzots, Robespierres :
who were wont to come to us, says the fair hostess, four
evenings in the week. They, running about, busier than
ever this day, would fain have comforted the seagreen
man; spake of Achille de Chatelet's placard; of a journal
to be called The Republican of preparing men's minds for
a republic. "A republic?" said the seagreen, with one of
his dry husky Mwsportful laughs, "What is that?" * Oh
seagreen incorruptible, thou shalt see !

CHAPTER V.
THE NEW BERLINE.
But scouts, all this while, and aides-de-camp, have flown
forth' faster than the leathern diligences. Young Romceuf,
as we said, was off early toward Valenciennes: distracted
villagers seize him, as a traitor with a finger of his own in
the plot; drag him back to the town hall; to the national
assembly, Avhich speedily grants a new passport. Nay noAV,
.that same scarecrow of an herb merchant with hi= ass has
bethought him of the grand new Berline seen in the wood
of Bondy; and delivered evidence of it: f Romceuf, fur
nished with new passport, is sent forth with double speed
on a hopefuler track; by Bondy, Claye and Chalons, toAvard
Metz, to track the new Berline; and gallops a franc etrier .
Miserable new Berline ! Why could not royalty go in some
old Berline similar to that of other men? Flying for life,
one does not stickle about his vehicle. Monsieur, in a
commonplace traveling carriage is off northward; madame,
his princess, in another, with variation of route; they cross
one another while changing horses, without look of recog-
* Madame Roland, ii. 70.
f "Moniteur," etc. (in Hist. Pari." x. 244-253).

408 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
nition; and reach Flanders, no man questioning them.
Precisely in the same manner, beautiful Princess de Lam-
balle set off, about the same hour; and will reach England
safe : would she had continued there ! The beautiful, the
good, but the unfortunate; reserved for a frightful end!
All runs along, unmolested, speedy, except only the new
Berline. Huge leather vehicle : huge Argosy, let us say, or
Acapulco ship ; with its heavy stern-boat of chaise-and-pair;
with its three yellow pilot-boats of mounted bodyguard
couriers, rocking aimless round it and ahead of it, to bewil-
^ der, not to guide ! It lumbers along, lurchingly with stress,
at a snail's pace; noted of all the world. The bodyguard
couriers in their yellow liveries, go prancing and clattering;
loyal but stupid ; unacquainted with all things. Stoppages
occur ; and breakages, to be repaired at Etoges. King Louis
too will dismount, will walk up hills, and enjoy the blessed
sunshine: with eleven horses and double drink money,
and all furtherances of nature and art, it will be found that
royalty, flying for life, accomplishes sixty-nine miles in
twenty-two incessant hours. Slow royalty ! And yet not a
minute of these hours but is precious: on minutes hang
the destinies of royalty now.

Readers, therefore, can judge in what humor Duke de
Choiseul might stand waiting, in the village of Pont-de-
Sommevelle, some leagues beyond Chalons, hour after hour,
now when the day bends visibly westward. Choiseul drove
out of Paris, in all privity, ten hours before their maj
esties' fixed time; his hussars, led by Engineer Goguelat,
are here duly, come " to escort a treasure that is expected ;"
but, hour after hour, is no Baroness de Korff's Berline.
Indeed, over all that north-east region, on the skirts of
Champagne and of Lorraine, where the great road runs, the
agitation is considerable. For all along, from this Pont-
de-Sommevelle northeastward as far as Montmedi, at post-
villages and towns, escorts of hussars and dragoons do
lounge waiting; a train or chain of military escorts; at the
Montmedi end of it our brave Bouille : an electric thunder
chain; which the invisible Bouille, like a father Jove,
holds in his hand — for wise purposes! Brave Bouille has
done what man could; has spread out his electric thunder
chain of military escorts, onward to the threshold of

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 409
Chalons; it waits but for the new Korff Berline; to receive
it, escort it, and, if need be, bear it off in whirlwind of
military fire. They lie and lounge there, we say, these
fierce troopers; from Montmedi and Stenai through Cler
mont, Sainte-Menehould to utmost Pont-de-Sommevelle,in
all post villages; for the route shall avoid Verdun and great
towns : they loiter impatient ; " till the treasure arrive. "
Judge what a day this is for brave Bouille : perhaps the
first day of a new glorious life; surely the last day of the
old! Also, and indeed still more, what a day, beautiful
and terrible, for your young full-blooded captains: your
Dandoins, Comte de Damas, Duke de Choiseul, Engineer
Goguelat, and the like ; intrusted with the secret ! Alas,
the day bends ever more westward ; and no Korff Berline
comes to sight. It is four hours beyond the time, and
still no Berline. In all village-streets, royalist captains go
lounging, looking often Paris-ward; with face of uncon
cern, Avith heart full of black care : rigorous quartermasters
can hardly keep the private dragoons from cafes and dram
shops. * Dawn on our bewilderment, thou new Berline;
dawn on us, thou sun-chariot of a new Berline, with the
destinies of France !
It was of his majesty's ordering, this military array of
escorts; a thing solacing the royal imagination with a look
of security and rescue; yet, in reality creating only alarm,
and, where there was otherwise no danger, danger without
end. For each patriot, in these post-villages, asks natur
ally: This clatter of cavalry, and marching and lounging
of troops, what means it? To escort a treasure? Why
¦escort, when no patriot will steal from the nation; or
where is your treasure? There has been such marching
and counter-marching: for it is another fatality, that
certain of these military escorts came out so early as yes
terday; the nineteenth, not the twentieth of the month
being the day first appointed : which her majesty, for
some necessity or other, saw good to alter. And now
consider the suspicious nature of patriotism; suspicious,
above all, of Bouille the aristocrat; and how the sour
doubting humor has had leave to accumulate and exacer
bate for f our-and-twenty hours !
* "Declaration du Sieur La Gache du Regiment Royal-Dragons"
(in Choiseul, pp. 125-39).

410 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
At Pont-de-Sommevelle, these forty foreign hussars of
Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are becoming an unspeak
able mystery to all men. They lounged long enough,
already, at Sainte-Menehould; lounged and loitered till
our national volunteers there, all risen into hot wrath of
doubt, "demanded three hundred fusils of their town
hall," and got them. At which same moment too, as it
chanced, our Captain Dandoins was just coming in from
Clermont with his troop, at the other end of the village.
A fresh troop ; alarming enough ; though happily they are
only dragoons and French! So that Goguelat Avith his
hussars had to ride, and even to do it fast; till here at
Pont-de-Sommevelle, where Choiseul lay waiting, he found
resting-place. Resting-place as on burning marie. For
the rumor of him flies abroad ; and men run to and fro in
fright and anger : Chalons sends forth exploratory pickets of
national volunteers toward this hand; which meet explora
tory pickets, coming from Sainte-Menehould, on that. What
is it, ye whiskered hussars, men of foreign guttural speech;
in the name of heaven, what is that brings you? A
treasure? exploratory pickets shake their heads. The
hungry peasants, however, know too well what treasure it
is; military seizure for rents, feudalities; which no bailiff
could make us pay: This they know; and set to jingling
their parish bell by way of tocsin; with rapid effect!
Choiseul and Goguelat, if the whole country is not to take
fire, must needs, be there Berline, be there no Berline,
saddle and ride.
They mount; and this parish tocsin happily ceases.
They ride slowly eastward.; toward Sainte Menehould;
still hoping the sun chariot of a Berline may overtake them.
Ah me, no Berline ! And near now is that Sainte Mene
hould, which expelled us in the morning, with its "three
hundred national fusils;" which looks, belike, not too lov
ingly on Captain Dandoins and his fresh dragoons, though
only French; which, in a word, one dare not enter the
second time, under pain of explosion ! With rather heavy
heart, our hussar party strikes off to the left; through by
ways, through pathless hills and woods, they, avoiding
Sainte Menehould and all places which have seen them
heretofore, will make direct for the distant village_ of
Verennes. It is probable they will have a rough evening
ride.

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 41 1
This first military post, therefore, in the long thunder
chain, has gone off with no effect; or with worse, and your
chain threatens to entangle itself! The great road, how
ever, is got hushed again into a kind of quietude, though
one of the wakefulest. Indolent dragoons cannot, by any
quartermaster, be kept altogether from the dramshop:
where patriots drink, and will even treat, eager enough for
news. Captains, in a state near distraction, beat the dusty
highway, with a face of indifference ; and no sun-chariot
appears. Why lingers it? Incredible, that with eleven
horses, and such yellow couriers and furtherances, its rate
should be under the weightiest dray rate, some three miles
an hour! Alas, one knoAvs not whether it ever even got
out of Paris; and yet also one knoAvs not whether, this
very moment, it is not at the village-end ! One's heart
flutters on the verge of unutterabilities.

CHAPTER VI.
OLD DRAGOON DROUET.
In this manner, however, has the day bent downward.
Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field labor ;
the village artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or
has strolled forth to the village street for a sweet mouthful
of air and human news. Still summer-eventide every
where! The great sun hangs flaming on the utmost
northwest; for it is his longest day this year. The hill
tops rejoicing will ere long he at their ruddiest, and blush
good-night. The thrush, in green dells, on long shadowed
leafy spray, pours gushing his glad serenade, to the babble
of brooks grown audibler; silence is stealing over the
earth. Your dusty mill of Valmy, as all other mills and
drudgeries, may furl its canvas, and cease swashing and
circling. The swenkt grinders in this treadmill of an
earth have ground out another day; and lounge there, as
we say, in village groups; movable, or ranked on social
stone-seats; * their children, mischievous imps, sporting
about their feet. Unnotable hum of sweet human gossip
rises from this village of Sainte Menehould, as from nil
* " Rapport de M. Remy " (in Choiseul, p. 143).

i 1 2 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
other villages. Gossip mostly sweet, unnotable; for the
very dragoons are French and gallant; nor as yet has the
Paris and Verdun diligence, with its leathern bag, rum
bled in, to terrify the minds of men.
One figure nevertheless we do note at the last door
of the village; that figure in loose-flowing nightgown, of
Jean Baptiste Drouet, master of the^post here. An acrid
choleric man, rather dangerous-looking ; still in the prime
of life, though he has served, in his time, as a Conde
Dragoon. This day, from an early hour Drouet got his
choler stirred, and has been kept fretting. Hussar
Gougelat in the morning saw good, by way of thrift, to
bargain with his own innkeeper, not with Drouet regular
Maitre depost, about some gig horse for the sending back
of his gig; which thing Drouet perceiving came over in
red ire, menacing the innkeeper, and would not be
appeased. Wholly an unsatisfactory day. For Drouet is
an acrid patriot too, was at the Paris feast of pikes: and
Avhat do these Bouille soldiers mean? Hussars, with their
gig, and a vengeance to it ! have hardly been thrust out,
when Dandoins and his fresh dragoons arrive from Cler
mont, and stroll. For what purpose? Choleric Drouet
steps out and steps in, Avith long flowing nightgown; look
ing abroad, Avith that sharpness of faculty which stirred
choler gives to man.
On the other hand, mark Captain Dandions on the street
of that same village ; sauntering with a face of indifference,
a heart eaten of black care ! For no Korff Berline makes
its appearance. The great sun flames broader toward
setting: one's heart flutters on the verge of dread unutter
abilities. By heaven! here is the yelloAv bodyguard courier;
spurring fast, in the ruddy evening light! Steady, 0
Dandoins, stand with inscrutable indifferent face; though
the yellow blockhead spurs past the post nouse; inquires
to find it; and stirs the village, all delighted with his fine
livery. Lumbering along Avith its mountains of bandboxes
and chaise behind, the Korff Berline rolls in; huge
Acapulco ship with its cockboat, having got thus far. The
eyes of the villagers look enlightened, as such eyes do Avhen
a coach transit, which is an event, occurs for them. Strol
ling dragoons respectfully, so fine are the yellow liveries,
bring hand to helmet; and a lady in gypsy hat responds

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 413
with a grace peculiar to her. * Dandoins stands with
folded arms, and what look of indifference and disdainful
garrison air a man can, while the heart is like leaping out
of him. Curled disdainful mustachio; careless glance,
which however surveys the village groups, and does not
like them. With his eye he bespeaks the yelloAv courier,
be quick, be quick ! Thickheaded yellow cannot under
stand the eye; comes up mumbling, to ask in words: seen
of the village !
Nor is postmaster Drouet unobservant all this while;
but steps out and steps in, with his long-floAving nightgown
in the level sunlight; prying into several things. When I
a man's faculties, at the right time, are sharpened by
choler, it may lead to much. That lady in slouched gypsy
hat, though sitting back in the carriage, does she not
resemble some one we have seen, some time; at the feast
of pikes, or elsewhere? And this Grosse-Tete in round
hat and peruke, which, looking rearward, pokes itself out
from time to time, methinks there are features in it  ?
Quick, Sieur Guillaume, clerk of the directoire, bring
me a new assignat! Drouet scans the new assignat; com
pares the paper-money picture Avith the gross head in
round hat there: by day and night! you might say the
one Avas an attempted engraving of the other. And this
march of troops ; this sauntering and whispering, I see it !
Drouet, postmaster of this village, hot patriot, old
dragoon of Conde, consider, therefore, what thou wilt do.
And fast, for behold . the new Berline, expeditiously
yoked, cracks whipcord, and rolls away! Drouet dare
not, on the spur of the instant, clutch the bridles in his
own two hands; Dandoins, with broadsword, might hew
you off. Our poor nationals, not one of them here, have
three hundred fusils, but then no poAvder; besides one is
not sure, only morally certain. Drouet, as an adroit old
dragoon of Conde, does what is advisablest; privily
bespeaks Clerk Guillaume, old dragoon of Conde he too,
privily, while Clerk Guillaume is saddling two of the
fleetest horses, slips over to the town-hall to whisper a
word; then mounts with Clerk Guillaume; and the tAvo
bound eastward in pursuit, to see what can be done.
* "Declaration de la Gache " (in Choiseul, ubi supra).

414 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION
They bound eastward, in sharp trot; their moral cer
tainty permeating the village, from the town hall out
ward, in busy whispers. Alas! Captain Dandoins orders
his dragoons to mount; but they, complaining of long fast,
demand bread and cheese first; before which brief repast
can be eaten, the Avhole village is permeated; not whisper
ing now, but blustering and shrieking! National volun
teers, in hurried muster, shriek for gunpowder; dragoons
halt between patriotism and rule of the service, between
bread and cheese and fixed bayonets : Dandoins hands se
cretly his pocketbook, with its secret despatches, to the rigo
rous quartermaster: the very ostlers have stable forks and
flails. The rigorous quartermaster, half -saddled, cuts out
his way with the sword's edge, amid leveled bayonets, amid
patriot vociferations, adjurations, flail-strokes; and rides
frantic ; * few or even none following him ; the rest, so
sweetly constrained, consenting to stay there.
And thus the new Berlines roll; and Drouet and
Guillaume gallop after it, and Dandoins' troopers or
trooper gallops after them; and Sainte-Menehould, with
some leagues of the king's highway, is in explosion; and
your military thunder chain has gone off in a self-destruc
tive manner; one may fear, with the frightfulest issues.

CHAPTER VII.
THE NIGHT OF SPURS.
This comes of mysterious escorts, and a new Berline
with eleven horses; "he that has a secret should not only
hide it, but hide that he has it to hide." Your first mili
tary escort has exploded self-destructive; and all military
escorts, and a suspicious country will now be up, explosive;
comparable not to victorious thunder. Comparable, say
rather,/to the first stirring of an Alpine avalanche; which,
once stir it, as here at Sainte Menehould, will spread, all
round, and on and on, as far as Stenai; thundering with
wild ruin, till patriot villagers, peasantry, military escorts,
new Berline and royalty are down, jumbling in the abyss!
The thick shades of night are falling. Postillions crack
* " Declaration de la Gache " (in Choiseul, p. 134).

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 415
and whip : the royal Berline is through Clermont, where
Colonel Comte de Damas got a word whispered to it; is
safe through, toward Varennes; rushing at the rate of
double drink money; an unknoAvn, "inconnu -on horse
back," shrieks earnestly some hoarse whisper, not audible,
into the rushing carriage window, and vanishes, left in
the night.* August travelers palpitate ; nevertheless over
wearied nature sinks every one of them into a kind of
sleep. Alas, and Drouet and Clerk Guillaume spur;
taking side roads, for shortness, for safety; scattering
abroad that moral certainty of theirs; which flies, a bird of
the air carrying it.
And your rigorous quartermaster spurs; awakening
hoarse trumpet tone, as here at Clermont, calling out
dragoons gone to bed. Brave Colonel de Damas has them
mounted, in part, these Clermont men; young Cornet
Remy dashes off with a few. But the patriot magistracy
is out here at Clermont too; national guards shrieking for
ball cartridges; and the village "illuminates itself;" deft
patriots springing out of bed; alertly, in shirt or shift,
striking a light ; sticking up each his farthing candle, or
penurious oil-cruse, till all glitters and glimmers; so deft
are they ! A camisado, or shirt tumult, everywhere : storm-
bell set a-ringing; village drum beating furious generate,
as here at Clermont, under illumination; distracted
patriots pleading and menacing! Brave young Colonel de
Damas, in that uproar of distracted patriotism, speaks
some Are sentences to what troopers he has: "Comrades,
insulted at Sainte Menehould : King and country calling on
the brave ;" then gives the fire, word draw swords. Where
upon, alas, the troopers only smite their sword-handles,
driving them farther home! "To me, whoever is for the
king!" cries Damas in despair; and gallops, he with some
poor loyal two, of the subaltern sort, into the bosom of
the night, f
Night unexampled in the Clermontais; shortest of
the year; remarkablest of the century: Night deserving
to be named of spurs! Cornet Remy, and those few he
dashed off with, has missed his road; is galloping for
* Campan, ii. 159.
t " Proces-verbal du Directoire de Clermont "(in Choiseul, pp.
189-95).

41 6 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION
hours toward Verdun; then, for hours, across hedged
country, through roused hamlets, toward Varennes.
Unlucky Cornet Remy; unluckier Colonel Damas, with
whom there ride desperate only some loyal two! More
ride not of that Clermont escort : of other escorts, in other
villages, not even two may ride; but only all curvet and
prance, impeded by storm bell and your village illuminat
ing itself.
And Drouet rides and Clerk Guillaume ; and the country
runs. Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are plunging through
morasses, over cliffs, over stock and stone, in the shaggy
woods of the Clermontais; by tracks; or trackless, with
guides; hussars tumbling into pitfalls, and lying "swooned
three quarters of an hour," the rest refusing to march
without them. What an evening ride from Pont-de-
Sommevelle; what a thirty hours, since Choiseul quitted
Paris, with queen's valet Leonard in the chaise by him!
Black care sits behind the rider. Thus go they plunging;
rustle the owlet from his branchy nest ; champ the sweet-
scented forest herb, queen of the meadoAvs spilling her
spikenard; and frighten the ear of night. But hark!
toward twelve o'clock, as one guesses, for the very stars
are gone out; sound of the tocsin from Varennes? Check
ing bridle, the hussar officer listens; "Some fire undoubt
edly!" yet rides on, with double breathlessness, to verify.
Yes, gallant friends that do your utmost, it is a certain
sort of fire: difficult to quench. The Korff Berline, fairly
ahead of all this riding avalanche, reached the little paltry
village of Varennes about eleven o'clock; hopeful, in spite
of that hoarse whispering unknown. Do not all towns
now lie behind us; Verdun avoided, on our right? Within
wind of Bouille himself, in a manner; and the darkest of
midsummer nights favoring us ! And so we halt on the
hilltop at the south end of the village; expecting our
relay; which young Bouille, Bouill6's oavu son, with his
escort of hussars, was to have ready; for in this village is
no post. Distracting to think of; neither horse nor hussar
is here! Ah, and stout horses, a proper relay belonging to
Duke Choiseul, do stand at bay, but in the upper village
over the bridge; and we know not of them. Hussars
likewise do wait, but drinking in the taverns. For indeed
it is six hours beyond the time; young Bouille, silly
stripling, thinking the matter over for this night, has

the French reVol ution. 41 7
retired to bed. And so our yellow couriers, inexperienced,
must rove, groping, bungling, through a village mostly
asleep : postillions will not, for any money, go on with the
tired horses; not at least Avithout refreshment; not they,
let the valet in round hat argue as he likes.
Miserable! " For five-and-thirty minutes" by the king's
watch, the Berline is at a dead stand : round hat arguing
Avith churn boots; tired horses slobbering their meal and
water; yellow couriers groping, bungling; young Bouille
asleep, all the while, in the upper village, and Choiseul's
fine team standing there at bay. No help for it; not Avith
a king's ransom; the horses deliberately slobber, round
hat argues, Bouille sleeps. And mark now, in the thick
night, do not two horsemen, with jaded trot, come clank-
clanking; and start with half pause, if one noticed them,
at sight of this dim mass of a Berline, and its dull slobber
ing and arguing; then prick off faster, into the village?
It is Drouet, he and Clerk Guillaume! Still ahead, they
two, of the whole riding hurlyburly; unshot, though some
brag of having chased them. Perilous is Drouet's errand
also ; but he is an old dragoon, with his wits shaken thor
oughly awake.
The village of Varennes lies dark and slumberous; a
most unlevel village, of inverse saddle-shape, as men write.
It sleeps; the rushing of the river Aire singing lullaby to
it. Nevertheless from the Golden Arm, Bras d' Or Tavern,
across that sloping market place, there still comes shine of
social light; comes voice of rude drovers or the like, who
have not yet taken the stirrup cup ; Boniface Le Blanc,
in white apron, serving them : cheerful to behold. To this
Bras d' Or Drouet enters, alacrity looking through his
eyes ; he nudges Boniface, in all privacy, " Camarade, es-tu
bon patriote, Art thou a good patriot"? "Sije suis!" an
swers Boniface. "In that case," eagerly whispers Drouet
— Avhat whisper is needful, heard of Boniface alone.*
And now see Boniface Le Blanc bustling, as he never
did for the jolliest toper. See Drouet and Guillaume, dex
terous old dragoons, instantly doAvn blocking the bridge,
with a "furniture wagon they find there," with whatever
wagons, tumbrils, barrels, barrows their hands can lay hold
of; till no carriage can pass. Then swiftly, the bridge
*"Deux Amis," vi. 139-78.

418 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
once blocked, see them take station hard by, under
Varennes archway: joined by Le Blanc, Le Blanc's
brother, and one or two alert patriots he has roused. Some
half-dozen in all, with national muskets, they stand close,
waiting under the archway, till that same Korff Berline
rumble up.
It rumbles up; Alte la! lanterns flash out from under
coat skirts, bridles chuck in strong fists, two national
muskets level themselves fore and aft through the two
coach doors: "Mesdames, your passports?" Alas, alas!
Sieur Sausse, procureur of the township, tallow chandler
also and grocer, is there, Avith official grocer-politeness;
Drouet with fierce logic and ready wit: The respected
traveling party, be it Baroness de Korff's, or persons of
still higher consequence, will perhaps please to rest itself
in M. Sausse's till the dawn strike up !
0 Louis; 0 hapless Marie Antoinette, fated to pass
thy life with such men ! Phlegmatic Louis, art thou but
lazy semi-animate phlegm, then, to the center of thee?
King, captain general, sovereign Frank ! if thy heart ever
formed, since it began beating under the name of heart,
any resolution at all, be it now then, or never in this
world; "Violent nocturnal individuals, and if it were per
sons of high consequence? And if it were the king him
self? Has the king not the power, which all beggars have,
of traveling unmolested on his OAvn highway? Yes: it is
the king ; and tremble ye to know it ! The king has said,
in this one small matter; and in France, or under God's
throne, is no poAver that shall gainsay. Not the king shall
ye stop here under this your miserable archway ; but his
dead body only, and answer it to heaven and earth. To
me, bodyguards; postilions, en avant!" One fancies in
that case the pale paralysis of these tAVo Le Blanc mus
keteers; the drooping of Drouet's underjaw; and how
Procureur Sausse had melted like tallow in furnace-heat;
Louis faring on; in some few steps awakening young
Bouille, awakening relays and hussars; triumphant entry,
with cavalcading high brandishing escort, and escorts, into
Montmedi; and the whole course of French history
different !
Alas, it was not in the poor phlegmatic man. Had it
been in him, French history had never come under this
Varennes archway to decide itself. He steps out; all step

THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION. 419
Out. Procureur Sausse gives his grocer arms to the queen
and sister Elizabeth; majesty taking the two children by
the hand. And thus they walk, coolly back, over the
market place to Porcureur Sausse's; mount into his small
upper story; where straightway his majesty "demands
refreshments." Demands refreshments, as is written;
gets bread and cheese with a bottle of Burgundy ; and
remarks, that it is the best Burgundy he ever drank !
Meanwhile the Varennes notables, and all men, official and
non-official, are hastily drawing on their breeches ; getting
their fighting gear. Mortals half -dressed tumble out
barrels, lay felled trees; scouts dart off to all the four
winds, the tocsin begins clanging, " the village illuminates
itself." Very singular: how these little villages do man
age, so adroit are they, when startled in midnight alarm
of war. Like little adroit municipal rattlesnakes suddenly
awakened: for their storm -bell rattles and rings; their
eyes glisten luminous (with tallow-light), as in rattle
snake ire ; and the village will sting. Old-Dragoon Drouet
is our engineer and generalissimo ; valiant as a Buy Diaz :
Now or never, ye patriots, for the soldiery is coming;
massacre by Austrians, by aristocrats, wars more than civil,
it all depends on you and the hour! National guards rank
themselves, half buttoned: mortals, we say, still only in
breeches, in under petticoat, tumble out barrels and lum
ber, lay felled trees for barricades : the village will sting.
Rabid democracy, it would seem, is not confined to Paris,
then? Ah no, whatsoever couriers might tell; too clearly
no. This of dying for one's king is grown into a dying
for one's self, against the king, if need be.
And so our riding and running avalanche and hurly-
burly has reached the abyss, Korff Berline foremost ; and
may pour itself thither, and jumble: endless! For the
next six hours, need we ask if there was a clattering far
and wide? Clattering and tocsining and hot tumult, over
all the Clermontais, spreading through the three bishoprics :
dragoon and hussar troops galloping on roads and no roads :
national guards arming and starting in the dead of night ;
tocsin after tocsin transmitting the alarm. In some forty
minutes, Goguelat and Choiseul, with their wearied
hussars, reach Varennes. Ah, it is no fire, then; or a fire
difficult to quench! They leap the tree barricades, in spite
of national sergeant; they enter the village, Choiseul

420 THE FR ENCH RE VOL UTION.
instructing his troopers how the matter really is; who
respond interjectionally, in their guttural dialect, "Der
K'dnig; die Kbniginn!" and seem stanch. These now, in
their stanch humor, will, for one thing, beset Procureur
Sausse's house. Most beneficial: had not Drouet storm
fully ordered otherwise; and even bellowed, in his ex
tremity, "Cannoneers, to your guns!" two old honey
combed field pieces, empty of all but cobwebs; the rattle
whereof, as the cannoneers with assured countenance
trundled them up, did nevertheless abate the hussar ardor,
and produce a respectfuler ranking farther back. Jugs
of wine, handed over the ranks, for the German throat
too has sensibility, will complete the business. When
Engineer Goguelat, some hour or so afterward, steps forth,
the response to him is — a hiccuping Vive la nation!
What boots it? Goguelat, Choiseul, now also Count
Damas, and all the Varennes officiality are with the king;
and the king can give no order, form no opinion ; but sits
there, as he has ever done, like clay on potter's wheel ; per
haps the absurdest of all pitiable and pardonable clay-
figures that now circle under the moon. He will go on,
next morning, and take the national guard with him;
Sausses pemitting! Hapless queen: with her two chil
dren laid there on the mean bed, old Mother Sausses
kneeling to heaven, with tears and an audible prayer, to
bless them; imperial Marie Antoinette near kneeling to
Son Sausses and Wife Sausses, amid candle boxes and
treacle barrels, in vain ! There are three thousand na
tional guards got in; before long they will count ten
thousand; tocsins spreading like fire on dry heath, or
far faster.
Young Bouille, roused by .this Varennes tocsin has
taken horse, and — fled toward his father. Thitherward
also rides, in an almost hysterically desperate manner, a
certain Sieur Aubriot, Choiseul 's orderly; swimming dark
rivers, our bridge being blocked ; spurring as if the hell-
hunt were at his heels.* Through the village of Dun, he
galloping still on, scatters the alarm; at Dun, brave
Captain Deslons and his escort of a hundred saddle and
ride. Deslons too gets into Varennes; leaving his hundred
outside, at the tree barricade; offers to cut King Louis out
* "Rapport de M. Aubriot " (in Choiseul, pp. 150-7).

THE FRENCH REVOL UTION. 43!
if he will order it; but unfortunately "the work will
prove hot:" whereupon King Louis has no "orders to
giAre."* And so the tocsin clangs, and dragoons gallop, and can
do nothing, having galloped : national guards stream in
like the gathering of ravens; your exploding thunder
chain, falling avalanche, or what else we liken it to,
does play with a vengeance, up now as far as Stenai and
Bouille himself, f Brave Bouille, son of the whirlwind,
he saddles Royal Allemand; speaks fire-words, kindling
heart and eyes ; distributes twenty -five gold louis a com
pany; ride Royal Allemand, long-famed, no Tuileries
charge and Necker Orleans bust procession; a very king
made captive and world all to Avin ! Such is the night
deserving to be named of Spurs.

At six o'clock two things have happened. Lafayette's
Aide-de-camp, Romoeuf, riding a franc etrier on that old
herb merchant's route, quickened during the last stages,
has got to Varennes ; where the ten thousand now furiously
demand, with fury of panic terror, that royalty shall forth
with return Paris-ward that there be not infinite bloodshed.
Also, on the other side, "English Tom," Choiseul's jokei,
flying with that Choiseul relay, has met Bouille on the
heights of Dun ; the adamantine brow flushed with- dark
thunder: thunderous rattle of Royal Allemand at his
heels. English Tom answers as he can the brief question,
How is it at Varennes? then asks in turn, What he,
English Tom, with M. de Choiseul's horses, is to do, and
whither to ride? To the bottomless pool ! answers a thun
der voice; then again speaking and spurring, orders Royal
Allemand to the gallop; and vanishes, swearing {en
hirant)-X 'Tis the last of our brave Bouille. Within
sight of Varennes, he having drawn bridle, calls a council
of officers; finds that it is in vain. King Louis has
departed, consenting: amid the clangor of universal
stormbell; amid the tramp of ten thousand armed men,
already arrived ; and say, of sixty thousand flocking thither.
* "Extrait d' un Rapport de M. Deslons" (in Choiseul, pp. 164-7).
f Bouille, ii. 74-6.
X " Declaration du Sieur Thomas." (in Choiseul, p, 188).

422 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Brave Deslons, even without "orders," darted at the River
Aire writh his hundred ; * swam one branch of it, could
not the other; and stood there, dripping and panting,
with inflated nostril ; the teu thousand answering him with
a shout of mockery, the new Berline lumbering Paris-ward
its weary inevitable way. No help, then, in earth; or, in
an age not of miracles, in heaven !
That night," Marquis de Bouille and twenty-one more of
us rode over the frontiers: the Bernardine monks at
Orval in Luxemburg gave us supper and lodging." f
With little of speech, Bouille rides; with thoughts that
do not brook speech. Northward, toward uncertainty, and
the Cimmerian night: toward West Indian Isles for with
thin emigrant delirium the son of the whirlwind cannot
act toward England, toward premature stoical death; not
toward France any more. Honor to the brave ; who, be it
in this quarrel or in that, is a substance and articulate-
speaking piece of human valor, not a fanfaronading hollow
spectrum and squeaking and gibbering shadow! One of
the few royalist chief -actors this Bouille, of whom so much
can be said.
The brave Bouille too, -then, vanishes from the tissue of
our story. Story and tissue, faint ineffectual emblem of
that grand miraculous tissue, and living tapestry named
French Revolution, which did weave itself then in very
fact, " on the loud sounding loom of time !" The old brave
drop out from it, with their strivings; and new acrid
Drouets, of neAV strivings and color, come in: as is the
manner of that weaving.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE RETURN?
So, then, our grand royalist plot, of flight to Metz, has
executed itself. Long hovering in the background, as a
dread royal ultimatum, it has rushed forward in its
terrors : verily to some purpose. How many royalist plots
and projects, one after another, cunningly-devised, that
were to explode like powder-mines and thunder claps ; not
one solitary plot of which has issued otherwise ! Powder
* Weber, ii. 396. t Aubriot, ut suprti, p. 158.

THE FR ENCH R E VOL UTION. 423
mine of a Seance Royale on the 23d of June, 1789, which
exploded as we then said, "through the touchhole;" which
next_ your wargod Broglie having reloaded it brought a
Bastille about your ears. Then came fervent opera-repast
with flourishing of sabers and Oh, Richard, Oh, my king;
which aided by hunger produces insurrection of women
and Pallas Athene in the shape of Demoiselle Theroigne.
Valor profits not ; neither has fortune smiled on fanfar
onade. The Bouille armament ends as the Broglie one
had done. Man after man spends himself in this cause
only to work it quicker ruin; it seems a cause doomed, for
saken of earth and heaven.
On the 6th of October gone a year, King Louis, escorted
by Demoiselle Theroigne and some two hundred thousand,
made a royal progress and entrance into Paris, such as
man had never witnessed; we prophesied him two more
such ; and accordingly another of them after this flight to
Metz is now coming to pass. Theroigne will not escort
here; neither does Mirabeau now "sit in one of the accom
panying carriages." Mirabeau lies dead in the Pantheon
of great men. Theroigne lies living in dark Austrian
prison; having gone to Liege professionally and been
seized there. Bemurmured now by the hoarse-flowing
Danube; the light of her patriot supper-parties gone quite
out; so lies Theroigne: she shall speak with the kaiser
face to face and return. And France lies — how! Fleet
ing time shears down the great and the little ; and in two
years alters many things.
But at all events here we say is a second ignominious
royal procession, though much altered; to be witnessed also
by its hundreds of thousands. Patience, ye Paris patriots;
the royal Berline is returning. Not till Saturday : for the
royal Berline travels'by slow stages ; amid such loud-voiced
confluent sea of national guards, sixty thousands as they
count; amid such tumult of all people. Three national
assembly commissioners, famed Barnave, famed Petion
generally-respectable Latour Mauborg have gone to meet
it; of whom the two former ride in the Berline itself beside
majesty day after day. Latour, as a mere respectability
and man of whom all men speak well, can ride in the rear
with Dame de Tourzel and the soubrettes.
So on Saturday evening about seven o'clock Paris by
hundreds of thousands is again drawn up: not now danc-

424 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.
ing the tricolor joy-dance of hope; nor as yet dancing in
fury-dance of hate and revenge : but in silence with vague
look of conjecture and curiosity mostly scientific. A
Saint Antoine placard has given notice this morning that
"whosoever insults Louis shall be caned, whosoever
applauds him shall be hanged." Behold then at last that
Avonderful new Berline; encircled by blue national sea
with fixed bayonets, which flows slowly, floating it on
through the silent assembled hundreds of thousands.
Three yellow couriers sits atop bound with ropes; Petion,
Barnave, their majesties, with Sister Elizabeth, and the
children of France are within.
Smile of embarrassment, or cloud of dull sourness, is on
the broad phlegmatic face of his majesty; who keeps
declaring to the successive official persons, what is evident,
"Eh Men, me voild, Well, here you have me;" and what is
not evident, "I do assure you I did not mean to pass the
frontiers;" and so forth: speeches natural for that poor
royal man; which decency would veil. Silent is her maj
esty, with a look of grief and scorn ; natural for that royal
woman. Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious royal
procession, through many streets, amid a silent gazing
people comparable Mercier thinks,* to some procession du
Roi de Basoche, or say, procession of King Crispin, with his
Dukes of Sutormania and royal blazonry of Cordwainery.
Except indeed that this is not comic ; ah no, it is comico-
tragic; with bound couriers, and a doom hanging over it;
most fantastic, yet most miserably real. Miseramest flebile
lubibrium of a pickleherring tragedy! It sweeps along
there, in most wwgorgeous pall, through many streets in
the dusty summer evening ; gets itself at length wriggled
out of sight; vanishing in the Tuileries Palace, toward its
doom, of sIoav torture, peine forte et dure.
Populace, it is true, seizes the three rope-bound yellow
couriers; will at least massacre them. But our august
assembly, which is sitting at this great moment, sends out
deputation of rescue; and the whole is got huddled up.
Barnave, "all dusty," is already there, in the national hall;
making brief discreet address and report. As indeed,
through the whole journey, this Barnave has been most
discreet, sympathetic; and has gained the queen's trust,
* " Nouveau Paris," iii., 22.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 425
whose noble instinct teaches her always who is to be
trusted Very different from heavy Petion, who, if Cam-
pan speak truth, ate his luncheon, comfortably filled his
wine glass, in the royal Berline; flung out his chicken-
bones past the nose of royalty itself; and, on the king's
saying, "France cannot be a republic," ansAvered, "No, it
is not ripe yet." Barnave is henceforth a queen's adviser,
if advice could profit : and her majesty astonishes Dame
Campan by signifying almost a regard for Barnave ; and
that, in a day of retribution and royal triumph, Barnave
shall not be executed.*
On Monday night royalty went ; on Saturday evening it
returns: so much, within one short week, has royalty
accomplished for itself. The pickleherring tragedy has
vanished in the Tuileries Palace, toward "pain strong and
hard." Watched, fettered and humbled, as royalty never
was. Watched even in its sleeping apartments and inmost
recesses : for it has to sleep with door set ajar, blue na
tional Argus watching, his eye fixed on the queen's cur
tains; nay, on one occasion, as the queen cannot sleep, he
offers to sit by her pillow, and converse a little ! \

CHAPTER IX.
sharp shot.
In regard to all which, this most pressing question
arises: What is to be done with it? Depose it! resolutely
answer Robespierre and the thoroughgoing few. For,
truly, with a king who runs away, and needs to be watched
in his very bedroom that he may stay and govern you,
Avhat other reasonable thing can be done? Had Philippe
d'Orleans not been a caput mortuum! But of him, known
as one defunct, no man now dreams. Depose it not ; say
that it is inviolable, that it was spirited away, was enleve;
at any cost of sophistry and solecism, re-establish it: so
answer with loud vehemence all manner of Constitutional
royalists ; as all your pure royalists' do naturally likewise,
with Ioav vehemence, and rage compressed by fear, still
more passionately answer. Nay Barnave and the two
Lameths, and what will follow them, do likewise answer
•Campan, ii. o. 18. flbid., ii. 149.

426 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
so. Answer, with their whole might: terrorstruck at
the unknown abysses on the verge of which, driven thither
by themselves mainly, all now reels ready to plunge.
By mighty effort and combination, this latter course is
the course fixed on ; and it shall by the strong arm, if not
by the clearest logic, be made good. With the sacrifice of
all their hard-earned popularity, this notable Triumvirate,
says Toulongeon, " set the throne up again, which they had
so toiled to overturn : as one might set up an overturned
pyramid, on its vortex;" to stand so long as it is held.
Unhappy France; unhappy in king, queen and constitu
tion ; one knows not in which unhappiest ! Was the mean
ing of our so glorious French Revolution this, and no
other, That when shams and delusions, long soul-killing,
had become body-killing, and got the' length of bankruptcy
and inanition, a great people rose and, with one voice,
said, in the name of the highest: Shams shall be no more?
So many sorrows and bloody horrors, endured, and to be
yet endured through dismal coming centuries, were they
not the heavy price paid and payable for this same : Total
destruction of shams from among men? And now, oh,
Barnave Triumvirate! is it in such <7oM^e-distilled delu
sion, and sham even of a sham, that an effort of this kind
will rest acquiescent? Messieurs of the popular Trium
virate, never! But, after all, what can poor popular
Triumvirates, and fallible august senators, do? They
can, when the truth is all too horrible, stick their heads
ostrich -like into what sheltering fallacy is nearest; and
wait there, a posteriori.

Readers who saw the Clermontais and three bishoprics
gallop in the night of spurs; diligence ruffling up all
France into one terrific terrified cock of India; and the
town of Nantes in its shirt, may fancy what an affair to
settle this was. Robespierre, on the extreme left, with
perhaps Petion and lean old Goupil, for the very Trium
virate has defalcated, are shrieking hoarse; drowned in
constitutional clamor. But the debate and arguing of a
whole nation; the belloAvings through all journals, for and
against; the reverberant voice of Danton; the Hyperion
shafts of Camille, the porcupine-quills of implacable
Marat; conceive all this.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 427
Constitutionalists in a body, as we often predicted, do
now recede from the mother society, and become Feuillans;
threatening her with inanition, the rank and respecta
bility being mostly gone. Petition after petition, for
warded by post, or borne in deputation, comes praying for
judgment and decheance, which is our name for deposition ;
praying, at lowest, for reference to the eighty-three depart
ments of France. Hot Marseillese deputation comes
declaring, among other things; "Our Phocean ancestors
flung a bar of iron into the bay at their first landing ;
this bar will float again on the Mediterranean brine before
we consent to be slaves." All this for four weeks or more,
while the matter still hangs doubtful; emigration stream
ing with double violence over the frontiers; * France
seething in fierce agitation of this question and prize-ques
tion : What is to be done with the fugitive hereditary
representative? Finally, on Friday, the 15th of July, 1791, the national
assembly decides; in what negatory manner we know.
Whereupon the theaters all close, the i?owrwe-stones
and portable chairs begin spouting. Municipal placards
flaming on the walls, and proclamations published by
sound of trumpet, "invite to repose;" with small effect.
And so, on Sunday the 17th there shall be a thing seen,
worthy of remembering. Scroll of a petition, drawn up
by Bissots, Dantons, by Cordeliers, Jacobins; for the thing
was infinitely shaken and manipulated, and many had a
hand in it: such scroll lies now visible, on the wooden
framework of the fatherland's altar, for signature. Un-
Avorking Paris, male and female, is crowding thither, all
day, to sign or to see. Our fair Roland herself the eye of
history can discern there "in the morning;" f not without
interest. In few weeks the fair patriot will quit Paris ;
yet perhaps only to return.
But, what with sorrow of balked patriotism, what with
closed theaters, and proclamations still publishing them
selves by sound of trumpet, the fervor of men's minds, this
day, is great. Nay, over and above, there has fallen out
an incident, of the nature of farce tragedy and riddle;
enough to stimulate all creatures. Early in the day, a
patriot (or some say, it was a patriotess, and indeed the
* Bouille, ii. 101. f Madame Roland, ii. 74.

428 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
truth is undiscoverable), while standing on the firm deal-
board of fatherland's altar, feels suddenly, with indescrib
able torpedo-shock of amazement, his hoot sole pricked
through from below; clutches up suddenly this electrified
boot sole and foot; discerns next instant— the point of a
gimlet or bradawl playing up, through the firm deal board,
and now hastily drawing itself back! Mystery, perhaps
treason ? The wooden framework is impetuously broken up ;
and behold, verily a mystery ; never explicable fully to the
end of the world! Two human individuals, of mean
aspect, one of them a wooden leg, lie ensconced there,
gimlet in hand : they must have come in overnight; they
have a supply of provisions, no "barrel of gunpowder"
that one can see; they affect to be asleep; look blank
enough, and give the lamest account of themselves.
" Mere curiosity ; they were boring up, to get an eye-hole ; to
see perhaps 'with lubricity, ' whatsoever, from that new point
of vision, could be seen;" little that was edifying, one would
think ! But indeed what stupidest thing may not human
dullness, pruriency, lubricity, chance and the devil, choos
ing two out of half-a-million idle human heads, tempt
them to? *
Sure enough, the two human individuals with their
gimlet are there. Ill-starred pair of individuals ! For the
result of it all is, that patriotism, fretting itself, in this
state of nervous excitability, with hypotheses, suspicions and
reports, keeps questioning these two distracted human indi
viduals, and again questioning them; claps them into the
nearest guardhouse, clutches them out again; one
hypothetic group snatching them from another: till
finally, in such extreme state of nervous excitability,
patriotism hangs them as spies of Sieur Motier; and the
life and secret is choked out of them forevermore. For
evermore, alas ! Or is a day to be looked for when these
two evidently mean individuals, who are human neverthe
less, will become historical riddles; and like him of the
iron mask (also a human individual, and evidently nothing
more), have their dissertations? To us this only is cer
tain, that they had a gimlet, provisions and a wooden leg;
and have died there on the Lanterne, as the unluckiest
fools might die. * "Histoire Parlementaire," xi. 104-7.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 429
And so the signature goes on, in a still more excited
manner. And Chaumette, for antiquarians possess the
very paper to this hour, * has signed himself " in a flowing
saucy hand slightly leaned;" and Hebert, detestable Pere
Duchesne, as if "an inked spider had dropped on the
paper;" Usher Maillard also has signed, and many crosses,
which cannot write. And Paris, through its thousand
avenues, is welling to the Champ-de-Mars and from it, in
the most excitability of humor; central fatherland's altar
quite heaped with signing patriots and patriotesses; the
thirty benches and whole internal space crowded with on
lookers, with comers and goers; one regurgitating whirl
pool of men and women in their Sunday clothes. All
which a constitutional Sieur Motier sees; and Bailly, look
ing into it with his long visage made still longer. Arguing
no good; perhaps decheance and deposition after all!
Stop it, ye constitutional patriots; fire itself is quench -
able, yet only quenchable at first.
Stop it, truly: but how stop it? Have not the first
free people of the universe a right to petition? Happily,
if also unhappily, here is one proof of riot: these two
human individuals hanged at the Lanterne. Proof, oh
treacherous Sieur Motier? Were they not tAvo human
individuals sent thither by thee to be hanged; to be a
pretext for thy bloody Drapeau Rouge? This question shall
many a patriot, one day, ask; and answer affirmatively,
strong in preternatural suspicion.

Enough, toward half past seven in the evening, the
mere natural eye can behold this thing : Sieur Motier, with
municipals in scarf, with blue national patroUotism, rank
after rank, to the clang of drums; wending resolutely to
the Champ-de-Mars; Mayor Bailly, with elongated visage,
bearing, as in sad duty bound, the Drapeau Rouge. Howl
of angry derision rises in treble and bass from a hundred
thousand throats, at the sight of martial law ; Avhich never
theless, waving its red sanguinary flag, advances there,
from the Gros-Caillou entrance; advances, drumming and
waving, toward altar of fatherland. Amid still wilder
howls, with objurgation, obtestation; with fiights of
"* Histoire Parlementaire." xi. 113, etc.

430 THE FRENCH REVOL UTION.
pebbles and mud, saxa et faeces with crackle of a pistol
shot; finally with volley-fire of patroUotism; leveled mus
kets ; roll of volley on volley ! Precisely after one year and
three days, our sublime federation field is wetted, in this
manner, with French blood.
Some " twelve unfortunately shot, reports Bailly," count
ing by units; but patriotism counts by tens and even by
hundreds. Not to be forgotten, nor forgiven ! Patriotism
flies, shrieking, execrating. Camille ceases journalizing,
this day ; great Danton with Camille and Freron have taken
Aving, for their life; Marat burrows deep in the earth, and
is silent. Once more patroUotism has triumphed; one
other time ; but it is the last.

This was the royal flight to Varennes. Thus was the
throne overturned hereby ; but thus also was it victoriously
set up again on its vortex; and will stand while it can be
held.

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Springhaven. By R. D. Blackmore.

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the publisher, A. X. SUJtT, 97 Reade Street, New Yorh,

A LIST OF BURT'S HOME LIBRARY.

THREE HUNDRED AND TEN TITLES.
Uniform Cloth Binding. Price 75 Cents Per Copy
By James Fenimore

Spy The.
Cooper.
Saint Katharine's by the Tower.
By Walter Besant.
Story of an African Farm. By
Olive Schreiner.
Strathmore. By "Ouida."

By A. Conan
By Jean

Study in Scarlet, A.
Doyle.
Swiss Family Robinson.
Rudolph AVyss.
Tale of Two Cities. By Charles
Dickens.
Tales from Shakespeare. By Chas.
and Mary Lamb.
Talisman, The. By Sir Walter Scott.
Tartarin of Tarascon. By Alphonse
Daudet.
Tempest Tossed. By Theodore Til-
ton.
Ten Years Later. By Alexandre
Dumas.
Terrible Temptation, A. By Chas.
Reade.
Thaddeus of Warsaw. By Jane
Porter.
Thelma. By Marie Corelli.
Thousand Miles Up the Nile. By
Amelia B. Edwards.
Three Guardsmen. By Alexandre
Dumas.
Three Men in a Boat. By Jerome
K. Jerome.
Toilers of the Sea. By Victor Hugo.
Thrift. By Samuel Smiles.

By Thomas By

Tom Brown at Oxford
Hughes.
Tom Brown's Schooldays,
Thomas Hughes.
Tom Burke of " Ours." By Charles
Lever.
Tom Cringle's Log. By Michael
Scott.
Tour of the World in Eighty
. Days, A. By Jules Verne.
Treasure Island. By Robert Louis
Stevenson.
30,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
By Jules Verne.
Twenty Years After. By Alexandre
Dumas.
Twice Told Tales. By Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
Two Admirals. By James Feni
more Cooper.
Two Chiefs of Dunboy. By James
A. Froude.
Two on a Tower. By Thos. Hardy.

Two Years Before the Mast.
R. H. Dana, Jr.
Uarda. By George Ebers.

By

Uncle Max.

By Rosa N. Carey.
By Harriet ByDe

Uncle Tom's Cabin
Beecher Stowe.
Undine and Other Tales.
La Motte Fouque.
Vanity Fair. By William M. Thack
eray.
Vendetta. By Marie Corelli.

Very Hard Cash.

By Charles Reade.
By Oliver
By Alex-

Vicar of Wakefield.
Goldsmith.
Vicomte de Bragelonne
andre Dumas.
Villette. By Charlotte Bronte.
Virginians, The. By William M.
Thackeray.
Vivian Grey. By Benjamin Disraeli.

By James Feni-

Water Witch, The
more Cooper.
Waverley. By Sir Walter Scott.
Wee Wine. By Rosa N. Carey.
Westward Ho I By Charles Kings-
ley.
We Two. By Edna Lyall.
What's Mine's Mine. By George
Macdonald.
When a Man's Single. By J. M.
Barrie.
White Company, The. By A. Conan
Doyle.
Wide, Wide World. By Susan
Warner.
Whittier's Poems. (Early.)
Widow Lerouge, The. By Emile
Gaboriau.
Window in Thrums. By James M.
Barrie.
Wing and Wing. By James Feni
more Cooper.
Woman in White, The. By Wilkie
Collins.
Won by Waiting. By Edna Lyall.
Wooed and Married. By Rosa N.
Carey.
Wooing O't. By Mrs. Alexander.
World Went Very Well Then,
The. W. Besant.
Worm-wood. By Marie Corelli.
Wreck of the Grosvenor, The.
By W. Clark Russell.
Zenobia. By William Ware.

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THE HENTY SERIES FOR BOYS
Uniform Cloth Binding. Price #1.00.
** Wherever English is spoken one imagines that Mr. Henty's name is known.
One cannot enter a schoolroom or look at a boy's bookshelf without seeing
half a dozen of the famous volumes. Mr. Henty is no doubt the most successful
writer for boys, and the one to whose new volumes they look forward every
Christmas with most pleasure." — Review of Reviews.
Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden. By G. A.
Henty. With Illustrations by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
With Olive in India ; or, The Beginnings of an Empire. By G. A. Henty
With Dlustrations by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
The Dragon and the Raven; or, The Days of King Alfred. By G. A
Henty. With Illustrations by C. J. Staniland, R.I. Price $1.00.
The Young Carthaginian: A Story of the Times of Hannibal. By G. A.
Henty. With Illustrations by C. J. Staniland, R.I. Price $1.00.
The Lion of the North: A Tale of Gustavus Adolphus and the Wars of
Religion. By G. A. Henty. With Illustrations by John Schonberg.
With Lee in Virginia: A Story of the American Civil War. By G. A.
Henty. With Dlustrations by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
By England's Aid; or, The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604). By
G. A. Henty. With Illustrations by Alfred Pearse. Price $1.00.
By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic. By G. A.
Henty. With Illustrations by Maynard Brown. Price $1.00.
Captain Bayley's Heir: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California. By
G. A. Henty. With Illustrations by H. M. Paget. Price $1.00.
Under Drake'sJFIag: A Tale of the Spanish Main. By G. A. Henty. With
Illustrations by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
In Freedom's Cause: A Story of Wallace and Bruce. By G. A. Henty.
With Illustrations by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy. By G. A.
Henty. With Illustrations by John Schonberg. Price $1.00.
True to the Old Flag: A Tale of the American War of Independence. With
12 page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
With Wolfe in Canada; or, The Winning of a Continent. With 12 page
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By Right of Conquest; or, With Cortez in Mexico. With 6 page Dlustra
tions by W. S. Stacey. Price. $1.00.
St. George for England: A Tale of Cressy and Poitiers. With 8 page Il
lustrations by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
The Bravest of the Brave: With Peterborough in Spain. With 8 page
Dlustrations by H. M. Paget. Price $1.00.
For Name and Fame; or, Through Afghan Passes. With 8 page Illustra
tions by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
The Cat of Bubastes: A Story of Ancient Egypt. With 5 page Dlustrations
toy J. R. Weguelin. Price $1.00.
For the Temple: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem. With 10 page Dlustra
tions by S. J. Solomon. Price $1.00.
The Lion of St. Mark: A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century. With
10 page Illustrations by Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
By Sheer Pluck; A Tale of the Ashanti War. With 8 page Dlustrations by
Gordon Browne. Price $1.00.
A Final Reckoning: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia. With 8 page Dlus
trations by W. B. Wollen. Price $1.00.
Facing Death: A Tale of the Coal Mines. With 8 page Dlustrations by
Bordon Browne. Price $1 .00.
Maori and Settler: A Story of the New Zealand War. With 5 page Dlus
trations by Alfred Pearse. Price $1.00.
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THE ALGER SERIES for BOYS
Uniform with. This Volume.
This series affords wholesome reading for boys and girls, and all tha
volumes are extremely interesting.— Cincinnati Commercial-Oazette.
JOE'S LUCK ; or, A Brave Boy's Adventurer in California. By
Horatio Alger, Jr.
JULIAN MORTIMER : or, A Brave Boy's Struggles for Horns
and Fortune. By Harry Castlemon.
ADRIFT IN THE WILDS ; or. The Adventures of Two Ship.
wrecked Boys. By Edward S. Ellis.
FRANK FOWLER, THE CASH BOY. By Horatio Alger, Jr.
GUY HARRIS, THE RUNAWAY. By Harry Castlemon.
THE SLATE-PICKER ; A Story of a Boy's Life in the Coal
Mines. By Harry Prentice.
TOM TEMPLE'S CAREER. By Horatio Alger, Jr.
TOM, THE READY ; or, Up from the Lowest. By Randolph Hill.
THE CASTAWAYS ; or, On the Florida Reefs. By James Otis.
CAPTAIN KIDD'S GOLD. The True Story of an Adventurous
Sailor Boy. By James Franklin Fitts.
TOM THATCHER'S FORTUNE. By Horatio Alger, Jr.
LOST IN THE CANON. The Story of Sam Willett's Adventures
on the Great Colorado of the West. By Alfred R. Calhoun.
A YOUNG HERO ; or, Fighting to Win. By Edward S. Ellis.
THE ERRAND BOY ; or, How Phil Brent Won Success. By
Horatio alger, Jr.
THE ISLAND TREASURE ; or, Harry Darrel's Fortune. By
Frank H. Converse.
A RUNAWAY BRIG ; or, An Accidental Cruise. By James Otis.
A JAUNT THROUGH JAVA. The Story of a Journey to the
Sacred Mountain by^Two American Boys. By E. S. Ellis.
CAPTURED BY APES ; or. How Philip Garland Became King
of Apeland. By Harry Prentice.
TOM THE BOOT-BLACK ; or, The Road to Success. By Horatio
ROY GILBERT'S SEARCH. A Tale of the Great Lakes. By
William P. Chipman.
THE TREASURE-FINDERS. A Boy's Adventures in Nicara-
uga. By James Otis.
BUDD BOYD'S TRIUMPH; or, The Boy Firm of Fox Island.
By William P. Chipman.
TONY, THE HERO ; or, A Brave Boy's Adventures with a
Tramp. By Horatio Alger, Jr.
CAPTURED BY ZULUS. A Story of Trapping in Africa. By
Harry Prentice.
THE TRAIN BOY. By Horatio Alger, Jr.
DAN THE NEWSBOY. By Horatio Alger, Jr.
SEARCH FOR THE SILVER CITY. A Story of Adventure
in Yucatan. By James Otis.
3>HE BOY CRUISERS ; or, Paddling in Florida. By St. George
Rathborne.
The above stories are printed on extra paper, and bound in
Handsome Cloth Binding, in all respects uniform with this
volume, at $1.00 per copy.
For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt qfprict, by 0l4
publisher. A. L. B URT, 66 Reade St., New York.

The Fireside Series for Girls.
Uniform Cloth Binding. Illustrated.
A carefully selected series of books i
for girls written by authors of acknowl
edged reputation. The stories are |
deeply interesting in themselves, and
have a moral charm that emanates j
from the principal characters; they '
teach without preaching, are of lively
interest throughout, and will win the
hearts of all girl readers.
Esther. By Rosa Nouchette Carey. Illustrated.
Price $1.00.
A World of Girls: The Story of a School.
ByL. T. Meadb. Illustrated. Price $1.00.
The Heir of Redely ffe. By Charlotte M. Yonge. DIus. Price $1.00.
The Story of a Short Life. By Juliana Horatia Ewing. Dlustrated.
Price $1.00.
A Sweet Girl Graduate. By L. T. Meade. Dlustrated. Price $1.00.
Our Bessie. By Rosa Nouchette Carey. Dlustrated. Price $1.00.
Six to Sixteen: A Story for Girls. By Juliana Horatia Ewing. D-
lustrated. Price $1.00.
The Dove in the Eagle's Nest. By Charlotte M. Yonge. Dlustrated.
Price $1.00.
Gianetta: A Girl's Story of Herself. By RosaMulholland. I1Iu&
trated. Price $1.00.
Jan of the WindmiU: A Story of the Plains. By Juliana Horatu
Ewing. Dlustrated. Price $1.00.
Averil. By Rosa Nouchette Carey. Dlustrated. Price $1.00.
Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass.
Two volumes in one. By Lewis Carroll. Illustrated. Price $1.00.
Merle's Crusade. By Rosa Nouchette Carey. Illustrated. Price $1.00
Girl Neighbors; or, The Old Fashion and the New. By Sarab
Tytler. Illustrated. Price. $1.00.
Polly: A New Fashioned Girl. By L. T. Meade. DIus. Price $1.00.
Aunt Diana. By Rosa N. Carey. Dlustrated. Price $1 .00.
The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby. By Charlw
Kingsley. Illustrated. Price $1.00.
At the Back of the North Wind. By George Macdonald- Illus
trated. Price $1.00.
The Chaplet of Pearls; or The White and Black Ribaumont. By
Charlotte M. Yonge. Illustrated. Price $1.00.
The Days 'of Bruce : A Story of Scottish History. By Gracb & <jm>
lar. Dlustrated. Price $1.00.
The Palace Beautiful: A Story for Girls. By L. T. Meade. Iflus
trated. Price $1.00.
Margery Merton's Girlhood. By Alice Corkran. DIus. Price $1.00.
Three Bright Girls: A Story of Chance and Mischance, by Annih
E. Armstrong. Dlustrated. Price $1 .00.
Pythia's Pupils: The Story of a School. By Eva Hartner. DIus
trated. Price $1.00.
The Lady of the Forest: A Story for Girls. By L. T. Meade. D-
lustrated. Price $1.00.

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THE "LITTLE WOMEN" SERIES.
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Profusely Illustrated.
A series of most delightful stories for young girls.
Selected from the best-known writers for children.
These stories are narrated in a simple and lively
fashion and cannot but prove irresistible with the
little ones, while throughout the volumes there is a
comprehension of and sympathy with child thought
and feeling that is almost as rare out of books as in.
These stories are sunny, interesting, and thoroughly
winsome and wholesome.

Adventures of a Brownie, As Told to My Child. By Miss Mulock.
Dlustrated. Price 75 cents.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. By Lewis Carroll. With 42
Illustrations by John Tenniel. Price 75 cents.
Birdie. A Tale of Child Life. By H. L. Childe-Pemberton. niustrated.
Price 5 cents.
Count Up the Sunny Days. A Story for Girls. By C.A.Jones. Illus
trated. Price 75 cents.
Cuckoo Clock, The. By Mrs. Molesworth. With 7 Dlustrations by
Walter Crane. Price 75 cents.
Downithe Snow Stairs; or, From Good Night to Good Morning. By
Alice Corkran. With 60 Illustrations by Gordon Browne. Price 75c.
Joan's Adventures. At the North Pole and Elsewhere. By Alice
Corkran. Illustrated. Price 75 cents.
Little Lame Prince, and His Traveling Cloak. By Miss Mulock. Dlus
trated. Price 75 cents.
Little Miss Joy. By Emma Marshall. Dlustrated. Price 75 cents.
Little Miss Peggy. Only a Nursery Story. By Mrs. Molesworth. With
13 Dlustrations by Walter Crane. Price 75 cents.
Little Princess of Tower Hill. By L. T. Meade. Illustrated. Price
75 cents.
Little Sunshine's Holiday. A Picture from Life. By Miss Mulock.
Illustrated. Price 75 cents.
Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe. By Charlotte M. Yonge. Dlus
trated. Price 75 cents.
Little Rosebud: or, Things Will Take a Turn. By Beatrice Harraden.
Dlustrated. Price 75 cents.
One of a Covey. By the author of " Honor Bright." With 19 Dlustra
tions by H. J. A. Miles. Price 75 cents.
Rosy. By Mrs. Molesworth. With 8 Illustrations by Walter Crane.
Price 75 cents.
Sweet Content. By Mrs. Molesworth. With 20 Illustrations by W.
Rainey. Price 75 cents.
Sue and I. By Mrs. Robert O'Reilly. Dlustrated. Price 75 cents.
Tapestry Room, The. By Mrs. Molesworth. Illustrated. Price 75 cts.
Through the Looking-GIass, and What Alice Found There. By Lewis
Carroll. With 50 Illustrations by John Tenniel. Price 75 cents.
For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price
by the publisher, A. I, BURT, 97 Reade Street, New York.

ii

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