The Procession.
On the first Saturday of May, it is gala at Versailles; and
Monday, fourth of the month, is to be a still greater day. The
Deputies have mostly got thither, and sought out lodgings; and
are now successively, in long well-ushered files, kissing the
hand of Majesty in the Château. Supreme Usher de Brézé does not
give the highest satisfaction: we cannot but observe that in
ushering Noblesse or Clergy into the anointed Presence, he
liberally opens _both_ his folding-doors; and on the other hand,
for members of the Third Estate opens only one! However, there is
room to enter; Majesty has smiles for all.
The good Louis welcomes his Honourable Members, with smiles of
hope. He has prepared for them the Hall of _Menus_, the largest
near him; and often surveyed the workmen as they went on. A
spacious Hall: with raised platform for Throne, Court and
Blood-royal; space for six hundred Commons Deputies in front; for
half as many Clergy on this hand, and half as many Noblesse on
that. It has lofty galleries; wherefrom dames of honour,
splendent 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 foreboding, which he awoke in every bosom at
Versailles! Huge Paris, in all conceivable and inconceivable
vehicles, is pouring itself forth; from each Town and Village
come subsidiary rills; Versailles is a very sea of men. But above
all, from the Church of St. Louis to the Church of Notre-Dame:
one vast suspended-billow of Life,—with _spray_ scattered even to
the chimney-pots! For on chimney-tops too, as over the roofs, and
up thitherwards on every lamp-iron, sign-post, breakneck coign of
vantage, sits patriotic Courage; and every window bursts with
patriotic Beauty: for the Deputies are gathering at St. Louis
Church; to march in procession to Notre-Dame, and hear sermon.
Yes, friends, ye may sit and look: boldly or in thought, all
France, and all Europe, may sit and look; for it is a day like
few others. Oh, one might weep like Xerxes:—So many serried rows
sit perched there; like winged creatures, alighted out of Heaven:
all these, and so many more that follow them, shall have wholly
fled aloft again, vanishing into the 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
extreme-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, a new one is to be born. What
a work, O 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 centuries of it still to fight! Two centuries; hardly
less; before Democracy go through its due, most baleful, stages
of _Quack_ocracy; and a pestilential World be burnt up, and have
begun to grow green and young again.
Rejoice nevertheless, ye Versailles multitudes; to you, from whom
all this is hid, and glorious end of it is visible. This day,
sentence of death is pronounced on Shams; judgment of
resuscitation, were it but far off, is pronounced on Realities.
This day it is declared aloud, as with a Doom-trumpet, that a
_Lie is unbelievable_. Believe that, stand by that, if more there
be not; and let what thing or things soever will follow it
follow. “Ye can no other; God be your help!” So spake a greater
than any of you; opening _his_ Chapter of World-History.
Behold, however! The doors of St. Louis Church flung wide; and
the Procession of Processions advancing towards Notre-Dame!
Shouts rend the air; one shout, at which Grecian birds might drop
dead. It is indeed a stately, solemn sight. The Elected of
France, and then the Court of France; they are marshalled and
march there, all in prescribed place and 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
winds, on the deepest errand.
Yes, in that silent marching mass there lies Futurity enough. No
symbolic Ark, like the old Hebrews, do these men bear: yet with
them too is a Covenant; they too preside at a new Era in the
History of Men. The whole Future is there, and Destiny
dim-brooding over it; in the hearts and unshaped thoughts of
these men, it lies illegible, inevitable. Singular to think:
_they_ have it in them; yet not they, not mortal, only the Eye
above can read it,—as it shall unfold itself, in fire and
thunder, of siege, and field-artillery; in the rustling of
battle-banners, the tramp of hosts, in the glow of burning
cities, the shriek of strangled nations! Such things lie hidden,
safe-wrapt in this Fourth day of May;—say rather, had lain in
some other unknown day, of which this latter is the public fruit
and outcome. As indeed what wonders lie in every Day,—had we the
sight, as happily we have not, to decipher it: for is not every
meanest Day “the conflux of two Eternities!”
Meanwhile, suppose we too, good Reader, should, as now without
miracle Muse Clio enables us—take _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 few, which shall not always be nameless,
disclose themselves; visible or presumable there! Young Baroness
de Staël—she evidently looks from a window; among older
honourable women.[130] Her 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 Théroigne? 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 Salpêtrière! 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?[131] De Morande from his _Courrier de
l’Europe;_ Linguet from his _Annales_, they looked eager through
the London fog, and became Ex-Editors,—that they might feed the
guillotine, and have their due. Does Louvet (of _Faublas_) stand
a-tiptoe? And Brissot, hight De Warville, friend of the Blacks?
He, with Marquis Condorcet, and Clavière the Genevese “have
created the _Moniteur_ Newspaper,” or are about creating it. Able
Editors must give account of such a day.
Or seest thou with any distinctness, low down probably, not in
places of honour, a Stanislas Maillard, riding-tipstaff
(_huissier à cheval_) of the Châtelet; 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-coloured whiskers, not yet with tile-beard; an unjust dealer
in mules? He shall be, in a few months, Jourdan the Headsman, and
have other work.
Surely also, in some place not of honour, stands or sprawls up
querulous, that he too, though short, may see,—one squalidest
bleared mortal, redolent of soot and horse-drugs: Jean Paul Marat
of Neuchâtel! O Marat, Renovator of Human Science, Lecturer on
Optics; O thou remarkablest Horseleech, once in D’Artois’
Stables,—as thy bleared soul looks forth, through thy bleared,
dull-acrid, wo-stricken face, what sees it in all this? Any
faintest light of hope; like dayspring after Nova-Zembla night?
Or is it but _blue_ sulphur-light, and spectres; 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 signalise there. The huge, brawny, Figure;
through whose black brows, and rude flattened face (_figure
ecrasée_), 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 burnt within it: that Figure is Camille Desmoulins.
A fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit, nay humour; one of the
sprightliest clearest souls in all these millions. Thou poor
Camille, say of thee what they may, it were but falsehood to
pretend one did not almost love thee, thou headlong
lightly-sparkling man! But the brawny, not yet furibund Figure,
we say, is Jacques Danton; a name that shall be “tolerably known
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 _hure_,
as himself calls it, or black _boar’s-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 fuliginous through murkiest confusions?
It is _Gabriel Honoré Riquetti de Mirabeau_, the world-compeller;
man-ruling Deputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de Staël, 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 aspirations,
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 Arighettis, 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 towards
madness, yet did not reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad
fulfilment of a mad vow, chains two Mountains together; and the
chain, with its “iron star of five rays,” is still to be seen.
May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and set it
drifting,—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 on 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 Vendôme, dropping his spyglass, moaned out, “Mirabeau is
_dead_, then!” Nevertheless he was not dead: he awoke to breathe,
and miraculous surgery;—for Gabriel was yet to be. With his
silver _stock_ he kept his scarred head erect, through long
years; and wedded; and produced tough Marquis Victor, the _Friend
of Men_. Whereby at last in the appointed year 1749, this
long-expected rough-hewn Gabriel Honoré did likewise see the
light: roughest lion’s-whelp ever littered of that rough breed.
How the old lion (for our old Marquis too was lion-like, most
unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wonderingly on
his offspring; and determined to train him as no lion had yet
been! It is in vain, O 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, must and
will be Himself, another than Thou. Divorce lawsuits, “whole
family save one in prison, and three-score _Lettres-de-Cachet_”
for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.
Our Luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the
Isle of Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the Castle
of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in
the Fortress of Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing
to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes;—all by
_Lettre-de-Cachet_, from his lion father. He has been in
Pontarlier Jails (self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording
estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of
men. He has pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife);
the public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear:
‘the clatter-teeth (_claque-dents_)!’ snarles singular old
Mirabeau; 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 Honoré, 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 _Despotism_, on _Lettres-de-Cachet;_ Erotics
Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, 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
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 huckster, and ass-panniers, of every
description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have
been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is _mine!_
Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for
borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his;
the man himself he can make his. ‘All reflex and echo (_tout de
reflet et de réverbère_)!’ snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but
will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his
aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of all for him.
In that forty-years “struggle against despotism,” he has gained
the glorious faculty of _self-help_, and yet not lost the
glorious natural gift of _fellowship_, of being helped. Rare
union! This man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in the
life of other men; can make men love him, work with him: a born
king of men!
But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has
‘made away with (_humé_, swallowed) 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 nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any
object; and see through it, and conquer it: for he has intellect,
he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with
_logic-spectacles;_ but with an _eye!_ Unhappily without
Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not
without a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there: a
Reality, not an Artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having
struggled “forty years against despotism,” and “made away with
all formulas,” shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to
do the same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also
to cast off despotism; to make away with _her_ old
formulas,—having found them naught, worn out, far from the
reality? She will make away with _such_ formulas;—and even go
_bare_, if need be, till she have found new ones.
Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular
Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks
under the slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous
mass, which could not be choked and 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 smouldering,
with foul fire-damp and vapour enough, then victory over
that;—and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high; and, for
twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten
fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder-sign of
an amazed Europe;—and then lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on,
thou questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest of them all: in
the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none
like and none second to thee.
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 upturned face,
snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time; complexion of a
multiplex atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which may be the
pale sea-green.[132] That greenish-coloured (_verdâtre_)
individual is an Advocate of Arras; his name is _Maximilien
Robespierre_. The son of an Advocate; his father founded
mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince or
Pretender. Maximilien the first-born was thriftily educated; he
had brisk Camille 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 favour 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 favour of the first Franklin
thunder-rod.” With a strict painful mind, an understanding small
but clear and ready, he grew in favour with official persons, who
could foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite
free from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints
him Judge of his diocese; and he faithfully does justice to the
people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime merits
hanging; and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his
conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die.
A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions?
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, towards their several destinies, in that
Procession! There is _Cazalès_, the learned young soldier; who
shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the shadow
of a name. Experienced _Mounier_, experienced _Malouet;_ whose
Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things shall
soon leave stranded. A Pétion 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 bearing in their pocket a _Cahier_
of _doléances_ with this singular clause, and more such in it:
“That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with new
gild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two being
more than sufficient!”[133] The Rennes people have elected Farmer
_Gérard_, “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 Gérard, or “_Père Gérard_,
Father Gérard,” as they please to call him, will fly far; borne
about in endless banter; in Royalist satires, in Republican
didactic Almanacks.[134] As for the man Gerard, being asked once,
what he did, after trial of it, candidly think of this
Parlementary work,—‘I think,’ answered he, ‘that there are a good
many scoundrels among us.’ so walks Father Gérard; 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 _hygiène_ be a present aid: but,
greater far, he can produce his “Report on the Penal Code;” and
reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which shall
become famous and world-famous. This is the product of
Guillotin’s endeavours, gained not without meditation and
reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a
feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: _La
Guillotine!_ ‘With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head
(_vous fais sauter la tête_) in a twinkling, and you have no
pain;’—whereat they all laugh.[135] Unfortunate Doctor! For
two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but
guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through
long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the
wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar’s.
See _Bailly_, likewise of Paris, time-honoured Historian of
Astronomy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely
beautiful Philosophising, with its soft moonshiny clearness and
thinness, ends in foul thick confusion—of Presidency, Mayorship,
diplomatic Officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of
everlasting Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly
Galaxy to the _Drapeau Rouge:_ beside that fatal dung-heap, on
that last hell-day, thou must “tremble,” though only with cold,
“_de froid_.” Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not so
miserable; but to be weaker than our task. Wo the day when they
mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hippogriff of
a Democracy; which, spurning the firm earth, nay lashing at the
very _stars_, no yet known Astolpho could have ridden!
In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of
Letters; three hundred and seventy-four Lawyers;[136] and at
least one Clergyman: the _Abbé Sieyes_. Him also Paris sends,
among its twenty. Behold him, the light thin man; cold, but
elastic, wiry; 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)
skyhigh,—which shall all unfortunately fall before he get the
scaffolding away. ‘_La Politique_,’ said he to Dumont, ‘Polity is
a science I think I have completed (_achevée_).’[137] What
things, O Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see!
But were it not curious to know how Sieyes, now in these days
(for he is said to be still alive)[138] looks out on all that
Constitution masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme
age? Might we hope, still with the old irrefragable
transcendentalism? The victorious cause pleased the gods, the
vanquished one pleased Sieyes (_victa Catoni_).
Thus, however, amid skyrending vivats, and blessings from every
heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by.
Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of
whom it might be asked, What they specially have come for?
Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this question,
put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God’s fair Earth
and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is begging or
stealing? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only
answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game!—Remark, meanwhile,
how _D’Orléans_ 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’Antraigues_, the young
Languedocian 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 Washington-formula; and by that he will stick;—and
hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight
war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water,
is found still hanging. Happy for him; be it glorious or not!
Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and right
mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect
character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note further our old
Parlementary friend, _Crispin-Catiline d’Espréménil_. He is
returned from the Mediterranean 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 _Viscomte_ Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau _Tonneau_
(Barrel Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the
quantities of strong liquor he contains.
There then walks our French Noblesse. All in the old pomp of
chivalry: and yet, alas, how changed from the old position;
drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs
got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these
Chivalry _Duces_ (Dukes, as they are still named) did actually
_lead_ the world,—were it only towards battle-spoil, where lay
the world’s best wages then: moreover, being the ablest Leaders
going, they had their lion’s share, those _Duces;_ which none
could grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved
Ploughshares, Steam-Engines and Bills of Exchange have been
invented; and, for battle-brawling itself, men hire
Drill-Sergeants at eighteen-pence a-day,—what mean these
goldmantled Chivalry Figures, walking there “in black-velvet
cloaks,” in high-plumed “hats of a feudal cut”? Reeds shaken in
the wind!
The Clergy have got up; with _Cahiers_ for abolishing
pluralities, enforcing residence of bishops, better payment of
tithes.[139] 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 _Grégoire:_ one day
Curé Grégoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are
wandering distracted, as Bishops _in partibus_. With other
thought, mark also the _Abbé Maury:_ his broad bold face; mouth
accurately primmed; full eyes, that ray out intelligence,
falsehood,—the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should
find it sophistical. Skilfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather,
to make it look like new; always a rising man; he used to tell
Mercier, ‘You will see; I shall be in the Academy before
you.’[140] Likely indeed, thou skilfullest Maury; nay thou shalt
have a Cardinal’s Hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in
the longrun—mere oblivion, like the rest of us; and six feet of
earth! What boots it, vamping rotten leather on these terms?
Glorious in comparison is the livelihood thy good old Father
earns, by making shoes,—one may hope, in a sufficient manner.
Maury does not want for audacity. He shall wear pistols, by and
by; and at death-cries of ‘_La Lanterne_, The Lamp-iron;’ answer
coolly, ‘Friends, will you see better there?’
But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next _Bishop
Talleyrand-Perigord_, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grimness
lies in that irreverent 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; yet not what you can call a false man: there is
the specialty! It will be an enigma for future ages, one may
hope: hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was possible only
for this age of ours,—Age of Paper, and of the Burning of Paper.
Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafayette as the topmost
of their two kinds; and say once more, looking at what they did
and what they were, _O 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 cheerful, 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 ineffaceably soiled her name; ineffaceably while
this generation lasts. Instead of _Vive la Reine_, voices insult
her with _Vive d’Orléans_. Of her queenly beauty little remains
except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid,
silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no
part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen.
Poor Marie Antoinette; with thy quick noble instincts; vehement
glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the work thou hast to
do! O there are tears in store for thee; bitterest wailings, soft
womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an imperial
Theresa’s Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the
future!—
And so, in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France.
Some towards honour and quick fire-consummation; most towards
dishonour; not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration,
desperation: all towards Eternity!—So many heterogeneities cast
together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable
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 complex a Society, ready to burst-up from its
infinite depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without
life-rule for themselves,—other life-rule than a Gospel according
to Jean Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we must call the
wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without
Duty round him; except it be “to make the Constitution.” He is
without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in
the world.
What further or better belief can be said to exist in these
Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in
heraldic scutcheons; in the divine right of Kings, in the divine
right of Game-destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting
half-belief; or worst of all, mere Macchiavellic
pretence-of-belief,—in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood
of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless in that immeasurable
Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to
become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one
salient point of a New Life discernible: the deep fixed
Determination to have done with Shams. A determination, which,
consciously or unconsciously, is _fixed;_ which waxes ever more
fixed, into very madness and fixed-idea; which in such embodiment
as lies provided there, shall now unfold itself rapidly:
monstrous, stupendous, unspeakable; new for long thousands of
years!—How has the Heaven’s _light_, oftentimes in this Earth, to
clothe itself in thunder and electric murkiness; and descend as
molten _lightning_, blasting, if purifying! Nay is it not rather
the very murkiness, and atmospheric suffocation, that _brings_
the lightning and the light? The new Evangel, as the old had
been, was it to be born in the Destruction of a World?
But how 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 _Salles des Menus_ (Hall no longer
of _Amusements_), and become a States-General,—readers can fancy
for themselves. The King from his _estrade_, gorgeous as Solomon
in all his glory, runs his eye over that majestic Hall;
many-plumed, many-glancing; bright-tinted as rainbow, in the
galleries and near side spaces, where Beauty sits raining bright
influence. Satisfaction, as of one that after long voyaging had
got to port, plays over his broad simple face: the innocent King!
He rises and speaks, with sonorous tone, a conceivable speech.
With which, still more with the succeeding one-hour and two-hour
speeches of Garde-des-Sceaux and M. Necker, full of nothing but
patriotism, hope, faith, and deficiency of the revenue,—no reader
of these pages shall be tried.
We remark only that, as his Majesty, on finishing the speech, put
on his plumed hat, and the Noblesse according to custom imitated
him, our Tiers-Etat Deputies did mostly, not without a shade of
fierceness, in like manner clap-on, and even crush on their
slouched hats; and stand there awaiting the issue.[141] Thick
buzz among them, between majority and minority of _Couvrezvous,
Décrouvrez-vous_ (Hats off, Hats on)! To which his Majesty puts
end, by taking _off_ his own royal hat again.
The session terminates without further accident or omen than
this; with which, significantly enough, France has opened her
States-General.