The French Revolution: A History
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Title: The French Revolution: A History
Author: Thomas Carlyle
Release date: February 15, 2006 [eBook #1301]
Most recently updated: February 8, 2025
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1301
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: A HISTORY ***
cover
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
A HISTORY
by THOMAS CARLYLE
Contents
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A HISTORY
VOLUME I. THE BASTILLE
BOOK 1.I. DEATH OF LOUIS XV.
Chapter 1.1.I. Louis the Well-Beloved.
Chapter 1.1.II. Realised Ideals.
Chapter 1.1.III. Viaticum.
Chapter 1.1.IV. Louis the Unforgotten2.
BOOK 1.II. THE PAPER AGE
Chapter 1.2.I. Astræa Redux.
Chapter 1.2.II. Petition in Hieroglyphs.
Chapter 1.2.III. Questionable.
Chapter 1.2.IV. Maurepas.
Chapter 1.2.V. Astræa Redux without Cash.
Chapter 1.2.VI. Windbags.
Chapter 1.2.VII. Contrat Social.
Chapter 1.2.VIII. Printed Paper.
BOOK 1.III. THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS
Chapter 1.3.I. Dishonoured Bills.
Chapter 1.3.II. Controller Calonne.
Chapter 1.3.III. The Notables.
Chapter 1.3.IV. Loménie’s Edicts.
Chapter 1.3.V. Loménie’s Thunderbolts.
Chapter 1.3.VI. Loménie’s Plots.
Chapter 1.3.VII. Internecine.
Chapter 1.3.VIII. Loménie’s Death-throes.
Chapter 1.3.IX. Burial with Bonfire.
BOOK 1.IV. STATES-GENERAL
Chapter 1.4.I. The Notables Again.
Chapter 1.4.II. The Election.
Chapter 1.4.III. Grown Electric.
Chapter 1.4.IV. The Procession.
BOOK 1.V. THE THIRD ESTATE
Chapter 1.5.I. Inertia.
Chapter 1.5.II. Mercury de Brézé.
Chapter 1.5.III. Broglie the War-God.
Chapter 1.5.IV. To Arms!
Chapter 1.5.V. Give us Arms.
Chapter 1.5.VI. Storm and Victory.
Chapter 1.5.VII. Not a Revolt.
Chapter 1.5.VIII. Conquering your King.
Chapter 1.5.IX. The Lanterne.
BOOK VI. CONSOLIDATION
Chapter 1.6.I. Make the Constitution.
Chapter 1.6.II. The Constituent Assembly.
Chapter 1.6.III. The General Overturn.
Chapter 1.6.IV. In Queue.
Chapter 1.6.V. The Fourth Estate.
BOOK VII. THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN
Chapter 1.7.I. Patrollotism.
Chapter 1.7.II. O Richard, O my King.
Chapter 1.7.III. Black Cockades.
Chapter 1.7.IV. The Menads.
Chapter 1.7.V. Usher Maillard.
Chapter 1.7.VI. To Versailles.
Chapter 1.7.VII. At Versailles.
Chapter 1.7.VIII. The Equal Diet.
Chapter 1.7.IX. Lafayette.
Chapter 1.7.X. The Grand Entries.
Chapter 1.7.XI. From Versailles.
VOLUME II. THE CONSTITUTION
BOOK 2.I. THE FEAST OF PIKES
Chapter 2.1.I. In the Tuileries.
Chapter 2.1.II. In the Salle de Manége.
Chapter 2.1.III. The Muster.
Chapter 2.1.IV. Journalism.
Chapter 2.1.V. Clubbism.
Chapter 2.1.VI. Je le jure.
Chapter 2.1.VII. Prodigies.
Chapter 2.1.VIII. Solemn League and Covenant.
Chapter 2.1.IX. Symbolic.
Chapter 2.1.X. Mankind.
Chapter 2.1.XI. As in the Age of Gold.
Chapter 2.1.XII. Sound and Smoke.
BOOK 2.II. NANCI
Chapter 2.2.I. Bouillé.
Chapter 2.2.II. Arrears and Aristocrats.
Chapter 2.2.III. Bouillé at Metz.
Chapter 2.2.IV. Arrears at Nanci.
Chapter 2.2.V. Inspector Malseigne.
Chapter 2.2.VI. Bouillé at Nanci.
BOOK 2.III. THE TUILERIES
Chapter 2.3.I. Epimenides.
Chapter 2.3.II. The Wakeful.
Chapter 2.3.III. Sword in Hand.
Chapter 2.3.IV. To fly or not to fly.
Chapter 2.3.V. The Day of Poniards.
Chapter 2.3.VI. Mirabeau.
Chapter 2.3.VII. Death of Mirabeau.
BOOK 2.IV. VARENNES
Chapter 2.4.I. Easter at Saint-Cloud.
Chapter 2.4.II. Easter at Paris.
Chapter 2.4.III. Count Fersen.
Chapter 2.4.IV. Attitude.
Chapter 2.4.V. The New Berline.
Chapter 2.4.VI. Old-Dragoon Drouet.
Chapter 2.4.VII. The Night of Spurs.
Chapter 2.4.VIII. The Return.
Chapter 2.4.IX. Sharp Shot.
BOOK 2.V. PARLIAMENT FIRST
Chapter 2.5.I. Grande Acceptation.
Chapter 2.5.II. The Book of the Law.
Chapter 2.5.III. Avignon.
Chapter 2.5.IV. No Sugar.
Chapter 2.5.V. Kings and Emigrants.
Chapter 2.5.VI. Brigands and Jalès.
Chapter 2.5.VII. Constitution will not march.
Chapter 2.5.VIII. The Jacobins.
Chapter 2.5.IX. Minister Roland.
Chapter 2.5.X. Pétion-National-Pique.
Chapter 2.5.XI. The Hereditary Representative.
Chapter 2.5.XII. Procession of the Black Breeches.
BOOK 2.VI. THE MARSEILLESE
Chapter 2.6.I. Executive that does not act.
Chapter 2.6.II. Let us march.
Chapter 2.6.III. Some Consolation to Mankind.
Chapter 2.6.IV. Subterranean.
Chapter 2.6.V. At Dinner.
Chapter 2.6.VI. The Steeples at Midnight.
Chapter 2.6.VII. The Swiss.
Chapter 2.6.VIII. Constitution burst in Pieces.
VOLUME III. THE GUILLOTINE
BOOK 3.I. SEPTEMBER
Chapter 3.1.I. The Improvised Commune.
Chapter 3.1.II. Danton.
Chapter 3.1.III. Dumouriez.
Chapter 3.1.IV. September in Paris.
Chapter 3.1.V. A Trilogy.
Chapter 3.1.VI. The Circular.
Chapter 3.1.VII. September in Argonne.
Chapter 3.1.VIII. Exeunt.
BOOK 3.II. REGICIDE
Chapter 3.2.I. The Deliberative.
Chapter 3.2.II. The Executive.
Chapter 3.2.III. Discrowned.
Chapter 3.2.IV. The Loser Pays.
Chapter 3.2.V. Stretching of Formulas.
Chapter 3.2.VI. At the Bar.
Chapter 3.2.VII. The Three Votings.
Chapter 3.2.VIII. Place de la Révolution.
BOOK 3.III. THE GIRONDINS
Chapter 3.3.I. Cause and Effect.
Chapter 3.3.II. Culottic and Sansculottic.
Chapter 3.3.III. Growing Shrill.
Chapter 3.3.IV. Fatherland in Danger.
Chapter 3.3.V. Sansculottism Accoutred.
Chapter 3.3.VI. The Traitor.
Chapter 3.3.VII. In Fight.
Chapter 3.3.VIII. In Death-Grips.
Chapter 3.3.IX. Extinct.
BOOK 3.IV. TERROR
Chapter 3.4.I. Charlotte Corday.
Chapter 3.4.II. In Civil War.
Chapter 3.4.III. Retreat of the Eleven.
Chapter 3.4.IV. O Nature.
Chapter 3.4.V. Sword of Sharpness.
Chapter 3.4.VI. Risen against Tyrants.
Chapter 3.4.VII. Marie-Antoinette.
Chapter 3.4.VIII. The Twenty-two.
BOOK 3.V. TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY
Chapter 3.5.I. Rushing down.
Chapter 3.5.II. Death.
Chapter 3.5.III. Destruction.
Chapter 3.5.IV. Carmagnole complete.
Chapter 3.5.V. Like a Thunder-Cloud.
Chapter 3.5.VI. Do thy Duty.
Chapter 3.5.VII. Flame-Picture.
BOOK 3.VI. THERMIDOR
Chapter 3.6.I. The Gods are athirst.
Chapter 3.6.II. Danton, No Weakness.
Chapter 3.6.III. The Tumbrils.
Chapter 3.6.IV. Mumbo-Jumbo.
Chapter 3.6.V. The Prisons.
Chapter 3.6.VI. To Finish the Terror.
Chapter 3.6.VII. Go Down to.
BOOK 3.VII. VENDÉMIAIRE
Chapter 3.7.I. Decadent.
Chapter 3.7.II. La Cabarus.
Chapter 3.7.III. Quiberon.
Chapter 3.7.IV. Lion not Dead.
Chapter 3.7.V. Lion Sprawling its Last.
Chapter 3.7.VI. Grilled Herrings.
Chapter 3.7.VII. The Whiff of Grapeshot.
Chapter 3.7.VIII. Finis.
INDEX.
FOOTNOTES.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A HISTORY
by
THOMAS CARLYLE
VOLUME I.—THE BASTILLE
Diesem Ambos vergleich’ ich das Land, den Hammer dem Herscher;
Und dem Volke das Blech, das in der Mitte sich krümmt.
Wehe dem armen Blech, wenn nur willkürliche Schläge
Ungewiss treffen, und nie fertig der Kessel erscheint!
GOETHE
BOOK 1.I.
DEATH OF LOUIS XV.
Chapter 1.1.I.
Louis the Well-Beloved.
President Hénault, remarking on royal Surnames of Honour how
difficult it often is to ascertain not only why, but even when,
they were conferred, takes occasion in his sleek official way, to
make a philosophical reflection. “The Surname of _Bien-aimé_
(Well-beloved),” says he, “which Louis XV. bears, will not leave
posterity in the same doubt. This Prince, in the year 1744, while
hastening from one end of his kingdom to the other, and
suspending his conquests in Flanders that he might fly to the
assistance of Alsace, was arrested at Metz by a malady which
threatened to cut short his days. At the news of this, Paris, all
in terror, seemed a city taken by storm: the churches resounded
with supplications and groans; the prayers of priests and people
were every moment interrupted by their sobs: and it was from an
interest so dear and tender that this Surname of _Bien-aimé_
fashioned itself—a title higher still than all the rest which
this great Prince has earned.”[1]
So stands it written; in lasting memorial of that year 1744.
Thirty other years have come and gone; and “this great Prince”
again lies sick; but in how altered circumstances now! Churches
resound not with excessive groanings; Paris is stoically calm:
sobs interrupt no prayers, for indeed none are offered; except
Priests’ Litanies, read or chanted at fixed money-rate per hour,
which are not liable to interruption. The shepherd of the people
has been carried home from Little Trianon, heavy of heart, and
been put to bed in his own Château of Versailles: the flock knows
it, and heeds it not. At most, in the immeasurable tide of French
Speech (which ceases not day after day, and only ebbs towards the
short hours of night), may this of the royal sickness emerge from
time to time as an article of news. Bets are doubtless depending;
nay, some people “express themselves loudly in the streets.”[2]
But for the rest, on green field and steepled city, the May sun
shines out, the May evening fades; and men ply their useful or
useless business as if no Louis lay in danger.
Dame Dubarry, indeed, might pray, if she had a talent for it;
Duke d’Aiguillon too, Maupeou and the Parlement Maupeou: these,
as they sit in their high places, with France harnessed under
their feet, know well on what basis they continue there. Look to
it, D’Aiguillon; sharply as thou didst, from the Mill of St.
Cast, on Quiberon and the invading English; thou, “covered if not
with glory yet with meal!” Fortune was ever accounted inconstant:
and each dog has but his day.
Forlorn enough languished Duke d’Aiguillon, some years ago;
covered, as we said, with meal; nay with worse. For La Chalotais,
the Breton Parlementeer, accused him not only of poltroonery and
tyranny, but even of _concussion_ (official plunder of money);
which accusations it was easier to get “quashed” by backstairs
Influences than to get answered: neither could the thoughts, or
even the tongues, of men be tied. Thus, under disastrous eclipse,
had this grand-nephew of the great Richelieu to glide about;
unworshipped by the world; resolute Choiseul, the abrupt proud
man, disdaining him, or even forgetting him. Little prospect but
to glide into Gascony, to rebuild Châteaus there,[3] and die
inglorious killing game! However, in the year 1770, a certain
young soldier, Dumouriez by name, returning from Corsica, could
see “with sorrow, at Compiègne, the old King of France, on foot,
with doffed hat, in sight of his army, at the side of a
magnificent phaeton, doing homage to the—Dubarry.”[4]
Much lay therein! Thereby, for one thing, could D’Aiguillon
postpone the rebuilding of his Château, and rebuild his fortunes
first. For stout Choiseul would discern in the Dubarry nothing
but a wonderfully dizened Scarlet-woman; and go on his way as if
she were not. Intolerable: the source of sighs, tears, of
pettings and pouting; which would not end till “France” (La
France, as she named her royal valet) finally mustered heart to
see Choiseul; and with that “quivering in the chin (_tremblement
du menton_)” natural in such case,[5] faltered out a dismissal:
dismissal of his last substantial man, but pacification of his
scarlet-woman. Thus D’Aiguillon rose again, and culminated. And
with him there rose Maupeou, the banisher of Parlements; who
plants you a refractory President “at Croe in Combrailles on the
top of steep rocks, inaccessible except by litters,” there to
consider himself. Likewise there rose Abbé Terray, dissolute
Financier, paying eightpence in the shilling,—so that wits
exclaim in some press at the playhouse, ‘Where is Abbé Terray,
that he might reduce us to two-thirds!’ And so have these
individuals (verily by black-art) built them a Domdaniel, or
enchanted Dubarrydom; call it an Armida-Palace, where they dwell
pleasantly; Chancellor Maupeou “playing blind-man’s-buff” with
the scarlet Enchantress; or gallantly presenting her with dwarf
Negroes;—and a Most Christian King has unspeakable peace within
doors, whatever he may have without. “My Chancellor is a
scoundrel; but I cannot do without him.”[6]
Beautiful Armida-Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives;
lapped in soft music of adulation; waited on by the splendours of
the world;—which nevertheless hangs wondrously as by a single
hair. Should the Most Christian King die; or even get seriously
afraid of dying! For, alas, had not the fair haughty Châteauroux
to fly, with wet cheeks and flaming heart, from that Fever-scene
at Metz; driven forth by sour shavelings? She hardly returned,
when fever and shavelings were both swept into the background.
Pompadour too, when Damiens wounded Royalty “slightly, under the
fifth rib,” and our drive to Trianon went off futile, in shrieks
and madly shaken torches,—had to pack, and be in readiness: yet
did not go, the wound not proving poisoned. For his Majesty has
religious faith; believes, at least in a Devil. And now a third
peril; and who knows what may be in it! For the Doctors look
grave; ask privily, If his Majesty had not the small-pox long
ago?—and doubt it may have been a false kind. Yes, Maupeou,
pucker those sinister brows of thine, and peer out on it with thy
malign rat-eyes: it is a questionable case. Sure only that man is
mortal; that with the life of one mortal snaps irrevocably the
wonderfulest talisman, and all Dubarrydom rushes off, with
tumult, into infinite Space; and ye, as subterranean Apparitions
are wont, vanish utterly,—leaving only a smell of sulphur!
These, and what holds of these may pray,—to Beelzebub, or whoever
will hear them. But from the rest of France there comes, as was
said, no prayer; or one of an _opposite_ character, “expressed
openly in the streets.” Château or Hôtel, were an enlightened
Philosophism scrutinises many things, is not given to prayer:
neither are Rossbach victories, Terray Finances, nor, say only
“sixty thousand _Lettres de Cachet_” (which is Maupeou’s share),
persuasives towards that. O Hénault! Prayers? From a France
smitten (by black-art) with plague after plague, and lying now in
shame and pain, with a Harlot’s foot on its neck, what prayer can
come? Those lank scarecrows, that prowl hunger-stricken through
all highways and byways of French Existence, will they pray? The
dull millions that, in the workshop or furrowfield, grind
fore-done at the wheel of Labour, like haltered gin-horses, if
blind so much the quieter? Or they that in the Bicêtre Hospital,
“eight to a bed,” lie waiting their manumission? Dim are those
heads of theirs, dull stagnant those hearts: to them the great
Sovereign is known mainly as the great Regrater of Bread. If they
hear of his sickness, they will answer with a dull _Tant pis pour
lui;_ or with the question, Will he die?
Yes, will he die? that is now, for all France, the grand
question, and hope; whereby alone the King’s sickness has still
some interest.
Chapter 1.1.II.
Realised Ideals.
Such a changed France have we; and a changed Louis. Changed,
truly; and further than thou yet seest!—To the eye of History
many things, in that sick-room of Louis, are now visible, which
to the Courtiers there present were invisible. For indeed it is
well said, “in every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the
eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.” To Newton
and to Newton’s Dog Diamond, what a different pair of Universes;
while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most
likely, the same! Let the Reader here, in this sick-room of
Louis, endeavour to look with the mind too.
Time was when men could (so to speak) of a given man, by
nourishing and decorating him with fit appliances, to the due
pitch, _make_ themselves a King, almost as the Bees do; and what
was still more to the purpose, loyally obey him when made. The
man so nourished and decorated, thenceforth named royal, does
verily bear rule; and is said, and even thought, to be, for
example, “prosecuting conquests in Flanders,” when he lets
himself like luggage be carried thither: and no light luggage;
covering miles of road. For he has his unblushing Châteauroux,
with her band-boxes and rouge-pots, at his side; so that, at
every new station, a wooden gallery must be run up between their
lodgings. He has not only his _Maison-Bouche_, and _Valetaille_
without end, but his very Troop of Players, with their pasteboard
coulisses, thunder-barrels, their kettles, fiddles,
stage-wardrobes, portable larders (and chaffering and quarrelling
enough); all mounted in wagons, tumbrils, second-hand
chaises,—sufficient not to conquer Flanders, but the patience of
the world. With such a flood of loud jingling appurtenances does
he lumber along, prosecuting his conquests in Flanders; wonderful
to behold. So nevertheless it was and had been: to some solitary
thinker it might seem strange; but even to him inevitable, not
unnatural.
For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent
plastic of creatures. A world not fixable; not fathomable! An
unfathomable Somewhat, which is _Not we;_ which we can work with,
and live amidst,—and model, miraculously in our miraculous Being,
and name World.—But if the very Rocks and Rivers (as Metaphysic
teaches) are, in strict language, _made_ by those outward Senses
of ours, how much more, by the Inward Sense, are all Phenomena of
the spiritual kind: Dignities, Authorities, Holies, Unholies!
Which inward sense, moreover is not permanent like the outward
ones, but forever growing and changing. Does not the Black
African take of Sticks and Old Clothes (say, exported
Monmouth-Street cast-clothes) what will suffice, and of these,
cunningly combining them, fabricate for himself an Eidolon (Idol,
or _Thing Seen_), and name it _Mumbo-Jumbo;_ which he can
thenceforth pray to, with upturned awestruck eye, not without
hope? The white European mocks; but ought rather to consider; and
see whether he, at home, could not do the like a little more
wisely.
So it _was_, we say, in those conquests of Flanders, thirty years
ago: but so it no longer is. Alas, much more lies sick than poor
Louis: not the French King only, but the French Kingship; this
too, after long rough tear and wear, is breaking down. The world
is all so changed; so much that seemed vigorous has sunk
decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to be!—Borne over the
Atlantic, to the closing ear of Louis, King by the Grace of God,
what sounds are these; muffled ominous, new in our centuries?
Boston Harbour is black with unexpected Tea: behold a
Pennsylvanian Congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill,
DEMOCRACY announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged, under her
Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-doo, that she is born,
and, whirlwind-like, will envelope the whole world!
Sovereigns die and Sovereignties: how all dies, and is for a Time
only; is a “Time-phantasm, yet reckons itself real!” The
Merovingian Kings, slowly wending on their bullock-carts through
the streets of Paris, with their long hair flowing, have all
wended slowly on,—into Eternity. Charlemagne sleeps at Salzburg,
with truncheon grounded; only Fable expecting that he will
awaken. Charles the Hammer, Pepin Bow-legged, where now is their
eye of menace, their voice of command? Rollo and his shaggy
Northmen cover not the Seine with ships; but have sailed off on a
longer voyage. The hair of Towhead (_Tête d’étoupes_) now needs
no combing; Iron-cutter (_Taillefer_) cannot cut a cobweb; shrill
Fredegonda, shrill Brunhilda have had out their hot life-scold,
and lie silent, their hot life-frenzy cooled. Neither from that
black Tower de Nesle descends now darkling the doomed gallant, in
his sack, to the Seine waters; plunging into Night: for Dame de
Nesle now cares not for this world’s gallantry, heeds not this
world’s scandal; Dame de Nesle is herself gone into Night. They
are all gone; sunk,—down, down, with the tumult they made; and
the rolling and the trampling of ever new generations passes over
them, and they hear it not any more forever.
And yet withal has there not been realised somewhat? Consider (to
go no further) these strong Stone-edifices, and what they hold!
Mud-Town of the Borderers (_Lutetia Parisiorum_ or _Barisiorum_)
has paved itself, has spread over all the Seine Islands, and far
and wide on each bank, and become City of Paris, sometimes
boasting to be “Athens of Europe,” and even “Capital of the
Universe.” Stone towers frown aloft; long-lasting, grim with a
thousand years. Cathedrals are there, and a Creed (or memory of a
Creed) in them; Palaces, and a State and Law. Thou seest the
Smoke-vapour; _un_extinguished Breath as of a thing living.
Labour’s thousand hammers ring on her anvils: also a more
miraculous Labour works noiselessly, not with the Hand but with
the Thought. How have cunning workmen in all crafts, with their
cunning head and right-hand, tamed the Four Elements to be their
ministers; yoking the winds to their Sea-chariot, making the very
Stars their Nautical Timepiece;—and written and collected a
_Bibliothèque du Roi;_ among whose Books is the Hebrew Book! A
wondrous race of creatures: _these_ have been realised, and what
of Skill is in these: call not the Past Time, with all its
confused wretchednesses, a lost one.
Observe, however, that of man’s whole terrestrial possessions and
attainments, unspeakably the noblest are his Symbols, divine or
divine-seeming; under which he marches and fights, with
victorious assurance, in this life-battle: what we can call his
Realised Ideals. Of which realised ideals, omitting the rest,
consider only these two: his Church, or spiritual Guidance; his
Kingship, or temporal one. The Church: what a word was there;
richer than Golconda and the treasures of the world! In the heart
of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk; the Dead all
slumbering round it, under their white memorial-stones, “in hope
of a happy resurrection:”—dull wert thou, O Reader, if never in
any hour (say of moaning midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral
in the sky, and Being was as if swallowed up of Darkness) it
spoke to thee—things unspeakable, that went into thy soul’s soul.
Strong was he that had a Church, what we can call a Church: he
stood thereby, though “in the centre of Immensities, in the
conflux of Eternities,” yet manlike towards God and man; the
vague shoreless Universe had become for him a firm city, and
dwelling which he knew. Such virtue was in Belief; in these
words, well spoken: _I believe_. Well might men prize their
_Credo_, and raise stateliest Temples for it, and reverend
Hierarchies, and give it the tithe of their substance; it was
worth living for and dying for.
Neither was that an inconsiderable moment when wild armed men
first raised their Strongest aloft on the buckler-throne, and
with clanging armour and hearts, said solemnly: Be thou our
Acknowledged Strongest! In such Acknowledged Strongest (well
named King, _Kön-ning,_ Can-ning, or Man that was Able) what a
Symbol shone now for them,—significant with the destinies of the
world! A Symbol of true Guidance in return for loving Obedience;
properly, if he knew it, the prime want of man. A Symbol which
might be called sacred; for is there not, in reverence for what
is better than we, an indestructible sacredness? On which ground,
too, it was well said there lay in the Acknowledged Strongest a
divine right; as surely there might in the Strongest, whether
Acknowledged or not,—considering _who_ it was that made him
strong. And so, in the midst of confusions and unutterable
incongruities (as all growth is confused), did this of Royalty,
with Loyalty environing it, spring up; and grow mysteriously,
subduing and assimilating (for a principle of Life was in it);
till it also had grown world-great, and was among the main Facts
of our modern existence. Such a Fact, that Louis XIV., for
example, could answer the expostulatory Magistrate with his
‘_L’Etat c’est moi_ (The State? I am the State);’ and be replied
to by silence and abashed looks. So far had accident and
forethought; had your Louis Elevenths, with the leaden Virgin in
their hatband, and torture-wheels and conical _oubliettes_
(man-eating!) under their feet; your Henri Fourths, with their
prophesied social millennium, “when every peasant should have his
fowl in the pot;” and on the whole, the fertility of this most
fertile Existence (named of Good and Evil),—brought it, in the
matter of the Kingship. Wondrous! Concerning which may we not
again say, that in the huge mass of Evil, as it rolls and swells,
there is ever some Good working imprisoned; working towards
deliverance and triumph?
How such Ideals do realise themselves; and grow, wondrously, from
amid the incongruous ever-fluctuating chaos of the Actual: this
is what World-History, if it teach any thing, has to teach us,
How they grow; and, after long stormy growth, bloom out mature,
supreme; then quickly (for the blossom is brief) fall into decay;
sorrowfully dwindle; and crumble down, or rush down, noisily or
noiselessly disappearing. The blossom is so brief; as of some
centennial Cactus-flower, which after a century of waiting shines
out for hours! Thus from the day when rough Clovis, in the Champ
de Mars, in sight of his whole army, had to cleave retributively
the head of that rough Frank, with sudden battleaxe, and the
fierce words, ‘It was thus thou clavest the vase’ (St. Remi’s and
mine) ‘at Soissons,’ forward to Louis the Grand and his _L’Etat
c’est moi_, we count some twelve hundred years: and now this the
very next Louis is dying, and so much dying with him!—Nay, thus
too, if Catholicism, with and against Feudalism (but _not_
against Nature and her bounty), gave us English a Shakspeare and
Era of Shakspeare, and so produced a blossom of Catholicism—it
was not till Catholicism itself, so far as Law could abolish it,
had been abolished here.
But of those decadent ages in which no Ideal either grows or
blossoms? When Belief and Loyalty have passed away, and only the
cant and false echo of them remains; and all Solemnity has become
Pageantry; and the Creed of persons in authority has become one
of two things: an Imbecility or a Macchiavelism? Alas, of these
ages World-History can take no notice; they have to become
compressed more and more, and finally suppressed in the Annals of
Mankind; blotted out as spurious,—which indeed they are. Hapless
ages: wherein, if ever in any, it is an unhappiness to be born.
To be born, and to learn only, by every tradition and example,
that God’s Universe is Belial’s and a Lie; and “the Supreme
Quack” the hierarch of men! In which mournfulest faith,
nevertheless, do we not see whole generations (two, and sometimes
even three successively) live, what they call living; and
vanish,—without chance of reappearance?
In such a decadent age, or one fast verging that way, had our
poor Louis been born. Grant also that if the French Kingship had
not, by course of Nature, long to live, he of all men was the man
to accelerate Nature. The Blossom of French Royalty, cactus-like,
has accordingly made an astonishing progress. In those Metz days,
it was still standing with all its petals, though bedimmed by
Orleans Regents and _Roué_ Ministers and Cardinals; but now, in
1774, we behold it bald, and the virtue nigh gone out of it.
Disastrous indeed does it look with those same “realised ideals,”
one and all! The Church, which in its palmy season, seven hundred
years ago, could make an Emperor wait barefoot, in penance-shift;
three days, in the snow, has for centuries seen itself decaying;
reduced even to forget old purposes and enmities, and join
interest with the Kingship: on this younger strength it would
fain stay its decrepitude; and these two will henceforth stand
and fall together. Alas, the Sorbonne still sits there, in its
old mansion; but mumbles only jargon of dotage, and no longer
leads the consciences of men: not the Sorbonne; it is
_Encyclopédies, Philosophie_, and who knows what nameless
innumerable multitude of ready Writers, profane Singers,
Romancers, Players, Disputators, and Pamphleteers, that now form
the Spiritual Guidance of the world. The world’s Practical
Guidance too is lost, or has glided into the same miscellaneous
hands. Who is it that the King (_Able-man_, named also _Roi,
Rex,_ or Director) now guides? His own huntsmen and prickers:
when there is to be no hunt, it is well said, “_Le Roi ne fera
rien_ (Today his Majesty will do _nothing_).”[7] He lives and
lingers there, because he is living there, and none has yet laid
hands on him.
The nobles, in like manner, have nearly ceased either to guide or
misguide; and are now, as their master is, little more than
ornamental figures. It is long since they have done with
butchering one another or their king: the Workers, protected,
encouraged by Majesty, have ages ago built walled towns, and
there ply their crafts; will permit no Robber Baron to “live by
the saddle,” but maintain a gallows to prevent it. Ever since
that period of the _Fronde_, the Noble has changed his fighting
sword into a court rapier, and now loyally attends his king as
ministering satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and
murder, but by soliciting and finesse. These men call themselves
supports of the throne, singular gilt-pasteboard _caryatides_ in
that singular edifice! For the rest, their privileges every way
are now much curtailed. That law authorizing a Seigneur, as he
returned from hunting, to kill not more than two Serfs, and
refresh his feet in their warm blood and bowels, has fallen into
perfect desuetude,—and even into incredibility; for if Deputy
Lapoule can believe in it, and call for the abrogation of it, so
cannot we.[8] No Charolois, for these last fifty years, though
never so fond of shooting, has been in use to bring down slaters
and plumbers, and see them roll from their roofs;[9] but contents
himself with partridges and grouse. Close-viewed, their industry
and function is that of dressing gracefully and eating
sumptuously. As for their debauchery and depravity, it is perhaps
unexampled since the era of Tiberius and Commodus. Nevertheless,
one has still partly a feeling with the lady Maréchale: ‘Depend
upon it, Sir, God thinks twice before damning a man of that
quality.’[10] These people, of old, surely had virtues, uses; or
they could not have been there. Nay, one virtue they are still
required to have (for mortal man cannot live without a
conscience): the virtue of perfect readiness to fight duels.
Such are the shepherds of the people: and now how fares it with
the flock? With the flock, as is inevitable, it fares ill, and
ever worse. They are not tended, they are only regularly shorn.
They are sent for, to do statute-labour, to pay statute-taxes; to
fatten battle-fields (named “Bed of honour”) with their bodies,
in quarrels which are not theirs; their hand and toil is in every
possession of man; but for themselves they have little or no
possession. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed; to pine dully in thick
obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction: this is the
lot of the millions; _peuple taillable et corvéable à merci et
miséricorde_. In Brittany they once rose in revolt at the first
introduction of Pendulum Clocks; thinking it had something to do
with the _Gabelle_. Paris requires to be cleared out periodically
by the Police; and the horde of hunger-stricken vagabonds to be
sent wandering again over space—for a time. “During one such
periodical clearance,” says Lacretelle, “in May, 1750, the Police
had presumed withal to carry off some reputable people’s
children, in the hope of extorting ransoms for them. The mothers
fill the public places with cries of despair; crowds gather, get
excited: so many women in destraction run about exaggerating the
alarm: an absurd and horrid fable arises among the people; it is
said that the doctors have ordered a Great Person to take baths
of young human blood for the restoration of his own, all spoiled
by debaucheries. Some of the rioters,” adds Lacretelle, quite
coolly, “were hanged on the following days:” the Police went
on.[11] O ye poor naked wretches! and this, then, is your
inarticulate cry to Heaven, as of a dumb tortured animal, crying
from uttermost depths of pain and debasement? Do these azure
skies, like a dead crystalline vault, only reverberate the echo
of it on you? Respond to it only by “hanging on the following
days?”—Not so: not forever! Ye are heard in Heaven. And the
answer too will come,—in a horror of great darkness, and shakings
of the world, and a cup of trembling which all the nations shall
drink.
Remark, meanwhile, how from amid the wrecks and dust of this
universal Decay new Powers are fashioning themselves, adapted to
the new time and its destinies. Besides the old Noblesse,
originally of Fighters, there is a new recognised Noblesse of
Lawyers; whose gala-day and proud battle-day even now is. An
unrecognised Noblesse of Commerce; powerful enough, with money in
its pocket. Lastly, powerfulest of all, least recognised of all,
a Noblesse of Literature; without steel on their thigh, without
gold in their purse, but with the “grand thaumaturgic faculty of
Thought” in their head. French Philosophism has arisen; in which
little word how much do we include! Here, indeed, lies properly
the cardinal symptom of the whole wide-spread malady. Faith is
gone out; Scepticism is come in. Evil abounds and accumulates: no
man has Faith to withstand it, to amend it, to begin by amending
himself; it must even go on accumulating. While hollow langour
and vacuity is the lot of the Upper, and want and stagnation of
the Lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing
is certain? That a Lie cannot be believed! Philosophism knows
only this: her other belief is mainly that, in spiritual
supersensual matters no Belief is possible. Unhappy! Nay, as yet
the Contradiction of a Lie is some kind of Belief; but the Lie
with its Contradiction once swept away, what will remain? The
five unsatiated Senses will remain, the sixth insatiable Sense
(of vanity); the whole _dæmonic_ nature of man will
remain,—hurled forth to rage blindly without rule or rein; savage
itself, yet with all the tools and weapons of civilisation; a
spectacle new in History.
In such a France, as in a Powder-tower, where fire unquenched and
now unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all round, has Louis
XV. lain down to die. With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his
Fleur-de-lis has been shamefully struck down in all lands and on
all seas; Poverty invades even the Royal Exchequer, and
Tax-farming can squeeze out no more; there is a quarrel of
twenty-five years’ standing with the Parlement; everywhere Want,
Dishonesty, Unbelief, and hotbrained Sciolists for
state-physicians: it is a portentous hour.
Such things can the eye of History see in this sick-room of King
Louis, which were invisible to the Courtiers there. It is twenty
years, gone Christmas-day, since Lord Chesterfield, summing up
what he had noted of this same France, wrote, and sent off by
post, the following words, that have become memorable: “In short,
all the symptoms which I have ever met with in History, previous
to great Changes and Revolutions in government, now exist and
daily increase in France.”[12]
Chapter 1.1.III.
Viaticum.
For the present, however, the grand question with the Governors
of France is: Shall extreme unction, or other ghostly viaticum
(to Louis, not to France), be administered?
It is a deep question. For, if administered, if so much as spoken
of, must not, on the very threshold of the business, Witch
Dubarry vanish; hardly to return should Louis even recover? With
her vanishes Duke d’Aiguillon and Company, and all their
Armida-Palace, as was said; Chaos swallows the whole again, and
there is left nothing but a smell of brimstone. But then, on the
other hand, what will the Dauphinists and Choiseulists say? Nay
what may the royal martyr himself say, should he happen to get
deadly worse, without getting delirious? For the present, he
still kisses the Dubarry hand; so we, from the ante-room, can
note: but afterwards? Doctors’ bulletins may run as they are
ordered, but it is “confluent small-pox,”—of which, as is
whispered too, the Gatekeeper’s once so buxom Daughter lies ill:
and Louis XV. is not a man to be trifled with in his viaticum.
Was he not wont to catechise his very girls in the
_Parc-aux-cerfs_, and pray with and for them, that they might
preserve their—orthodoxy?[13] A strange fact, not an unexampled
one; for there is no animal so strange as man.
For the moment, indeed, it were all well, could Archbishop
Beaumont but be prevailed upon—to wink with one eye! Alas,
Beaumont would himself so fain do it: for, singular to tell, the
Church too, and whole posthumous hope of Jesuitism, now hangs by
the apron of this same unmentionable woman. But then “the force
of public opinion”? Rigorous Christophe de Beaumont, who has
spent his life in persecuting hysterical Jansenists and
incredulous Non-confessors; or even their dead bodies, if no
better might be,—how shall he now open Heaven’s gate, and give
Absolution with the _corpus delicti_ still under his nose? Our
Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, for his part, will not higgle with a
royal sinner about turning of the key: but there are other
Churchmen; there is a King’s Confessor, foolish Abbé Moudon; and
Fanaticism and Decency are not yet extinct. On the whole, what is
to be done? The doors can be well watched; the Medical Bulletin
adjusted; and much, as usual, be hoped for from time and chance.
The doors are well watched, no improper figure can enter. Indeed,
few wish to enter; for the putrid infection reaches even to the
_Œil-de-Bœuf;_ so that “more than fifty fall sick, and ten die.”
Mesdames the Princesses alone wait at the loathsome sick-bed;
impelled by filial piety. The three Princesses, _Graille, Chiffe,
Coche_ (Rag, Snip, Pig, as he was wont to name them), are
assiduous there; when all have fled. The fourth Princess _Loque_
(Dud), as we guess, is already in the Nunnery, and can only give
her orisons. Poor _Graille_ and Sisterhood, they have never known
a Father: such is the hard bargain Grandeur must make. Scarcely
at the _Débotter_ (when Royalty took off its boots) could they
snatch up their “enormous hoops, gird the long train round their
waists, huddle on their black cloaks of taffeta up to the very
chin;” and so, in fit appearance of full dress, “every evening at
six,” walk majestically in; receive their royal kiss on the brow;
and then walk majestically out again, to embroidery,
small-scandal, prayers, and vacancy. If Majesty came some
morning, with coffee of its own making, and swallowed it with
them hastily while the dogs were uncoupling for the hunt, it was
received as a grace of Heaven.[14] Poor withered ancient women!
in the wild tossings that yet await your fragile existence,
before it be crushed and broken; as ye fly through hostile
countries, over tempestuous seas, are almost taken by the Turks;
and wholly, in the Sansculottic Earthquake, know not your right
hand from your left, be this always an assured place in your
remembrance: for the act was good and loving! To us also it is a
little sunny spot, in that dismal howling waste, where we hardly
find another.
Meanwhile, what shall an impartial prudent Courtier do? In these
delicate circumstances, while not only death or life, but even
sacrament or no sacrament, is a question, the skilfulest may
falter. Few are so happy as the Duke d’Orléans and the Prince de
Condé; who can themselves, with volatile salts, attend the King’s
ante-chamber; and, at the same time, send their brave sons (Duke
de Chartres, _Egalité_ that is to be; Duke de Bourbon, one day
Condé too, and famous among Dotards) to wait upon the Dauphin.
With another few, it is a resolution taken; _jacta est alea_. Old
Richelieu,—when Beaumont, driven by public opinion, is at last
for entering the sick-room,—will twitch him by the rochet, into a
recess; and there, with his old dissipated mastiff-face, and the
oiliest vehemence, be seen pleading (and even, as we judge by
Beaumont’s change of colour, prevailing) “that the King be not
killed by a proposition in Divinity.” Duke de Fronsac, son of
Richelieu, can follow his father: when the Curé of Versailles
whimpers something about sacraments, he will threaten to “throw
him out of the window if he mention such a thing.”
Happy these, we may say; but to the rest that hover between two
opinions, is it not trying? He who would understand to what a
pass Catholicism, and much else, had now got; and how the symbols
of the Holiest have become gambling-dice of the Basest,—must read
the narrative of those things by Besenval, and Soulavie, and the
other Court Newsmen of the time. He will see the Versailles
Galaxy all scattered asunder, grouped into new ever-shifting
Constellations. There are nods and sagacious glances;
go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for
this constellation, sighs for that: there is tremor, of hope or
desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale grinning Shadow
of Death, ceremoniously ushered along by another grinning Shadow,
of Etiquette: at intervals the growl of Chapel Organs, like
prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of horrid diabolic
horse-laughter, _Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!_
Chapter 1.1.IV.
Louis the Unforgotten.
Poor Louis! With these it is a hollow phantasmagory, where like
mimes they mope and mowl, and utter false sounds for hire; but
with thee it is frightful earnest.
Frightful to all men is Death; from of old named King of Terrors.
Our little compact home of an Existence, where we dwelt
complaining, yet as in a home, is passing, in dark agonies, into
an Unknown of Separation, Foreignness, unconditioned Possibility.
The Heathen Emperor asks of his soul: Into what places art thou
now departing? The Catholic King must answer: To the Judgment-bar
of the Most High God! Yes, it is a summing-up of Life; a final
settling, and giving-in the “account of the deeds done in the
body:” they are done now; and lie there unalterable, and do bear
their fruits, long as Eternity shall last.
Louis XV. had always the kingliest abhorrence of Death. Unlike
that praying Duke of Orleans, _Egalité’s_ grandfather,—for indeed
several of them had a touch of madness,—who honesty believed that
there was no Death! He, if the Court Newsmen can be believed,
started up once on a time, glowing with sulphurous contempt and
indignation on his poor Secretary, who had stumbled on the words,
_feu roi d’Espagne_ (the late King of Spain): ‘_Feu roi,
Monsieur?_’—‘_Monseigneur_,’ hastily answered the trembling but
adroit man of business, ‘_c’est une titre qu’ils prennent_ (’tis
a title they take).’[15] Louis, we say, was not so happy; but he
did what he could. He would not suffer Death to be spoken of;
avoided the sight of churchyards, funereal monuments, and
whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is the resource of the
Ostrich; who, hard hunted, sticks his foolish head in the ground,
and would fain forget that his foolish unseeing body is not
unseen too. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism,
significant of the same thing, and of more, he _would_ go; or
stopping his court carriages, would send into churchyards, and
ask “how many new graves there were today,” though it gave his
poor Pompadour the disagreeablest qualms. We can figure the
thought of Louis that day, when, all royally caparisoned for
hunting, he met, at some sudden turning in the Wood of Senart, a
ragged Peasant with a coffin: ‘For whom?’—It was for a poor
brother slave, whom Majesty had sometimes noticed slaving in
those quarters. ‘What did he die of?’—‘Of hunger:’—the King gave
his steed the spur.[16]
But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own
heart-strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death
has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous
tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him
out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will
extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera
and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous
Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity;
Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with
hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open;
there must thou enter, naked, all unking’d, and await what is
appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull
agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine!
Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too possible, in the prospect;
in the retrospect,—alas, what thing didst thou do that were not
better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help; what
sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the “five hundred thousand”
ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from
Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an
epigram,—crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the
curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable
man! thou “hast done evil as thou couldst:” thy whole existence
seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature; the use and
meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin,
_devouring_ the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy
cave;—clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear
but Death’s? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis,
seem these moments for thee.—We will pry no further into the
horrors of a sinner’s death-bed.
And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul.
Louis was a Ruler; but art not thou also one? His wide France,
look at it from the Fixed Stars (themselves not yet Infinitude),
is no wider than thy narrow brickfield, where thou too didst
faithfully, or didst unfaithfully. Man, “Symbol of Eternity
imprisoned into Time!” it is not thy works, which are all mortal,
infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least,
but only the Spirit thou workest in, that can have worth or
continuance.
But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis,
when he rose as _Bien-Aimé_ from that Metz sick-bed, really was!
What son of Adam could have swayed such incoherences into
coherence? Could he? Blindest Fortune alone has cast _him_ on the
top of it: he swims there; can as little sway it as the drift-log
sways the wind-tossed moon-stirred Atlantic. ‘What have I done to
be so loved?’ he said then. He may say now: What have I done to
be so hated? Thou hast done nothing, poor Louis! Thy fault is
properly even this, that thou didst _nothing_. What could poor
Louis do? Abdicate, and wash his hands of it,—in favour of the
first that would accept! Other clear wisdom there was none for
him. As it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal
extant (a very Solecism Incarnate), into the absurdest confused
world;—wherein at lost nothing seemed so certain as that he, the
incarnate Solecism, had five senses; that were Flying Tables
(_Tables Volantes_, which vanish through the floor, to come back
reloaded). and a _Parc-aux-cerfs_.
Whereby at least we have again this historical curiosity: a human
being in an original position; swimming passively, as on some
boundless “Mother of Dead Dogs,” towards issues which he partly
saw. For Louis had withal a kind of insight in him. So, when a
new Minister of Marine, or what else it might be, came announcing
his new era, the Scarlet-woman would hear from the lips of
Majesty at supper: ‘Yes, he spread out his ware like another;
promised the beautifulest things in the world; not a thing of
which will come: he does not know this region; he will see.’ Or
again: ‘’Tis the twentieth time I hear all that; France will
never get a Navy, I believe.’ How touching also was this: ‘If _I_
were Lieutenant of Police, I would prohibit those Paris
cabriolets.’[17]
Doomed mortal;—for is it not a doom to be Solecism incarnate! A
new _Roi Fainéant_, King Donothing; but with the strangest new
_Mayor of the Palace:_ no bow-legged Pepin now for _Mayor_, but
that same cloud-capt, fire-breathing Spectre of DEMOCRACY;
incalculable, which is enveloping the world!—Was Louis no
wickeder than this or the other private Donothing and Eatall;
such as we often enough see, under the name of Man, and even Man
of Pleasure, cumbering God’s diligent Creation, for a time? Say,
wretcheder! His Life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole
scandalised world; him endless Oblivion cannot engulf, and
swallow to endless depths,—not yet for a generation or two.
However, be this as it will, we remark, not without interest,
that “on the evening of the 4th,” Dame Dubarry issues from the
sick-room, with perceptible “trouble in her visage.” It is the
fourth evening of May, year of Grace 1774. Such a whispering in
the Œil-de-Bœuf! Is he dying then? What can be said is, that
Dubarry seems making up her packages; she sails weeping through
her gilt boudoirs, as if taking leave. D’Aiguilon and Company are
near their last card; nevertheless they will not yet throw up the
game. But as for the sacramental controversy, it is as good as
settled without being mentioned; Louis can send for his Abbé
Moudon in the course of next night, be confessed by him, some say
for the space of “seventeen minutes,” and demand the sacraments
of his own accord.
Nay, already, in the afternoon, behold is not this your Sorceress
Dubarry with the handkerchief at her eyes, mounting D’Aiguillon’s
chariot; rolling off in his Duchess’s consolatory arms? She is
gone; and her place knows her no more. Vanish, false Sorceress;
into Space! Needless to hover at neighbouring Ruel; for thy day
is done. Shut are the royal palace-gates for evermore; hardly in
coming years shalt thou, under cloud of night, descend once, in
black domino, like a black night-bird, and disturb the fair
Antoinette’s music-party in the Park: all Birds of Paradise
flying from thee, and musical windpipes growing mute.[18] Thou
unclean, yet unmalignant, not unpitiable thing! What a course was
thine: from that first trucklebed (in Joan of Arc’s country)
where thy mother bore thee, with tears, to an unnamed father:
forward, through lowest subterranean depths, and over highest
sunlit heights, of Harlotdom and Rascaldom—to the guillotine-axe,
which shears away thy vainly whimpering head! Rest there
uncursed; only buried and abolished: what else befitted thee?
Louis, meanwhile, is in considerable impatience for his
sacraments; sends more than once to the window, to see whether
they are not coming. Be of comfort, Louis, what comfort thou
canst: they are under way, those sacraments. Towards six in the
morning, they arrive. Cardinal Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon is here,
in pontificals, with his pyxes and his tools; he approaches the
royal pillow; elevates his wafer; mutters or seems to mutter
somewhat;—and so (as the Abbé Georgel, in words that stick to
one, expresses it) has Louis “made the _amende honorable_ to
God;” so does your Jesuit construe it.—‘_Wa, Wa_,’ as the wild
Clotaire groaned out, when life was departing, ‘what great God is
this that pulls down the strength of the strongest kings!’[19]
The _amende honorable_, what “legal apology” you will, to
God:—but not, if D’Aiguillon can help it, to man. Dubarry still
hovers in his mansion at Ruel; and while there is life, there is
hope. Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, accordingly (for he seems to be
in the secret), has no sooner seen his pyxes and gear repacked,
then he is stepping majestically forth again, as if the work were
done! But King’s Confessor Abbé Moudon starts forward; with
anxious acidulent face, twitches him by the sleeve; whispers in
his ear. Whereupon the poor Cardinal must turn round; and declare
audibly; ‘That his Majesty repents of any subjects of scandal he
may have given (_a pu donner_); and purposes, by the strength of
Heaven assisting him, to avoid the like—for the future!’ Words
listened to by Richelieu with mastiff-face, growing blacker;
answered to, aloud, “with an epithet,”—which Besenval will not
repeat. Old Richelieu, conqueror of Minorca, companion of
Flying-Table orgies, perforator of bedroom walls,[20] is thy day
also done?
Alas, the Chapel organs may keep going; the Shrine of Sainte
Genevieve be let down, and pulled up again,—without effect. In
the evening the whole Court, with Dauphin and Dauphiness, assist
at the Chapel: priests are hoarse with chanting their “Prayers of
Forty Hours;” and the heaving bellows blow. Almost frightful! For
the very heaven blackens; battering rain-torrents dash, with
thunder; almost drowning the organ’s voice: and electric
fire-flashes make the very flambeaux on the altar pale. So that
the most, as we are told, retired, when it was over, with hurried
steps, “in a state of meditation (_recueillement_),” and said
little or nothing.[21]
So it has lasted for the better half of a fortnight; the Dubarry
gone almost a week. Besenval says, all the world was getting
impatient _que cela finît;_ that poor Louis would have done with
it. It is now the 10th of May 1774. He will soon have done now.
This tenth May day falls into the loathsome sick-bed; but dull,
unnoticed there: for they that look out of the windows are quite
darkened; the cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis; Life,
like a spent steed, is panting towards the goal. In their remote
apartments, Dauphin and Dauphiness stand road-ready; all grooms
and equerries booted and spurred: waiting for some signal to
escape the house of pestilence.[22] And, hark! across the
Œil-de-Bœuf, what sound is that; sound “terrible and absolutely
like thunder”? It is the rush of the whole Court, rushing as in
wager, to salute the new Sovereigns: Hail to your Majesties! The
Dauphin and Dauphiness are King and Queen! Over-powered with many
emotions, they two fall on their knees together, and, with
streaming tears, exclaim, ‘O God, guide us, protect us; we are
too young to reign!’—Too young indeed.
Thus, in any case, “with a sound absolutely like thunder,” has
the Horologe of Time struck, and an old Era passed away. The
Louis that was, lies forsaken, a mass of abhorred clay; abandoned
“to some poor persons, and priests of the _Chapelle
Ardente_,”—who make haste to put him “in two lead coffins,
pouring in abundant spirits of wine.” The new Louis with his
Court is rolling towards Choisy, through the summer afternoon:
the royal tears still flow; but a word mispronounced by
Monseigneur d’Artois sets them all laughing, and they weep no
more. Light mortals, how ye walk your light life-minuet, over
bottomless abysses, divided from you by a film!
For the rest, the proper authorities felt that no Funeral could
be too unceremonious. Besenval himself thinks it was
unceremonious enough. Two carriages containing two noblemen of
the usher species, and a Versailles clerical person; some score
of mounted pages, some fifty palfreniers; these, with torches,
but not so much as in black, start from Versailles on the second
evening with their leaden bier. At a high trot they start; and
keep up that pace. For the jibes (_brocards_) of those Parisians,
who stand planted in two rows, all the way to St. Denis, and
“give vent to their pleasantry, the characteristic of the
nation,” do not tempt one to slacken. Towards midnight the vaults
of St. Denis receive their own; unwept by any eye of all these;
if not by poor _Loque_ his neglected Daughter’s, whose Nunnery is
hard by.
Him they crush down, and huddle under-ground, in this impatient
way; him and his era of sin and tyranny and shame; for behold a
New Era is come; the future all the brighter that the past was
base.
BOOK 1.II.
THE PAPER AGE
Chapter 1.2.I.
Astræa Redux.
A paradoxical philosopher, carrying to the uttermost length that
aphorism of Montesquieu’s, “Happy the people whose annals are
tiresome,” has said, “Happy the people whose annals are vacant.”
In which saying, mad as it looks, may there not still be found
some grain of reason? For truly, as it has been written, “Silence
is divine,” and of Heaven; so in all earthly things too there is
a silence which is better than any speech. Consider it well, the
Event, the thing which can be spoken of and recorded, is it not,
in all cases, some disruption, some solution of continuity? Were
it even a glad Event, it involves change, involves loss (of
active Force); and so far, either in the past or in the present,
is an irregularity, a disease. Stillest perseverance were our
blessedness; not dislocation and alteration,—could they be
avoided.
The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years; only in
the thousandth year, when the woodman arrives with his axe, is
there heard an echoing through the solitudes; and the oak
announces itself when, with a far-sounding crash, it _falls_. How
silent too was the planting of the acorn; scattered from the lap
of some wandering wind! Nay, when our oak flowered, or put on its
leaves (its glad Events), what shout of proclamation could there
be? Hardly from the most observant a word of recognition. These
things _befell_ not, they were slowly _done;_ not in an hour, but
through the flight of days: what was to be said of it? This hour
seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be.
It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was
done, but of what was misdone or undone; and foolish History
(ever, more or less, the written epitomised synopsis of Rumour)
knows so little that were not as well unknown. Attila Invasions,
Walter-the-Penniless Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thirty-Years
Wars: mere sin and misery; not work, but hindrance of work! For
the Earth, all this while, was yearly green and yellow with her
kind harvests; the hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker
rested not: and so, after all, and in spite of all, we have this
so glorious high-domed blossoming World; concerning which, poor
History may well ask, with wonder, Whence _it_ came? She knows so
little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it, what would
have rendered it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or
foolish choice, is her rule and practice; whereby that paradox,
“Happy the people whose annals are vacant,” is not without its
true side.
And yet, what seems more pertinent to note here, there is a
stillness, not of unobstructed growth, but of passive inertness,
and symptom of imminent downfall. As victory is silent, so is
defeat. Of the opposing forces the weaker has resigned itself;
the stronger marches on, noiseless now, but rapid, inevitable:
the fall and overturn will not be noiseless. How all grows, and
has its period, even as the herbs of the fields, be it annual,
centennial, millennial! All grows and dies, each by its own
wondrous laws, in wondrous fashion of its own; spiritual things
most wondrously of all. Inscrutable, to the wisest, are these
latter; not to be prophesied of, or understood. If when the oak
stands proudliest flourishing to the eye, you know that its heart
is sound, it is not so with the man; how much less with the
Society, with the Nation of men! Of such it may be affirmed even
that the superficial aspect, that the inward feeling of full
health, is generally ominous. For indeed it is of apoplexy, so to
speak, and a plethoric lazy habit of body, that Churches,
Kingships, Social Institutions, oftenest die. Sad, when such
Institution plethorically says to itself, Take thy ease, thou
hast goods laid up;—like the fool of the Gospel, to whom it was
answered, Fool, _this night_ thy life shall be required of thee!
Is it the healthy peace, or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on
France, for these next Ten Years? Over which the Historian can
pass lightly, without call to linger: for as yet events are not,
much less performances. Time of sunniest stillness;—shall we call
it, what all men thought it, the new Age of Gold? Call it at
least, of Paper; which in many ways is the succedaneum of Gold.
Bank-paper, wherewith you can still buy when there is no gold
left; Book-paper, splendent with Theories, Philosophies,
Sensibilities,—beautiful art, not only of revealing Thought, but
also of so beautifully hiding from us the want of Thought! Paper
is made from the _rags_ of things that did once exist; there are
endless excellences in Paper.—What wisest Philosophe, in this
halcyon uneventful period, could prophesy that there was
approaching, big with darkness and confusion, the event of
events? Hope ushers in a Revolution,—as earthquakes are preceded
by bright weather. On the Fifth of May, fifteen years hence, old
Louis will not be sending for the Sacraments; but a new Louis,
his grandson, with the whole pomp of astonished intoxicated
France, will be opening the States-General.
Dubarrydom and its D’Aiguillons are gone forever. There is a
young, still docile, well-intentioned King; a young, beautiful
and bountiful, well-intentioned Queen; and with them all France,
as it were, become young. Maupeou and his Parlement have to
vanish into thick night; respectable Magistrates, not indifferent
to the Nation, were it only for having been opponents of the
Court, can descend unchained from their “steep rocks at Croe in
Combrailles” and elsewhere, and return singing praises: the old
Parlement of Paris resumes its functions. Instead of a profligate
bankrupt Abbé Terray, we have now, for Controller-General, a
virtuous philosophic Turgot, with a whole Reformed France in his
head. By whom whatsoever is wrong, in Finance or otherwise, will
be righted,—as far as possible. Is it not as if Wisdom herself
were henceforth to have seat and voice in the Council of Kings?
Turgot has taken office with the noblest plainness of speech to
that effect; been listened to with the noblest royal
trustfulness.[23] It is true, as King Louis objects, ‘They say he
never goes to mass;’ but liberal France likes him little worse
for that; liberal France answers, ‘The Abbé Terray always went.’
Philosophism sees, for the first time, a Philosophe (or even a
Philosopher) in office: she in all things will applausively
second him; neither will light old Maurepas obstruct, if he can
easily help it.
Then how “sweet” are the manners; vice “losing all its
deformity;” becoming _decent_ (as established things, making
regulations for themselves, do); becoming almost a kind of
“sweet” virtue! Intelligence so abounds; irradiated by wit and
the art of conversation. Philosophism sits joyful in her
glittering saloons, the dinner-guest of Opulence grown ingenuous,
the very nobles proud to sit by her; and preaches, lifted up over
all Bastilles, a coming millennium. From far Ferney, Patriarch
Voltaire gives sign: veterans Diderot, D’Alembert have lived to
see this day; these with their younger Marmontels, Morellets,
Chamforts, Raynals, make glad the spicy board of rich ministering
Dowager, of philosophic Farmer-General. O nights and suppers of
the gods! Of a truth, the long-demonstrated will now be done:
“the Age of Revolutions approaches” (as Jean Jacques wrote), but
then of happy blessed ones. Man awakens from his long
somnambulism; chases the Phantasms that beleagured and bewitched
him. Behold the new morning glittering down the eastern steeps;
fly, false Phantasms, from its shafts of light; let the Absurd
fly utterly forsaking this lower Earth for ever. It is Truth and
_Astræa Redux_ that (in the shape of Philosophism) henceforth
reign. For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be
“happy”? By victorious Analysis, and Progress of the Species,
happiness enough now awaits him. Kings can become philosophers;
or else philosophers Kings. Let but Society be once rightly
constituted,—by victorious Analysis. The stomach that is empty
shall be filled; the throat that is dry shall be wetted with
wine. Labour itself shall be all one as rest; not grievous, but
joyous. Wheatfields, one would think, cannot come to grow
untilled; no man made clayey, or made weary thereby;—unless
indeed machinery will do it? Gratuitous Tailors and Restaurateurs
may start up, at fit intervals, one as yet sees not how. But if
each will, according to rule of Benevolence, have a care for all,
then surely—no one will be uncared for. Nay, who knows but, by
sufficiently victorious Analysis, “human life may be indefinitely
lengthened,” and men get rid of Death, as they have already done
of the Devil? We shall then be happy in spite of Death and the
Devil.—So preaches magniloquent Philosophism her _Redeunt
Saturnia regna._
The prophetic song of Paris and its Philosophes is audible enough
in the Versailles Œil-de-Bœuf; and the Œil-de-Bœuf, intent
chiefly on nearer blessedness, can answer, at worst, with a
polite ‘Why not?’ Good old cheery Maurepas is too joyful a Prime
Minister to dash the world’s joy. Sufficient for the day be its
own evil. Cheery old man, he cuts his jokes, and hovers careless
along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he may
please all persons. The simple young King, whom a Maurepas cannot
think of troubling with business, has retired into the interior
apartments; taciturn, irresolute; though with a sharpness of
temper at times: he, at length, determines on a little smithwork;
and so, in apprenticeship with a Sieur Gamain (whom one day he
shall have little cause to bless), is learning to make locks.[24]
It appears further, he understood Geography; and could read
English. Unhappy young King, his childlike trust in that foolish
old Maurepas deserved another return. But friend and foe, destiny
and himself have combined to do him hurt.
Meanwhile the fair young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like
a goddess of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes; as yet mingles not
with affairs; heeds not the future; least of all, dreads it.
Weber and Campan[25] have pictured her, there within the royal
tapestries, in bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand
and Little Toilette; with a whole brilliant world waiting
obsequious on her glance: fair young daughter of Time, what
things has Time in store for thee! Like Earth’s brightest
Appearance, she moves gracefully, environed with the grandeur of
Earth: a reality, and yet a magic vision; for, behold, shall not
utter Darkness swallow it! The soft young heart adopts orphans,
portions meritorious maids, delights to succour the poor,—such
poor as come picturesquely in her way; and sets the fashion of
doing it; for as was said, Benevolence has now begun reigning. In
her Duchess de Polignac, in Princess de Lamballe, she enjoys
something almost like friendship; now too, after seven long
years, she has a child, and soon even a Dauphin, of her own; can
reckon herself, as Queens go, happy in a husband.
Events? The Grand events are but charitable Feasts of Morals
(_Fêtes des mœurs_), with their Prizes and Speeches; Poissarde
Processions to the Dauphin’s cradle; above all, Flirtations,
their rise, progress, decline and fall. There are Snow-statues
raised by the poor in hard winter to a Queen who has given them
fuel. There are masquerades, theatricals; beautifyings of little
Trianon, purchase and repair of St. Cloud; journeyings from the
summer Court-Elysium to the winter one. There are poutings and
grudgings from the Sardinian Sisters-in-law (for the Princes too
are wedded); little jealousies, which Court-Etiquette can
moderate. Wholly the lightest-hearted frivolous foam of
Existence; yet an artfully refined foam; pleasant were it not so
costly, like that which mantles on the wine of Champagne!
Monsieur, the King’s elder Brother, has set up for a kind of wit;
and leans towards the Philosophe side. Monseigneur d’Artois pulls
the mask from a fair impertinent; fights a duel in
consequence,—almost drawing blood.[26] He has breeches of a kind
new in this world;—a fabulous kind; “four tall lackeys,” says
Mercier, as if he had seen it, “hold him up in the air, that he
may fall into the garment without vestige of wrinkle; from which
rigorous encasement the same four, in the same way, and with more
effort, must deliver him at night.”[27] This last is he who now,
as a gray time-worn man, sits desolate at Grätz;[28] having
winded up his destiny with the Three Days. In such sort are poor
mortals swept and shovelled to and fro.
Chapter 1.2.II.
Petition in Hieroglyphs.
With the working people, again it is not so well. Unlucky! For
there are twenty to twenty-five millions of them. Whom, however,
we lump together into a kind of dim compendious unity, monstrous
but dim, far off, as the _canaille;_ or, more humanely, as “the
masses.” Masses, indeed: and yet, singular to say, if, with an
effort of imagination, thou follow them, over broad France, into
their clay hovels, into their garrets and hutches, the masses
consist all of units. Every unit of whom has his own heart and
sorrows; stands covered there with his own skin, and if you prick
him he will bleed. O purple Sovereignty, Holiness, Reverence;
thou, for example, Cardinal Grand-Almoner, with thy plush
covering of honour, who hast thy hands strengthened with
dignities and moneys, and art set on thy world watch-tower
solemnly, in sight of God, for such ends,—what a thought: that
every unit of these masses is a miraculous Man, even as thyself
art; struggling, with vision, or with blindness, for _his_
infinite Kingdom (this life which he has got, once only, in the
middle of Eternities); with a spark of the Divinity, what thou
callest an immortal soul, in him!
Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remoteness;
their hearth cheerless, their diet thin. For them, in this world,
rises no Era of Hope; hardly now in the other,—if it be not hope
in the gloomy rest of Death, for their faith too is failing.
Untaught, uncomforted, unfed! A dumb generation; their voice only
an inarticulate cry: spokesman, in the King’s Council, in the
world’s forum, they have none that finds credence. At rare
intervals (as now, in 1775), they will fling down their hoes and
hammers; and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind,[29] flock
hither and thither, dangerous, aimless; get the length even of
Versailles. Turgot is altering the Corn-trade, abrogating the
absurdest Corn-laws; there is dearth, real, or were it even
“factitious;” an indubitable scarcity of bread. And so, on the
second day of May 1775, these waste multitudes do here, at
Versailles Château, in wide-spread wretchedness, in sallow faces,
squalor, winged raggedness, present, as in legible hieroglyphic
writing, their Petition of Grievances. The Château gates have to
be shut; but the King will appear on the balcony, and speak to
them. They have seen the King’s face; their Petition of
Grievances has been, if not read, looked at. For answer, two of
them are hanged, on a “new gallows forty feet high;” and the rest
driven back to their dens,—for a time.
Clearly a difficult “point” for Government, that of dealing with
these masses;—if indeed it be not rather the sole point and
problem of Government, and all other points mere accidental
crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind! For let
Charter-Chests, Use and Wont, Law common and special say what
they will, the masses count to so many millions of units; made,
to all appearance, by God,—whose Earth this is declared to be.
Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have sinews
and indignation. Do but look what holiday old Marquis Mirabeau,
the crabbed old friend of Men, looked on, in these same years,
from his lodging, at the Baths of Mont d’Or: “The savages
descending in torrents from the mountains; our people ordered not
to go out. The Curate in surplice and stole; Justice in its
peruke; Marechausee sabre in hand, guarding the place, till the
bagpipes can begin. The dance interrupted, in a quarter of an
hour, by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of infirm
persons, and other assistants, tarring them on, as the rabble
does when dogs fight: frightful men, or rather frightful wild
animals, clad in jupes of coarse woollen, with large girdles of
leather studded with copper nails; of gigantic stature,
heightened by high wooden-clogs (_sabots_); rising on tiptoe to
see the fight; tramping time to it; rubbing their sides with
their elbows: their faces haggard (_figures hâves_), and covered
with their long greasy hair; the upper part of the visage waxing
pale, the lower distorting itself into the attempt at a cruel
laugh and a sort of ferocious impatience. And these people pay
the _taille!_ And you want further to take their salt from them!
And you know not what it is you are stripping barer, or as you
call it, governing; what by the spurt of your pen, in its cold
dastard indifference, you will fancy you can starve always with
impunity; always till the catastrophe come!—Ah Madame, such
Government by Blindman’s-buff, stumbling along too far, will end
in the General Overturn (_culbute générale_).”[30]
Undoubtedly a dark feature this in an Age of Gold,—Age, at least,
of Paper and Hope! Meanwhile, trouble us not with thy prophecies,
O croaking Friend of Men: ’tis long that we have heard such; and
still the old world keeps wagging, in its old way.
Chapter 1.2.III.
Questionable.
Or is this same Age of Hope itself but a simulacrum; as Hope too
often is? Cloud-vapour with rainbows painted on it, beautiful to
see, to sail towards,—which hovers over Niagara Falls? In that
case, victorious Analysis will have enough to do.
Alas, yes! a whole world to remake, if she could see it; work for
another than she! For all is wrong, and gone out of joint; the
inward spiritual, and the outward economical; head or heart,
there is no soundness in it. As indeed, evils of all sorts are
more or less of kin, and do usually go together: especially it is
an old truth, that wherever huge physical evil is, there, as the
parent and origin of it, has moral evil to a proportionate extent
been. Before those five-and-twenty labouring Millions, for
instance, could get that haggardness of face, which old Mirabeau
now looks on, in a Nation calling itself Christian, and calling
man the brother of man,—what unspeakable, nigh infinite
Dishonesty (of _seeming_ and not _being_) in all manner of
Rulers, and appointed Watchers, spiritual and temporal, must
there not, through long ages, have gone on accumulating! It will
accumulate: moreover, it will reach a head; for the first of all
Gospels is this, that a Lie cannot endure for ever.
In fact, if we pierce through that rosepink vapour of
Sentimentalism, Philanthropy, and Feasts of Morals, there lies
behind it one of the sorriest spectacles. You might ask, What
bonds that ever held a human society happily together, or held it
together at all, are in force here? It is an unbelieving people;
which has suppositions, hypotheses, and froth-systems of
victorious Analysis; and for _belief_ this mainly, that Pleasure
is pleasant. Hunger they have for all sweet things; and the law
of Hunger; but what other law? Within them, or over them,
properly none!
Their King has become a King Popinjay; with his Maurepas
Government, gyrating as the weather-cock does, blown about by
every wind. Above them they see no God; or they even do not look
above, except with astronomical glasses. The Church indeed still
is; but in the most submissive state; quite tamed by
Philosophism; in a singularly short time; for the hour was come.
Some twenty years ago, your Archbishop Beaumont would not even
let the poor Jansenists get buried: your Loménie Brienne (a
rising man, whom we shall meet with yet) could, in the name of
the Clergy, insist on having the Anti-protestant laws, which
condemn to death for preaching, “put in execution.”[31] And,
alas, now not so much as Baron Holbach’s Atheism can be
burnt,—except as pipe-matches by the private speculative
individual. Our Church stands haltered, dumb, like a dumb ox;
lowing only for provender (of tithes); content if it can have
that; or, dumbly, dully expecting its further doom. And the
Twenty Millions of “haggard faces;” and, as finger-post and
guidance to them in their dark struggle, “a gallows forty feet
high”! Certainly a singular Golden Age; with its Feasts of
Morals, its “sweet manners,” its sweet institutions
(_institutions douces_); betokening nothing but peace among
men!—Peace? O Philosophe-Sentimentalism, what hast thou to do
with peace, when thy mother’s name is Jezebel? Foul Product of
still fouler Corruption, thou with the corruption art doomed!
Meanwhile it is singular how long the rotten will hold together,
provided you do not handle it roughly. For whole generations it
continues standing, “with a ghastly affectation of life,” after
all life and truth has fled out of it; so loth are men to quit
their old ways; and, conquering indolence and inertia, venture on
new. Great truly is the Actual; is the Thing that has rescued
itself from bottomless deeps of theory and possibility, and
stands there as a definite indisputable Fact, whereby men do work
and live, or once did so. Widely shall men cleave to that, while
it will endure; and quit it with regret, when it gives way under
them. Rash enthusiast of Change, beware! Hast thou well
considered all that Habit does in this life of ours; how all
Knowledge and all Practice hang wondrous over infinite abysses of
the Unknown, Impracticable; and our whole being is an infinite
abyss, _overarched_ by Habit, as by a thin Earth-rind,
laboriously built together?
But if “every man,” as it has been written, “holds confined
within him a _mad_-man,” what must every Society do;—Society,
which in its commonest state is called “the standing miracle of
this world”! “Without such Earth-rind of Habit,” continues our
author, “call it System of Habits, in a word, _fixed ways_ of
acting and of believing,—Society would not exist at all. With
such it exists, better or worse. Herein too, in this its System
of Habits, acquired, retained how you will, lies the true
Law-Code and Constitution of a Society; the only Code, though an
unwritten one which it can in nowise _dis_obey. The thing we call
written Code, Constitution, Form of Government, and the like,
what is it but some miniature image, and solemnly expressed
summary of this unwritten Code? _Is_,—or rather alas, is _not;_
but only should be, and always tends to be! In which latter
discrepancy lies struggle without end.” And now, we add in the
same dialect, let but, by ill chance, in such ever-enduring
struggle,—your “thin Earth-rind” be once _broken!_ The fountains
of the great deep boil forth; fire-fountains, enveloping,
engulfing. Your “Earth-rind” is shattered, swallowed up; instead
of a green flowery world, there is a waste wild-weltering
chaos:—which has again, with tumult and struggle, to _make_
itself into a world.
On the other hand, be this conceded: Where thou findest a Lie
that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to
be extinguished; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction.
Think well, meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it: not with
hatred, with headlong selfish violence; but in clearness of
heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity. Thou wouldst not
_replace_ such extinct Lie by a new Lie, which a new Injustice of
thy own were; the parent of still other Lies? Whereby the latter
end of that business were worse than the beginning.
So, however, in this world of ours, which has both an
indestructible hope in the Future, and an indestructible tendency
to persevere as in the Past, must Innovation and Conservation
wage their perpetual conflict, as they may and can. Wherein the
“dæmonic element,” that lurks in all human things, _may_
doubtless, some once in the thousand years—get vent! But indeed
may we not regret that such conflict,—which, after all, is but
like that classical one of “hate-filled Amazons with heroic
Youths,” and will end in _embraces_,—should usually be so
spasmodic? For Conservation, strengthened by that mightiest
quality in us, our indolence, sits for long ages, not victorious
only, which she should be; but tyrannical, incommunicative. She
holds her adversary as if annihilated; such adversary lying, all
the while, like some buried Enceladus; who, to gain the smallest
freedom, must stir a whole Trinacria with it Ætnas.
Wherefore, on the whole, we will honour a Paper Age too; an Era
of hope! For in this same frightful process of Enceladus Revolt;
when the task, on which no mortal would willingly enter, has
become imperative, inevitable,—is it not even a kindness of
Nature that she lures us forward by cheerful promises, fallacious
or not; and a whole generation plunges into the Erebus Blackness,
lighted on by an Era of Hope? It has been well said: “Man is
based on Hope; he has properly no other possession but Hope; this
habitation of his is named the Place of Hope.”
Chapter 1.2.IV.
Maurepas.
But now, among French hopes, is not that of old M. de Maurepas
one of the best-grounded; who hopes that he, by dexterity, shall
contrive to continue Minister? Nimble old man, who for all
emergencies has his light jest; and ever in the worst confusion
will emerge, cork-like, unsunk! Small care to him is
Perfectibility, Progress of the Species, and _Astræa Redux:_ good
only, that a man of light wit, verging towards fourscore, can in
the seat of authority feel himself important among men. Shall we
call him, as haughty Châteauroux was wont of old, “_M. Faquinet_
(Diminutive of Scoundrel)”? In courtier dialect, he is now named
“the Nestor of France;” such governing Nestor as France has.
At bottom, nevertheless, it might puzzle one to say where the
Government of France, in these days, specially is. In that
Château of Versailles, we have Nestor, King, Queen, ministers and
clerks, with paper-bundles tied in tape: but the Government? For
Government is a thing that _governs_, that guides; and if need
be, compels. Visible in France there is not such a thing.
Invisible, inorganic, on the other hand, there is: in Philosophe
saloons, in Œil-de-Bœuf galleries; in the tongue of the babbler,
in the pen of the pamphleteer. Her Majesty appearing at the Opera
is applauded; she returns all radiant with joy. Anon the
applauses wax fainter, or threaten to cease; she is heavy of
heart, the light of her face has fled. Is Sovereignty some poor
Montgolfier; which, blown into by the popular wind, grows great
and mounts; or sinks flaccid, if the wind be withdrawn? France
was long a “Despotism tempered by Epigrams;” and now, it would
seem, the Epigrams have get the upper hand.
Happy were a young “Louis the Desired” to make France happy; if
it did not prove too troublesome, and he only knew the way. But
there is endless discrepancy round him; so many claims and
clamours; a mere confusion of tongues. Not reconcilable by man;
not manageable, suppressible, save by some strongest and wisest
men;—which only a lightly-jesting lightly-gyrating M. de Maurepas
can so much as subsist amidst. Philosophism claims her new Era,
meaning thereby innumerable things. And claims it in no faint
voice; for France at large, hitherto mute, is now beginning to
speak also; and speaks in that same sense. A huge, many-toned
sound; distant, yet not unimpressive. On the other hand, the
Œil-de-Bœuf, which, as nearest, one can hear best, claims with
shrill vehemence that the Monarchy be as heretofore a Horn of
Plenty; wherefrom loyal courtiers may draw,—to the just support
of the throne. Let Liberalism and a New Era, if such is the wish,
be introduced; only no curtailment of the royal moneys? Which
latter condition, alas, is precisely the impossible one.
Philosophism, as we saw, has got her Turgot made
Controller-General; and there shall be endless reformation.
Unhappily this Turgot could continue only twenty months. With a
miraculous _Fortunatus’ Purse_ in his Treasury, it might have
lasted longer; with such Purse indeed, every French
Controller-General, that would prosper in these days, ought first
to provide himself. But here again may we not remark the bounty
of Nature in regard to Hope? Man after man advances confident to
the Augean Stable, as if _he_ could clean it; expends his little
fraction of an ability on it, with such cheerfulness; does, in so
far as he was honest, accomplish something. Turgot has faculties;
honesty, insight, heroic volition; but the Fortunatus’ Purse he
has not. Sanguine Controller-General! a whole pacific French
Revolution may stand schemed in the head of the thinker; but who
shall pay the unspeakable “indemnities” that will be needed?
Alas, far from that: on the very threshold of the business, he
proposes that the Clergy, the Noblesse, the very Parlements be
subjected to taxes! One shriek of indignation and astonishment
reverberates through all the Château galleries; M. de Maurepas
has to gyrate: the poor King, who had written few weeks ago, “_Il
n’y a que vous et moi qui aimions le peuple_ (There is none but
you and I that has the people’s interest at heart),” must write
now a dismissal;[32] and let the French Revolution accomplish
itself, pacifically or not, as it can.
Hope, then, is deferred? Deferred; not destroyed, or abated. Is
not this, for example, our Patriarch Voltaire, after long years
of absence, revisiting Paris? With face shrivelled to nothing;
with “huge peruke _à la Louis Quatorze_, which leaves only two
eyes ‘visible’ glittering like carbuncles,” the old man is
here.[33] What an outburst! Sneering Paris has suddenly grown
reverent; devotional with Hero-worship. Nobles have disguised
themselves as tavern-waiters to obtain sight of him: the
loveliest of France would lay their hair beneath his feet. “His
chariot is the nucleus of a comet; whose train fills whole
streets:” they crown him in the theatre, with immortal vivats;
“finally stifle him under roses,”—for old Richelieu recommended
opium in such state of the nerves, and the excessive Patriarch
took too much. Her Majesty herself had some thought of sending
for him; but was dissuaded. Let Majesty consider it,
nevertheless. The purport of this man’s existence has been to
wither up and annihilate all whereon Majesty and Worship for the
present rests: and is it _so_ that the world recognises him? With
Apotheosis; as its Prophet and Speaker, who has spoken wisely the
thing it longed to say? Add only, that the body of this same
rose-stifled, beatified-Patriarch cannot get buried except by
stealth. It is wholly a notable business; and France, without
doubt, is _big_ (what the Germans call “Of good Hope”): we shall
wish her a happy birth-hour, and blessed fruit.
Beaumarchais too has now winded-up his Law-Pleadings
(_Mémoires_);[34] not without result, to himself and to the
world. Caron Beaumarchais (or de Beaumarchais, for he got
ennobled) had been born poor, but aspiring, esurient; with
talents, audacity, adroitness; above all, with the talent for
intrigue: a lean, but also a tough, indomitable man. Fortune and
dexterity brought him to the harpsichord of Mesdames, our good
Princesses _Loque, Graille_ and Sisterhood. Still better, Paris
Duvernier, the Court-Banker, honoured him with some confidence;
to the length even of transactions in cash. Which confidence,
however, Duvernier’s Heir, a person of quality, would not
continue. Quite otherwise; there springs a Lawsuit from it:
wherein tough Beaumarchais, losing both money and repute, is, in
the opinion of Judge-Reporter Goezman, of the Parlement Maupeou,
of a whole indifferent acquiescing world, miserably beaten. In
all men’s opinions, only not in his own! Inspired by the
indignation, which makes, if not verses, satirical law-papers,
the withered Music-master, with a desperate heroism, takes up his
lost cause in spite of the world; fights for it, against
Reporters, Parlements and Principalities, with light banter, with
clear logic; adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness and
resource, like the skilfullest fencer; on whom, so skilful is he,
the whole world now looks. Three long years it lasts; with
wavering fortune. In fine, after labours comparable to the Twelve
of Hercules, our unconquerable Caron triumphs; regains his
Lawsuit and Lawsuits; strips Reporter Goezman of the judicial
ermine; covering him with a perpetual garment of obloquy
instead:—and in regard to the Parlement Maupeou (which he has
helped to extinguish), to Parlements of all kinds, and to French
Justice generally, gives rise to endless reflections in the minds
of men. Thus has Beaumarchais, like a lean French Hercules,
ventured down, driven by destiny, into the Nether Kingdoms; and
victoriously tamed hell-dogs there. He also is henceforth among
the notabilities of his generation.
Chapter 1.2.V.
Astræa Redux without Cash.
Observe, however, beyond the Atlantic, has not the new day verily
dawned! Democracy, as we said, is born; storm-girt, is struggling
for life and victory. A sympathetic France rejoices over the
Rights of Man; in all saloons, it is said, What a spectacle! Now
too behold our Deane, our Franklin, American Plenipotentiaries,
here in position soliciting;[35] the sons of the Saxon Puritans,
with their Old-Saxon temper, Old-Hebrew culture, sleek Silas,
sleek Benjamin, here on such errand, among the light children of
Heathenism, Monarchy, Sentimentalism, and the Scarlet-woman. A
spectacle indeed; over which saloons may cackle joyous; though
Kaiser Joseph, questioned on it, gave this answer, most
unexpected from a Philosophe: ‘Madame, the trade I live by is
that of royalist (_Mon métier à moi c’est d’être royaliste_).’
So thinks light Maurepas too; but the wind of Philosophism and
force of public opinion will blow him round. Best wishes,
meanwhile, are sent; clandestine privateers armed. Paul Jones
shall equip his _Bon Homme Richard:_ weapons, military stores can
be smuggled over (if the English do not seize them); wherein,
once more Beaumarchais, dimly as the Giant Smuggler becomes
visible,—filling his own lank pocket withal. But surely, in any
case, France should have a Navy. For which great object were not
now the time: now when that proud Termagant of the Seas has her
hands full? It is true, an impoverished Treasury cannot build
ships; but the hint once given (which Beaumarchais says he gave),
this and the other loyal Seaport, Chamber of Commerce, will build
and offer them. Goodly vessels bound into the waters; a _Ville de
Paris_, Leviathan of ships.
And now when gratuitous three-deckers dance there at anchor, with
streamers flying; and eleutheromaniac Philosophedom grows ever
more clamorous, what can a Maurepas do—but gyrate? Squadrons
cross the ocean: Gages, Lees, rough Yankee Generals, “with
woollen night-caps under their hats,” present arms to the
far-glancing Chivalry of France; and new-born Democracy sees, not
without amazement, “Despotism tempered by Epigrams” fight at her
side. So, however, it is. King’s forces and heroic volunteers;
Rochambeaus, Bouillés, Lameths, Lafayettes, have drawn their
swords in this sacred quarrel of mankind;—shall draw them again
elsewhere, in the strangest way.
Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course of which
did our young Prince, Duke de Chartres, “hide in the hold;” or
did he materially, by _active_ heroism, contribute to the
victory? Alas, by a second edition, we learn that there was no
victory; or that English Keppel had it.[36] Our poor young Prince
gets his Opera plaudits changed into mocking tehees; and cannot
become Grand-Admiral,—the source to him of woes which one may
call endless.
Woe also for _Ville de Paris_, the Leviathan of ships! English
Rodney has clutched it, and led it home, with the rest; so
successful was his new “manœuvre of breaking the enemy’s
line.”[37] It seems as if, according to Louis XV., “France were
never to have a Navy.” Brave Suffren must return from Hyder Ally
and the Indian Waters; with small result; yet with great glory
for “six” _non-defeats;_—which indeed, with such seconding as he
had, one may reckon heroic. Let the old sea-hero rest now,
honoured of France, in his native Cevennes mountains; send smoke,
not of gunpowder, but mere culinary smoke, through the old
chimneys of the Castle of Jalès,—which one day, in other hands,
shall have other fame. Brave Lapérouse shall by and by lift
anchor, on philanthropic Voyage of Discovery; for the King knows
Geography.[38] But, alas, this also will not prosper: the brave
Navigator goes, and returns not; the Seekers search far seas for
him in vain. He has vanished trackless into blue Immensity; and
only some mournful mysterious shadow of him hovers long in all
heads and hearts.
Neither, while the War yet lasts, will Gibraltar surrender. Not
though Crillon, Nassau-Siegen, with the ablest projectors extant,
are there; and Prince Condé and Prince d’Artois have hastened to
help. Wondrous leather-roofed Floating-batteries, set afloat by
French-Spanish _Pacte de Famille_, give gallant summons: to
which, nevertheless, Gibraltar answers Plutonically, with mere
torrents of redhot iron,—as if stone Calpe had become a throat of
the Pit; and utters such a Doom’s-blast of a No, as all men must
credit.[39]
And so, with this loud explosion, the noise of War has ceased; an
Age of Benevolence may hope, for ever. Our noble volunteers of
Freedom have returned, to be her missionaries. Lafayette, as the
matchless of his time, glitters in the Versailles Œil-de-Beouf;
has his Bust set up in the Paris Hôtel-de-Ville. Democracy stands
inexpugnable, immeasurable, in her New World; has even a foot
lifted towards the Old;—and our French Finances, little
strengthened by such work, are in no healthy way.
What to do with the Finance? This indeed is the great question: a
small but most black weather-symptom, which no radiance of
universal hope can cover. We saw Turgot cast forth from the
Controllership, with shrieks,—for want of a Fortunatus’ Purse. As
little could M. de Clugny manage the duty; or indeed do anything,
but consume his wages; attain “a place in History,” where as an
ineffectual shadow thou beholdest him still lingering;—and let
the duty manage itself. Did Genevese Necker _possess_ such a
Purse, then? He possessed banker’s skill, banker’s honesty;
_credit_ of all kinds, for he had written Academic Prize Essays,
struggled for India Companies, given dinners to Philosophes, and
“realised a fortune in twenty years.” He possessed, further, a
taciturnity and solemnity; of depth, or else of dulness. How
singular for Celadon Gibbon, false swain as he had proved; whose
father, keeping most probably his own gig, “would not hear of
such a union,”—to find now his forsaken Demoiselle Curchod
sitting in the high places of the world, as Minister’s Madame,
and “Necker not jealous!”[40]
A new young Demoiselle, one day to be famed as a Madame and De
Staël, was romping about the knees of the Decline and Fall: the
lady Necker founds Hospitals; gives solemn Philosophe
dinner-parties, to cheer her exhausted Controller-General.
Strange things have happened: by clamour of Philosophism,
management of Marquis de Pezay, and Poverty constraining even
Kings. And so Necker, Atlas-like, sustains the burden of the
Finances, for five years long?[41] Without wages, for he refused
such; cheered only by Public Opinion, and the ministering of his
noble Wife. With many thoughts in him, it is hoped;—which,
however, he is shy of uttering. His _Compte Rendu_, published by
the royal permission, fresh sign of a New Era, shows
wonders;—which what but the genius of some Atlas-Necker can
prevent from becoming portents? In Necker’s head too there is a
whole pacific French Revolution, of its kind; and in that
taciturn dull depth, or deep dulness, ambition enough.
Meanwhile, alas, his Fotunatus’ Purse turns out to be little
other than the old “_vectigal_ of Parsimony.” Nay, he too has to
produce his scheme of taxing: Clergy, Noblesse to be taxed;
Provincial Assemblies, and the rest,—like a mere Turgot! The
expiring M. de Maurepas must gyrate one other time. Let Necker
also depart; not unlamented.
Great in a private station, Necker looks on from the distance;
abiding his time. “Eighty thousand copies” of his new Book, which
he calls _Administration des Finances_, will be sold in few days.
He is gone; but shall return, and that more than once, borne by a
whole shouting Nation. Singular Controller-General of the
Finances; once Clerk in Thelusson’s Bank!
Chapter 1.2.VI.
Windbags.
So marches the world, in this its Paper Age, or Era of Hope. Not
without obstructions, war-explosions; which, however, heard from
such distance, are little other than a cheerful marching-music.
If indeed that dark living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger,
five-and-twenty million strong, under your feet,—were to begin
playing!
For the present, however, consider Longchamp; now when Lent is
ending, and the glory of Paris and France has gone forth, as in
annual wont. Not to assist at _Tenebris_ Masses, but to sun
itself and show itself, and salute the Young Spring.[42]
Manifold, bright-tinted, glittering with gold; all through the
Bois de Boulogne, in longdrawn variegated rows;—like longdrawn
living flower-borders, tulips, dahlias, lilies of the valley; all
in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages): pleasure of
the eye, and pride of life! So rolls and dances the Procession:
steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the
foundations of the world; not on mere heraldic parchment,—under
which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye
sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers
have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from
of old, written: _The wages of sin is death?_
But at Longchamp, as elsewhere, we remark for one thing, that
dame and cavalier are waited on each by a kind of human familiar,
named _jokei._ Little elf, or imp; though young, already
withered; with its withered air of premature vice, of
knowingness, of completed elf-hood: useful in various
emergencies. The name _jokei_ (jockey) comes from the English; as
the thing also fancies that it does. Our Anglomania, in fact , is
grown considerable; prophetic of much. If France is to be free,
why shall she not, now when mad war is hushed, love neighbouring
Freedom? Cultivated men, your Dukes de Liancourt, de la
Rochefoucault admire the English Constitution, the English
National Character; would import what of it they can.
Of what is lighter, especially if it be light as wind, how much
easier the freightage! Non-Admiral Duke de Chartres (not yet
d’Orléans or Egalité) flies to and fro across the Strait;
importing English Fashions; this he, as hand-and-glove with an
English Prince of Wales, is surely qualified to do. Carriages and
saddles; top-boots and _rédingotes_, as we call riding-coats. Nay
the very mode of riding: for now no man on a level with his age
but will trot _à l’Anglaise_, rising in the stirrups; scornful of
the old sitfast method, in which, according to Shakspeare,
“butter and eggs” go to market. Also, he can urge the fervid
wheels, this brave Chartres of ours; no whip in Paris is rasher
and surer than the unprofessional one of Monseigneur.
Elf _jokeis_, we have seen; but see now real Yorkshire jockeys,
and what they ride on, and train: English racers for French
Races. These likewise we owe first (under the Providence of the
Devil) to Monseigneur. Prince d’Artois also has his stud of
racers. Prince d’Artois has withal the strangest horseleech: a
moonstruck, much-enduring individual, of Neuchâtel in
Switzerland,—named _Jean Paul Marat_. A problematic Chevalier
d’Eon, now in petticoats, now in breeches, is no less problematic
in London than in Paris; and causes bets and lawsuits. Beautiful
days of international communion! Swindlery and Blackguardism have
stretched hands across the Channel, and saluted mutually: on the
racecourse of Vincennes or Sablons, behold in English
curricle-and-four, wafted glorious among the principalities and
rascalities, an English Dr. Dodd,[43]—for whom also the too early
gallows gapes.
Duke de Chartres was a young Prince of great promise, as young
Princes often are; which promise unfortunately has belied itself.
With the huge Orléans Property, with Duke de Penthievre for
Father-in-law (and now the young Brother-in-law Lamballe killed
by excesses),—he will one day be the richest man in France.
Meanwhile, “his hair is all falling out, his blood is quite
spoiled,”—by early transcendentalism of debauchery. Carbuncles
stud his face; dark studs on a ground of burnished copper. A most
signal failure, this young Prince! The stuff prematurely burnt
out of him: little left but foul smoke and ashes of expiring
sensualities: what might have been Thought, Insight, and even
Conduct, gone now, or fast going,—to confused darkness, broken by
bewildering dazzlements; to obstreperous crotchets; to activities
which you may call semi-delirious, or even semi-galvanic! Paris
affects to laugh at his charioteering; but he heeds not such
laughter.
On the other hand, what a day, not of laughter, was that, when he
threatened, for lucre’s sake, to lay sacrilegious hand on the
Palais-Royal Garden![44] The flower-parterres shall be riven up;
the Chestnut Avenues shall fall: time-honoured boscages, under
which the Opera Hamadryads were wont to wander, not inexorable to
men. Paris moans aloud. Philidor, from his Café de la Regence,
shall no longer look on greenness; the loungers and losels of the
world, where now shall they haunt? In vain is moaning. The axe
glitters; the sacred groves fall crashing,—for indeed Monseigneur
was short of money: the Opera Hamadryads fly with shrieks. Shriek
not, ye Opera Hamadryads; or not as those that have no comfort.
He will surround your Garden with new edifices and piazzas:
though narrowed, it shall be replanted; dizened with hydraulic
jets, cannon which the sun fires at noon; things bodily, things
spiritual, such as man has not imagined;—and in the Palais-Royal
shall again, and more than ever, be the _Sorcerer’s Sabbath_ and
_Satan-at-Home_ of our Planet.
What will not mortals attempt? From remote Annonay in the
Vivarais, the Brothers Montgolfier send up their paper-dome,
filled with the smoke of burnt wool.[45] The Vivarais provincial
assembly is to be prorogued this same day: Vivarais
Assembly-members applaud, and the shouts of congregated men. Will
victorious Analysis scale the very Heavens, then?
Paris hears with eager wonder; Paris shall ere long see. From
Reveilion’s Paper-warehouse there, in the Rue St. Antoine (a
noted Warehouse),—the new Montgolfier air-ship launches itself.
Ducks and poultry are borne skyward: but now shall men be
borne.[46] Nay, Chemist Charles thinks of hydrogen and glazed
silk. Chemist Charles will himself ascend, from the Tuileries
Garden; Montgolfier solemnly cutting the cord. By Heaven, he also
mounts, he and another? Ten times ten thousand hearts go
palpitating; all tongues are mute with wonder and fear; till a
shout, like the voice of seas, rolls after him, on his wild way.
He soars, he dwindles upwards; has become a mere gleaming
circlet,—like some Turgotine snuff-box, what we call “_Turgotine
Platitude;_” like some new daylight Moon! Finally he descends;
welcomed by the universe. Duchess Polignac, with a party, is in
the Bois de Boulogne, waiting; though it is drizzly winter; the
1st of December 1783. The whole chivalry of France, Duke de
Chartres foremost, gallops to receive him.[47]
Beautiful invention; mounting heavenward, so beautifully,—so
unguidably! Emblem of much, and of our Age of Hope itself; which
shall mount, specifically-light, majestically in this same
manner; and hover,—tumbling whither Fate will. Well if it do not,
Pilatre-like, explode; and demount all the more tragically!—So,
riding on windbags, will men scale the Empyrean.
Or observe Herr Doctor Mesmer, in his spacious Magnetic Halls.
Long-stoled he walks; reverend, glancing upwards, as in rapt
commerce; an Antique Egyptian Hierophant in this new age. Soft
music flits; breaking fitfully the sacred stillness. Round their
Magnetic Mystery, which to the eye is mere tubs with water,—sit
breathless, rod in hand, the circles of Beauty and Fashion, each
circle a living circular _Passion-Flower:_ expecting the magnetic
afflatus, and new-manufactured Heaven-on-Earth. O women, O men,
great is your infidel-faith! A Parlementary Duport, a Bergasse,
D’Espréménil we notice there; Chemist Berthollet too,—on the part
of Monseigneur de Chartres.
Had not the Academy of Sciences, with its Baillys, Franklins,
Lavoisiers, interfered! But it did interfere. (Lacretelle, 18me
Siecle, iii.258.) Mesmer may pocket his hard money, and withdraw.
Let him walk silent by the shore of the Bodensee, by the ancient
town of Constance; meditating on much. For so, under the
strangest new vesture, the old great truth (since no vesture can
hide it) begins again to be revealed: That man is what we call a
miraculous creature, with miraculous power over men; and, on the
whole, with such a Life in him, and such a World round him, as
victorious Analysis, with her Physiologies, Nervous-systems,
Physic and Metaphysic, will never completely _name_, to say
nothing of explaining. Wherein also the Quack shall, in all ages,
come in for his share.[48]
Chapter 1.2.VII.
Contrat Social.
In such succession of singular prismatic tints, flush after flush
suffusing our horizon, does the Era of Hope dawn on towards
fulfilment. Questionable! As indeed, with an Era of Hope that
rests on mere universal Benevolence, victorious Analysis, Vice
cured of its deformity; and, in the long run, on Twenty-five dark
savage Millions, looking up, in hunger and weariness, to that
_Ecce-signum_ of theirs “forty feet high,”—how could it but be
questionable?
Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be, the
parent of misery. This land calls itself most Christian, and has
crosses and cathedrals; but its High-priest is some Roche-Aymon,
some Necklace-Cardinal Louis de Rohan. The voice of the poor,
through long years, ascends inarticulate, in _Jacqueries_,
meal-mobs; low-whimpering of infinite moan: unheeded of the
Earth; not unheeded of Heaven. Always moreover where the Millions
are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy; only
the Units can flourish; or say rather, be ruined the last.
Industry, all noosed and haltered, as if it too were some beast
of chase for the mighty hunters of this world to bait, and cut
slices from,—cries passionately to these its well-paid guides and
watchers, not, _Guide me;_ but, _Laissez faire,_ Leave me alone
of _your_ guidance! What market has Industry in this France? For
two things there may be market and demand: for the coarser kind
of field-fruits, since the Millions will live: for the fine kinds
of luxury and spicery,—of multiform taste, from opera-melodies
down to racers and courtesans; since the Units will be amused. It
is at bottom but a mad state of things.
To mend and remake all which we have, indeed, victorious
Analysis. Honour to victorious Analysis; nevertheless, out of the
Workshop and Laboratory, what thing was victorious Analysis yet
known to make? Detection of incoherences, mainly; destruction of
the incoherent. From of old, Doubt was but half a magician; she
evokes the spectres which she cannot quell. We shall have
“endless vortices of froth-logic;” whereon first words, and then
things, are whirled and swallowed. Remark, accordingly, as
acknowledged grounds of Hope, at bottom mere precursors of
Despair, this perpetual theorising about Man, the Mind of Man,
Philosophy of Government, Progress of the Species and such-like;
the main thinking furniture of every head. Time, and so many
Montesquieus, Mablys, spokesmen of Time, have discovered
innumerable things: and now has not Jean Jacques promulgated his
new Evangel of a _Contrat Social;_ explaining the whole mystery
of Government, and how it is _contracted_ and bargained for,—to
universal satisfaction? Theories of Government! Such have been,
and will be; in ages of decadence. Acknowledge them in their
degree; as processes of Nature, who does nothing in vain; as
steps in her great process. Meanwhile, what theory is so certain
as this, That all theories, were they never so earnest, painfully
elaborated, are, and, by the very conditions of them, must be
incomplete, questionable, and even false? Thou shalt know that
this Universe is, what it professes to be, an _infinite_ one.
Attempt not to swallow _it_, for thy logical digestion; be
thankful, if skilfully planting down this and the other fixed
pillar in the chaos, thou prevent its swallowing _thee_. That a
new young generation has exchanged the Sceptic Creed, _What shall
I believe?_ for passionate Faith in this Gospel according to Jean
Jacques is a further step in the business; and betokens much.
Blessed also is Hope; and always from the beginning there was
some Millennium prophesied; Millennium of Holiness; but (what is
notable) never till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease and
plentiful Supply. In such prophesied Lubberland, of Happiness,
Benevolence, and Vice cured of its deformity, trust not, my
friends! Man is not what one calls a happy animal; his appetite
for sweet victual is so enormous. How, in this wild Universe,
which storms in on him, infinite, vague-menacing, shall poor man
find, say not happiness, but existence, and footing to stand on,
if it be not by girding himself together for continual endeavour
and endurance? Woe, if in his heart there dwelt no devout Faith;
if the word Duty had lost its meaning for him! For as to this of
Sentimentalism, so useful for weeping with over romances and on
pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily will avail nothing; nay
less. The healthy heart that said to itself, “How healthy am I!”
was already fallen into the fatalest sort of disease. Is not
Sentimentalism twin-sister to Cant, if not one and the same with
it? Is not Cant the _materia prima_ of the Devil; from which all
falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations body themselves; from
which no true thing _can_ come? For Cant is itself properly a
double-distilled Lie; the second-power of a Lie.
And now if a whole Nation fall into that? In such case, I answer,
infallibly they will return out of it! For life is no
cunningly-devised deception or self-deception: it is a great
truth that thou art alive, that thou hast desires, necessities;
neither can these subsist and satisfy themselves on delusions,
but on fact. To fact, depend on it, we shall come back: to such
fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom for. The lowest, least
blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals have ever
based themselves, seems to be the primitive one of Cannibalism:
That _I_ can devour _Thee_. What if such Primitive Fact were
precisely the one we had (with our improved methods) to revert
to, and begin anew from!
Chapter 1.2.VIII.
Printed Paper.
In such a practical France, let the theory of Perfectibility say
what it will, discontents cannot be wanting: your promised
Reformation is so indispensable; yet it comes not; who will begin
it—with himself? Discontent with what is around us, still more
with what is above us, goes on increasing; seeking ever new
vents.
Of Street Ballads, of Epigrams that from of old tempered
Despotism, we need not speak. Nor of Manuscript Newspapers
(_Nouvelles à la main_) do we speak. Bachaumont and his
journeymen and followers may close those “thirty volumes of
scurrilous eaves-dropping,” and quit that trade; for at length if
not liberty of the Press, there is license. Pamphlets can be
surreptititiously vended and read in Paris, did they even bear to
be “Printed at Pekin.” We have a _Courrier de l’Europe_ in those
years, regularly published at London; by a De Morande, whom the
guillotine has not yet devoured. There too an unruly Linguet,
still unguillotined, when his own country has become too hot for
him, and his brother Advocates have cast him out, can emit his
hoarse wailings, and _Bastille Dévoilée_ (Bastille unveiled).
Loquacious Abbé Raynal, at length, has his wish; sees the
_Histoire Philosophique,_ with its “lubricity,” unveracity, loose
loud eleutheromaniac rant (contributed, they say, by
Philosophedom at large, though in the Abbé’s name, and to his
glory), burnt by the common hangman;—and sets out on his travels
as a martyr. It was the edition of 1781; perhaps the last notable
book that had such fire-beatitude,—the hangman discovering now
that it did not serve.
Again, in Courts of Law, with their money-quarrels,
divorce-cases, wheresoever a glimpse into the household existence
can be had, what indications! The Parlements of Besancon and Aix
ring, audible to all France, with the amours and destinies of a
young Mirabeau. He, under the nurture of a “Friend of Men,” has,
in State Prisons, in marching Regiments, Dutch Authors” garrets,
and quite other scenes, “been for twenty years learning to resist
despotism:” despotism of men, and alas also of gods. How, beneath
this rose-coloured veil of Universal Benevolence and _Astræa
Redux_, is the sanctuary of Home so often a dreary void, or a
dark contentious Hell-on-Earth! The old Friend of Men has his own
divorce case too; and at times, “his whole family but one” under
lock and key: he writes much about reforming and enfranchising
the world; and for his own private behoof he has needed sixty
_Lettres-de-Cachet_. A man of insight too, with resolution, even
with manful principle: but in such an element, inward and
outward; which he could not rule, but only madden. Edacity,
rapacity;—quite contrary to the finer sensibilities of the heart!
Fools, that expect your verdant Millennium, and nothing but Love
and Abundance, brooks running wine, winds whispering music,—with
the whole ground and basis of your existence champed into a mud
of Sensuality; which, daily growing deeper, will soon have no
bottom but the Abyss!
Or consider that unutterable business of the Diamond Necklace.
Red-hatted Cardinal Louis de Rohan; Sicilian jail-bird Balsamo
Cagliostro; milliner Dame de Lamotte, “with a face of some
piquancy:” the highest Church Dignitaries waltzing, in Walpurgis
Dance, with quack-prophets, pickpurses and public women;—a whole
Satan’s Invisible World displayed; working there continually
under the daylight visible one; the smoke of its torment going up
for ever! The Throne has been brought into scandalous collision
with the Treadmill. Astonished Europe rings with the mystery for
ten months; sees only lie unfold itself from lie; corruption
among the lofty and the low, gulosity, credulity, imbecility,
strength nowhere but in the hunger. Weep, fair Queen, thy first
tears of unmixed wretchedness! Thy fair name has been tarnished
by foul breath; irremediably while life lasts. No more shalt thou
be loved and pitied by living hearts, till a new generation has
been born, and thy own heart lies cold, cured of all its
sorrows.—The Epigrams henceforth become, not sharp and bitter;
but cruel, atrocious, unmentionable. On that 31st of May, 1786, a
miserable Cardinal Grand-Almoner Rohan, on issuing from his
Bastille, is escorted by hurrahing crowds: unloved he, and worthy
of no love; but important since the Court and Queen are his
enemies.[49]
How is our bright Era of Hope dimmed: and the whole sky growing
bleak with signs of hurricane and earthquake! It is a doomed
world: gone all “obedience that made men free;” fast going the
obedience that made men slaves,—at least to one another. Slaves
only of their own lusts they now are, and will be. Slaves of sin;
inevitably also of sorrow. Behold the mouldering mass of
Sensuality and Falsehood; round which plays foolishly, itself a
corrupt phosphorescence, some glimmer of Sentimentalism;—and over
all, rising, as Ark of _their_ Covenant, the grim Patibulary Fork
“forty feet high;” which also is now nigh rotted. Add only that
the French Nation distinguishes itself among Nations by the
characteristic of Excitability; with the good, but also with the
perilous evil, which belongs to that. Rebellion, explosion, of
unknown extent is to be calculated on. There are, as Chesterfield
wrote, “all the symptoms I have ever met with in History!”
Shall we say, then: Wo to Philosophism, that it destroyed
Religion, what it called “extinguishing the abomination (_écraser
l’infâme_)”? Wo rather to those that made the Holy an
abomination, and extinguishable; wo at all men that live in such
a time of world-abomination and world-destruction! Nay, answer
the Courtiers, it was Turgot, it was Necker, with their mad
innovating; it was the Queen’s want of etiquette; it was he, it
was she, it was that. Friends! it was every scoundrel that had
lived, and quack-like pretended to be doing, and been only eating
and _mis_doing, in all provinces of life, as Shoeblack or as
Sovereign Lord, each in his degree, from the time of Charlemagne
and earlier. All this (for be sure no falsehood perishes, but is
as seed sown out to grow) has been storing itself for thousands
of years; and now the account-day has come. And rude will the
settlement be: of wrath laid up against the day of wrath. O my
Brother, be not thou a Quack! Die rather, if thou wilt take
counsel; ’tis but dying once, and thou art quit of it for ever.
Cursed is that trade; and bears curses, thou knowest not how,
long ages after thou art departed, and the wages thou hadst are
all consumed; nay, as the ancient wise have written,—through
Eternity itself, and is verily marked in the Doom-Book of a God!
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is
but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable. It is very notable,
and touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the
French Nation through all its wild destinies. For we shall still
find Hope shining, be it for fond invitation, be it for anger and
menace; as a mild heavenly light it shone; as a red conflagration
it shines: burning sulphurous blue, through darkest regions of
Terror, it still shines; and goes sent out at all, since
Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era still to be
named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,—when there is nothing
left but Hope.
But if any one would know summarily what a Pandora’s Box lies
there for the opening, he may see it in what by its nature is the
symptom of all symptoms, the surviving Literature of the Period.
Abbé Raynal, with his lubricity and loud loose rant, has spoken
_his_ word; and already the fast-hastening generation responds to
another. Glance at Beaumarchais’ _Mariage de Figaro;_ which now
(in 1784), after difficulty enough, has issued on the stage; and
“runs its hundred nights,” to the admiration of all men. By what
virtue or internal vigour it so ran, the reader of our day will
rather wonder:—and indeed will know so much the better that it
flattered some pruriency of the time; that it spoke what all were
feeling, and longing to speak. Small substance in that _Figaro:_
thin wiredrawn intrigues, thin wiredrawn sentiments and sarcasms;
a thing lean, barren; yet which winds and whisks itself, as
through a wholly mad universe, adroitly, with a high-sniffing
air: wherein each, as was hinted, which is the grand secret, may
see some image of himself, and of his own state and ways. So it
runs its hundred nights, and all France runs with it; laughing
applause. If the soliloquising Barber ask: ‘What has your
Lordship done to earn all this?’ and can only answer: ‘You took
the trouble to be born (_Vous vous êtes donné la peine de
naître_),’ all men must laugh: and a gay horse-racing Anglomaniac
Noblesse loudest of all. For how can small books have a great
danger in them? asks the Sieur Caron; and fancies his thin
epigram may be a kind of reason. Conqueror of a golden fleece, by
giant smuggling; tamer of hell-dogs, in the Parlement Maupeou;
and finally crowned Orpheus in the _Théâtre Français_,
Beaumarchais has now culminated, and unites the attributes of
several demigods. We shall meet him once again, in the course of
his decline.
Still more significant are two Books produced on the eve of the
ever-memorable Explosion itself, and read eagerly by all the
world: Saint-Pierre’s _Paul et Virginie_, and Louvet’s _Chevalier
de Faublas_. Noteworthy Books; which may be considered as the
last speech of old Feudal France. In the first there rises
melodiously, as it were, the wail of a moribund world: everywhere
wholesome Nature in unequal conflict with diseased perfidious
Art; cannot escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest
island of the sea. Ruin and death must strike down the loved one;
and, what is most significant of all, death even here not by
necessity, but by etiquette. What a world of prurient corruption
lies visible in that super-sublime of modesty! Yet, on the whole,
our good Saint-Pierre is musical, poetical though most morbid: we
will call his Book the swan-song of old dying France.
Louvet’s again, let no man account musical. Truly, if this
wretched _Faublas_ is a death-speech, it is one under the
gallows, and by a felon that does not repent. Wretched _cloaca_
of a Book; without depth even as a cloaca! What “picture of
French society” is here? Picture properly of nothing, if not of
the mind that gave it out as some sort of picture. Yet symptom of
much; above all, of the world that could nourish itself thereon.
BOOK 1.III.
THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS
Chapter 1.3.I.
Dishonoured Bills.
While the unspeakable confusion is everywhere weltering within,
and through so many cracks in the surface sulphur-smoke is
issuing, the question arises: Through what crevice will the main
Explosion carry itself? Through which of the old craters or
chimneys; or must it, at once, form a new crater for itself? In
every Society are such chimneys, are Institutions serving as
such: even Constantinople is not without its safety-valves; there
too Discontent can vent itself,—in material fire; by the number
of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the Reigning
Power can read the signs of the times, and change course
according to these.
We may say that this French Explosion will doubtless first try
all the old Institutions of escape; for by each of these there
is, or at least there used to be, some communication with the
interior deep; they are national Institutions in virtue of that.
Had they even become personal Institutions, and what we can call
choked up from their original uses, there nevertheless must the
impediment be weaker than elsewhere. Through which of them then?
An observer might have guessed: Through the Law Parlements; above
all, through the Parlement of Paris.
Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not
inaccessible to the influences of their time; especially men
whose life is business; who at all turns, were it even from
behind judgment-seats, have come in contact with the actual
workings of the world. The Counsellor of Parlement, the President
himself, who has bought his place with hard money that he might
be looked up to by his fellow-creatures, how shall he, in all
Philosophe-soirées, and saloons of elegant culture, become
notable as a Friend of Darkness? Among the Paris Long-robes there
may be more than one patriotic Malesherbes, whose rule is
conscience and the public good; there are clearly more than one
hotheaded D’Espréménil, to whose confused thought any loud
reputation of the Brutus sort may seem glorious. The
Lepelletiers, Lamoignons have titles and wealth; yet, at Court,
are only styled “Noblesse of the Robe.” There are Duports of deep
scheme; Fréteaus, Sabatiers, of incontinent tongue: all nursed
more or less on the milk of the _Contrat Social_. Nay, for the
whole Body, is not this patriotic opposition also a fighting for
oneself? Awake, Parlement of Paris, renew thy long warfare! Was
not the Parlement Maupeou abolished with ignominy? Not now hast
thou to dread a Louis XIV., with the crack of his whip, and his
Olympian looks; not now a Richelieu and Bastilles: no, the whole
Nation is behind thee. Thou too (O heavens!) mayest become a
Political Power; and with the shakings of thy horse-hair wig
shake principalities and dynasties, like a very Jove with his
ambrosial curls!
Light old M. de Maurepas, since the end of 1781, has been fixed
in the frost of death: ‘Never more,’ said the good Louis, ‘shall
I hear his step overhead;’ his light jestings and gyratings are
at an end. No more can the importunate reality be hidden by
pleasant wit, and today’s evil be deftly rolled over upon
tomorrow. The morrow itself has arrived; and now nothing but a
solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull matter of
fact, like some dull punctual Clerk (which he originally was);
admits what cannot be denied, let the remedy come whence it will.
In him is no remedy; only clerklike “despatch of business”
according to routine. The poor King, grown older yet hardly more
experienced, must himself, with such no-faculty as he has, begin
governing; wherein also his Queen will give help. Bright Queen,
with her quick clear glances and impulses; clear, and even noble;
but all too superficial, vehement-shallow, for that work! To
govern France were such a problem; and now it has grown well-nigh
too hard to govern even the Œil-de-Bœuf. For if a distressed
People has its cry, so likewise, and more audibly, has a bereaved
Court. To the Œil-de-Bœuf it remains inconceivable how, in a
France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry: did
it not _use_ to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of
parsimony, has “suppressed above six hundred places,” before the
Courtiers could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was.
Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian
manœuvres; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not
coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected
military men; the Mousquetaires, with much else are suppressed:
for he too was one of your suppressors; and unsettling and
oversetting, did mere mischief—to the Œil-de-Bœuf. Complaints
abound; scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Œil-de-Bœuf. Besenval
says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy
(such a _tristesse_) about Court, compared with former days, as
made it quite dispiriting to look upon.
No wonder that the Œil-de-Bœuf feels melancholy, when you are
suppressing its places! Not a place can be suppressed, but some
purse is the lighter for it; and more than one heart the heavier;
for did it not employ the working-classes too,—manufacturers,
male and female, of laces, essences; of Pleasure generally,
whosoever could manufacture Pleasure? Miserable economies; never
felt over Twenty-five Millions! So, however, it goes on: and is
not yet ended. Few years more and the Wolf-hounds shall fall
suppressed, the Bear-hounds, the Falconry; places shall fall,
thick as autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac demonstrates, to the
complete silencing of ministerial logic, that his place cannot be
abolished; then gallantly, turning to the Queen, surrenders it,
since her Majesty so wishes. Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny,
and yet not luckier: ‘We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I,’
said King Louis; ‘but if he had even struck me, I could not have
blamed him.’[50] In regard to such matters there can be but one
opinion. Baron Besenval, with that frankness of speech which
stamps the independent man, plainly assures her Majesty that it
is frightful (_affreux_); ‘you go to bed, and are not sure but
you shall rise impoverished on the morrow: one might as well be
in Turkey.’ It is indeed a dog’s life.
How singular this perpetual distress of the royal treasury! And
yet it is a thing not more incredible than undeniable. A thing
mournfully true: the stumbling-block on which all Ministers
successively stumble, and fall. Be it “want of fiscal genius,” or
some far other want, there is the palpablest discrepancy between
Revenue and Expenditure; a _Deficit_ of the Revenue: you must
“choke (_combler_) the Deficit,” or else it will swallow you!
This is the stern problem; hopeless seemingly as squaring of the
circle. Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do
nothing with it; nothing but propose loans, which were tardily
filled up; impose new taxes, unproductive of money, productive of
clamour and discontent. As little could Controller d’Ormesson do,
or even less; for if Joly maintained himself beyond year and day,
d’Ormesson reckons only by months: till “the King purchased
Rambouillet without consulting him,” which he took as a hint to
withdraw. And so, towards the end of 1783, matters threaten to
come to still-stand. Vain seems human ingenuity. In vain has our
newly-devised “Council of Finances” struggled, our Intendants of
Finance, Controller-General of Finances: there are unhappily no
Finances to control. Fatal paralysis invades the social movement;
clouds, of blindness or of blackness, envelop us: are we breaking
down, then, into the black horrors of NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY?
Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all
Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither,
from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature
is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will
come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on
Nature’s Reality, and be presented there for payment,—with the
answer, _No effects_. Pity only that it often had so long a
circulation: that the original forger were so seldom he who bore
the final smart of it! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring,
are passed on; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank;
and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade
and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in
_contact_ with reality, and can pass the cheat no further.
Observe nevertheless how, by a just compensating law, if the lie
with its burden (in this confused whirlpool of Society) sinks and
is shifted ever downwards, then in return the distress of it
rises ever upwards and upwards. Whereby, after the long pining
and demi-starvation of those Twenty Millions, a Duke de Coigny
and his Majesty come also to have their “real quarrel.” Such is
the law of just Nature; bringing, though at long intervals, and
were it only by Bankruptcy, matters round again to the mark.
But with a Fortunatus’ Purse in his pocket, through what length
of time might not almost any Falsehood last! Your Society, your
Household, practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue, unjust,
offensive to the eye of God and man. Nevertheless its hearth is
warm, its larder well replenished: the innumerable Swiss of
Heaven, with a kind of Natural loyalty, gather round it; will
prove, by pamphleteering, musketeering, that it is a truth; or if
not an unmixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth, then better, a
wholesomely attempered one, (as wind is to the shorn lamb), and
works well. Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow
empty! Was your Arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature’s
ways, then how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her
infinite bounty, come to leave it famishing there? To all men, to
all women and all children, it is now indutiable that your
Arrangement was _false_. Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on
the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all
Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it
rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day,
will sweep it down, and make us free of it.
Chapter 1.3.II.
Controller Calonne.
Under such circumstances of _tristesse_, obstruction and sick
langour, when to an exasperated Court it seems as if fiscal
genius had departed from among men, what apparition could be
welcomer than that of M. de Calonne? Calonne, a man of
indisputable genius; even fiscal genius, more or less; of
experience both in managing Finance and Parlements, for he has
been Intendant at Metz, at Lille; King’s Procureur at Douai. A
man of weight, connected with the moneyed classes; of unstained
name,—if it were not some peccadillo (of showing a Client’s
Letter) in that old D’Aiguillon-Lachalotais business, as good as
forgotten now. He has kinsmen of heavy purse, felt on the Stock
Exchange. Our Foulons, Berthiers intrigue for him:—old Foulon,
who has now nothing to do but intrigue; who is known and even
seen to be what they call a scoundrel; but of unmeasured wealth;
who, from Commissariat-clerk which he once was, may hope, some
think, if the game go right, to be Minister himself one day.
Such propping and backing has M. de Calonne; and then
intrinsically such qualities! Hope radiates from his face;
persuasion hangs on his tongue. For all straits he has present
remedy, and will make the world roll on wheels before him. On the
3d of November 1783, the Œil-de-Bœuf rejoices in its new
Controller-General. Calonne also shall have trial; Calonne also,
in his way, as Turgot and Necker had done in theirs, shall
forward the consummation; suffuse, with one other flush of
brilliancy, our now too leaden-coloured Era of Hope, and wind it
up—into fulfilment.
Great, in any case, is the felicity of the Œil-de-Bœuf.
Stinginess has fled from these royal abodes: suppression ceases;
your Besenval may go peaceably to sleep, sure that he shall awake
unplundered. Smiling Plenty, as if conjured by some enchanter,
has returned; scatters contentment from her new-flowing horn. And
mark what suavity of manners! A bland smile distinguishes our
Controller: to all men he listens with an air of interest, nay of
anticipation; makes their own wish clear to themselves, and
grants it; or at least, grants conditional promise of it. ‘I fear
this is a matter of difficulty,’ said her Majesty.—‘Madame,’
answered the Controller, ‘if it is but difficult, it is done, if
it is impossible, it shall be done (_se fera_).’ A man of such
“facility” withal. To observe him in the pleasure-vortex of
society, which none partakes of with more gusto, you might ask,
When does he work? And yet his work, as we see, is never
behindhand; above all, the fruit of his work: ready-money. Truly
a man of incredible facility; facile action, facile elocution,
facile thought: how, in mild suasion, philosophic depth sparkles
up from him, as mere wit and lambent sprightliness; and in her
Majesty’s Soirees, with the weight of a world lying on him, he is
the delight of men and women! By what magic does he accomplish
miracles? By the only true magic, that of genius. Men name him
“_the_ Minister;” as indeed, when was there another such? Crooked
things are become straight by him, rough places plain; and over
the Œil-de-Bœuf there rests an unspeakable sunshine.
Nay, in seriousness, let no man say that Calonne had not genius:
genius for Persuading; before all things, for Borrowing. With the
skilfulest judicious appliances of underhand money, he keeps the
Stock-Exchanges flourishing; so that Loan after Loan is filled up
as soon as opened. “Calculators likely to know”[51] have
calculated that he spent, in extraordinaries, “at the rate of one
million daily;” which indeed is some fifty thousand pounds
sterling: but did he not procure something with it; namely peace
and prosperity, for the time being? Philosophedom grumbles and
croaks; buys, as we said, 80,000 copies of Necker’s new Book: but
Nonpareil Calonne, in her Majesty’s Apartment, with the
glittering retinue of Dukes, Duchesses, and mere happy admiring
faces, can let Necker and Philosophedom croak.
The misery is, such a time cannot last! Squandering, and Payment
by Loan is no way to choke a Deficit. Neither is oil the
substance for quenching conflagrations;—but, only for assuaging
them, _not_ permanently! To the Nonpareil himself, who wanted not
insight, it is clear at intervals, and dimly certain at all
times, that his trade is by nature temporary, growing daily more
difficult; that changes incalculable lie at no great distance.
Apart from financial Deficit, the world is wholly in such a
new-fangled humour; all things working loose from their old
fastenings, towards new issues and combinations. There is not a
dwarf _jokei_, a cropt Brutus’-head, or Anglomaniac horseman
rising on his stirrups, that does not betoken change. But what
then? The day, in any case, passes pleasantly; for the morrow, if
the morrow come, there shall be counsel too. Once mounted (by
munificence, suasion, magic of genius) high enough in favour with
the Œil-de-Bœuf, with the King, Queen, Stock-Exchange, and so far
as possible with all men, a Nonpareil Controller may hope to go
careering through the Inevitable, in some unimagined way, as
handsomely as another.
At all events, for these three miraculous years, it has been
expedient heaped on expedient; till now, with such cumulation and
height, the pile topples perilous. And here has this
world’s-wonder of a Diamond Necklace brought it at last to the
clear verge of tumbling. Genius in that direction can no more:
mounted high enough, or not mounted, we must fare forth. Hardly
is poor Rohan, the Necklace-Cardinal, safely bestowed in the
Auvergne Mountains, Dame de Lamotte (unsafely) in the
Salpêtrière, and that mournful business hushed up, when our
sanguine Controller once more astonishes the world. An expedient,
unheard of for these hundred and sixty years, has been
propounded; and, by dint of suasion (for his light audacity, his
hope and eloquence are matchless) has been got
adopted,—_Convocation of the Notables._
Let notable persons, the actual or virtual rulers of their
districts, be summoned from all sides of France: let a true tale,
of his Majesty’s patriotic purposes and wretched pecuniary
impossibilities, be suasively told them; and then the question
put: What are we to do? Surely to adopt healing measures; such as
the magic of genius will unfold; such as, once sanctioned by
Notables, all Parlements and all men must, with more or less
reluctance, submit to.
Chapter 1.3.III.
The Notables.
Here, then is verily a sign and wonder; visible to the whole
world; bodeful of much. The Œil-de-Bœuf dolorously grumbles; were
we not well as we stood,—quenching conflagrations by oil?
Constitutional Philosophedom starts with joyful surprise; stares
eagerly what the result will be. The public creditor, the public
debtor, the whole thinking and thoughtless public have their
several surprises, joyful and sorrowful. Count Mirabeau, who has
got his matrimonial and other Lawsuits huddled up, better or
worse; and works now in the dimmest element at Berlin; compiling
_Prussian Monarchies_, Pamphlets _On Cagliostro;_ writing, with
pay, but not with honourable recognition, innumerable Despatches
for his Government,—scents or descries richer quarry from afar.
He, like an eagle or vulture, or mixture of both, preens his
wings for flight homewards.[52]
M. de Calonne has stretched out an Aaron’s Rod over France;
miraculous; and is summoning quite unexpected things. Audacity
and hope alternate in him with misgivings; though the
sanguine-valiant side carries it. Anon he writes to an intimate
friend, ‘_Je me fais pitié à moi-même_ (I am an object of pity to
myself);’ anon, invites some dedicating Poet or Poetaster to sing
“this Assembly of the Notables and the Revolution that is
preparing.”[53] Preparing indeed; and a matter to be sung,—only
not till we have _seen_ it, and what the issue of it is. In deep
obscure unrest, all things have so long gone rocking and swaying:
will M. de Calonne, with this his alchemy of the Notables, fasten
all together again, and get new revenues? Or wrench all asunder;
so that it go no longer rocking and swaying, but clashing and
colliding?
Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold men of
weight and influence threading the great vortex of French
Locomotion, each on his several line, from all sides of France
towards the Château of Versailles: summoned thither _de par le
roi_. There, on the 22d day of February 1787, they have met, and
got installed: Notables to the number of a Hundred and
Thirty-seven, as we count them name by name:[54] add Seven
Princes of the Blood, it makes the round Gross of Notables. Men
of the sword, men of the robe; Peers, dignified Clergy,
Parlementary Presidents: divided into Seven Boards (_Bureaux_);
under our Seven Princes of the Blood, Monsieur, D’Artois,
Penthievre, and the rest; among whom let not our new Duke
d’Orléans (for, since 1785, he is Chartres no longer) be
forgotten. Never yet made Admiral, and now turning the corner of
his fortieth year, with spoiled blood and prospects; half-weary
of a world which is more than half-weary of him, Monseigneur’s
future is most questionable. Not in illumination and insight, not
even in conflagration; but, as was said, “in dull smoke and ashes
of outburnt sensualities,” does he live and digest. Sumptuosity
and sordidness; revenge, life-weariness, ambition, darkness,
putrescence; and, say, in sterling money, three hundred thousand
a year,—were this poor Prince once to burst loose from his
Court-moorings, to what regions, with what phenomena, might he
not sail and drift! Happily as yet he “affects to hunt daily;”
sits there, since he must sit, presiding that Bureau of his, with
dull moon-visage, dull glassy eyes, as if it were a mere tedium
to him.
We observe finally, that Count Mirabeau has actually arrived. He
descends from Berlin, on the scene of action; glares into it with
flashing sun-glance; discerns that it will do nothing for him. He
had hoped these Notables might need a Secretary. They do need
one; but have fixed on Dupont de Nemours; a man of smaller fame,
but then of better;—who indeed, as his friends often hear,
labours under this complaint, surely not a universal one, of
having “five kings to correspond with.”[55] The pen of a Mirabeau
cannot become an official one; nevertheless it remains a pen. In
defect of Secretaryship, he sets to denouncing Stock-brokerage
(_Dénonciation de l’Agiotage_); testifying, as his wont is, by
loud bruit, that he is present and busy;—till, warned by friend
Talleyrand, and even by Calonne himself underhand, that “a
seventeenth _Lettre-de-Cachet_ may be launched against him,” he
timefully flits over the marches.
And now, in stately royal apartments, as Pictures of that time
still represent them, our hundred and forty-four Notables sit
organised; ready to hear and consider. Controller Calonne is
dreadfully behindhand with his speeches, his preparatives;
however, the man’s “facility of work” is known to us. For
freshness of style, lucidity, ingenuity, largeness of view, that
opening Harangue of his was unsurpassable:—had not the
subject-matter been so appalling. A Deficit, concerning which
accounts vary, and the Controller’s own account is not
unquestioned; but which all accounts agree in representing as
“enormous.” This is the epitome of our Controller’s difficulties:
and then his means? Mere Turgotism; for thither, it seems, we
must come at last: Provincial Assemblies; new Taxation; nay,
strangest of all, new Land-tax, what he calls _Subvention
Territoriale_, from which neither Privileged nor Unprivileged,
Noblemen, Clergy, nor Parlementeers, shall be exempt!
Foolish enough! These Privileged Classes have been used to tax;
levying toll, tribute and custom, at all hands, while a penny was
left: but to be themselves taxed? Of such Privileged persons,
meanwhile, do these Notables, all but the merest fraction,
consist. Headlong Calonne had given no heed to the “composition,”
or judicious packing of them; but chosen such Notables as were
really notable; trusting for the issue to off-hand ingenuity,
good fortune, and eloquence that never yet failed. Headlong
Controller-General! Eloquence can do much, but not all. Orpheus,
with eloquence grown rhythmic, musical (what we call Poetry),
drew iron tears from the cheek of Pluto: but by what witchery of
rhyme or prose wilt thou from the pocket of Plutus draw gold?
Accordingly, the storm that now rose and began to whistle round
Calonne, first in these Seven Bureaus, and then on the outside of
them, awakened by them, spreading wider and wider over all
France, threatens to become unappeasable. A Deficit so enormous!
Mismanagement, profusion is too clear. Peculation itself is
hinted at; nay, Lafayette and others go so far as to speak it
out, with attempts at proof. The blame of his Deficit our brave
Calonne, as was natural, had endeavoured to shift from himself on
his predecessors; not excepting even Necker. But now Necker
vehemently denies; whereupon an “angry Correspondence,” which
also finds its way into print.
In the Œil-de-Bœuf, and her Majesty’s private Apartments, an
eloquent Controller, with his ‘Madame, if it is but difficult,’
had been persuasive: but, alas, the cause is now carried
elsewhither. Behold him, one of these sad days, in Monsieur’s
Bureau; to which all the other Bureaus have sent deputies. He is
standing at bay: alone; exposed to an incessant fire of
questions, interpellations, objurgations, from those “hundred and
thirty-seven” pieces of logic-ordnance,—what we may well call
_bouches à feu_, fire-mouths literally! Never, according to
Besenval, or hardly ever, had such display of intellect,
dexterity, coolness, suasive eloquence, been made by man. To the
raging play of so many fire-mouths he opposes nothing angrier
than light-beams, self-possession and fatherly smiles. With the
imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps
answering the incessant volley of fiery captious questions,
reproachful interpellations; in words prompt as lightning, quiet
as light. Nay, the cross-fire too: such side questions and
incidental interpellations as, in the heat of the main-battle, he
(having only one tongue) could not get answered; these also he
takes up at the first slake; answers even these.[56] Could
blandest suasive eloquence have saved France, she were saved.
Heavy-laden Controller! In the Seven Bureaus seems nothing but
hindrance: in Monsieur’s Bureau, a Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop
of Toulouse, with an eye himself to the Controllership, stirs up
the Clergy; there are meetings, underground intrigues. Neither
from without anywhere comes sign of help or hope. For the Nation
(where Mirabeau is now, with stentor-lungs, “denouncing Agio”)
the Controller has hitherto done nothing, or less. For
Philosophedom he has done as good as nothing,—sent out some
scientific Lapérouse, or the like: and is he not in “angry
correspondence” with its Necker? The very Œil-de-Bœuf looks
questionable; a falling Controller has no friends. Solid M. de
Vergennes, who with his phlegmatic judicious punctuality might
have kept down many things, died the very week before these
sorrowful Notables met. And now a Seal-keeper, _Garde-des-Sceaux_
Miroménil is thought to be playing the traitor: spinning plots
for Loménie-Brienne! Queen’s-Reader Abbé de Vermond, unloved
individual, was Brienne’s creature, the work of his hands from
the first: it may be feared the backstairs passage is open,
ground getting mined under our feet. Treacherous Garde-des-Sceaux
Miroménil, at least, should be dismissed; Lamoignon, the eloquent
Notable, a stanch man, with connections, and even ideas,
Parlement-President yet intent on reforming Parlements, were not
he the right Keeper? So, for one, thinks busy Besenval; and, at
dinner-table, rounds the same into the Controller’s ear,—who
always, in the intervals of landlord-duties, listens to him as
with charmed look, but answers nothing positive.[57]
Alas, what to answer? The force of private intrigue, and then
also the force of public opinion, grows so dangerous, confused!
Philosophedom sneers aloud, as if its Necker already triumphed.
The gaping populace gapes over Wood-cuts or Copper-cuts; where,
for example, a Rustic is represented convoking the poultry of his
barnyard, with this opening address: ‘Dear animals, I have
assembled you to advise me what sauce I shall dress you with;’ to
which a Cock responding, ‘We don’t want to be eaten,’ is checked
by ‘You wander from the point (_Vous vous écartez de la
question_).’[58] Laughter and logic; ballad-singer, pamphleteer;
epigram and caricature: what wind of public opinion is this,—as
if the Cave of the Winds were bursting loose! At nightfall,
President Lamoignon steals over to the Controller’s; finds him
“walking with large strides in his chamber, like one out of
himself.”[59] With rapid confused speech the Controller begs M.
de Lamoignon to give him “an advice.” Lamoignon candidly answers
that, except in regard to his own anticipated Keepership, unless
that would prove remedial, he really cannot take upon him to
advise.
“On the Monday after Easter,” the 9th of April 1787, a date one
rejoices to verify, for nothing can excel the indolent falsehood
of these _Histoires and Mémoires_,—“On the Monday after Easter,
as I, Besenval, was riding towards Romainville to the Maréchal de
Segur’s, I met a friend on the Boulevards, who told me that M. de
Calonne was out. A little further on came M. the Duke d’Orléans,
dashing towards me, head to the wind” (trotting _à l’Anglaise_),
“and confirmed the news.”[60] It is true news. Treacherous
Garde-des-Sceaux Miroménil is gone, and Lamoignon is appointed in
his room: but appointed for his own profit only, not for the
Controller’s: “next day” the Controller also has had to move. A
little longer he may linger near; be seen among the money
changers, and even “working in the Controller’s office,” where
much lies unfinished: but neither will that hold. Too strong
blows and beats this tempest of public opinion, of private
intrigue, as from the Cave of all the Winds; and blows him
(higher Authority giving sign) out of Paris and France,—over the
horizon, into Invisibility, or outer Darkness.
Such destiny the magic of genius could not forever avert.
Ungrateful Œil-de-Bœuf! did he not miraculously rain gold manna
on you; so that, as a Courtier said, ‘All the world held out its
hand, and I held out my hat,’—for a time? Himself is poor;
penniless, had not a “Financier’s widow in Lorraine” offered him,
though he was turned of fifty, her hand and the rich purse it
held. Dim henceforth shall be his activity, though unwearied:
Letters to the King, Appeals, Prognostications; Pamphlets (from
London), written with the old suasive facility; which however do
not persuade. Luckily his widow’s purse fails not. Once, in a
year or two, some shadow of him shall be seen hovering on the
Northern Border, seeking election as National Deputy; but be
sternly beckoned away. Dimmer then, far-borne over utmost
European lands, in uncertain twilight of diplomacy, he shall
hover, intriguing for “Exiled Princes,” and have adventures; be
overset into the Rhine stream and half-drowned, nevertheless save
his papers dry. Unwearied, but in vain! In France he works
miracles no more; shall hardly return thither to find a grave.
Farewell, thou facile sanguine Controller-General, with thy light
rash hand, thy suasive mouth of gold: worse men there have been,
and better; but to thee also was allotted a task,—of raising the
wind, and the winds; and thou hast done it.
But now, while Ex-Controller Calonne flies storm-driven over the
horizon, in this singular way, what has become of the
Controllership? It hangs vacant, one may say; extinct, like the
Moon in her vacant interlunar cave. Two preliminary shadows, poor
M. Fourqueux, poor M. Villedeuil, do hold in quick succession
some simulacrum of it,[61]—as the new Moon will sometimes shine
out with a dim preliminary old one in her arms. Be patient, ye
Notables! An actual new Controller is certain, and even ready;
were the indispensable manœuvres but gone through. Long-headed
Lamoignon, with Home Secretary Bréteuil, and Foreign Secretary
Montmorin have exchanged looks; let these three once meet and
speak. Who is it that is strong in the Queen’s favour, and the
Abbé de Vermond’s? That is a man of great capacity? Or at least
that has struggled, these fifty years, to have it thought great;
now, in the Clergy’s name, demanding to have Protestant
death-penalties “put in execution;” no flaunting it in the
Œil-de-Bœuf, as the gayest man-pleaser and woman-pleaser;
gleaning even a good word from Philosophedom and your Voltaires
and D’Alemberts? With a party ready-made for him in the
Notables?—Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse! answer all
the three, with the clearest instantaneous concord; and rush off
to propose him to the King; “in such haste,” says Besenval, “that
M. de Lamoignon had to borrow a _simarre_,” seemingly some kind
of cloth apparatus necessary for that.[62]
Loménie-Brienne, who had all his life “felt a kind of
predestination for the highest offices,” has now therefore
obtained them. He presides over the Finances; he shall have the
title of Prime Minister itself, and the effort of his long life
be realised. Unhappy only that it took such talent and industry
to _gain_ the place; that to _qualify_ for it hardly any talent
or industry was left disposable! Looking now into his inner man,
what qualification he may have, Loménie beholds, not without
astonishment, next to nothing but vacuity and possibility.
Principles or methods, acquirement outward or inward (for his
very body is wasted, by hard tear and wear) he finds none; not so
much as a plan, even an unwise one. Lucky, in these
circumstances, that Calonne has had a plan! Calonne’s plan was
gathered from Turgot’s and Necker’s by compilation; shall become
Loménie’s by adoption. Not in vain has Loménie studied the
working of the British Constitution; for he professes to have
some Anglomania, of a sort. Why, in that free country, does one
Minister, driven out by Parliament, vanish from his King’s
presence, and another enter, borne in by Parliament?[63] Surely
not for mere change (which is ever wasteful); but that all men
may have share of what is going; and so the strife of Freedom
indefinitely prolong itself, and no harm be done.
The Notables, mollified by Easter festivities, by the sacrifice
of Calonne, are not in the worst humour. Already his Majesty,
while the “interlunar shadows” were in office, had held session
of Notables; and from his throne delivered promissory
conciliatory eloquence: “The Queen stood waiting at a window,
till his carriage came back; and Monsieur from afar clapped hands
to her,” in sign that all was well.[64] It has had the best
effect; if such do but last. Leading Notables meanwhile can be
“caressed;” Brienne’s new gloss, Lamoignon’s long head will
profit somewhat; conciliatory eloquence shall not be wanting. On
the whole, however, is it not undeniable that this of ousting
Calonne and adopting the plans of Calonne, is a measure which, to
produce its best effect, should be looked at from a certain
distance, cursorily; not dwelt on with minute near scrutiny. In a
word, that no service the Notables could now do were so obliging
as, in some handsome manner, to—take themselves away! Their “Six
Propositions” about Provisional Assemblies, suppression of
_Corvées_ and suchlike, can be accepted without criticism. The
_Subvention_ on Land-tax, and much else, one must glide hastily
over; safe nowhere but in flourishes of conciliatory eloquence.
Till at length, on this 25th of May, year 1787, in solemn final
session, there bursts forth what we can call an explosion of
eloquence; King, Loménie, Lamoignon and retinue taking up the
successive strain; in harrangues to the number of ten, besides
his Majesty’s, which last the livelong day;—whereby, as in a kind
of choral anthem, or bravura peal, of thanks, praises, promises,
the Notables are, so to speak, organed out, and dismissed to
their respective places of abode. They had sat, and talked, some
nine weeks: they were the first Notables since Richelieu’s, in
the year 1626.
By some Historians, sitting much at their ease, in the safe
distance, Loménie has been blamed for this dismissal of his
Notables: nevertheless it was clearly time. There are things, as
we said, which should not be dwelt on with minute close scrutiny:
over hot coals you cannot glide too fast. In these Seven Bureaus,
where no work could be done, unless talk were work, the
questionablest matters were coming up. Lafayette, for example, in
Monseigneur d’Artois’ Bureau, took upon him to set forth more
than one deprecatory oration about _Lettres-de-Cachet_, Liberty
of the Subject, _Agio_, and suchlike; which Monseigneur
endeavouring to repress, was answered that a Notable being
summoned to speak his opinion must speak it.[65]
Thus too his Grace the Archbishop of Aix perorating once, with a
plaintive pulpit tone, in these words? ‘Tithe, that free-will
offering of the piety of Christians’—‘Tithe,’ interrupted Duke la
Rochefoucault, with the cold business-manner he has learned from
the English, ‘that free-will offering of the piety of Christians;
on which there are now forty-thousand lawsuits in this
realm.’[66] Nay, Lafayette, bound to speak his opinion, went the
length, one day, of proposing to convoke a “National Assembly.”
‘You demand States-General?’ asked Monseigneur with an air of
minatory surprise.—‘Yes, Monseigneur; and even better than
that.’—‘Write it,’ said Monseigneur to the Clerks.[67]—Written
accordingly it is; and what is more, will be acted by and by.
Chapter 1.3.IV.
Loménie’s Edicts.
Thus, then, have the Notables returned home; carrying to all
quarters of France, such notions of deficit, decrepitude,
distraction; and that States-General will cure it, or will not
cure it but kill it. Each Notable, we may fancy, is as a funeral
torch; disclosing hideous abysses, better left hid! The
unquietest humour possesses all men; ferments, seeks issue, in
pamphleteering, caricaturing, projecting, declaiming; vain
jangling of thought, word and deed.
It is Spiritual Bankruptcy, long tolerated; verging now towards
Economical Bankruptcy, and become intolerable. For from the
lowest dumb rank, the inevitable misery, as was predicted, has
spread upwards. In every man is some obscure feeling that his
position, oppressive or else oppressed, is a false one: all men,
in one or the other acrid dialect, as assaulters or as defenders,
must give vent to the unrest that is in them. Of such stuff
national well-being, and the glory of rulers, is not made. O
Loménie, what a wild-heaving, waste-looking, hungry and angry
world hast thou, after lifelong effort, got promoted to take
charge of!
Loménie’s first Edicts are mere soothing ones: creation of
Provincial Assemblies, “for apportioning the imposts,” when we
get any; suppression of _Corvées_ or statute-labour; alleviation
of _Gabelle_. Soothing measures, recommended by the Notables;
long clamoured for by all liberal men. Oil cast on the waters has
been known to produce a good effect. Before venturing with great
essential measures, Loménie will see this singular “swell of the
public mind” abate somewhat.
Most proper, surely. But what if it were not a swell of the
abating kind? There are swells that come of upper tempest and
wind-gust. But again there are swells that come of subterranean
pent wind, some say; and even of inward decomposition, of decay
that has become self-combustion:—as when, according to
Neptuno-Plutonic Geology, the World is all decayed down into due
attritus of this sort; and shall now be _exploded_, and new-made!
These latter abate not by oil.—The fool says in his heart, How
shall not tomorrow be as yesterday; as all days,—which were once
tomorrows? The wise man, looking on this France, moral,
intellectual, economical, sees, “in short, all the symptoms he
has ever met with in history,”—unabatable by soothing Edicts.
Meanwhile, abate or not, cash must be had; and for that quite
another sort of Edicts, namely “bursal” or fiscal ones. How easy
were fiscal Edicts, did you know for certain that the Parlement
of Paris would what they call “register” them! Such right of
registering, properly of mere _writing down_, the Parlement has
got by old wont; and, though but a Law-Court, can remonstrate,
and higgle considerably about the same. Hence many quarrels;
desperate Maupeou devices, and victory and defeat;—a quarrel now
near forty years long. Hence fiscal Edicts, which otherwise were
easy enough, become such problems. For example, is there not
Calonne’s _Subvention Territoriale_, universal, unexempting
Land-tax; the sheet-anchor of Finance? Or, to show, so far as
possible, that one is not without original finance talent,
Loménie himself can devise an _Edit du Timbre_ or
Stamp-tax,—borrowed also, it is true; but then from America: may
it prove luckier in France than there!
France has her resources: nevertheless, it cannot be denied, the
aspect of that Parlement is questionable. Already among the
Notables, in that final symphony of dismissal, the Paris
President had an ominous tone. Adrien Duport, quitting magnetic
sleep, in this agitation of the world, threatens to rouse himself
into preternatural wakefulness. Shallower but also louder, there
is magnetic D’Espréménil, with his tropical heat (he was born at
Madras); with his dusky confused violence; holding of
Illumination, Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt,
Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent
things: of whom can come no good. The very Peerage is infected
with the leaven. Our Peers have, in too many cases, laid aside
their frogs, laces, bagwigs; and go about in English costume, or
ride rising in their stirrups,—in the most headlong manner;
nothing but insubordination, eleutheromania, confused unlimited
opposition in their heads. Questionable: not to be ventured upon,
if we had a Fortunatus’ Purse! But Loménie has waited all June,
casting on the waters what oil he had; and now, betide as it may,
the two Finance Edicts must out. On the 6th of July, he forwards
his proposed Stamp-tax and Land-tax to the Parlement of Paris;
and, as if putting his own leg foremost, not his borrowed
Calonne’s-leg, places the Stamp-tax first in order.
Alas, the Parlement will _not_ register: the Parlement demands
instead a “state of the expenditure,” a “state of the
contemplated reductions;” “states” enough; which his Majesty must
decline to furnish! Discussions arise; patriotic eloquence: the
Peers are summoned. Does the Nemean Lion begin to bristle? Here
surely is a duel, which France and the Universe may look upon:
with prayers; at lowest, with curiosity and bets. Paris stirs
with new animation. The outer courts of the Palais de Justice
roll with unusual crowds, coming and going; their huge outer hum
mingles with the clang of patriotic eloquence within, and gives
vigour to it. Poor Loménie gazes from the distance, little
comforted; has his invisible emissaries flying to and fro,
assiduous, without result.
So pass the sultry dog-days, in the most electric manner; and the
whole month of July. And still, in the Sanctuary of Justice,
sounds nothing but Harmodius-Aristogiton eloquence, environed
with the hum of crowding Paris; and no registering accomplished,
and no “states” furnished. ‘States?’ said a lively Parlementeer:
‘Messieurs, the states that should be furnished us, in my opinion
are the STATES-GENERAL.’ On which timely joke there follow
cachinnatory buzzes of approval. What a word to be spoken in the
Palais de Justice! Old D’Ormesson (the Ex-Controller’s uncle)
shakes his judicious head; far enough from laughing. But the
outer courts, and Paris and France, catch the glad sound, and
repeat it; shall repeat it, and re-echo and reverberate it, till
it grow a deafening peal. Clearly enough here is no registering
to be thought of.
The pious Proverb says, “There are remedies for all things but
death.” When a Parlement refuses registering, the remedy, by long
practice, has become familiar to the simplest: a Bed of Justice.
One complete month this Parlement has spent in mere idle
jargoning, and sound and fury; the _Timbre_ Edict not registered,
or like to be; the _Subvention_ not yet so much as spoken of. On
the 6th of August let the whole refractory Body roll out, in
wheeled vehicles, as far as the King’s Château of Versailles;
there shall the King, holding his Bed of Justice, _order_ them,
by his own royal lips, to register. They may remonstrate, in an
under tone; but they must obey, lest a worse unknown thing befall
them.
It is done: the Parlement has rolled out, on royal summons; has
heard the express royal order to register. Whereupon it has
rolled back again, amid the hushed expectancy of men. And now,
behold, on the morrow, this Parlement, seated once more in its
own Palais, with “crowds inundating the outer courts,” not only
does not register, but (O portent!) declares all that was done on
the prior day to be _null_, and the Bed of Justice as good as a
futility! In the history of France here verily is a new feature.
Nay better still, our heroic Parlement, getting suddenly
enlightened on several things, declares that, for its part, it is
incompetent to register Tax-edicts at all,—having done it by
mistake, during these late centuries; that for such act one
authority only is competent: the assembled Three Estates of the
Realm!
To such length can the universal spirit of a Nation penetrate the
most isolated Body-corporate: say rather, with such weapons,
homicidal and suicidal, in exasperated political duel, will
Bodies-corporate fight! But, in any case, is not this the real
death-grapple of war and internecine duel, Greek meeting Greek;
whereon men, had they even no interest in it, might look with
interest unspeakable? Crowds, as was said, inundate the outer
courts: inundation of young eleutheromaniac Noblemen in English
costume, uttering audacious speeches; of Procureurs,
Basoche-Clerks, who are idle in these days: of Loungers,
Newsmongers and other nondescript classes,—rolls tumultuous
there. “From three to four thousand persons,” waiting eagerly to
hear the _Arrêtés_ (Resolutions) you arrive at within; applauding
with bravos, with the clapping of from six to eight thousand
hands! Sweet also is the meed of patriotic eloquence, when your
D’Espréménil, your Fréteau, or Sabatier, issuing from his
Demosthenic Olympus, the thunder being hushed for the day, is
welcomed, in the outer courts, with a shout from four thousand
throats; is borne home shoulder-high “with benedictions,” and
strikes the stars with his sublime head.
Chapter 1.3.V.
Loménie’s Thunderbolts.
Arise, Loménie-Brienne: here is no case for “Letters of Jussion;”
for faltering or compromise. Thou seest the whole loose _fluent_
population of Paris (whatsoever is not solid, and fixed to work)
inundating these outer courts, like a loud destructive deluge;
the very Basoche of Lawyers’ Clerks talks sedition. The lower
classes, in this duel of Authority with Authority, Greek
throttling Greek, have ceased to respect the City-Watch:
Police-satellites are marked on the back with chalk (the M
signifies _mouchard_, spy); they are hustled, hunted like _feræ
naturæ_. Subordinate rural Tribunals send messengers of
congratulation, of adherence. Their Fountain of Justice is
becoming a Fountain of Revolt. The Provincial Parlements look on,
with intent eye, with breathless wishes, while their elder sister
of Paris does battle: the whole Twelve are of one blood and
temper; the victory of one is that of all.
Ever worse it grows: on the 10th of August, there is “_Plainte_”
emitted touching the “prodigalities of Calonne,” and permission
to “proceed” against him. No registering, but instead of it,
denouncing: of dilapidation, peculation; and ever the burden of
the song, States-General! Have the royal armories no thunderbolt,
that thou couldst, O Loménie, with red right-hand, launch it
among these Demosthenic theatrical thunder-barrels, mere resin
and noise for most part;—and shatter, and smite them silent? On
the night of the 14th of August, Loménie launches his
thunderbolt, or handful of them. Letters named of the Seal (_de
Cachet_), as many as needful, some sixscore and odd, are
delivered overnight. And so, next day betimes, the whole
Parlement, once more set on wheels, is rolling incessantly
towards Troyes in Champagne; “escorted,” says History, “with the
blessings of all people;” the very innkeepers and postillions
looking gratuitously reverent.[68] This is the 15th of August
1787.
What will not people bless; in their extreme need? Seldom had the
Parlement of Paris deserved much blessing, or received much. An
isolated Body-corporate, which, out of old confusions (while the
Sceptre of the Sword was confusedly struggling to become a
Sceptre of the Pen), had got itself together, better and worse,
as Bodies-corporate do, to satisfy some dim desire of the world,
and many clear desires of individuals; and so had grown, in the
course of centuries, on concession, on acquirement and
usurpation, to be what we see it: a prosperous social Anomaly,
deciding Lawsuits, sanctioning or rejecting Laws; and withal
disposing of its places and offices by sale for ready
money,—which method sleek President Hénault, after meditation,
will demonstrate to be the indifferent-best.[69]
In such a Body, existing by purchase for ready-money, there could
not be excess of public spirit; there might well be excess of
eagerness to divide the public spoil. Men in helmets have divided
that, with swords; men in wigs, with quill and inkhorn, do divide
it: and even more hatefully these latter, if more peaceably; for
the wig-method is at once irresistibler and baser. By long
experience, says Besenval, it has been found useless to sue a
Parlementeer at law; no Officer of Justice will serve a writ on
one; his wig and gown are his Vulcan’s-panoply, his enchanted
cloak-of-darkness.
The Parlement of Paris may count itself an unloved body; mean,
not magnanimous, on the political side. Were the King weak,
always (as now) has his Parlement barked, cur-like at his heels;
with what popular cry there might be. Were he strong, it barked
before his face; hunting for him as his alert beagle. An unjust
Body; where foul influences have more than once worked shameful
perversion of judgment. Does not, in these very days, the blood
of murdered Lally cry aloud for vengeance? Baited, circumvented,
driven mad like the snared lion, Valour had to sink extinguished
under vindictive Chicane. Behold him, that hapless Lally, his
wild dark soul looking through his wild dark face; trailed on the
ignominious death-hurdle; the voice of his despair choked by a
wooden gag! The wild fire-soul that has known only peril and
toil; and, for threescore years, has buffeted against Fate’s
obstruction and men’s perfidy, like genius and courage amid
poltroonery, dishonesty and commonplace; faithfully enduring and
endeavouring,—O Parlement of Paris, dost thou reward it with a
gibbet and a gag?[70] The dying Lally bequeathed his memory to
his boy; a young Lally has arisen, demanding redress in the name
of God and man. The Parlement of Paris does its utmost to defend
the indefensible, abominable; nay, what is singular,
dusky-glowing Aristogiton d’Espréménil is the man chosen to be
its spokesman in that.
Such Social Anomaly is it that France now blesses. An unclean
Social Anomaly; but in duel against another worse! The exiled
Parlement is felt to have “covered itself with glory.” There are
quarrels in which even Satan, bringing help, were not unwelcome;
even Satan, fighting stiffly, might cover himself with glory,—of
a temporary sort.
But what a stir in the outer courts of the Palais, when Paris
finds its Parlement trundled off to Troyes in Champagne; and
nothing left but a few mute Keepers of records; the Demosthenic
thunder become extinct, the martyrs of liberty clean gone!
Confused wail and menace rises from the four thousand throats of
Procureurs, Basoche-Clerks, Nondescripts, and Anglomaniac
Noblesse; ever new idlers crowd to see and hear; Rascality, with
increasing numbers and vigour, hunts _mouchards_. Loud whirlpool
rolls through these spaces; the rest of the City, fixed to its
work, cannot yet go rolling. Audacious placards are legible, in
and about the Palais, the speeches are as good as seditious.
Surely the temper of Paris is much changed. On the third day of
this business (18th of August), Monsieur and Monseigneur
d’Artois, coming in state-carriages, according to use and wont,
to have these late obnoxious _Arrêtés_ and protests “expunged”
from the Records, are received in the most marked manner.
Monsieur, who is thought to be in opposition, is met with vivats
and strewed flowers; Monseigneur, on the other hand, with
silence; with murmurs, which rise to hisses and groans; nay, an
irreverent Rascality presses towards him in floods, with such
hissing vehemence, that the Captain of the Guards has to give
order, ‘_Haut les armes_ (Handle arms)!’—at which thunder-word,
indeed, and the flash of the clear iron, the Rascal-flood
recoils, through all avenues, fast enough.[71] New features
these. Indeed, as good M. de Malesherbes pertinently remarks, ‘it
is a quite new kind of contest this with the Parlement:’ no
transitory sputter, as from collision of hard bodies; but more
like ‘the first sparks of what, if not quenched, may become a
great conflagration.’[72]
This good Malesherbes sees himself now again in the King’s
Council, after an absence of ten years: Loménie would profit if
not by the faculties of the man, yet by the name he has. As for
the man’s opinion, it is not listened to;—wherefore he will soon
withdraw, a second time; back to his books and his trees. In such
King’s Council what can a good man profit? Turgot tries it not a
second time: Turgot has quitted France and this Earth, some years
ago; and now cares for none of these things. Singular enough:
Turgot, this same Loménie, and the Abbé Morellet were once a trio
of young friends; fellow-scholars in the Sorbonne. Forty new
years have carried them severally thus far.
Meanwhile the Parlement sits daily at Troyes, calling cases; and
daily adjourns, no Procureur making his appearance to plead.
Troyes is as hospitable as could be looked for: nevertheless one
has comparatively a dull life. No crowds now to carry you,
shoulder-high, to the immortal gods; scarcely a Patriot or two
will drive out so far, and bid you be of firm courage. You are in
furnished lodgings, far from home and domestic comfort: little to
do, but wander over the unlovely Champagne fields; seeing the
grapes ripen; taking counsel about the thousand-times consulted:
a prey to tedium; in danger even that Paris may forget you.
Messengers come and go: pacific Loménie is not slack in
negotiating, promising; D’Ormesson and the prudent elder Members
see no good in strife.
After a dull month, the Parlement, yielding and retaining, makes
truce, as all Parlements must. The Stamp-tax is withdrawn: the
_Subvention_ Land-tax is also withdrawn; but, in its stead, there
is granted, what they call a “Prorogation of the Second
Twentieth,”—itself a kind of Land-tax, but not so oppressive to
the Influential classes; which lies mainly on the Dumb class.
Moreover, secret promises exist (on the part of the Elders), that
finances may be raised by Loan. Of the ugly word States-General
there shall be no mention.
And so, on the 20th of September, our exiled Parlement returns:
D’Espréménil said, “it went out covered with glory, but had come
back covered with mud (_de boue_).” Not so, Aristogiton; or if
so, thou surely art the man to clean it.
Chapter 1.3.VI.
Loménie’s Plots.
Was ever unfortunate Chief Minister so bested as Loménie-Brienne?
The reins of the State fairly in his hand these six months; and
not the smallest motive-power (of Finance) to stir from the spot
with, this way or that! He flourishes his whip, but advances not.
Instead of ready-money, there is nothing but rebellious debating
and recalcitrating.
Far is the public mind from having calmed; it goes chafing and
fuming ever worse: and in the royal coffers, with such yearly
Deficit running on, there is hardly the colour of coin. Ominous
prognostics! Malesherbes, seeing an exhausted, exasperated France
grow hotter and hotter, talks of “conflagration:” Mirabeau,
without talk, has, as we perceive, descended on Paris again,
close on the rear of the Parlement,[73]—not to quit his native
soil any more.
Over the Frontiers, behold Holland invaded by Prussia;[74] the
French party oppressed, England and the Stadtholder triumphing:
to the sorrow of War-Secretary Montmorin and all men. But without
money, sinews of war, as of work, and of existence itself, what
can a Chief Minister do? Taxes profit little: this of the Second
Twentieth falls not due till next year; and will then, with its
“strict valuation,” produce more controversy than cash. Taxes on
the Privileged Classes cannot be got registered; are intolerable
to our supporters themselves: taxes on the Unprivileged yield
nothing,—as from a thing drained dry more cannot be drawn. Hope
is nowhere, if not in the old refuge of Loans.
To Loménie, aided by the long head of Lamoignon, deeply pondering
this sea of troubles, the thought suggested itself: Why not have
a Successive Loan (_Emprunt Successif_), or Loan that went on
lending, year after year, as much as needful; say, till 1792? The
trouble of registering such Loan were the same: we had then
breathing time; money to work with, at least to subsist on. Edict
of a Successive Loan must be proposed. To conciliate the
Philosophes, let a liberal Edict walk in front of it, for
emancipation of Protestants; let a liberal Promise guard the rear
of it, that when our Loan ends, in that final 1792, the
States-General shall be convoked.
Such liberal Edict of Protestant Emancipation, the time having
come for it, shall cost a Loménie as little as the
“Death-penalties to be put in execution” did. As for the liberal
Promise, of States-General, it can be fulfilled or not: the
fulfilment is five good years off; in five years much intervenes.
But the registering? Ah, truly, there is the difficulty!—However,
we have that promise of the Elders, given secretly at Troyes.
Judicious gratuities, cajoleries, underground intrigues, with old
Foulon, named “_Ame damnée_, Familiar-demon, of the Parlement,”
may perhaps do the rest. At worst and lowest, the Royal Authority
has resources,—which ought it not to put forth? If it cannot
realise money, the Royal Authority is as good as dead; dead of
that surest and miserablest death, inanition. Risk and win;
without risk all is already lost! For the rest, as in enterprises
of pith, a touch of stratagem often proves furthersome, his
Majesty announces _a Royal Hunt_, for the 19th of November next;
and all whom it concerns are joyfully getting their gear ready.
Royal Hunt indeed; but of two-legged unfeathered game! At eleven
in the morning of that Royal-Hunt day, 19th of November 1787,
unexpected blare of trumpetting, tumult of charioteering and
cavalcading disturbs the Seat of Justice: his Majesty is come,
with Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon, and Peers and retinue, to hold
Royal Session and have Edicts registered. What a change, since
Louis XIV. entered here, in boots; and, whip in hand, ordered his
registering to be done,—with an Olympian look which none durst
gainsay; and did, without stratagem, in such unceremonious
fashion, hunt as well as register![75] For Louis XVI., on this
day, the Registering will be enough; if indeed he and the day
suffice for it.
Meanwhile, with fit ceremonial words, the purpose of the royal
breast is signified:—Two Edicts, for Protestant Emancipation, for
Successive Loan: of both which Edicts our trusty Garde-des-Sceaux
Lamoignon will explain the purport; on both which a trusty
Parlement is requested to deliver its opinion, each member having
free privilege of speech. And so, Lamoignon too having perorated
not amiss, and wound up with that Promise of States-General,—the
Sphere-music of Parlementary eloquence begins. Explosive,
responsive, sphere answering sphere, it waxes louder and louder.
The Peers sit attentive; of diverse sentiment: unfriendly to
States-General; unfriendly to Despotism, which cannot reward
merit, and is suppressing places. But what agitates his Highness
d’Orléans? The rubicund moon-head goes wagging; darker beams the
copper visage, like unscoured copper; in the glazed eye is
disquietude; he rolls uneasy in his seat, as if he meant
something. Amid unutterable satiety, has sudden new appetite, for
new forbidden fruit, been vouchsafed him? Disgust and edacity;
laziness that cannot rest; futile ambition, revenge,
non-admiralship:—O, within that carbuncled skin what a confusion
of confusions sits bottled!
“Eight Couriers,” in course of the day, gallop from Versailles,
where Loménie waits palpitating; and gallop back again, not with
the best news. In the outer Courts of the Palais, huge buzz of
expectation reigns; it is whispered the Chief Minister has lost
six votes overnight. And from within, resounds nothing but
forensic eloquence, pathetic and even indignant; heartrending
appeals to the royal clemency, that his Majesty would please to
summon States-General forthwith, and be the Saviour of
France:—wherein dusky-glowing D’Espréménil, but still more
Sabatier de Cabre, and Fréteau, since named _Commère_ Fréteau
(Goody Fréteau), are among the loudest. For six mortal hours it
lasts, in this manner; the infinite hubbub unslackened.
And so now, when brown dusk is falling through the windows, and
no end visible, his Majesty, on hint of Garde-des-Sceaux,
Lamoignon, opens his royal lips once more to say, in brief That
he must have his Loan-Edict registered.—Momentary deep
pause!—See! Monseigneur d’Orléans rises; with moon-visage turned
towards the royal platform, he asks, with a delicate graciosity
of manner covering unutterable things: ‘Whether it is a Bed of
Justice, then; or a Royal Session?’ Fire flashes on him from the
throne and neighbourhood: surly answer that ‘it is a Session.’ In
that case, Monseigneur will crave leave to remark that Edicts
cannot be registered by _order_ in a Session; and indeed to
enter, against such registry, his individual humble Protest.
‘_Vous êtes bien le maître_ (You will do your pleasure)’, answers
the King; and thereupon, in high state, marches out, escorted by
his Court-retinue; D’Orléans himself, as in duty bound, escorting
him, but only to the gate. Which duty done, D’Orléans returns in
from the gate; redacts his Protest, in the face of an applauding
Parlement, an applaud
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