Lion not Dead.
The Convention, borne on the tide of Fortune towards foreign
Victory, and driven by the strong wind of Public Opinion towards
Clemency and Luxury, is rushing fast; all skill of pilotage is
needed, and more than all, in such a velocity.
Curious to see, how we veer and whirl, yet must ever whirl round
again, and scud before the wind. If, on the one hand, we re-admit
the Protesting Seventy-Three, we, on the other hand, agree to
consummate the Apotheosis of Marat; lift his body from the
Cordeliers Church, and transport it to the Pantheon of Great
Men,—flinging out Mirabeau to make room for him. To no purpose:
so strong blows Public Opinion! A Gilt Youthhood, in plaited
hair-tresses, tears down his Busts from the Theatre Feydeau;
tramples them under foot; scatters them, with vociferation into
the Cesspool of Montmartre.[769] Swept is his Chapel from the
Place du Carrousel; the Cesspool of Montmartre will receive his
very dust. Shorter godhood had no divine man. Some four months in
this Pantheon, Temple of All the Immortals; then to the Cesspool,
grand _Cloaca_ of Paris and the World! “His Busts at one time
amounted to four thousand.” Between Temple of All the Immortals
and Cloaca of the World, how are poor human creatures whirled!
Furthermore the question arises, When will the Constitution of
_Ninety-three_, of 1793, come into action? Considerate heads
surmise, in all privacy, that the Constitution of Ninety-three
will never come into action. Let them busy themselves to get
ready a better.
Or, again, where now are the Jacobins? Childless, most decrepit,
as we saw, sat the mighty Mother; gnashing not teeth, but empty
gums, against a traitorous Thermidorian Convention and the
current of things. Twice were Billaud, Collot and Company accused
in Convention, by a Lecointre, by a Legendre; and the second
time, it was not voted calumnious. Billaud from the Jacobin
tribune says, ‘The lion is not dead, he is only sleeping.’ They
ask him in Convention, What he means by the awakening of the
lion? And bickerings, of an extensive sort, arose in the
Palais-Egalité between _Tappe-durs_ and the Gilt Youthhood; cries
of ‘Down with the Jacobins, the _Jacoquins_,’ _coquin_ meaning
scoundrel! The Tribune in mid-air gave battle-sound; answered
only by silence and uncertain gasps. Talk was, in Government
Committees, of “suspending” the Jacobin Sessions. Hark, there!—it
is in Allhallow-time, or on the Hallow-eve itself, month
_ci-devant_ November, year once named of Grace 1794, sad eve for
Jacobinism,—volley of stones dashing through our windows, with
jingle and execration! The female Jacobins, famed _Tricoteuses_
with knitting-needles, take flight; are met at the doors by a
Gilt Youthhood and “mob of four thousand persons;” are hooted,
flouted, hustled; fustigated, in a scandalous manner, _cotillons
retroussés;_—and vanish in mere hysterics. Sally out ye male
Jacobins! The male Jacobins sally out; but only to battle,
disaster and confusion. So that armed Authority has to intervene:
and again on the morrow to intervene; and suspend the Jacobin
Sessions forever and a day.[770] Gone are the Jacobins; into
invisibility; in a storm of laughter and howls. Their place is
made a Normal School, the first of the kind seen; it then
vanishes into a “Market of Thermidor Ninth;” into a Market of
Saint-Honoré, where is now peaceable chaffering for poultry and
greens. The solemn temples, the great globe itself; the baseless
fabric! Are not we such stuff, we and this world of ours, as
Dreams are made of?
Maximum being abrogated, Trade was to take its own free course.
Alas, Trade, shackled, topsyturvied in the way we saw, and now
suddenly let go again, can for the present take no course at all;
but only reel and stagger. There is, so to speak, no Trade
whatever for the time being. Assignats, long sinking, emitted in
such quantities, sink now with an alacrity beyond parallel.
‘_Combien?_’ said one, to a Hackney-coachman, ‘What fare?’ ‘Six
thousand livres,’ answered he: some three hundred pounds
sterling, in Paper-money.[771] Pressure of Maximum withdrawn, the
things it compressed likewise withdraw. “Two ounces of bread per
day” in the modicum allotted: wide-waving, doleful are the
Bakers’ Queues; Farmers’ houses are become pawnbrokers’ shops.
One can imagine, in these circumstances, with what humour
Sansculottism growled in its throat, ‘_La Cabarus;_’ beheld
Ci-devants return dancing, the Thermidor effulgence of
recivilisation, and Balls in flesh-coloured drawers. Greek tunics
and sandals; hosts of _Muscadins_ parading, with their clubs
loaded with lead;—and we here, cast out, abhorred, “picking
offals from the street;”[772] agitating in Baker’s Queue for our
two ounces of bread! Will the Jacobin lion, which they say is
meeting secretly “at the Archevêché, in _bonnet rouge_ with
loaded pistols,” not awaken? Seemingly not. Our Collot, our
Billaud, Barrère, Vadier, in these last days of March 1795, are
found worthy of _Déportation_, of Banishment beyond seas; and
shall, for the present, be trundled off to the Castle of Ham. The
lion is dead;—or writhing in death-throes!
Behold, accordingly, on the day they call Twelfth of Germinal
(which is also called First of April, not a lucky day), how
lively are these streets of Paris once more! Floods of hungry
women, of squalid hungry men; ejaculating: ‘Bread, Bread and the
Constitution of Ninety-three!’ Paris has risen, once again, like
the Ocean-tide; is flowing towards the Tuileries, for Bread and a
Constitution. Tuileries Sentries do their best; but it serves
not: the Ocean-tide sweeps them away; inundates the Convention
Hall itself; howling, ‘Bread, and the Constitution!’
Unhappy Senators, unhappy People, there is yet, after all toils
and broils, no Bread, no Constitution. ‘_Du pain, pas tant de
longs discours_, Bread, not bursts of Parliamentary eloquence!’
so wailed the Menads of Maillard, five years ago and more; so
wail ye to this hour. The Convention, with unalterable
countenance, with what thought one knows not, keeps its seat in
this waste howling chaos; rings its stormbell from the Pavilion
of Unity. Section Lepelletier, old _Filles Saint-Thomas_, who are
of the money-changing species; these and Gilt Youthhood fly to
the rescue; sweep chaos forth again, with levelled bayonets.
Paris is declared “in a state of siege.” Pichegru, Conqueror of
Holland, who happens to be here, is named Commandant, till the
disturbance end. He, in one day, so to speak, ends it. He
accomplishes the transfer of Billaud, Collot and Company;
dissipating all opposition “by two cannon-shots,” blank
cannon-shots, and the terror of his name; and thereupon
announcing, with a Laconicism which should be imitated,
‘Representatives, your decrees are executed,’[773] lays down his
Commandantship.
This Revolt of Germinal, therefore, has passed, like a vain cry.
The Prisoners rest safe in Ham, waiting for ships; some nine
hundred “chief Terrorists of Paris” are disarmed. Sansculottism,
swept forth with bayonets, has vanished, with its misery, to the
bottom of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau.—Time was when Usher
Maillard with Menads could alter the course of Legislation; but
that time is not. Legislation seems to have got bayonets; Section
Lepelletier takes its firelock, not for us! We retire to our dark
dens; our cry of hunger is called a Plot of Pitt; the Saloons
glitter, the flesh-coloured Drawers gyrate as before. It was for
‘_The Cabarus_’ then, and her _Muscadins_ and Money-changers,
that we fought? It was for Balls in flesh-coloured drawers that
we took Feudalism by the beard, and did, and dared, shedding our
blood like water? Expressive Silence, muse thou their praise!—