Usher Maillard.
In flames, truly,—were it not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot,
shifty of head, has returned!
Maillard, of his own motion, for Gouvion or the rest would not
even sanction him,—snatches a drum; descends the Porch-stairs,
ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls, his Rogues’-march: To
Versailles! _Allons; a Versailles!_ As men beat on kettle or
warmingpan, when angry she-bees, or say, flying desperate wasps,
are to be hived; and the desperate insects hear it, and cluster
round it,—simply as round a guidance, where there was none: so
now these Menads round shifty Maillard, Riding-Usher of the
Châtelet. The axe pauses uplifted; Abbé Lefevre is left
half-hanged; from the belfry downwards 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 Théroigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as
gunneress, “with haughty eye and serene fair countenance;”
comparable, some think, to the _Maid_ of Orléans, or even
recalling “the idea of Pallas Athene.”[235] 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
coachdrivers 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 not theretofore
seen.
And now Maillard has his Menads in the _Champs Elysées_ (Fields
_Tartarean_ rather); and the Hôtel-de-Ville has suffered
comparatively nothing. Broken doors; an Abbé Lefevre, who shall
never more distribute powder; three sacks of money, most part of
which (for Sansculottism, though famishing, is not without
honour) shall be returned:[236] this is all the damage. Great
Maillard! A small nucleus of Order is round his drum; but his
outskirts fluctuate like the mad Ocean: for Rascality male and
female is flowing in on him, from the four winds; guidance there
is none but in his single head and two drumsticks.
O Maillard, when, since War first was, had General of Force such
a task before him, as thou this day? Walter the Penniless still
touches the feeling heart: but then Walter had sanction; had
space to turn in; and also his Crusaders were of the male sex.
Thou, this day, disowned of Heaven and Earth, art General of
Menads. Their inarticulate frenzy thou must on the spur of the
instant, render into articulate words, into actions that are not
frantic. Fail in it, this way or that! Pragmatical Officiality,
with its penalties and law-books, waits before thee; Menads storm
behind. If such hewed off the melodious head of Orpheus, and
hurled it into the 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 Rumour, how
remarkable 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
Volunteers bringing up his rear, once more takes the road.
Chaillot, which will promptly yield baked loaves, is not
plundered; nor are the Sèvres Potteries broken. The old arches of
Sèvres 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
Daughters, mothers that are, or that hope to be. No
carriage-lady, were it with never such hysterics, but must
dismount, in the mud roads, in her silk shoes, and walk.[237] In
this manner, amid wild October weather, they a wild unwinged
stork-flight, through the astonished country, wend their way.
Travellers of all sorts they stop; especially travellers 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
Patriot-Deputy Lechapelier, and even Old-President Lechapelier,
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.”[238]
Nevertheless, news, despatches from Lafayette, or vague noise of
rumour, 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
under-tone: ‘_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 Château;
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
blindfold 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 _générale_,
began to take effect. Armed National Guards from every District;
especially the Grenadiers of the Centre, who are our old Gardes
Françaises, arrive, in quick sequence, on the Place de Grève. An
“immense people” is there; Saint-Antoine, with pike and rusty
firelock, is all crowding thither, be it welcome or unwelcome.
The Centre Grenadiers are received with cheering: ‘it is not
cheers that we want,’ answer they gloomily; ‘the nation has been
insulted; to arms, and come with us for orders!’ Ha, sits the
wind _so?_ Patriotism and Patrollotism are now one!
The Three Hundred have assembled; “all the Committees are in
activity;” Lafayette is dictating despatches for Versailles, when
a Deputation of the Centre Grenadiers introduces itself to him.
The Deputation makes military obeisance; and thus speaks, not
without a kind of thought in it: ‘_Mon Général_, we are deputed
by the Six Companies of Grenadiers. We do not think you a
traitor, but we think the Government betrays you; it is time that
this end. We cannot turn our bayonets against women crying to us
for bread. The people are miserable, the source of the mischief
is at Versailles: we must go seek the King, and bring him to
Paris. We must exterminate (_exterminer_) the _Regiment de
Flandre_ and the _Gardes-du-Corps_, who have dared to trample on
the National Cockade. If the King be too weak to wear his crown,
let him lay it down. You will crown his Son, you will name a
Council of Regency; and all will go better.’[239] Reproachful
astonishment paints itself on the face of Lafayette; speaks
itself from his eloquent chivalrous lips: in vain. ‘My General,
we would shed the last drop of our blood for you; but the root of
the mischief is at Versailles; we must go and bring the King to
Paris; all the people wish it, _tout le peuple le veut_.’
My General descends to the outer staircase; and harangues: once
more in vain. ‘To Versailles! To Versailles!’ Mayor Bailly, sent
for through floods of Sansculottism, attempts academic oratory
from his gilt state-coach; realizes nothing but infinite hoarse
cries of: ‘Bread! To Versailles!’—and gladly shrinks within
doors. Lafayette mounts the white charger; and again harangues
and reharangues: with eloquence, with firmness, indignant
demonstration; 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. ‘_Morbleu, mon Général_,’ cry the Grenadiers 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 Grève, with its thirty
thousand Regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and
Saint-Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel; all
hearts set, with a moody fixedness, on one object. Moody, fixed
are all hearts: tranquil is no heart,—if it be not that of the
white charger, who paws there, with arched neck, composedly
champing his bit; as if no world, with its Dynasties and Eras,
were now rushing down. The drizzly day tends westward; the cry is
still: ‘To Versailles!’
Nay now, borne from afar, come quite sinister cries; hoarse,
reverberating in longdrawn hollow murmurs, with syllables too
like those of _Lanterne!_ 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 permit? “Permit
and even order,”—since he can no other. Clangour of approval
rends the welkin. To your ranks, then; let us march!
It is, as we compute, towards three in the afternoon. Indignant
National Guards may dine for once from their haversack: dined or
undined, they march with one heart. Paris flings up her windows,
claps hands, as the Avengers, with their shrilling drums and
shalms tramp by; she will then sit pensive, apprehensive, and
pass rather a sleepless night.[240] On the white charger,
Lafayette, in the slowest possible manner, going and coming, and
eloquently haranguing among the ranks, rolls onward with his
thirty thousand. Saint-Antoine, with pike and cannon, has
preceded him; a mixed multitude, of all and of no arms, hovers on
his flanks and skirts; the country once more pauses agape: _Paris
marche sur nous_.