Sword in Hand.
On such wonderful basis, however, has Law, Royalty, Authority,
and whatever yet exists of visible Order, to maintain itself,
while it can. Here, as in that Commixture of the Four Elements
did the Anarch Old, has an august Assembly spread its pavilion;
curtained by the dark infinite of discords; founded on the
wavering bottomless of the Abyss; and keeps continual hubbub.
Time is around it, and Eternity, and the Inane; and it does what
it can, what is given it to do.
Glancing reluctantly in, once more, we discern little that is
edifying: a Constitutional Theory of Defective Verbs struggling
forward, with perseverance, amid endless interruptions: 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.[332] This man’s path is mysterious, questionable;
difficult, and he walks without 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 Pétion; an incorruptible
Robespierre, most consistent, incorruptible of thin acrid men;
Triumvirs Barnave, Duport, Lameth, great in speech, thought,
action, each according to his 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’Orléans 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: _Ce j—f—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 purchasable by cash. Without cash your
hopefullest Projector cannot stir from the spot: individual
patriotic or other Projects require cash: how much more do
wide-spread 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 centre of the
strangest cloudy coil; out of which has visibly come, as we often
say, an Epic Preternatural Machinery of SUSPICION; and _within_
which there has dwelt and worked,—what specialties of treason,
stratagem, aimed or aimless endeavour towards 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 come
down. More fool than he rose! To create Preternatural Suspicion,
this was his function in the Revolutionary 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 welter and
flounder on, in that piteous death-element, the hapless man.
Once, or even twice, we shall still behold him emerged;
struggling 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 _Côté Droit_ persists no less; nay with more animation than
ever, though hope has now well nigh fled. Tough Abbé Maury, when
the obscure country Royalist grasps his hand with transport of
thanks, answers, rolling his indomitable brazen head: ‘_Hélas,
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 à la main sur ces gaillards là_,’[333]
franticly indicating our chosen Thirty on the extreme tip of the
Left! Whereupon is clangour and clamour, debate,
repentance,—evaporation. Things ripen towards downright
incompatibility, 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 depart, 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 sometimes 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 swaggering; 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 “a
considerable number of Assassins, _nombre considérable
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: which he, since the Constitution must be
made first, and his time is precious, answers now always with a
kind of stereotype 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 Cazalès and Barnave; the
two chief masters of tongue-shot meeting now to exchange
pistol-shot? For Cazalès, chief of the Royalists, whom we call
“Blacks or _Noirs_,” said, in a moment 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 Cazalès’s
_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 Duelling in general; petitions an
august Assembly to stop such Feudal barbarism by law. Barbarism
and solecism: for will 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 repetition in America was
that of headlong foolhardiness rather, and want of brain not of
heart, Charles Lameth does, on the eleventh 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 Gentleman; whereby, one
might have fancied, the whole matter was 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: ‘Monsieur,’ 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 à l’heure_, 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 thrusting, stoccado and passado,
in tierce and quart; intent to skewer one another. See, with most
skewering purpose, headlong Lameth, with his whole weight, makes
a furious lunge; but deft Castries whisks aside: Lameth skewers
only the air,—and slits deep and far, on Castries’ 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 with 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 ejaculates hurt Patriotism, with ever-deepening ever-widening
fervour, 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 neighbouring Boulevard
des Invalides, covered with a mixed flowing multitude: the
Castries Hotel 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 endless crockery and jingle: amid steady popular
cheers, absolutely 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 sit tremulous; deliberating whether
they will hang out the _Drapeau Rouge_ and Martial Law: National
Assembly, part in loud wail, part in hardly suppressed applause:
Abbé 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 Guardes, 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 punningly 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 constraint, 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 Switzerland,—or even to Dreamland
through the Horn-gate, whichsoever their home is. Nay Editor
Prudhomme is authorised to publish a curious thing: “We are
authorised 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-Boulonge, Faubourg St. Denis.”[334] 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.