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034 - Book 5 Chapter 9 The Lanterne · 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 five, The Third Estate, Chapter nine, The Lantern. This
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Peter
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  Speaker 1: Dan Book five, Chapter nine, The Lantern. The fall of
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  Speaker 1: the Bastille may be said to have shaken all France
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  Speaker 1: to the deepest foundations of its existence. The rumor of
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  Speaker 1: these wonders flies everywhere with the natural speed of rumor,
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  Speaker 1: with an effect thought to be preternatural, produced by plots
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  Speaker 1: did d'Or leon or laclaw nay did Mirabeau not overburdened
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  Speaker 1: with money at this time, send riding couriers out from
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  Speaker 1: Paris to gallop on all radii or highways towards all
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  Speaker 1: points of France. It is a miracle which no penetrating
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  Speaker 1: man will call in question. Already in most towns electoral
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  Speaker 1: committees were met to regret Neca in harangue and rest.
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  Speaker 1: In many a town as n Cayenne lyons An, a
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  Speaker 1: buliant people was already regretting him in brick bats and musketry.
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  Speaker 1: But now at every town's end in France, they do
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  Speaker 1: arrive in these days of terror men as men will
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  Speaker 1: arrive nay men on horseback, since Rumor often as travels riding,
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  Speaker 1: these men declare with alarmed countenance the brigands to be
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  Speaker 1: coming to be just at hand, and do then ride
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  Speaker 1: on about their further business, be what it might, whereupon
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  Speaker 1: the whole population of such town defensively flies to arms.
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  Speaker 1: Petition is soon thereafter forwarded to national assembly. In such
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  Speaker 1: peril and terror of peril, leave to organize yourself cannot
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  Speaker 1: be withheld. The armed population becomes everywhere an enrolled national
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  Speaker 1: guard thus rides rumor careering along all radii from Paris
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  Speaker 1: outwards to such purpose in few days some say not
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  Speaker 1: many hours. Or France to the utmost border's bristles with
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  Speaker 1: bayonets singular but undeniable, miraculous or not. But thus may
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  Speaker 1: any chemical liquid, though cool to the freezing point or
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  Speaker 1: far lower, still continue liquid, and then on the slightest
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  Speaker 1: stroke or shake it at once, rushes wholly into ice.
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  Speaker 1: Thus has France, for long months and even years, been
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  Speaker 1: chemically dealt with, brought below zero, and now shaken by
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  Speaker 1: the fall of a bastille, it instantaneously congeals into one
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  Speaker 1: crystallized mass of sharp cutting steel. Guayashi lataka or where
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  Speaker 1: who touches it. In Paris, an electoral committee with a
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  Speaker 1: new mayor and general is urgent, with belligerent workmen to
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  Speaker 1: resume their handicrafts. Strong dames of the market Dame de
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  Speaker 1: la houl demit congratulatory harangues present bouquets to the shrine
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  Speaker 1: of Saint Genevieve. Unenrolled men deposit their arms not so
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  Speaker 1: readily as could be wished, and receive nine francs with
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  Speaker 1: t d ms, royal visits and sanctioned revolution. There is
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  Speaker 1: halcion weather, whether even of preternatural brightness, the hurricane being overblown. Nevertheless,
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  Speaker 1: as is natural, the waves still run high, hollow rocks,
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  Speaker 1: retaining their murmur. We are but at the twenty second
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  Speaker 1: of the month, hardly above a week since the bustee
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  Speaker 1: you fell, when it suddenly appears that old Foulon is alive, Nay,
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  Speaker 1: that he is here in early morning in the streets
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  Speaker 1: of Paris, the extortioner, the plotter who would make the
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  Speaker 1: people eat grass, and was a liar from the beginning.
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  Speaker 1: It is even so the deceptive, sumptuous funeral of some
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  Speaker 1: domestic that died the hiding place at Vitry towards Fontainebleau,
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  Speaker 1: have not availed that wretched old man, some living domestic
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  Speaker 1: or dependent, for none Love's fulon has betrayed him to
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  Speaker 1: the village merciless bore a victry, unearth him, pounce on
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  Speaker 1: him like hell hounds westward old infamy to Paris, to
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  Speaker 1: be judged at the Hotel de Ville. His old head,
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  Speaker 1: which seventy four years have bleached his bear. They have
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  Speaker 1: tied an emblematic bundle of grass on his back. A
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  Speaker 1: garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck. In
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  Speaker 1: this manner, led with ropes, goaded on with curses and menaces,
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  Speaker 1: must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward the pitiablest,
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  Speaker 1: most unpitied of all old men, Sootie Saint d Antoine,
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  Speaker 1: And every street mustering its crowds as he passes the
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  Speaker 1: Place de Grave. The hall of the ot del de
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  Speaker 1: Ville will scarcely hold his escort and him Foulon must
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  Speaker 1: not only be judged righteously, but judged there where he stands,
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  Speaker 1: without any delay. Appoint seven judges, ye municipals of seventy
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  Speaker 1: and seven, name them yourselves, or we will name them,
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  Speaker 1: but judge him. Electoral rhetoric eloquence of Mayor by ye
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  Speaker 1: is wasted, explaining the beauty of the law's delay, delay,
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  Speaker 1: and still delay. Behold, o Mayre of the people. The
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  Speaker 1: morning has worn itself into noon, and he is still unjudged. Lafayette,
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  Speaker 1: pressingly sent for arrives, gives voice this Foulon, a known
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  Speaker 1: man is guilty, almost beyond doubt. But may he not
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  Speaker 1: have accomplices? Ought not the truth to be cunningly pumped
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  Speaker 1: out of him in the abbe prison. It is a
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  Speaker 1: new light, Saints. Collotism claps hands at which hand clapping
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  Speaker 1: Foulon in his faintness, as his destiny would have it,
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  Speaker 1: also claps See they understand one another, cries dark Sanscollottism,
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  Speaker 1: blazing into fury of suspicion. Friends said a person in
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  Speaker 1: good clothes, stepping forward, What is the use of judging
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  Speaker 1: this man? Has he not been judged these thirty years?
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  Speaker 1: With wild yells, Sanscollottism clutches him in its hundred hands,
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  Speaker 1: is whirled across the place de Grave to the lantern
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  Speaker 1: lamproon which there is at the corner of the Rue
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  Speaker 1: de la Vallnerie, pleading bitterly for life, to the deaf
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  Speaker 1: winds only with the third rope, for two ropes broke
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  Speaker 1: and a quavering voice still pleaded. Can he be so
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  Speaker 1: much as got hanged? His body is dragged through the streets,
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  Speaker 1: his head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled
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  Speaker 1: with grass amid sounds as of toufet from a grass
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  Speaker 1: eating people. Surely, if revenge is a kind of justice,
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  Speaker 1: it is a wild kind o mad sans coolottism. Hast
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  Speaker 1: thou risen in thy mad darkness, in thy souten rags
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  Speaker 1: unexpectedly like an ensiladus living buried from under his tranacria.
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  Speaker 1: They that would make grass be eaten do now eat
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  Speaker 1: grass in this manner? After long dumb groaning generations, has
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  Speaker 1: the turn suddenly become thine to such abysmal overturns and
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  Speaker 1: frightful instantaneous inversions of the center of gravity? Are human
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  Speaker 1: solecisms all liable if they but knew it. The more
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  Speaker 1: liable the falser and top heavier they are. To add
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  Speaker 1: to the horror of Merbai and his municipals, word comes
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  Speaker 1: that Berthier has also been arrested, that he is on
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  Speaker 1: his way hither from Campiegne, Bertia and Tendon, say tax
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  Speaker 1: levier of Paris, secophant and tyrant forestaller of Corn, contriver
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  Speaker 1: of camps against the people, accused of many things, is
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  Speaker 1: he not foolon son in law, and in that one
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  Speaker 1: point guilty of all? In these hours too, when Sanscolotism
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  Speaker 1: has its blood up, the shuddering municipals send one of
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  Speaker 1: their number to escort him with mounted national guards. At
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  Speaker 1: the fall of day, the wretched Bertier, still wearing a
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  Speaker 1: face of courage, arrives at the barrier in an open carriage,
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  Speaker 1: with the municipal beside him. Five hundred horsemen with drawn sabers,
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  Speaker 1: unarmed footmen enough not without noise. Placards go brandished round him,
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  Speaker 1: bearing legibly his indictment as sans Colotism, with unlegal brevity
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  Speaker 1: in huge letters draws it up. Paris has come forth
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  Speaker 1: to meet him with hand clappings, with windows flung up,
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  Speaker 1: with dancers, triumph songs as of the furies. Lastly, the
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  Speaker 1: head of foulon this also meets him on a pike. Well,
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  Speaker 1: might his look become glazed and sense fail him at
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  Speaker 1: such sight? Nevertheless, be the man's conscience what it may.
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  Speaker 1: His nerves are of iron at the Hotel de Villa.
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  Speaker 1: He will answer nothing. He says, he obeyed superior ordered.
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  Speaker 1: They have his papers, they may judge and determine. As
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  Speaker 1: for himself, not having closed an eye these two nights,
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  Speaker 1: he demands before all things to have sleep. Leaden sleep, Thou, miserable.
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  Speaker 1: Battier guards rise with him in motion to wardsards the abbey.
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  Speaker 1: At the very door of the Hotel de Villa. They
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  Speaker 1: are clutched, flung asunder as by a vortex of mad arms.
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  Speaker 1: Bertier whirls towards the lantern. He snatches a musket, fowls
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  Speaker 1: and strikes, defending himself like a mad lion, is borne down, trampled, hanged, mangled.
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  Speaker 1: His head too, and even his heart flies over the
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  Speaker 1: city on a pike. Horrible in lands that had known
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  Speaker 1: equal justice, not so unnatural in lands that had never
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  Speaker 1: known it. Le sanki cour letil don Sipur, asked Barnave,
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  Speaker 1: intimating that the gallows, though by irregular methods, has its own.
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  Speaker 1: Thou thyself, o reader, when thou turnest that corner of
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  Speaker 1: the Rue de la Vannilie, and discernest still that same
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  Speaker 1: grim bracket of old iron, will not want for reflections
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  Speaker 1: over a grocer's shop, or otherwise with a bust of
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  Speaker 1: Louis fourteenth in the niche under it, or now no
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  Speaker 1: longer in the niche. It still sticks out there, still
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  Speaker 1: holding out an ineffectual light of fish oil, and has
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  Speaker 1: seen worlds wrecked, and says nothing but to the eye
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  Speaker 1: of unenlightened patriotism, what a thundercloud was this suddenly shaping
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  Speaker 1: itself in the radiance of the Halcian weather, cloud of
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  Speaker 1: erebus blackness, betokening latent electricity without limit mere by e
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  Speaker 1: General Lafayette throw up their commissions in an indignant manner,
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  Speaker 1: need to be flattered back again. The cloud disappears, as
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  Speaker 1: thunder clouds do. The Halcian weather returns, though of a
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  Speaker 1: grayer complexion, of a character more and more evidently not supernatural. Thus,
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  Speaker 1: in any case, with what rubs soever shall the Bastille
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  Speaker 1: be abolished from our earth and with it feudalism, despotism,
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  Speaker 1: and one hopes scoundrelism generally, and all hard usage of
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  Speaker 1: man by his brother man alas the scoundrelism and hard
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  Speaker 1: usage are not so easy of abolition. But as for
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  Speaker 1: the Bastille, it sinks day after day and month after month,
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  Speaker 1: its ashlars and boulders tumbling down continually by express order
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  Speaker 1: of our municipals. Crowds of the curios roam through its caverns,
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  Speaker 1: gaze on the skeletons found walled up on the Eubliett's
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  Speaker 1: iron cages, monstrous stone blocks with padlocked chains. One day
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  Speaker 1: we discern Mirabeau there, along with Genevese. Dumont, workers and
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  Speaker 1: onlookers make reverent way for him, fling verses flowers on
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  Speaker 1: his path, Bastilla papers and curiosities into his carriage with vivats.
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  Speaker 1: Able editors compile books from the Bastille archives, from what
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  Speaker 1: of them remain unburnt. The key of that rubber den
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  Speaker 1: shall cross the Atlantic, shall lie on Washington's hall table.
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  Speaker 1: The great clock ticks now in a private, patriotic clockmaker's apartment,
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  Speaker 1: no longer measuring ours of mere heaviness. Vanished is the
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  Speaker 1: Bastille of what we call vanished, the body or sandstone
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  Speaker 1: of it, hanging in benign metamorphosis for centuries to come
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  Speaker 1: over the sane waters. As pont Louis says, the soul
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  Speaker 1: of its living perhaps still longer in the memories of men.
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  Speaker 1: So far, ye, august senators, with your tennis court oaths,
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  Speaker 1: your inertia and impetus, your sagacity and pertinacity, have ye
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  Speaker 1: brought us. And yet think monsieurs, as the petitioner justly
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  Speaker 1: urged you, who are our saviors? Did yourselves need saviors?
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  Speaker 1: The brave Bastillers, namely workmen of Paris, many of them
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  Speaker 1: in straitened pecuniary circumstances. Subscriptions are open, lists are formed
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  Speaker 1: more accurate than Ali's harangues are delivered. A body of
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  Speaker 1: bastill Ye heroes, tolerably complete, did get together comparable to
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  Speaker 1: the Argonauts, hoping to endure like them. But in little
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  Speaker 1: more than a year the whirlpool of things threw them
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  Speaker 1: asunder again, and they sank. So many highest superlatives achieved
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  Speaker 1: by man are followed by new hire and dwindle into
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  Speaker 1: comparatives and positives. The siege of the Bastille weighed with
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  Speaker 1: which in the historical balance most other sieges, including that
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  Speaker 1: of Troy Town, a gossamer cost, as we find in
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  Speaker 1: killed and mortally wounded on the part of the besieges,
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  Speaker 1: some eighty three persons on the part of the besieged
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  Speaker 1: After all that straw burning, fire pumping, and deluge of musketry,
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  Speaker 1: one poor solitary, invalid shot, stone, dead rid mort on
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  Speaker 1: the battlements, the bastille of Fortress, like the city of Jericho,
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  Speaker 1: was overturned by miraculous sound. End of Book five, Chapter
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  Speaker 1: nine mo