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 thunderclaps; not one solitary Plot of which has
issued otherwise! Powder-mine of a _Séance Royale_ on the
Twenty-third 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 sabres, and _O Richard,
O my King;_ which, aided by Hunger, produces Insurrection of
Women, and Pallas Athene in the shape of Demoiselle Théroigne.
Valour profits not; neither has fortune smiled on Fanfaronade.
The Bouillé 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, forsaken of Earth and Heaven.
On the Sixth of October gone a year, King Louis, escorted by
Demoiselle Théroigne 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. Théroigne will not escort here, neither does Mirabeau now
“sit in one of the accompanying carriages.” Mirabeau lies dead,
in the Pantheon of Great Men. Théroigne lies living, in dark
Austrian Prison; having gone to Liège, professionally, and been
seized there. Bemurmured now by the hoarse-flowing Danube; the
light of her Patriot Supper-Parties gone quite out; so lies
Théroigne: she shall speak with the Kaiser face to face, and
return. And France lies how! Fleeting 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 thousand as they count; amid such tumult
of all people. Three National-Assembly Commissioners, famed
Barnave, famed Pétion, generally-respectable Latour-Maubourg,
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 Tourzel and the _Soubrettes_.
So on Saturday evening, about seven o’clock, Paris by hundreds of
thousands is again drawn up: not now dancing 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 Sainte-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 wonderful 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 sit
atop bound with ropes; Pétion, 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 bien, me
voilà_, 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 Majesty, 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,[396] to some
_Procession de Roi de Bazoche;_ or say, Procession of King
Crispin, with his Dukes of Sutor-mania 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. Miserablest _flebile
ludibrium_ of a Pickleherring Tragedy! It sweeps along there, in
most ungorgeous pall, through many streets, in the dusty summer
evening; gets itself at length wriggled out of sight; vanishing
in the Tuileries Palace—towards its doom, of slow 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, whose noble instinct teaches her always who is to
be trusted. Very different from heavy Pétion; who, if Campan
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,’ answered ‘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.[397]
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,
towards “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
National Argus watching, his eye fixed on the Queen’s curtains;
nay, on one occasion, as the Queen cannot sleep, he offers to sit
by her pillow, and converse a little![398]