Discrowned.
But the question more pressing than all on the Legislator, as
yet, is this third: What shall be done with King Louis?
King Louis, now King and Majesty to his own family alone, in
their own Prison Apartment alone, has been Louis Capet and the
Traitor Veto with the rest of France. Shut in his Circuit of the
Temple, he has heard and seen the loud whirl of things; yells of
September Massacres, Brunswick war-thunders dying off in disaster
and discomfiture; he passive, a spectator merely;—waiting whither
it would please to whirl with him. From the neighbouring windows,
the curious, not without pity, might see him walk daily, at a
certain hour, in the Temple Garden, with his Queen, Sister and
two Children, all that now belongs to him in this Earth.[582]
Quietly he walks and waits; for he is not of lively feelings, and
is of a devout heart. The wearied Irresolute has, at least, no
need of resolving now. His daily meals, lessons to his Son, daily
walk in the Garden, daily game at ombre or drafts, fill up the
day: the morrow will provide for itself.
The morrow indeed; and yet How? Louis asks, How? France, with
perhaps still more solicitude, asks, How? A King dethroned by
insurrection is verily not easy to dispose of. Keep him prisoner,
he is a secret centre for the Disaffected, for endless plots,
attempts and hopes of theirs. Banish him, he is an open centre
for them; his royal war-standard, with what of divinity it has,
unrolls itself, summoning the world. Put him to death? A cruel
questionable extremity that too: and yet the likeliest in these
extreme circumstances, of insurrectionary men, whose own life and
death lies staked: accordingly it is said, from the last step of
the throne to the first of the scaffold there is short distance.
But, on the whole, we will remark here that this business of
Louis looks altogether different now, as seen over Seas and at
the distance of forty-four years, than it looked then, in France,
and struggling, confused all round one! For indeed it is a most
lying thing that same Past Tense always: so beautiful, sad,
almost Elysian-sacred, “in the moonlight of Memory,” it seems;
and _seems_ only. For observe: always, one most important element
is surreptitiously (we not noticing it) withdrawn from the Past
Time: the haggard element of Fear! Not _there_ does Fear dwell,
nor Uncertainty, nor Anxiety; but it dwells _here;_ haunting us,
tracking us; running like an accursed ground-discord through all
the music-tones of our Existence;—making the Tense a mere Present
one! Just so is it with this of Louis. Why smite the fallen? asks
Magnanimity, out of danger now. He is fallen so low this
once-high man; no criminal nor traitor, how far from it; but the
unhappiest of Human Solecisms: whom if abstract Justice had to
pronounce upon, she might well become concrete Pity, and
pronounce only sobs and dismissal!
So argues retrospective Magnanimity: but Pusillanimity, present,
prospective? Reader, thou hast never lived, for months, under the
rustle of Prussian gallows-ropes; never wert thou portion of a
National Sahara-waltz, Twenty-five millions running distracted to
fight Brunswick! Knights Errant themselves, when they conquered
Giants, usually slew the Giants: quarter was only for other
Knights Errant, who knew courtesy and the laws of battle. The
French Nation, in simultaneous, desperate dead-pull, and as if by
miracle of madness, has pulled down the most dread Goliath, huge
with the growth of ten centuries; and cannot believe, though his
giant bulk, covering acres, lies prostrate, bound with peg and
packthread, that he will not rise again, man-devouring; that the
victory is not partly a dream. Terror has its scepticism;
miraculous victory its rage of vengeance. Then as to criminalty,
is the prostrated Giant, who will devour us if he rise, an
innocent Giant? Curate Gregoire, who indeed is now Constitutional
Bishop Gregoire, asserts, in the heat of eloquence, that Kingship
by the very nature of it is a crime capital; that Kings’ Houses
are as wild-beasts’ dens.[583] Lastly consider this: that there
is on record a Trial of Charles First! This printed _Trial of
Charles First_ is sold and read every where at
present:[584]—_Quelle spectacle!_ Thus did the English People
judge their Tyrant, and become the first of Free Peoples: which
feat, by the grace of Destiny, may not France now rival?
Scepticism of terror, rage of miraculous victory, sublime
spectacle to the universe,—all things point one fatal way.
Such leading questions, and their endless incidental ones: of
September Anarchists and Departmental Guard; of Grain Riots,
plaintiff Interior Ministers; of Armies, Hassenfratz
dilapidations; and what is to be done with Louis,—beleaguer and
embroil this Convention; which would so gladly make the
Constitution rather. All which questions too, as we often urge of
such things, are in _growth;_ they grow in every French head; and
can be _seen_ growing also, very curiously, in this mighty welter
of Parliamentary Debate, of Public Business which the Convention
has to do. A question emerges, so small at first; is put off,
submerged; but always re-emerges bigger than before. It is a
curious, indeed an indescribable sort of growth which such things
have.
We perceive, however, both by its frequent re-emergence and by
its rapid enlargement of bulk, that this Question of King Louis
will take the lead of all the rest. And truly, in that case, it
will take the _lead_ in a much deeper sense. For as Aaron’s Rod
swallowed all the other Serpents; so will the Foremost Question,
whichever may get foremost, absorb all other questions and
interests; and from it and the decision of it will they all, so
to speak, be _born_, or new-born, and have shape, physiognomy and
destiny corresponding. It was appointed of Fate that, in this
wide-weltering, strangely growing, monstrous stupendous imbroglio
of Convention Business, the grand First-Parent of all the
questions, controversies, measures and enterprises which were to
be evolved there to the world’s astonishment, should be this
Question of King Louis.