Flame-Picture.
In this manner, mad-blazing with flame of all imaginable tints,
from the red of Tophet to the stellar-bright, blazes off this
Consummation of Sansculottism.
But the hundredth part of the things that were done, and the
thousandth part of the things that were projected and decreed to
be done, would tire the tongue of History. Statue of the _Peuple
Souverain_, high as Strasburg Steeple; which shall fling its
shadow from the Pont Neuf over Jardin National and Convention
Hall;—enormous, in Painter David’s head! With other the like
enormous Statues not a few: realised in paper Decree. For,
indeed, the Statue of Liberty herself is still but Plaster in the
Place de la Révolution! Then Equalisation of Weights and
Measures, with decimal division; Institutions, of Music and of
much else; Institute in general; School of Arts, School of Mars,
_Elèves de la Patrie_, Normal Schools: amid such Gun-boring,
Altar-burning, Saltpetre-digging, and miraculous improvements in
Tannery!
What, for example, is this that Engineer Chappe is doing, in the
Park of Vincennes? In the Park of Vincennes; and onwards, they
say, in the Park of Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau the assassinated
Deputy; and still onwards to the Heights of Ecouen and further,
he has scaffolding set up, has posts driven in; wooden arms with
elbow joints are jerking and fugling in the air, in the most
rapid mysterious manner! Citoyens ran up suspicious. Yes, O
Citoyens, we are signaling: it is a device this, worthy of the
Republic; a thing for what we will call _Far-writing_ without the
aid of postbags; in Greek, it shall be named
Telegraph.—_Télégraphe sacré!_ answers Citoyenism: For writing to
Traitors, to Austria?—and tears it down. Chappe had to escape,
and get a new Legislative Decree. Nevertheless he has
accomplished it, the indefatigable Chappe: this his _Far-writer_,
with its wooden arms and elbow-joints, can intelligibly signal;
and lines of them are set up, to the North Frontiers and
elsewhither. On an Autumn evening of the Year Two, Far-writer
having just written that Condé Town has surrendered to us, we
send from Tuileries Convention Hall this response in the shape of
Decree: “The name of Condé is changed to _Nord-Libre_,
North-Free. The Army of the North ceases not to merit well of the
country.”—To the admiration of men! For lo, in some half hour,
while the Convention yet debates, there arrives this new answer:
“I inform thee, _je t’annonce_, Citizen President, that the
decree of Convention, ordering change of the name Condé into
_North-Free;_ and the other declaring that the Army of the North
ceases not to merit well of the country, are transmitted and
acknowledged by Telegraph. I have instructed my Officer at Lille
to forward them to North-Free by express. _Signed_, CHAPPE.”[729]
Or see, over Fleurus in the Netherlands, where General Jourdan,
having now swept the soil of Liberty, and advanced thus far, is
just about to fight, and sweep or be swept, things there not in
the Heaven’s Vault, some Prodigy, seen by Austrian eyes and
spyglasses: in the similitude of an enormous Windbag, with
netting and enormous Saucer depending from it? A Jove’s Balance,
O ye Austrian spyglasses? One saucer-hole of a Jove’s Balance;
_your_ poor Austrian scale having kicked itself quite aloft, out
of sight? By Heaven, answer the spyglasses, it is a Montgolfier,
a Balloon, and they are making signals! Austrian cannon-battery
barks at this Montgolfier; harmless as dog at the Moon: the
Montgolfier makes its signals; detects what Austrian ambuscade
there may be, and descends at its ease.[730] What will not these
devils incarnate contrive?
On the whole, is it not, O Reader, one of the strangest
Flame-Pictures that ever painted itself; flaming off there, on
its ground of Guillotine-black? And the nightly Theatres are
Twenty-three; and the _Salons de danse_ are sixty: full of mere
_Egalité, Fraternite_ and _Carmagnole_. And Section
Committee-rooms are Forty-eight; redolent of tobacco and brandy:
vigorous with twenty-pence a-day, coercing the suspect. And the
Houses of Arrest are Twelve for Paris alone; crowded and even
crammed. And at all turns, you need your “Certificate of Civism;”
be it for going out, or for coming in; nay without it you cannot,
for money, get your daily ounces of bread. Dusky red-capped
Baker’s-queues; wagging themselves; not in silence! For we still
live by Maximum, in all things; waited on by these two, Scarcity
and Confusion. The faces of men are darkened with suspicion; with
suspecting, or being suspect. The streets lie unswept; the ways
unmended. Law has shut her Books; speaks little, save impromptu,
through the throat of Tinville. Crimes go unpunished: not crimes
against the Revolution.[731] “The number of foundling children,”
as some compute, “is doubled.”
How silent now sits Royalism; sits all Aristocratism;
Respectability that kept its Gig! The honour now, and the safety,
is to Poverty, not to Wealth. Your Citizen, who would be
fashionable, walks abroad, with his Wife on his arm, in red wool
nightcap, black shag spencer, and carmagnole complete.
Aristocratism crouches low, in what shelter is still left;
submitting to all requisitions, vexations; too happy to escape
with life. Ghastly châteaus stare on you by the wayside;
disroofed, diswindowed; which the National House-broker is
peeling for the lead and ashlar. The old tenants hover
disconsolate, over the Rhine with Condé; a spectacle to men.
_Ci-devant_ Seigneur, exquisite in palate, will become an
exquisite Restaurateur Cook in Hamburg; Ci-devant Madame,
exquisite in dress, a successful _Marchande des Modes_ in London.
In Newgate-Street, you meet M. le Marquis, with a rough deal on
his shoulder, adze and jack-plane under arm; he has taken to the
joiner trade; it being necessary to live (_faut
vivre_).[732]—Higher than all Frenchmen the domestic Stock-jobber
flourishes,—in a day of Paper-money. The Farmer also flourishes:
“Farmers’ houses,” says Mercier, “have become like Pawn-brokers’
shops;” all manner of furniture, apparel, vessels of gold and
silver accumulate themselves there: bread is precious. The
Farmer’s rent is Paper-money, and he alone of men has bread:
Farmer is better than Landlord, and will himself become Landlord.
And daily, we say, like a black Spectre, silently through that
Life-tumult, passes the Revolution Cart; writing on the walls its
MENE, MENE, _Thou art weighed, and found wanting!_ A Spectre with
which one has grown familiar. Men have adjusted themselves:
complaint issues not from that Death-tumbril. Weak women and
_ci-devants_, their plumage and finery all tarnished, sit there;
with a silent gaze, as if looking into the Infinite Black. The
once light lip wears a curl of irony, uttering no word; and the
Tumbril fares along. They may be guilty before Heaven, or not;
they are guilty, we suppose, before the Revolution. Then, does
not the Republic “coin money” of them, with its great axe? Red
Nightcaps howl dire approval: the rest of Paris looks on; if with
a sigh, that is much; Fellow-creatures whom sighing cannot help;
whom black Necessity and Tinville have clutched.
One other thing, or rather two other things, we will still
mention; and no more: The Blond Perukes; the Tannery at Meudon.
Great talk is of these _Perruques blondes:_ O Reader, they are
made from the Heads of Guillotined women! The locks of a Duchess,
in this way, may come to cover the scalp of a Cordwainer: her
blond German Frankism his black Gaelic poll, if it be bald. Or
they may be worn affectionately, as relics; rendering one
suspect?[733] Citizens use them, not without mockery; of a rather
cannibal sort.
Still deeper into one’s heart goes that Tannery at Meudon; not
mentioned among the other miracles of tanning! “At Meudon,” says
Montgaillard with considerable calmness, “there was a Tannery of
Human Skins; such of the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying: of
which perfectly good wash-leather was made:” for breeches, and
other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in
toughness (_consistance_) and quality to shamoy; that of women
was good for almost nothing, being so soft in
texture![734]—History looking back over Cannibalism, through
_Purchas’s Pilgrims_ and all early and late Records, will perhaps
find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort on the whole so
detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeling, quietly elegant
sort; a sort _perfide!_ Alas then, is man’s civilisation only a
wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst,
infernal as ever? Nature still makes him; and has an Infernal in
her as well as a Celestial.