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025 - Book 4 Chapter 4 The Procession · The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille

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Speaker 1: The French Revolution, A history by Thomas Carlyle, Volume one,
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Speaker 1: Book four, States General, Chapter four, The Procession. This LibriVox
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Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Read by Peter Dan,
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Speaker 1: Book four, Chapter four The Procession. On the first Saturday
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Speaker 1: of May, it is gala at Versailles, and Monday, fourth
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Speaker 1: of the month is to be a still greater day.
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Speaker 1: The deputies have mostly got thither and sought out lodgings,
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Speaker 1: and are now successively in long, well ushered files. Kissing
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Speaker 1: the hand of Majesty in the Chateau Supreme Rsha de
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Speaker 1: Brezaille does not give the highest satisfaction. We cannot but
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Speaker 1: observe that in ushering no bless or clergy into the
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Speaker 1: anointed presence, he liberally opens both his folding doors, and
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Speaker 1: on the other hand, for members of the third estate,
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Speaker 1: opens only one. However, there is room to enter. Majesty
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Speaker 1: has smiles for all the good. Louis welcomes his honorable
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Speaker 1: members with smiles of hope. He has prepared for them
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Speaker 1: the hall of Menus, the largest near him, and often
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Speaker 1: surveyed the workmen as they went on. A spacious hall
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Speaker 1: with raised platform for throne, court and blood royal space
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Speaker 1: for six hundred Commons deputies in front for half as
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Speaker 1: many clergy on this hand, and half as many no
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Speaker 1: bless on that it has lofty galleries, wherefrom dames of honor,
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Speaker 1: splendid in gazed door, foreign diplomacies and other gilt edged,
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Speaker 1: white frilled individuals to the number of two thousand may
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Speaker 1: sit and look. Broad passages flow through it and outside
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Speaker 1: the inner wall. All round it there are committee rooms,
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Speaker 1: guard rooms, robing rooms. Really a noble hall where upholstery,
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Speaker 1: aided by the subject fine arts, has done its best,
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Speaker 1: and crimson tasseled cloths and emblematic flur dely are not wanting.
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Speaker 1: The hall is ready. The very costume, as we said,
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Speaker 1: has been settled, and the Commons are not to wear
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Speaker 1: the hated slouch hat chapeau claubeaux, but one not quite
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Speaker 1: so slouched chapeau rabbatou as for their manner of working,
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Speaker 1: when all dressed for their voting by head or by order,
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Speaker 1: and the rest this which it were, perhaps still time
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Speaker 1: to settle, and in few hours will be no longer.
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Speaker 1: Time remains unsettled. Hangs dubious in the breast of twelve
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Speaker 1: hundred men, but now Finally, the sun on Monday, the
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Speaker 1: fourth of May has risen unconcerned, as if it were
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Speaker 1: no special day. And yet as his first rays could
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Speaker 1: strike music from the Memnon's statue on the nile, what
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Speaker 1: tones were there so thrilling, tremulous of preparation and foreboding
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Speaker 1: which he awoke in every bosom at Versailles, huge Paris,
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Speaker 1: and all conceivable and inconceivable vehicles is pouring itself forth
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Speaker 1: from each town and village come subsidiary rills, versaires, very
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Speaker 1: sea of men, But above all, from the Church of
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Speaker 1: Saint Louis to the Church of Notre Dame, one vast
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Speaker 1: suspended billow of life, with spray scattered even to the
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Speaker 1: chimney pots. For on chimney tops too, as over the roofs,
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Speaker 1: and up thitherwards on every lamp, iron signpost, breakneck coin
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Speaker 1: of vantage sits patriotic courage, and every window burst with
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Speaker 1: patriotic beauty. For the deputies are gathering at Saint Louis
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Speaker 1: Church to march in procession to Notre Dame and hear sermon, Yes, friends,
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Speaker 1: ye may sit and look boldly or in thought. All
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Speaker 1: France and all Europe may sit and look for It
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Speaker 1: is a day like few others. Oh one might weep
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Speaker 1: like Xerxes. So many serried rows sit perched there, like
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Speaker 1: winged creatures alighted out of heaven. All these and so
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Speaker 1: many more that follow them shall have wholly fled aloft again,
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Speaker 1: vanishing into the blue deep, And the memory of this
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Speaker 1: day still be fresh. It is the baptism day of democracy.
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Speaker 1: Sick time has given it birth, the numbered months being run,
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Speaker 1: the extreme unction day of feudalism, a superannuated system of society,
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Speaker 1: decrepid with toils, for has it not done much produced
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Speaker 1: you and what y have and know? And with thefts
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Speaker 1: and brawls named glorious victories, and with profligacy sensualities, and
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Speaker 1: on the whole, with dotage and senility is now to die,
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Speaker 1: And so with death throes and birth throws, a new
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Speaker 1: one is to be borne. What a work o Earth
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Speaker 1: and heavens, What a work battles and bloodshed, September massacres,
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Speaker 1: bridges of loady, retreats of moscow, waterloose, Peterlood's ten pound franchises,
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Speaker 1: tar barrels and guillotines. And from this present date, if
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Speaker 1: one might prophesy two centuries of it still to fight,
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Speaker 1: two centuries hardly less before democracy go through its due
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Speaker 1: most baleful stages of quacocracy and pestilential world be burnt
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Speaker 1: up and have begun to grow green and young again.
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Speaker 1: Rejoice nevertheless, ye vesay multitudes to you from whom all
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Speaker 1: this is hid, and glorious end of it is visible.
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Speaker 1: This day, sentence of death is pronounced on shams. Judgment
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Speaker 1: of resuscitation were it but far off is pronounced on realities.
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Speaker 1: This day it is declared aloud as with a doom trumpet,
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Speaker 1: that a lie is unbelievable. Believe that stand by that
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Speaker 1: if more there be not, and let what thing or
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Speaker 1: things however will follow it follow Ye can no other
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Speaker 1: God be your help, So spake are greater than any
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Speaker 1: of you. Opening his chapter of world history, Behold, however,
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Speaker 1: the doors of Saint Louis Church flung wide, and the
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Speaker 1: procession of processions advancing towards Notre Dame shouts rend the air,
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Speaker 1: one shout at which Grecian birds might drop dead. It
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Speaker 1: is indeed a stately solemn sight. The elected of France,
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Speaker 1: and then the Court of France. They are marshaled and
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Speaker 1: march there all in prescribed place and costume are commons
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Speaker 1: in plain black mantle and white cravat, no bless in
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Speaker 1: gold worked, bright d eyed cloaks of velvet resplendent, rustling with laces,
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Speaker 1: waving with plumes. The clergy and roche, awlb and other
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Speaker 1: best pontifica libus. Lastly comes the king himself and king's household,
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Speaker 1: also in their brightest blaze of pomp, their brightest and
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Speaker 1: final one, some fourteen hundred men, blown together from all
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Speaker 1: winds on the deepest Errand Yes, in that silent marching
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Speaker 1: mass there lies futurity enough. No symbolic arc like the
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Speaker 1: old Hebrews do these men bear. Yet with them too
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Speaker 1: is a covenant. They too preside at a new era
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Speaker 1: in the history of men. The whole future is there,
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Speaker 1: and destiny dim brooding over it. In the hearts and
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Speaker 1: unshaped thoughts of these men. It lies illegible, inevitable singular
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Speaker 1: to think they have it in them, Yet not they
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Speaker 1: not mortal. Only the eye above can read it as
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Speaker 1: it shall unfold itself in fire and thunder of siege
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Speaker 1: and field artillery, in the rustling of battle banners, the
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Speaker 1: tramp of hosts, in the glow of burning cities, the
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Speaker 1: shriek of strangled nations. Such things lie hidden, safe wrapt
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Speaker 1: in this fourth day of May. Say rather had lain
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Speaker 1: in some other unknown day, of which this latter is
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Speaker 1: the public fruit and outcome. And indeed what wonders lie
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Speaker 1: in every day had we the sight, as happily we
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Speaker 1: have not to decipher it, for is not every meanest
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Speaker 1: day the conflux of two eternities. Meanwhile, suppose we, too,
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Speaker 1: good reader, should, as now without miracle muse Cleo enables
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Speaker 1: us take our station also on some coign of vantage,
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Speaker 1: and glance momentarily over this procession and this life sea
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Speaker 1: with far other eyes than the rest do, namely with
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Speaker 1: prophetic we can mount and stand there without fear of falling.
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Speaker 1: As for the life sea, or on looking unnumbered multitude,
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Speaker 1: it is unfortunately all too dim. Yet, as we gaze fixedly,
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Speaker 1: do not nameless figures, not a few which shall not
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Speaker 1: always be nameless, disclose themselves visible or presumable. There, young
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Speaker 1: baroness to stay out, She evidently looks from a window
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Speaker 1: among older honorable women. Her father is minister in one
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Speaker 1: of the Gala personages. To his own eyes, the chief
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Speaker 1: one young spiritual Amazon, thy rest is not there, and
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Speaker 1: all thy loved fathers. As Malabranche saw all things in God,
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Speaker 1: so Monsieur Necker sees all things in Necca. A theorem
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Speaker 1: that will not hold. But where is the brown, locked,
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Speaker 1: light behaved, fire hearted Demoiselle Taragne, brown eloquent beauty, who
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Speaker 1: with thy winged words and glances shalt thrill rough bosoms,
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Speaker 1: hold steel batagnons and persuade An Austrian kaiser biken helm
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Speaker 1: lie provided for thee in due season, and alas also
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Speaker 1: straight waistcoat and long lodging, and the saltpetriere best hadst
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Speaker 1: thou stayed in native Luxembourg and been the mother of
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Speaker 1: some brave man's children. But it was not thy task.
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Speaker 1: It was not thy lot of the rougher sex. How
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Speaker 1: without tongue or hundred tongues of iron enumerate the notabilities
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Speaker 1: has not. Marquis val Lady hastily quitted his Quaker broad rim,
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Speaker 1: his Pythegorean Greek in Wapping in the city of Glasgow
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Speaker 1: the morand from his courier de l'u ropes Linguae from
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Speaker 1: his annals, they looked eager through the London fog and
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Speaker 1: became ex editors, that they might feed the guillotine and
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Speaker 1: have their due. Does Louvais of Faublas stand a tiptoe
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Speaker 1: and Bressaux hit d'ooville, friend of the blacks. He with
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Speaker 1: the Marquis Condorcet and Clavier the Genevese have created the
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Speaker 1: Monitor newspaper, or are about creating it. Able editors must
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Speaker 1: give account of such a day, or seest thou with
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Speaker 1: any distinctness low down, probably not in place of honor,
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Speaker 1: A stunni slas my yard, riding tipstaff uissay Cheval of
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Speaker 1: the chatelais one of the shiftiest of men, A Captain
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Speaker 1: Ulin of Geneva, Captain Ali of the Queen's Regiment, both
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Speaker 1: with an air of half pay, judin with tile colored whiskers,
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Speaker 1: not yet with tile beard, an unjust dealer in mules.
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Speaker 1: He shall be in a few months Jourdan the headsman,
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Speaker 1: and have other work. Surely also in some place not
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Speaker 1: of honor, stands or sprawls up querulous that he too,
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Speaker 1: though short, may see one squalidest blear'd mortal, redolent of
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Speaker 1: soot and horse drugs. Jean Paul Marato, no chatell oh Maras,
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Speaker 1: renovator of human sides, lecturer on optics. O thou remarkablest
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Speaker 1: horse leach once in d'Artois stable as thy bleared soul
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Speaker 1: looks forth through thy bleared dull, acrid woe stricken face.
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Speaker 1: What sees it in all this any faintest light of
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Speaker 1: hope like dayspring after novazembler night? Or is it but
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Speaker 1: blue sulphu light and specter's woe, suspicion, revenge without end
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Speaker 1: of draper laquantra. How he shut his cloth shop hard
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Speaker 1: by and stepped forth. One need hardly speak nor of
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Speaker 1: sainter Terre, the sonorous brewer from the Faubourg Saint Antoine.
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Speaker 1: Two other figures, and only two we signalize. There the
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Speaker 1: huge brawny figure, through whose black brows and rude flattened
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Speaker 1: face figure ecrasee. There looks a waste energy as of Hercules,
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Speaker 1: not yet furibond. He is an Assyrian, unprovided advocate Danton
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Speaker 1: by name him Mark, then that other, his slight built
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Speaker 1: comrade and craft brother, He with the long curling locks,
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Speaker 1: with the face of dingy blaggardism, wondrously irradiated with genius,
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Speaker 1: as if a naphtha lamp burnt within it. That figure
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Speaker 1: is Camille de Moulain, a figure of infinite shrewdness wit
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Speaker 1: nay humor, one of the sprightliest, clearer souls in all
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Speaker 1: these minions. Thou poor come in say of thee what
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Speaker 1: they may it were but falsehood to pretend one did
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Speaker 1: not almost love thee thy headlong, lightly sparkling man. But
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Speaker 1: the brawnee not yet furibund figure, we say, is Jacques D'Anton,
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Speaker 1: a name it shall be tolerably known in the revolution.
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Speaker 1: He is president of the electoral Cordelia's district at Paris,
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Speaker 1: or are about to be it, and shall open his
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Speaker 1: lungs of brass. We dwell no longer on the mixed
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Speaker 1: shouting multitude for an hour. Behold the Common's deputies are
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Speaker 1: at hand. Which of these six hundred individuals in plain
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Speaker 1: white cravat that have come up to regenerate France might
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Speaker 1: one guess, would become their king? For a king or
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Speaker 1: leader they, as all bodies of men, must have, be
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Speaker 1: their work what it may. There is one man there who,
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Speaker 1: by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it.
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Speaker 1: That man, as future not yet elected king, walks there
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Speaker 1: among the rest, he with a thick blacklocks. Will it
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Speaker 1: be with the here, as himself calls it, or black
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Speaker 1: boar's head, fit to be shaken as a senatorial portent,
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Speaker 1: through whose shaggy beetle brows and rough hewn seem'd carbuncor face.
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Speaker 1: There look natural ugliness, small pox, incontinent bankruptcy, and burning
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Speaker 1: fire of genius like comet fire, glaring foligenous through murkiest confusions.
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Speaker 1: It is Gabriel Honore Ricchetti de Mirrabau, the world compeller man,
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Speaker 1: ruling deputy of eye. According to the baronesster staye. He
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Speaker 1: steps proudly along, though look'd at askance here, and shakes
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Speaker 1: his black chevalier or lion's mane, as if prophetic of
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Speaker 1: great deeds. Yes, reader, that is the type frenchman of
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Speaker 1: this epoch, as Voltaire was of the last. He is
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Speaker 1: French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices,
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Speaker 1: perhaps more French than any other man, and intrinsically such
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Speaker 1: a massive manhood too, mark him well. The National Assembly
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Speaker 1: were all different without that one. Nay, he might say,
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Speaker 1: with the old despot the National Assembly, I am that
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Speaker 1: of a Southern climate of wild southern blood. For the
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Speaker 1: Racketties or a Raghettis, had to fly from Florence and
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Speaker 1: the Guelphs long centuries ago, and settled in Provence, where
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Speaker 1: from generation to generation they have ever approv'd themselves a
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Speaker 1: peculiar kindred, a rascable, indomitable, sharp cutting, true like the
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Speaker 1: steel they wore, of an intensity and activity that sometimes
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Speaker 1: verged towards madness, yet did not reach it. One ancient
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Speaker 1: ricketty and mad fulfillment of a mad vow changed two
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Speaker 1: mountains together, and the chain, with its iron star of
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Speaker 1: five rayses still to be seen. May not a modern
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Speaker 1: rakeetti unchained so much and set it drifting, which also
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Speaker 1: shall be seen. Destiny has work for that swart, burly
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Speaker 1: headed Mirabeau. Destiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar.
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Speaker 1: Did not his grandfather stout cold Darjean silver stock, so
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Speaker 1: they named him Shattered and slashed by seven and twenty
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Speaker 1: wounds in one fell day, lies sunk together on the
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Speaker 1: bridge at Cassano, while Prince Eugene's cavalry galloped and re
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Speaker 1: galloped over him. Only the flying sergeant had thrown a
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Speaker 1: camp kettle over that loved head, and von Dome, dropping
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Speaker 1: his spyglass, moaned out, Mirabeau is dead. Then nevertheless he
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Speaker 1: was not dead. He awoke to breathe, and miraculous surgery
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Speaker 1: for Gabriel was yet to be with his silver stock.
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Speaker 1: He kept his scarred head erect through long years, and
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Speaker 1: wedded and produced toft Marquis Victor, the friend of men. Whereby,
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Speaker 1: at last, in the appointed year seventeen forty nine, this
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Speaker 1: long expected, rough hewn Gabriel Honore did likewise see the light.
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Speaker 1: Roughest lions wop ever littered of that rough breed. How
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Speaker 1: the old lion, for our old Marquis too was lion like,
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Speaker 1: most unconquerable, kingly, genial, most perverse, gazed wonderingly on his offspring,
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Speaker 1: and determined to train him as no lion had yet been.
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Speaker 1: It is in vain o, Marquis, this carb, though thou
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Speaker 1: slay him and flay him, will not learn to draw
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Speaker 1: in dogcard of political economy and be a friend of man.
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Speaker 1: He will not be thou must, and will be himself
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Speaker 1: another than thou. Divorced law suits, whole family save one
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Speaker 1: in prison, and three score lettre de cachet for thy
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Speaker 1: own sole use do but astonish the world our luckless
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Speaker 1: Gabriel sinned against and sinning, has been in the eel
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Speaker 1: of Ray, and heard the Atlantic from his tower in
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Speaker 1: the Cassi Levif, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He
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Speaker 1: has been in the fortress of Joux, and forty two
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Speaker 1: months with hardly clothing on his back, in the dungeon
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Speaker 1: of van Sande, all by letter de cachet from his
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Speaker 1: lion father. He has been in Pontalier, Jail's self constituted prisoner,
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Speaker 1: was noticed fording estuaries of the sea at low water
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Speaker 1: in flight from the face of men. He has pleaded
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Speaker 1: before a parliaments to get back his wife. The public
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Speaker 1: gathering on roofs to see, since they could not hear
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Speaker 1: the clatter teeth clack, dent snarled singular old Mirabeau, discerning
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Speaker 1: in such admired forensic eloquence, nothing but two clattering jaw
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Speaker 1: bones and a head vacant sonorous of the drum species.
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Speaker 1: But as for Gabriel, Honore, in these strange wayfarings, what
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Speaker 1: has he not seen and tried? From droul sergeants to
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Speaker 1: prime ministers, to foreign and domestic book sellers, all manner
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Speaker 1: of men he has seen, all manner of men he
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Speaker 1: has gained for At bottom, it is a social, loving heart,
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Speaker 1: that wild, unconquerable one more, especially all manner of women,
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Speaker 1: from the archer's daughter at Saint to that fair young
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Speaker 1: Sophi Madaimonnie, whom he could not but steal and be
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Speaker 1: beheaded for in effigy. For indeed, hardly since the Arabian
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Speaker 1: prophet lay dead, to Ali's admiration, was there seen such
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Speaker 1: a love hero with the strength of thirty men. In
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Speaker 1: war again, he has helped to conquer Corsica, fort duels,
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Speaker 1: irregular brawls, or swept Calumnia's barons. In literature, he has
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Speaker 1: written on despotism, on Lettre de Cachet, erotic sapphig Westerian obscenities, profanities,
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Speaker 1: books on the Prussian monarchy, on Cagliostro, on Kalan, on
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Speaker 1: the water companies of Paris. Each book comparable, we will say,
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Speaker 1: to a bituminous alarum fire, huge, smoky, sudden, the fire pan,
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Speaker 1: the kindling, the bitchmen were his own. But the lumber
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Speaker 1: of rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish, for all
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Speaker 1: is fuel to him was gathered from huckster and as
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Speaker 1: panniers of every description under heaven, whereby indeed hucksters enough
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Speaker 1: have been heard to exclaim out upon it the fire
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Speaker 1: is mine. Nay, consider it more generally. Seldom had man
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Speaker 1: such a talent for borrowing the idea. The faculty of
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Speaker 1: another man he can make his the man himself. He
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Speaker 1: can make his all reflex and echo to the Aflaiu
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Speaker 1: seraverabra snarls old Mirabeau, who can see but will not crabbed,
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Speaker 1: old friend of men. It is his sociality, his aggregative nature,
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Speaker 1: and will now be the quality of all for him.
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Speaker 1: In that forty years struggle against despotism, he has gained
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Speaker 1: the glorious faculty of self help, and yet not lost
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Speaker 1: the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped rare union.
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Speaker 1: This man can live self sufficing, yet lives also in
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Speaker 1: the life of other men, can make men love him,
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Speaker 1: work with him, a born king of men. But consider further,
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Speaker 1: how as the old marquis still snarls, he has made
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Speaker 1: away with Hume, swallowed all formulas, a fact which if
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Speaker 1: we meditate it will in these days mean much. This
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Speaker 1: is no man of system. Then he is only a
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Speaker 1: man of instincts and insights, a man, nevertheless, who will
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Speaker 1: glare fiercely on any object and see through it and
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Speaker 1: conquer it. For he has intellect, he has will force
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Speaker 1: beyond other men, a man not with lodgic spectacles, but
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Speaker 1: with an eye unhappily without decalogue, moral code, or theorem
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Speaker 1: of any fixed sort, yet not without a strong, living
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Speaker 1: soul in him, and sincerity. There a reality, not an artificiality,
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Speaker 1: not a sham. And so he, having struggled forty years
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Speaker 1: against despotism and made away with all formulas, shall now
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Speaker 1: become the spokesman of a nation bent to do the same.
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Speaker 1: For is it not precisely the struggle of France also
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Speaker 1: to cast off despotism, to make away with her old formulas,
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Speaker 1: having found them nought worn out, far from the reality.
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Speaker 1: She will make away with such formulae, and even go bare,
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Speaker 1: if need be, till she have found new ones to
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Speaker 1: would such work in such manner, marches he this singular
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Speaker 1: Racketti Mirrorbeaux, in fiery, rough figure, with black samps and
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Speaker 1: locks under the slouch hat. He steps along there a
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Speaker 1: fiery forligenous mass which could not be choked and smothered,
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Speaker 1: but would fill all France with smoke. And now it
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Speaker 1: has got air, it will burn its whole substance, its
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Speaker 1: whole smoke atmosphere too, and fill all France with flame.
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Speaker 1: Strange lot, forty years of that smoldering, with foul fire,
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Speaker 1: damp and vapor enough, then victory over that, And like
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Speaker 1: a burning mountain, he blazes heaven high, and for twenty
23:10
Speaker 1: three resplendent months, pours out in flame and molten fire,
23:14
Speaker 1: torrents all that is in him, the farross and wonder
23:17
Speaker 1: sign of an amazed Europe, and then lies hollow, cold forever,
23:25
Speaker 1: passon our questionable Gabrio Lenora, the greatest of them all
23:30
Speaker 1: in the whole National Deputies, in the whole nation, there
23:33
Speaker 1: is none like, and none second to thee. But now,
23:38
Speaker 1: if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these six hundred
23:41
Speaker 1: may be the meanest, shall we say that anxious, slight,
23:45
Speaker 1: ineffectual looking man under thirty in spectacles, His eyes were
23:50
Speaker 1: the glasses of troubled careful, with upturned face snuffling dimly,
23:55
Speaker 1: the uncertain future time complexion of a multiplexatribili colour, the
24:00
Speaker 1: final shade of which may be the pale sea green,
24:05
Speaker 1: that greenish coloured Verdetra. Individual is an advocate of us.
24:10
Speaker 1: His name is Maximilian Robspierre, the son of an advocate.
24:16
Speaker 1: His father founded Mason Lodgers under Charles Edward, the English
24:20
Speaker 1: Prince or pretender. Maximilian the firstborn was thriftily educated. He
24:26
Speaker 1: had brisk Camide de Moulin for schoolmate in the College
24:30
Speaker 1: of Louis la Grande at Paris, but he begged our
24:33
Speaker 1: famed necklace, Cardinal Rohan the patron, to let him depart
24:36
Speaker 1: thence and resign in favor of a younger brother. The
24:40
Speaker 1: strict minded max departed home to paternal Larah, and even
24:45
Speaker 1: had a law case there, and pleaded, not unsuccessfully in
24:48
Speaker 1: favor of the first Franklin. Thunderod with a strict, painful mind,
24:54
Speaker 1: an understanding, small but clear and ready, he grew in
24:58
Speaker 1: favour with official person who could foresee in him an
25:01
Speaker 1: excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius. The bishop,
25:07
Speaker 1: therefore taking counsel, appoints him judge of his diocese, and
25:11
Speaker 1: he faithfully does justice to the people, till behold one
25:14
Speaker 1: day a culprit comes whose crime merits hanging and the
25:19
Speaker 1: strict mindest Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not
25:23
Speaker 1: permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die.
25:27
Speaker 1: A strict minded, straight placed man, a man unfit for revolutions,
25:33
Speaker 1: whose small soul, transparent, wholesome, looking as small ale, could
25:38
Speaker 1: by no chance ferment into virulent Aliga, the mother of
25:42
Speaker 1: ever new Aliga, till all France were grown. Ascetus virulent.
25:47
Speaker 1: We shall see between which two extremes of grandest and meanest,
25:54
Speaker 1: so many grand and mean roll on towards their several destinies.
25:58
Speaker 1: In that procession there is Kazales, the learned young soldier,
26:03
Speaker 1: who shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism and earn
26:06
Speaker 1: the shadow of a name experienced Mounier experience, Malluay, whose
26:12
Speaker 1: presidential parliamentary experience the stream of things shall soon leave stranded.
26:18
Speaker 1: Apetion has left his gown and briefs at Chartra for
26:21
Speaker 1: a stormier sort of pleading, has not forgotten his violin,
26:25
Speaker 1: being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he
26:28
Speaker 1: is still young. Convictions, beliefs, placid, unalterable are in that man,
26:33
Speaker 1: not hindmost of them belief in himself a Protestant clerical rabbo.
26:38
Speaker 1: Saint Etienne, a slender, young, eloquent and vehement Barnave, will
26:43
Speaker 1: help to regenerate France. There are so many of them. Young.
26:48
Speaker 1: Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry.
26:51
Speaker 1: But how many men here under thirty, coming to produce
26:55
Speaker 1: not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world
26:58
Speaker 1: of such. The old to heel up, rents the young
27:02
Speaker 1: to remove rubbish, which latter is it not? Indeed the
27:05
Speaker 1: task here dim formless from this distance, yet authentically there
27:12
Speaker 1: thou noticest the deputies from Nant to us mere clothes screens,
27:17
Speaker 1: with slouch hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket
27:19
Speaker 1: a cayeir of dollyanswers with this singular claws and much
27:23
Speaker 1: such in it, that the master wigmakers of Gnant be
27:26
Speaker 1: not troubled with new guild brethren, the actually existing number
27:30
Speaker 1: of ninety two being more than sufficient. The Wren people
27:35
Speaker 1: have elected farmer Gerard, a man of natural sense and rectitude,
27:39
Speaker 1: without any learning. He walks there with solid step, unique
27:43
Speaker 1: in his rustic farmer clothes, which he will wear always
27:47
Speaker 1: careless of short cloaks and costumes. The name Gerard or
27:52
Speaker 1: Pere Gerard, father Gerard, as they please to call him,
27:55
Speaker 1: will fly far borne about an endless banter in royalists, satires,
28:00
Speaker 1: in Republican didactic almanacs. As for the man Gerrard, being
28:05
Speaker 1: asked once what he did after trial of it, candidly
28:08
Speaker 1: think of this parliamentary work, I think, answered he that
28:12
Speaker 1: there are a good many scoundrels among us. So Wuk's
28:16
Speaker 1: father Gerard, solid in his thick shoes with us, whoever
28:20
Speaker 1: bound and worthy, doctor Guillotine, whom we hope to behold
28:25
Speaker 1: one other time, If not here, the doctor should be here,
28:29
Speaker 1: and we see him with the eye of prophecy. For
28:32
Speaker 1: indeed the Parisian deputies are all a little late singular guillotine,
28:37
Speaker 1: respectable practitioner, doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest
28:42
Speaker 1: immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting place,
28:46
Speaker 1: the bosom of oblivion. Guillotine can improve the ventilation of
28:51
Speaker 1: the hall in all cases of medical, police and hygiene.
28:55
Speaker 1: Be a present aid, but great a fire. He can
28:58
Speaker 1: produce his report on the penal code and reveal therein
29:02
Speaker 1: a cunningly devised beheading machine which shall become famous and
29:08
Speaker 1: world famous. This is the product of Guillotine's endeavors, gain
29:13
Speaker 1: not without meditation and reading, which product popular gravity or levity.
29:18
Speaker 1: Christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were
29:21
Speaker 1: his daughter, La Guillotine with my machine messieurs, I whisk
29:27
Speaker 1: off your head vufesorte la tete in a twinkling, and
29:32
Speaker 1: you have no pain. Whereat they all laugh, unfortunate doctor.
29:38
Speaker 1: For two and twenty years he and Guillotine shall hear
29:42
Speaker 1: nothing but Guillotine, see nothing but Guillotine. Then dying shall
29:47
Speaker 1: through long centuries wander as it were a disconsolate ghost
29:52
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of Styx, and leath his name,
29:55
Speaker 1: like to outlive Caesars. See by ye likewise of Paris time,
30:01
Speaker 1: honored historian of astronomy, ancient and modern. Poor by ye,
30:06
Speaker 1: how thy serenely beautiful philosophizing, with its soft moonshiny clearness,
30:11
Speaker 1: and thinness, ends in foul, thick confusion of presidency, mayorship,
30:16
Speaker 1: diplomatic officiality, rabid triviality, and the throat of everlasting darkness.
30:23
Speaker 1: Far was it to descend from the heavenry galaxy to
30:26
Speaker 1: the drapo rouge beside that fatal dung heap, on that
30:30
Speaker 1: last hell day, thou must tremble, though only with cold defire.
30:36
Speaker 1: Speculation is not practice. To be weak, is not so miserable,
30:40
Speaker 1: but to be weaker than our task o the day
30:43
Speaker 1: when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian on that wild
30:47
Speaker 1: hippogrifph of a democracy which, spurning the firm earth, nay
30:52
Speaker 1: lashing at the very stars, no yet known as Stolfo
30:55
Speaker 1: could have ridden. In the common deputies there are merchants, artists,
31:01
Speaker 1: men of letters, three hundred and seventy four lawyers, and
31:06
Speaker 1: at least one clergyman. The abbe sier him also pariscends
31:11
Speaker 1: among its twenty. Behold him the light, thin man, cold
31:15
Speaker 1: but elastic, wiry instinct, with the pride of logic, passionless
31:20
Speaker 1: or with but one passion that of self conceit, if
31:24
Speaker 1: indeed that can be called a passion, which in its independent,
31:27
Speaker 1: concentrated greatness seems to have soared into transcendentalism. And to
31:32
Speaker 1: sit there with a kind of godlike indifference, and look
31:35
Speaker 1: down on passion. He is the man, and wisdom shall
31:39
Speaker 1: die with him. This is the Siera should be system builder, constitution,
31:44
Speaker 1: builder general, and build constitutions as many as wanted sky high,
31:50
Speaker 1: which shall all unfortunately fall before he gets the scaffolding away.
31:56
Speaker 1: La politique, he said to Dumont, Polity is a science.
31:59
Speaker 1: I think I have completed a chevas. What things O Sia,
32:04
Speaker 1: with thy clear, assiduous eyes art thou to see? But
32:08
Speaker 1: were it not curious to know? How Cier now in
32:11
Speaker 1: these days? For he is said to be still alive,
32:14
Speaker 1: looks out on all that constitution masonry through the roomy
32:18
Speaker 1: soberness of extreme age, might we hope still with the old,
32:23
Speaker 1: irrefragable transcendentalism. The victorious cause pleased the gods, The vanquish
32:29
Speaker 1: one pleased Sier's victor Catoni. Thus, however, amid sky rending
32:36
Speaker 1: vivats and blessings from every heart, has the procession of
32:39
Speaker 1: the common's deputies rolled by. Next follow the noblesse, and
32:45
Speaker 1: next the clergy, concerning both of whom, it might be asked,
32:48
Speaker 1: what they specially have come for, specially little as they
32:53
Speaker 1: dream of it. To answer this question, put in a
32:55
Speaker 1: voice of thunder, what are you doing in God's fair
32:59
Speaker 1: earth and task garden? Where whosoever is not working is
33:03
Speaker 1: begging or stealing whoa oh to themselves and to all
33:07
Speaker 1: if they can only answer collecting tithes preserving game. Remark. Meanwhile,
33:14
Speaker 1: how dor Leon affects to step before his own order
33:18
Speaker 1: and mingle with the commons. For him are vivats few
33:22
Speaker 1: For the rest, though all wave implumed hats of a
33:24
Speaker 1: feudal cut, and have sword on thigh. Though among them
33:28
Speaker 1: is Danetrag, the young Languedocian gentlemen, and indeed many a
33:32
Speaker 1: pear more or less noteworthy. There are lianc Ors and
33:37
Speaker 1: larochefocor the liberal Anglo maniac dukes. There is a filial
33:42
Speaker 1: he pious Lily, a couple of liberal Lameths. Above all
33:46
Speaker 1: there is Lafayette, whose name shall be Cromwell Grandissan, and
33:50
Speaker 1: fill the world. Many a formula has this Lafayette too
33:54
Speaker 1: made away with, Yet not all formulas. He sticks by
33:58
Speaker 1: the Washington formula, and by that will he stick and
34:02
Speaker 1: hang for it, as by sure bower anchor hangs and
34:06
Speaker 1: swings the tight warship, which, after all changes of wildest
34:10
Speaker 1: weather and water, is still found hanging. Happy for him,
34:16
Speaker 1: be it glorious or not. Alone of all Frenchmen he
34:20
Speaker 1: has a theory of the world and right mind to
34:22
Speaker 1: conform thereto, he can become a hero and perfect character,
34:26
Speaker 1: were it but the hero of one idea. Note further
34:31
Speaker 1: our old parliamentary friend, Christam Catline Despremenil. He has returned
34:36
Speaker 1: from the Mediterranean Islands, a red hot royalist, repentant to
34:40
Speaker 1: the finger ends, unsettled looking, whose light dusky glowing at best,
34:45
Speaker 1: now flickers fowl in the socket, whom the National Assembly
34:48
Speaker 1: will buy and buy to save time, regard as in
34:51
Speaker 1: a state of distraction. Note lastly that globular younger Mirabeau,
34:57
Speaker 1: indignant that his elder brother is among the common it
35:01
Speaker 1: is Vicomte Mirabeau, named off in our Mirabeau Tonneau barrel Mirabeaux,
35:06
Speaker 1: on account of his rotundity and the quantities of strong
35:09
Speaker 1: liquor he contains. There then walks our French, no bless
35:15
Speaker 1: all in the old pomp of chivalry. And yet alas how,
35:18
Speaker 1: changed from the old position, drifted far down from their
35:22
Speaker 1: native latitude, like Arctic icebergs, got into the Equatorial sea
35:26
Speaker 1: and fast throwing there. Once these chivalry dus dukes, as
35:31
Speaker 1: they are still named, did actually lead the world, were
35:35
Speaker 1: it only towards battle spoil where lay the world's best wages. Then, moreover,
35:40
Speaker 1: being the ablest leaders going, they had their lion's share
35:43
Speaker 1: those juice which none could grudge them. But now when
35:47
Speaker 1: so many looms improved, plow shares, steam engines, and bills
35:50
Speaker 1: of exchange have been invented, and for battle brawling itself,
35:54
Speaker 1: men had drill sergeants at eighteen pence a day. What
35:58
Speaker 1: mean these gold mantle shivel figures walking there in black
36:02
Speaker 1: velvet cloaks, in high plumed hats of a feudal cut
36:06
Speaker 1: reeds shaken in the wind. The clergy have got up
36:11
Speaker 1: with cair for abolishing pluralities, enforcing residents of bishops better
36:16
Speaker 1: payment of tithes. The dignitaries we can observe, walk stately,
36:21
Speaker 1: apart from the numerous undignified, who indeed are properly little
36:25
Speaker 1: other than commons disguised in curate frocks. Here, however, though,
36:30
Speaker 1: by strange ways, shall the precept be fulfilled, and they
36:33
Speaker 1: that are greatest, much to their astonishment, become least, for
36:38
Speaker 1: one example out of many, mark that plausible Gregoire one
36:42
Speaker 1: day cure Gregoire shall be a bishop. When they now
36:45
Speaker 1: stately are wandering distracted as bishops in partibus with other thought.
36:50
Speaker 1: Mark also the Abbe Morie, his broad, bold face, mouth,
36:55
Speaker 1: accurately primmed, full eyes that ray out intelligence, falsehood, the
36:59
Speaker 1: sol of sophistry, which is astonished, you should find it sophistical,
37:04
Speaker 1: skillfullest vamper up of old rotten leather to make it
37:08
Speaker 1: look like new. Always a rising man, he used to
37:10
Speaker 1: tell Mercieur, you will see I shall be in the
37:13
Speaker 1: academy before you. Likely indeed, thou skillfulest, Maurie, nay thou
37:19
Speaker 1: shalt have a cardinal's hat and plush into glory, But
37:22
Speaker 1: alas also in the long run mere oblivion, like the
37:26
Speaker 1: rest of us and six feet of earth, what boots it?
37:29
Speaker 1: Vamping rotten leather? On these terms, glorious in comparison is
37:34
Speaker 1: the livelihood thy good old father earns. By making shoes,
37:38
Speaker 1: one may hope in a sufficient manner. Mauren does not
37:42
Speaker 1: want for audacity. He shall wear pistols by and by
37:45
Speaker 1: and it death. Cries of la lan turned the lamp iron,
37:48
Speaker 1: answer coolly, friends, will you see better there? But yonder
37:54
Speaker 1: halting lamely along, thou noticed. Next Bishop toleron Perigore, his
37:58
Speaker 1: reverence of Auta a sardonic grimness lies in that irreverent
38:03
Speaker 1: reverence of uta. He will do and suffer strange things,
38:07
Speaker 1: and will become surely one of the strangest things ever
38:10
Speaker 1: seen or likely to be seen, A man living in
38:12
Speaker 1: falsehood and on falsehood. Yet not what you can call
38:15
Speaker 1: a false man. There is the specialty. It will be
38:19
Speaker 1: an enigma for future ages. One may hope hitherto such
38:23
Speaker 1: a product of nature and art was possible only for
38:26
Speaker 1: this age of ours, age of paper and a burning
38:29
Speaker 1: of paper. Consider Bishop Talhron and Marquis Lafayette as the
38:34
Speaker 1: topmost of their two kinds, and say, once more, looking
38:37
Speaker 1: at what they did and what they were, o tempos
38:41
Speaker 1: ferax raierum. On the whole, however, has not this unfortunate
38:47
Speaker 1: clergy also drifted in the time stream, far from its
38:50
Speaker 1: native latitude, an anomalous mass of men, of whom the
38:54
Speaker 1: whole world has already a dim understanding that it can
38:57
Speaker 1: understand nothing. They were once a priesthood, interpreters of wisdom,
39:03
Speaker 1: revealers of the Holy, that is in man, a true
39:06
Speaker 1: claus or inheritance of God on earth. But now they
39:11
Speaker 1: pass silently with such cay years as they have been
39:14
Speaker 1: able to redact, and none cries. God bless them. King Louis,
39:20
Speaker 1: with his court, brings up the rear. He cheerful in
39:24
Speaker 1: this day of hope, is saluted with plaudites. Still more
39:27
Speaker 1: Neca his minister. Not so the Queen on whom hope shines,
39:32
Speaker 1: not steadily any more. Ill fated Queen, her hair is
39:38
Speaker 1: already gray with many cares and crosses. Her first born
39:42
Speaker 1: son is dying. In these weeks. Black falsehood has ineffaceably
39:47
Speaker 1: soiled her name, ineffaceably. While this generation lasts instead of
39:52
Speaker 1: vive la, Raine voices insult her with vived' Laon of
39:57
Speaker 1: her queenly beauty, little remains except its stateliness, not now gracious,
40:02
Speaker 1: but haughty, rigid, silently enduring with the most mixed feeling,
40:08
Speaker 1: wherein joy has no part. She resigns herself to a
40:12
Speaker 1: day she hoped never to have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette,
40:16
Speaker 1: with thy quick, noble instincts, vehement glancings, vision, all too fitful,
40:21
Speaker 1: narrow for the work thou hast to do. Oh, there
40:25
Speaker 1: are tears in store for thee bitterest wailing, soft womanly meltings.
40:30
Speaker 1: Though thou hast the heart of an imperial to raise
40:33
Speaker 1: his daughter, Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the future.
40:40
Speaker 1: And so in stately procession have passed the elected of France,
40:45
Speaker 1: some towards honor and quick fire consummation, most towards dishonor
40:50
Speaker 1: not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation, all towards eternity.
40:57
Speaker 1: So many heterogeneities cast again either into the fermenting that
41:02
Speaker 1: there with incalculable action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments to
41:08
Speaker 1: work out healing for a sick, moribund system of society,
41:13
Speaker 1: probably the strangest body of men, if we consider well
41:16
Speaker 1: that ever met together on our planet, on such an
41:19
Speaker 1: errand so thousandfold complex, a society ready to burst up
41:24
Speaker 1: from its infinite depths, and these men its rulers and healers,
41:28
Speaker 1: without life rule for themselves, other life rule than a gospel.
41:32
Speaker 1: According to Jean Jacques, to the wisest of them, what
41:36
Speaker 1: we must call the wisest man, is properly an accident
41:40
Speaker 1: under the sky. Man is without duty round him, except
41:44
Speaker 1: it be to make the constitution. He is without heaven
41:48
Speaker 1: above him or hell beneath him. He has no god
41:51
Speaker 1: in the world. What further or better belief can be
41:55
Speaker 1: said to exist in these twelve hundred Belief in high
41:59
Speaker 1: plume hats of a feudal cut in heraldic scutcheons, and
42:03
Speaker 1: the divine right of kings, in the divine right of
42:06
Speaker 1: game destroyers. Belief for what is still worse canting half belief,
42:11
Speaker 1: or worst of all, mere machiavellic pretense of belief in
42:15
Speaker 1: consecrated dough wafers and the godhead of a poor old
42:18
Speaker 1: Italian man. Nevertheless, in that im miserable confusion and corruption
42:24
Speaker 1: which struggles there so blindly to become less confused than corrupt,
42:29
Speaker 1: there is, as we said, this one salient point of
42:32
Speaker 1: a new life discernible, the deep fixed determination to have
42:36
Speaker 1: done with shams, a determination which consciously or unconsciously is fixed,
42:42
Speaker 1: which wax is ever more fixed into very madness, and
42:45
Speaker 1: fixed idea which, in such embodiment as lies provided there
42:50
Speaker 1: shall now unfold itself rapidly, monstrous, stupendous, unspeakable new For
42:56
Speaker 1: long thousands of years, how has the Heaven's light oftentimes
43:00
Speaker 1: in this earth, to clothe itself in thunder an electric murkiness,
43:04
Speaker 1: and descend as molten lightning blasting, if purifying, nay, is
43:10
Speaker 1: it not rather the very murkiness and atmospheric suffocation that
43:13
Speaker 1: brings the lightning and the light the new evangel as
43:18
Speaker 1: the old has been. Was it to be borne in
43:20
Speaker 1: the destruction of a world? But how the deputies assisted
43:25
Speaker 1: at high mass and heard sermon and applauded the preacher
43:28
Speaker 1: church as it was when he preached politics. How next day,
43:31
Speaker 1: with sustained pomp, they are for the first time installed
43:35
Speaker 1: in their soil de menu hall, no longer of amusements,
43:39
Speaker 1: and become a states general readers can fancy for themselves.
43:44
Speaker 1: The King from his estrade, gorgeous as Solomon in all
43:47
Speaker 1: his glory, runs his eye over that majestic hall, many plumed,
43:53
Speaker 1: many glancing bright, tinted as rainbow in the galleries and
43:57
Speaker 1: near side spaces where beauty sits reigning bright influence, satisfaction
44:02
Speaker 1: as of one that after long voyaging had got to
44:05
Speaker 1: port plays over his broad, simple face, the innocent king.
44:11
Speaker 1: He rises and speaks with sonorous tone, a conceivable speech
44:16
Speaker 1: with which still more with the succeeding one hour and
44:18
Speaker 1: two hour speeches of Guard Dessaux and Monsieur Necker, full
44:22
Speaker 1: of nothing but patriotism, hope, faith, and the deficiency of
44:25
Speaker 1: the revenue. No reader of these pages shall be tried.
44:30
Speaker 1: We remark only that as his majesty, on finishing the speech,
44:34
Speaker 1: put on his plumed hat, and the noblesse, according to custom,
44:37
Speaker 1: imitated him atier zetat de pities did, mostly not without
44:42
Speaker 1: a shade of fierceness in like manner, clap on or
44:45
Speaker 1: even crush on their slouched hats, and stand there awaiting
44:49
Speaker 1: the issue. Thick buzz among them between majority and minority
44:54
Speaker 1: of coup vrevo de coupvravo hats off, hats, on to
44:59
Speaker 1: which his magic deputs end by taking off his own
45:02
Speaker 1: royal hat. Again. The session terminates without further accident or
45:07
Speaker 1: omen than this, with which significantly enough France has opened
45:11
Speaker 1: her states general. End of Book four, Chapter three,