At Dinner.
It was a bright day for Charenton, that 29th of the month, when
the Marseillese Brethren actually came in sight. Barbaroux,
Santerre and Patriots have gone out to meet the grim Wayfarers.
Patriot clasps dusty Patriot to his bosom; there is footwashing
and refection: “dinner of twelve hundred covers at the Blue Dial,
_Cadran Bleu;_” and deep interior consultation, that one wots not
of.[492] Consultation indeed which comes to little; for Santerre,
with an open purse, with a loud voice, has almost no head. Here
however we repose this night: on the morrow is public entry into
Paris.
On which public entry the Day-Historians, _Diurnalists_, or
Journalists as they call themselves, have preserved record
enough. How Saint-Antoine male and female, and Paris generally,
gave brotherly welcome, with bravo and hand-clapping, in crowded
streets; and all passed in the peaceablest manner;—except it
might be our Marseillese pointed out here and there a
riband-cockade, and beckoned that it should be snatched away, and
exchanged for a wool one; which was done. How the Mother Society
in a body has come as far as the Bastille-ground, to embrace you.
How you then wend onwards, triumphant, to the Townhall, to be
embraced by Mayor Pétion; to put down your muskets in the
Barracks of Nouvelle France, not far off;—then towards the
appointed Tavern in the Champs Elysées to enjoy a frugal Patriot
repast.[493]
Of all which the indignant Tuileries may, by its Tickets of
Entry, have warning. Red Swiss look doubly sharp to their
Château-Grates;—though surely there is no danger? Blue Grenadiers
of the Filles-Saint-Thomas Section are on duty there this day:
men of Agio, as we have seen; with stuffed purses,
riband-cockades; among whom serves Weber. A party of these
latter, with Captains, with sundry Feuillant Notabilities, Moreau
de Saint-Méry of the three thousand orders, and others, have been
dining, much more respectably, in a Tavern hard by. They have
dined, and are now drinking Loyal-Patriotic toasts; while the
Marseillese, _National_-Patriotic merely, are about sitting down
to their frugal covers of delf. How it happened remains to this
day undemonstrable: but the external fact is, certain of these
Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers do issue from their Tavern;
perhaps touched, surely not yet muddled with any liquor they have
had;—issue in the professed intention of testifying to the
Marseillese, or to the multitude of Paris Patriots who stroll in
these spaces, That they, the Filles-Saint-Thomas men, if well
seen into, are not a whit less Patriotic than any other class of
men whatever.
It was a rash errand! For how can the strolling multitudes credit
such a thing; or do other indeed than hoot at it, provoking, and
provoked;—till Grenadier sabres stir in the scabbard, and a sharp
shriek rises: ‘_À nous Marseillais_, Help Marseillese!’ Quick as
lightning, for the frugal repast is not yet served, that
Marseillese Tavern flings itself open: by door, by window;
running, bounding, vault forth the Five hundred and Seventeen
undined Patriots; and, sabre flashing from thigh, are on the
scene of controversy. Will ye parley, ye Grenadier Captains and
official Persons; “with faces grown suddenly pale,” the Deponents
say?[494] Advisabler were instant moderately swift retreat! The
Filles-Saint-Thomas retreat, back foremost; then, alas, face
foremost, at treble-quick time; the Marseillese, according to a
Deponent, ‘clearing the fences and ditches after them like lions:
Messieurs, it was an imposing spectacle.’
Thus they retreat, the Marseillese following. Swift and swifter,
towards the Tuileries: where the Drawbridge receives the bulk of
the fugitives; and, then suddenly drawn up, saves them; or else
the green mud of the Ditch does it. The bulk of them; not all;
ah, no! Moreau de Saint-Méry for example, being too fat, could
not fly fast; he got a stroke, _flat_-stroke only, over the
shoulder-blades, and fell prone;—and disappears there from the
History of the Revolution. Cuts also there were, pricks in the
posterior fleshy parts; much rending of skirts, and other
discrepant waste. But poor Sub-lieutenant Duhamel, innocent
Change-broker, what a lot for him! He turned on his pursuer, or
pursuers, with a pistol; he fired and missed; drew a second
pistol, and again fired and missed; then ran: unhappily in vain.
In the Rue Saint-Florentin, they clutched him; thrust him
through, in red rage: that was the end of the New Era, and of all
Eras, to poor Duhamel.
Pacific readers can fancy what sort of grace-before-meat this was
to frugal Patriotism. Also how the Battalion of the
Filles-Saint-Thomas “drew out in arms,” luckily without further
result; how there was accusation at the Bar of the Assembly, and
counter-accusation and defence; Marseillese challenging the
sentence of free jury court,—which never got to a decision. We
ask rather, What the upshot of all these distracted wildly
accumulating things may, by probability, be? Some upshot; and the
time draws nigh! Busy are Central Committees, of Fédérés at the
Jacobins Church, of Sections at the Townhall; Reunion of Carra,
Camille and Company at the Golden Sun. Busy: like submarine
deities, or call them mud-gods, working there in the deep murk of
waters: till the thing be ready.
And how your National Assembly, like a ship waterlogged,
helmless, lies tumbling; the Galleries, of shrill Women, of
Fédérés with sabres, bellowing down on it, not unfrightful;—and
waits where the waves of chance may please to strand it;
suspicious, nay on the Left side, conscious, what submarine
Explosion is meanwhile a-charging! Petition for King’s Forfeiture
rises often there: Petition from Paris Section, from Provincial
Patriot Towns; From Alencon, Briancon, and “the Traders at the
Fair of Beaucaire.” Or what of these? On the 3rd of August, Mayor
Pétion and the Municipality come petitioning for Forfeiture: they
openly, in their tricolor Municipal scarfs. Forfeiture is what
all Patriots now want and expect. All Brissotins want Forfeiture;
with the little Prince Royal for King, and us for Protector over
him. Emphatic Fédérés asks the legislature: ‘Can you save us, or
not?’ Forty-seven Sections have agreed to Forfeiture; only that
of the Filles-Saint-Thomas pretending to disagree. Nay Section
Mauconseil declares Forfeiture to be, properly speaking, come;
Mauconseil for one “does from this day,” the last of July, “cease
allegiance to Louis,” and take minute of the same before all men.
A thing blamed aloud; but which will be praised aloud; and the
name _Mauconseil_, of Ill-counsel, be thenceforth changed to
_Bonconseil_, of Good-counsel.
President Danton, in the Cordeliers Section, does another thing:
invites all Passive Citizens to take place among the Active in
Section-business, one peril threatening all. Thus he, though an
official person; cloudy Atlas of the whole. Likewise he manages
to have that blackbrowed Battalion of Marseillese shifted to new
Barracks, in his own region of the remote South-East. Sleek
Chaumette, cruel Billaud, Deputy Chabot the Disfrocked, Huguenin
with the tocsin in his heart, will welcome them there. Wherefore,
again and again: ‘O Legislators, can you save us or not?’ Poor
Legislators; with their Legislature waterlogged, volcanic
Explosion charging under it! Forfeiture shall be debated on the
ninth day of August; that miserable business of Lafayette may be
expected to terminate on the eighth.
Or will the humane Reader glance into the Levee-day of Sunday the
fifth? The last Levee! Not for a long time, “never,” says
Bertrand-Moleville, had a Levee been so brilliant, at least so
crowded. A sad presaging interest sat on every face; Bertrand’s
own eyes were filled with tears. For, indeed, outside of that
Tricolor Riband on the Feuillants Terrace, Legislature is
debating, Sections are defiling, all Paris is astir this very
Sunday, demanding _Déchéance_.[495] Here, however, within the
riband, a grand proposal is on foot, for the hundredth time, of
carrying his Majesty to Rouen and the Castle of Gaillon. Swiss at
Courbevoye are in readiness; much is ready; Majesty himself seems
almost ready. Nevertheless, for the hundredth time, Majesty, when
near the point of action, draws back; writes, after one has
waited, palpitating, an endless summer day, that “he has reason
to believe the Insurrection is not so ripe as you suppose.”
Whereat Bertrand-Moleville breaks forth “into extremity at one of
spleen and despair, _d’humeur et de désespoir_.”[496]