Carmagnole complete.
Simultaneously with this Tophet-black aspect, there unfolds
itself another aspect, which one may call a Tophet-red aspect:
the Destruction of the Catholic Religion; and indeed, for the
time being of Religion itself. We saw Romme’s New Calendar
establish its _Tenth_ Day of Rest; and asked, what would become
of the Christian Sabbath? The Calendar is hardly a month old,
till all this is set at rest. Very singular, as Mercier observes:
last _Corpus-Christi_ Day 1792, the whole world, and Sovereign
Authority itself, walked in religious gala, with a quite devout
air;—Butcher Legendre, supposed to be irreverent, was like to be
massacred in his Gig, as the thing went by. A Gallican Hierarchy,
and Church, and Church Formulas seemed to flourish, a little
brown-leaved or so, but not browner than of late years or
decades; to flourish, far and wide, in the sympathies of an
unsophisticated People; defying Philosophism, Legislature and the
Encyclopédie. Far and wide, alas, like a brown-leaved
Vallombrosa; which waits but one whirlblast of the November wind,
and in an hour stands bare! Since that _Corpus-Christi_ Day,
Brunswick has come, and the Emigrants, and La Vendée, and
eighteen months of Time: to all flourishing, especially to
brown-leaved flourishing, there comes, were it never so slowly,
an end.
On the 7th of November, a certain Citoyen Parens, Curate of
Boissise-le-Bertrand, writes to the Convention that he has all
his life been preaching a lie, and is grown weary of doing it;
wherefore he will now lay down his Curacy and stipend, and begs
that an august Convention would give him something else to live
upon. “_Mention honorable_,” shall we give him? Or “reference to
Committee of Finances?” Hardly is this got decided, when goose
Gobel, Constitutional Bishop of Paris, with his Chapter, with
Municipal and Departmental escort in red nightcaps, makes his
appearance, to do as Parens has done. Goose Gobel will now
acknowledge “no Religion but Liberty;” therefore he doffs his
Priest-gear, and receives the Fraternal embrace. To the joy of
Departmental Momoro, of Municipal Chaumettes and Héberts, of
Vincent and the Revolutionary Army! Chaumette asks, Ought there
not, in these circumstances, to be among our intercalary Days
Sans-breeches, a Feast of Reason?[712] Proper surely! Let Atheist
Maréchal, Lalande, and little Atheist Naigeon rejoice; let
Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, present to the Convention his
_Evidences of the Mahometan Religion_, “a work evincing the
nullity of all Religions,”—with thanks. There shall be Universal
Republic now, thinks Clootz; and “one God only, _Le Peuple_.”
The French Nation is of gregarious imitative nature; it needed
but a fugle-motion in this matter; and goose Gobel, driven by
Municipality and force of circumstances, has given one. What Curé
will be behind him of Boissise; what Bishop behind him of Paris?
Bishop Grégoire, indeed, courageously declines; to the sound of
‘We force no one; let Grégoire consult his conscience;’ but
Protestant and Romish by the hundred volunteer and assent. From
far and near, all through November into December, till the work
is accomplished, come Letters of renegation, come Curates who are
“learning to be Carpenters,” Curates with their new-wedded Nuns:
has not the Day of Reason dawned, very swiftly, and become noon?
From sequestered Townships comes Addresses, stating plainly,
though in Patois dialect, That “they will have no more to do with
the black animal called Curay, _animal noir, appellé
Curay_.”[713]
Above all things there come Patriotic Gifts, of Church-furniture.
The remnant of bells, except for tocsin, descend from their
belfries, into the National meltingpot, to make cannon. Censers
and all sacred vessels are beaten broad; of silver, they are fit
for the poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become bullets
to shoot the “enemies of _du genre humain_.” Dalmatics of plush
make breeches for him who has none; linen stoles will clip into
shirts for the Defenders of the Country: old-clothesmen, Jew or
Heathen, drive the briskest trade. Chalier’s Ass Procession, at
Lyons, was but a type of what went on, in those same days, in all
Towns. In all Towns and Townships as quick as the guillotine may
go, so quick goes the axe and the wrench: sacristies, lutrins,
altar-rails are pulled down; the Mass Books torn into cartridge
papers: men dance the Carmagnole all night about the bonfire. All
highways jingle with metallic Priest-tackle, beaten broad; sent
to the Convention, to the poverty-stricken Mint. Good Sainte
Geneviève’s _Chasse_ is let down: alas, to be burst open, this
time, and burnt on the Place de Grève. Saint Louis’s shirt is
burnt;—might not a Defender of the Country have had it? At
Saint-Denis Town, no longer Saint-Denis but _Franciade_,
Patriotism has been down among the Tombs, rummaging; the
Revolutionary Army has taken spoil. This, accordingly, is what
the streets of Paris saw:
“Most of these persons were still drunk, with the brandy they had
swallowed out of chalices;—eating mackerel on the patenas!
Mounted on Asses, which were housed with Priests’ cloaks, they
reined them with Priests’ stoles: they held clutched with the
same hand communion-cup and sacred wafer. They stopped at the
doors of Dramshops; held out ciboriums: and the landlord, stoop
in hand, had to fill them thrice. Next came Mules high-laden with
crosses, chandeliers, censers, holy-water vessels,
hyssops;—recalling to mind the Priests of Cybele, whose panniers,
filled with the instruments of their worship, served at once as
storehouse, sacristy and temple. In such equipage did these
profaners advance towards the Convention. They enter there, in an
immense train, ranged in two rows; all masked like mummers in
fantastic sacerdotal vestments; bearing on hand-barrows their
heaped plunder,—ciboriums, suns, candelabras, plates of gold and
silver.”[714]
The Address we do not give; for indeed it was in strophes, sung
_vivâ voce_, with all the parts;—Danton glooming considerably, in
his place; and demanding that there be prose and decency in
future.[715] Nevertheless the captors of such _spolia opima_
crave, not untouched with liquor, permission to dance the
Carmagnole also on the spot: whereto an exhilarated Convention
cannot but accede. Nay, “several Members,” continues the
exaggerative Mercier, who was not there to witness, being in
Limbo now, as one of Duperret’s _Seventy-three_, “several
Members, quitting their curule chairs, took the hand of girls
flaunting in Priest’s vestures, and danced the Carmagnole along
with them.” Such Old-Hallow-tide have they, in this year, once
named of Grace, 1793.
Out of which strange fall of Formulas, tumbling there in confused
welter, betrampled by the Patriotic dance, is it not passing
strange to see a _new_ Formula arise? For the human tongue is not
adequate to speak what “triviality run distracted” there is in
human nature. Black Mumbo-Jumbo of the woods, and most Indian
Wau-waus, one can understand: but this of Procureur _Anaxagoras_
whilom John-Peter Chaumette? We will say only: Man is a born
idol-worshipper, _sight_-worshipper, so sensuous-imaginative is
he; and also partakes much of the nature of the ape.
For the same day, while this brave Carmagnole dance has hardly
jigged itself out, there arrive Procureur Chaumette and
Municipals and Departmentals, and with them the strangest
freightage: a New Religion! Demoiselle Candeille, of the Opera; a
woman fair to look upon, when well rouged: she, borne on
palanquin shoulder-high; with red woolen nightcap; in azure
mantle; garlanded with oak; holding in her hand the Pike of the
Jupiter-_Peuple_, sails in; heralded by white young women girt in
tricolor. Let the world consider it! This, O National Convention
wonder of the universe, is our New Divinity; _Goddess of Reason_,
worthy, and alone worthy of revering. Nay, were it too much to
ask of an august National Representation that it also went with
us to the _ci-devant_ Cathedral called of Notre-Dame, and
executed a few strophes in worship of her?
President and Secretaries give Goddess Candeille, borne at due
height round their platform, successively the fraternal kiss;
whereupon she, by decree, sails to the right-hand of the
President and there alights. And now, after due pause and
flourishes of oratory, the Convention, gathering its limbs, does
get under way in the required procession towards
Notre-Dame;—Reason, again in her litter, sitting in the van of
them, borne, as one judges, by men in the Roman costume; escorted
by wind-music, red nightcaps, and the madness of the world. And
so straightway, Reason taking seat on the high-altar of
Notre-Dame, the requisite worship or quasi-worship is, say the
Newspapers, _executed;_ National Convention chanting “the _Hymn
to Liberty_, words by Chénier, music by Gossec.” It is the first
of the _Feasts of Reason;_ first communion-service of the New
Religion of Chaumette.
“The corresponding Festival in the Church of Saint-Eustache,”
says Mercier, “offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The
interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with
cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables
over-loaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pastries
and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors:
whosoever presented himself took part of the good things:
children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in
sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt
intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft,
in a serene manner; Cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as
acolytes. And out of doors,” continues the exaggerative man,
“were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of
Chapel-balustrades, of Priests’ and Canons’ stalls; and the
dancers, I exaggerate nothing, the dancers nigh bare of breeches,
neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and
spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and
Destruction.”[716] At Saint-Gervais Church again there was a
terrible “smell of herrings;” Section or Municipality having
provided no food, no condiment, but left it to chance. Other
mysteries, seemingly of a Cabiric or even Paphian character, we
heave under the Veil, which appropriately stretches itself “along
the pillars of the aisles,”—not to be lifted aside by the hand of
History.
But there is one thing we should like almost better to understand
than any other: what Reason herself thought of it, all the while.
What articulate words poor Mrs. Momoro, for example, uttered;
when she had become ungoddessed again, and the Bibliopolist and
she sat quiet at home, at supper? For he was an earnest man,
Bookseller Momoro; and had notions of Agrarian Law. Mrs. Momoro,
it is admitted, made one of the best Goddesses of Reason; though
her teeth were a little defective. And now if the reader will
represent to himself that such visible Adoration of Reason went
on “all over the Republic,” through these November and December
weeks, till the Church woodwork was burnt out, and the business
otherwise completed, he will feel sufficiently what an adoring
Republic it was, and without reluctance quit this part of the
subject.
Such gifts of Church-spoil are chiefly the work of the _Armée
Révolutionnaire;_ raised, as we said, some time ago. It is an
Army with portable guillotine: commanded by Playwright Ronsin in
terrible moustachioes; and even by some uncertain shadow of Usher
Maillard, the old Bastille Hero, Leader of the Menads, September
Man in Grey! Clerk Vincent of the War-Office, one of Pache’s old
Clerks, “with a head heated by the ancient orators,” had a main
hand in the appointments, at least in the staff-appointments.
But of the marchings and retreatings of these Six Thousand no
Xenophon exists. Nothing, but an inarticulate hum, of cursing and
sooty frenzy, surviving dubious in the memory of ages! They scour
the country round Paris; seeking Prisoners; raising Requisitions;
seeing that Edicts are executed, that the Farmers have thrashed
sufficiently; lowering Church-bells or metallic Virgins.
Detachments shoot forth dim, towards remote parts of France; nay
new Provincial Revolutionary Armies rise dim, here and there, as
Carrier’s Company of Marat, as Tallien’s Bourdeaux Troop; like
sympathetic clouds in an atmosphere all electric. Ronsin, they
say, admitted, in candid moments, that his troops were the elixir
of the Rascality of the Earth. One sees them drawn up in
market-places; travel-plashed, rough-bearded, in _carmagnole
complète:_ the first exploit is to prostrate what Royal or
Ecclesiastical monument, crucifix or the like, there may be; to
plant a cannon at the steeple, fetch down the bell without
climbing for it, bell and belfry together. This, however, it is
said, depends somewhat on the size of the town: if the town
contains much population, and these perhaps of a dubious choleric
aspect, the Revolutionary Army will do its work gently, by ladder
and wrench; nay perhaps will take its billet without work at all;
and, refreshing itself with a little liquor and sleep, pass on to
the next stage.[717] Pipe in cheek, sabre on thigh; in carmagnole
complete!
Such things have been; and may again be. Charles Second sent out
his Highland Host over the Western Scotch Whigs; Jamaica Planters
got Dogs from the Spanish Main to hunt their Maroons with: France
too is bescoured with a Devil’s Pack, the baying of which, at
this distance of half a century, still sounds in the mind’s ear.