Sound and Smoke.
And so now, in spite of plotting Aristocrats, lazy hired
spademen, and almost of Destiny itself (for there has been much
rain), the Champ-de-Mars, on the 13th of the month is fairly
ready; trimmed, rammed, buttressed with firm masonry; and
Patriotism can stroll over it admiring; and as it were
rehearsing, for in every head is some unutterable image of the
morrow. Pray Heaven there be not clouds. Nay what far worse cloud
is this, of a misguided Municipality that talks of admitting
Patriotism, to the solemnity, by tickets! Was it by tickets we
were admitted 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 night-cap therefore; and, with
demi-articulate grumble, significant of several things, go
pacified to sleep again. Tomorrow is Wednesday morning;
unforgetable among the _fasti_ of the world.
The morning comes, cold for a July one; but such a festivity
would make Greenland smile. Through every inlet of that National
Amphitheatre (for it is a league in circuit, cut with openings at
due intervals), floods-in the living throng; covers without
tumult space after space. The Ecole Militaire has galleries and
overvaulting canopies, where Carpentry and Painting have vied,
for the upper Authorities; triumphal arches, at the Gate by the
River, bear inscriptions, if weak, yet well-meant, and orthodox.
Far aloft, over the Altar of the Fatherland, on their tall crane
standards of iron, swing pensile our antique _Cassolettes_ 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 glorified as one can fancy, sit waiting in
this Champ-de-Mars.
What a picture: that circle of bright-eyed 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 centre 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-coloured undulating groups;
round and far on, over all the circling heights that embosom
Paris, it is as one more or less peopled Amphitheatre; which the
eye grows dim with measuring. Nay heights, as was before 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 Amphitheatre: for in paved town and unpaved hamlet, men walk
listening; till the muffled thunder sound audible on their
horizon, that they too may begin swearing and firing![300] But
now, to streams of music, come Federates enough,—for they have
assembled on the Boulevard Saint-Antoine or thereby, and come
marching through the City, with 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 manœuvres can begin.
Evolutions and manœuvres? Task not the pen of mortal to describe
them: truant imagination droops;—declares that it is not worth
while. There is wheeling and sweeping, to slow, 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 himself 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 Orléans and Blois it rolls, in cannon-recitative;
Puy bellows of it amid his granite mountains; Pau where is the
shell-cradle of Great Henri. At far Marseilles, one can think,
the ruddy evening witnesses it; over the deep-blue Mediterranean
waters, the Castle of If ruddy-tinted darts forth, from every
cannon’s mouth, its tongue of fire; and all the people shout:
Yes, France is free. O 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 is the highest stretch
attained by the Thespian Art on this Planet, or perhaps
attainable?
The Thespian Art, unfortunately, one must still call it; for
behold there, on this Field of Mars, the National Banners, before
there could be any swearing, were to be all blessed. A most
proper operation; since surely without Heaven’s blessing
bestowed, say even, audibly or inaudibly _sought_, no Earthly
banner or contrivance can prove victorious: but now the means of
doing it? By what thrice-divine Franklin thunder-rod shall
miraculous fire be drawn out of Heaven; and descend gently,
life-giving, with health to the souls of men? Alas, by the
simplest: by Two Hundred shaven-crowned Individuals, “in
snow-white albs, with tricolor girdles,” arranged on the steps of
Fatherland’s Altar; and, at their head for spokesman, Soul’s
Overseer Talleyrand-Perigord! These shall act as miraculous
thunder-rod,—to such length as they can. O ye deep azure Heavens,
and thou green all-nursing Earth; ye Streams ever-flowing;
deciduous Forests that die and are born again, continually, like
the sons of men; stone Mountains that die daily with every
rain-shower, yet are not dead and levelled for ages of ages, nor
born again (it seems) but with new world-explosions, and such
tumultuous seething and tumbling, steam half way to the Moon; O
thou unfathomable mystic All, garment and dwellingplace of the
UNNAMED; O spirit, lastly, of Man, who mouldest and modellest
that Unfathomable Unnameable even as we see,—is not _there_ a
miracle: That some French mortal should, we say not have
believed, but pretended to imagine that 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 mitre and tricolor belt, was yet but hitching up the
Altar-steps, to do his miracle, the material Heaven grew black; a
north-wind, moaning cold moisture, began to sing; and there
descended a very deluge of rain. Sad to see! The thirty-staired
Seats, all round our Amphitheatre, get instantaneously slated
with mere umbrellas, fallacious when so thick set: our antique
_Cassolettes_ become Water-pots; their incense-smoke gone
hissing, in a whiff of muddy vapour. Alas, instead of vivats,
there is nothing now but the furious peppering and rattling. From
three to four hundred thousand human individuals feel that they
have a skin; happily _im_pervious. The General’s sash runs water:
how all military banners droop; and will not wave, but lazily
flap, as if metamorphosed into painted tin-banners! Worse, far
worse, these hundred thousand, such is the Historian’s testimony,
of the fairest of France! Their snowy muslins all splashed and
draggled; the ostrich feather shrunk shamefully to the backbone
of a feather: all caps are ruined; innermost pasteboard molten
into its original pap: Beauty no longer swims decorated in her
garniture, like Love-goddess hidden-revealed in her Paphian
clouds, but struggles in disastrous imprisonment in it, for “the
shape was noticeable;” and now only sympathetic interjections,
titterings, teeheeings, and resolute good-humour will avail. A
deluge; an incessant sheet or fluid-column of rain;—such that our
Overseer’s very mitre must be filled; not a mitre, but a filled
and leaky fire-bucket on his reverend head!—Regardless of which,
Overseer Talleyrand performs his miracle: the Blessing of
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. Towards three o’clock, the sun
beams out again: the remaining evolutions can be transacted under
bright heavens, though with decorations much damaged.[301]
On Wednesday our Federation is consummated: but the festivities
last out the week, and over into the next. Festivities such as no
Bagdad Caliph, or Aladdin with the Lamp, could have equalled.
There is a Jousting on the River; with its water-somersets,
splashing and haha-ing: Abbé Fauchet, _Te-Deum_ Fauchet,
preaches, for his part, in “the rotunda of the Corn-market,” a
Harangue on Franklin; for whom the National Assembly has lately
gone three days in black. The Motier and 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,
νήπια τέκνα, crow in arms; and sprawl out numb-plump little
limbs,—impatient for muscularity, they know not why. The stiffest
balk bends more or less; all joists creak.
Or out, on the Earth’s breast itself, behold the Ruins of the
Bastille. All lamplit, allegorically decorated: a Tree of Liberty
sixty feet high; and Phrygian Cap on it, of size enormous, under
which King Arthur and his round-table might have dined! In the
depths of the background, is a single lugubrious lamp, rendering
dim-visible one of your iron cages, half-buried, and some Prison
stones,—Tyranny vanishing downwards, 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 l’on danse_, Dancing Here.” As indeed had been
obscurely foreshadowed by Cagliostro[302] 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 Elysées!_ 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 with variegated fire,
shedding far a glimmer into the dubious wood. There, under the
free sky, do tight-limbed Federates, with fairest newfound
sweethearts, elastic as Diana, and not of that coyness and tart
humour of Diana, thread their jocund mazes, all through the
ambrosial night; and hearts were touched and fired; and seldom
surely had our old Planet, in that huge conic Shadow of hers
“which goes beyond the Moon, and is named _Night_,” curtained
such a Ball-room. O 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 million indifferent ones
victorious over it,—for eight days and more?
In this way, and in such ways, however, has the Feast of Pikes
danced itself off; gallant Federates wending homewards, towards
every point of the compass, with feverish nerves, heart and head
much heated; some of them, indeed, as Dampmartin’s elderly
respectable friend, from Strasbourg, quite “burnt out with
liquors,” and flickering towards extinction.[303] The Feast of
Pikes has danced itself off, and become defunct, and the ghost of
a Feast;—nothing of it now remaining but this vision in men’s
memory; and the place that knew it (for the slope of that
Champ-de-Mars is crumbled to half the original height[304]) now
knowing it no more. Undoubtedly one of the memorablest National
Hightides. Never or hardly ever, as we said, was Oath sworn with
such heart-effusion, emphasis and expenditure of joyance; and
then it was broken irremediably within year and day. Ah, why?
When the swearing of it was so heavenly-joyful, bosom clasped to
bosom, and Five-and-twenty million hearts all burning together: O
ye inexorable Destinies, why?—Partly _because_ it was sworn with
such over-joyance; but chiefly, indeed, for an older reason: that
Sin had come into the world and Misery by Sin! These
Five-and-twenty millions, if we will consider it, have now
henceforth, with that Phrygian Cap of theirs, no force _over_
them, to bind and guide; neither in them, more than heretofore,
is guiding force, or rule of just living: how then, while they
all go rushing at such a _pace_, on unknown ways, with no bridle,
towards no aim, can hurlyburly unutterable fail? For verily not
Federation-rosepink is the colour of this Earth and her work: not
by outbursts of noble-sentiment, but with far other ammunition,
shall a man front the world.
But how wise, in all cases, to “husband your fire;” to keep it
deep down, rather, as genial radical-heat! Explosions, the
forciblest, and never so well directed, are questionable; far
oftenest futile, always frightfully wasteful: but think of a man,
of a Nation of men, spending its whole stock of fire in one
artificial Firework! So have we seen fond 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
victorious over terrestrial evil, which seems all abolished, the
wider-eyed will your disappointment be to find terrestrial evil
still extant. ‘And why extant?’ will each of you cry: ‘Because my
false mate has played the traitor: evil was abolished; I meant
faithfully, and did, or would have done.’ Whereby the oversweet
moon of honey changes itself into long years of vinegar; perhaps
divulsive vinegar, like Hannibal’s.
Shall we say then, the French Nation has led Royalty, or wooed
and teased poor Royalty to lead _her_, to the hymeneal
Fatherland’s Altar, in such oversweet manner; and has, most
thoughtlessly, to celebrate the nuptials with due shine and
demonstration,—burnt her bed?