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050 - Book 7 Chapter 11 From Versailles · 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 seven, The Insurrection of Women, Chapter eleven from Versailles.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by
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  Speaker 1: Peter Dan, Book seven, Chapter eleven from Versailles. However, the
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  Speaker 1: Paris National Guard, wholly under arms, has cleared the palace
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  Speaker 1: and even occupies the nearer external spaces, extruding miscellaneous patriotism
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  Speaker 1: for the most part, into the Grand court, or even
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  Speaker 1: into the forecourt. The body guards, you can observe, have
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  Speaker 1: now of a verity hoisted the national cockade, for they
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  Speaker 1: step forward to the windows or balconies, hat aloft in
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  Speaker 1: hand on each hat a huge trecoler, and fling over
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  Speaker 1: their bandoliers in sign of surrender, and shout vive la naission,
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  Speaker 1: to which how can the generous heart respond But with
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  Speaker 1: vivalrois vivant le gardis kaup. His Majesty himself has appeared
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  Speaker 1: with Lafayette on the balcony, and again appears vivel o
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  Speaker 1: ah greets him from all throats, but also from some
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  Speaker 1: one throat is heard. Louis a Parie the King to Paris,
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  Speaker 1: her majesty too. On demand shows herself, though there is
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  Speaker 1: peril in it. She steps out on the balcony with
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  Speaker 1: her little boy and girl, no children pant dom fond
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  Speaker 1: cried the voices. She gently pushes back her children and
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  Speaker 1: stands alone, her hands serenely crossed on her breast. Should
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  Speaker 1: I die, she had said, I will do it. Such
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  Speaker 1: serenity of heroism has its effect. Lafayette, with ready wit,
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  Speaker 1: in his high flown chivalrous way, takes that fair queenly
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  Speaker 1: hand and reverently, kneeling kisses it. Thereupon the people do
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  Speaker 1: shout Vive Larraine. Nevertheless, poor Weber, sore or even thought
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  Speaker 1: he saw for hardly the third part of poor Weber's
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  Speaker 1: experiences in such hysterical days will stand scrutiny. One of
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  Speaker 1: these brigands level his musket at her majesty, with or
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  Speaker 1: without intention to shoot, for another of the brigands angrily
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  Speaker 1: struck it down, so that all and the Queen herself,
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  Speaker 1: nay the very captain of the bodyguards, have grown national.
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  Speaker 1: The very captain of the bodyguard steps out now with
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  Speaker 1: Lafayette on the hat of the repentant man as an
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  Speaker 1: enormous trickler, large as a soup platter or sunflower visible
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  Speaker 1: to the utmost forecourt. He takes the national oath with
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  Speaker 1: a loud voice, elevating his hat, at which side all
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  Speaker 1: the army raise their bonnets on their bayonets, with shouts.
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  Speaker 1: Sweet is reconcilement to the heart of man. Lafayette has
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  Speaker 1: sworn flounder. He swears the remaining bodyguards down in the
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  Speaker 1: marble court. The people clasp them in their arms. O,
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  Speaker 1: my brothers, why would ye force us to slay you? Behold,
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  Speaker 1: there is joy over you, as over returning prodigal sons.
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  Speaker 1: The poor body guards. Now National and Tricola exchange bonnets,
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  Speaker 1: exchange arms. There shall be peace and fraternity and still
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  Speaker 1: vive leuri and also las aparie, not now from one throat,
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  Speaker 1: but from all throats as one, For it is the
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  Speaker 1: heart's wish of all mortals. Yes, the king to paris
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  Speaker 1: what else? Ministers may consult to National deputies wag their heads,
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  Speaker 1: But there is now no other possibility. You have forced
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  Speaker 1: him to go willingly. At one o'clock, Lafayette gives audible
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  Speaker 1: assurance to that purpose and universal insurrection, with immeasurable shout
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  Speaker 1: and a discharge of all the firearms. Clear and rusty,
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  Speaker 1: great and small that it has returns him acceptance. What
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  Speaker 1: a sound heard for leagues, a doom peal. That sound
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  Speaker 1: two rolls away into the silence of ages, and the
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  Speaker 1: Chateau of Versailles stands ever since, vacant, hushed still, its
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  Speaker 1: spacious courts, grass grown responsive to the hoe of the weeder.
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  Speaker 1: Times and generations roll on in their confused gulf current,
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  Speaker 1: and buildings, like builders, have their destiny. Till one o'clock.
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  Speaker 1: Then there will be three parties. National Assembly, National Rascality,
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  Speaker 1: National Royalty, all busy enough. Rascality rejoices women trim themselves
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  Speaker 1: with trickola, nay motherly. Paris has sent her avengers sufficient
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  Speaker 1: cartloads of loaves, which are shouted over, which are gratefully consumed.
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  Speaker 1: The avengers, in return, are searching for grain stores, loading
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  Speaker 1: them in fifty wagons. That so a national king, probable
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  Speaker 1: harbinger of all blessings, may be the evident bringer of
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  Speaker 1: plenty for one, and thus has sans collotism made prisoner
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  Speaker 1: its king revoking his parole. The monarchy has fallen, and
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  Speaker 1: not so much as honorably, no ignominiously, with struggle, indeed
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  Speaker 1: oft repeated, but then with unwise struggle, wasting its strength
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  Speaker 1: in fits and paroxysms. At every new paroxysm foiled more
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  Speaker 1: pitifully than before. Thus Broyer's whiff of grape shot, which
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  Speaker 1: might have been something, has dwindled to the pot valor
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  Speaker 1: of an opera a past and Oh Richard o monoi,
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  Speaker 1: which again we shall see dwindled to a favrous conspiracy,
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  Speaker 1: a thing to be settled by the hanging of one chevalier.
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  Speaker 1: Poor monarchy, But what save foulest defeat can await that
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  Speaker 1: man who wills, and yet wills not. Apparently the king
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  Speaker 1: either has a right assertable as such to the death
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  Speaker 1: before God and man or else he has no right.
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  Speaker 1: Apparently the one or the other could he? But no
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  Speaker 1: may Heaven pity him. Were Lewis wise, he would this
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  Speaker 1: day abdicate, Is it not strained? So few kings abdicate,
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  Speaker 1: and none yet heard of, has been known to commit suicide.
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  Speaker 1: Fritz the First of Prussia alone tried it, and they
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  Speaker 1: cut the rope. As for the National Assembly, which decrees
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  Speaker 1: this morning that it is inseparable from his majesty and
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  Speaker 1: will follow him to Paris. There may one thing be noted,
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  Speaker 1: its extreme want of bodily health. After the fourteenth of
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  Speaker 1: July there was a certain sickliness observable among honorable members,
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  Speaker 1: so many demanding passports on account of infirm health. But
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  Speaker 1: now for these following days there is a perfect Murian President, Mounier, Lally, Tollendal,
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  Speaker 1: Clermontoneer and all constitutional two Chamber royalists needing change of air,
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  Speaker 1: as most No Chamber royalists had formerly done. For in truth,
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  Speaker 1: it is the secondtion, this that has now come most
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  Speaker 1: extensive among Commons deputies, no bless clergy, so that to
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  Speaker 1: Switzerland alone there go sixty thousand. They will return in
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  Speaker 1: the day of accounts, yes, and have hot welcome. But
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  Speaker 1: emigration on emigration is the peculiarity of France. One emigration
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  Speaker 1: follows another, grounded on reasonable fear, unreasonable hope, largely also
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  Speaker 1: on childish pet The high flyers have gone first. Now
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  Speaker 1: the lower fliers, and even the lower will go down
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  Speaker 1: to the crawlers. Whereby, however, cannot our National Assembly so
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  Speaker 1: much the more commodiously make the Constitution your two chamber
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  Speaker 1: Anglo maniacs, being all safe distant on foreign shores. Abbe
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  Speaker 1: Mauri is seized and sent back again he tough as
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  Speaker 1: tanned leather with eloquent Captain Kazzales and some others will
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  Speaker 1: stand it out for another year. But here meanwhile the
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  Speaker 1: question gen arises. Was Philip d'r leon seen this day
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  Speaker 1: in the Bois de Boulogne, ingray surtout, waiting under the
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  Speaker 1: wet sea foliage? What the day might bring forth? Alas, yes,
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  Speaker 1: the ido lun of him was in Webors and other
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  Speaker 1: such brains. The Chatelais shall make large inquisition into the matter,
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  Speaker 1: examining a hundred and seventy witnesses, and Deputy Charbru publish
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  Speaker 1: his report, but disclose nothing farther. What then, has caused
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  Speaker 1: these two unparalleled October days? For surely such dramatic exhibition
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  Speaker 1: never yet enacted itself without dramatist and machinist Wood and
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  Speaker 1: Punch emerges not with his domestic sorrows into the light
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  Speaker 1: of day. Unless the wire be pulled? How can human mobs?
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  Speaker 1: Was it not d'Or leon then, and La Clare, Marquis, Sillery,
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  Speaker 1: Mirabeaux and the sons of confusion, hoping to drive the
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  Speaker 1: king to Metz and gather the spoil. Nay, was it
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  Speaker 1: not quite contrariwise, the Oi de Burnt body guard, Colonel
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  Speaker 1: de Guige, minister, saint priest and high flying loyalist, hoping
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  Speaker 1: also to drive him to Mets and try it by
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  Speaker 1: the sword of civil war. Good marquis toulingion. The historian
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  Speaker 1: and deputy feels constrained to admit that it was both
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  Speaker 1: alas my friend's credulous incredulity is a strange matter. But
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  Speaker 1: when a whole nation is smitten with suspicion and sees
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  Speaker 1: a dramatic miracle in the very operation of the gastric juice,
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  Speaker 1: is what help is there? Such nation is already a
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  Speaker 1: mere hypochondriac bundle of diseases, as good as changed into
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  Speaker 1: glass at Trebellia, decadent, and will suffer crises. Is not
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  Speaker 1: suspicion itself the one thing to be suspected, as Montaigne feared,
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  Speaker 1: only one fear. Now, however, the short hour has struck.
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  Speaker 1: His Majesty is in his carriage with his queen sister
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  Speaker 1: Elizabeth and two royal children. Not for another hour can
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  Speaker 1: the infinite procession get marshaled and under way. Weather is dim, drizzling,
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  Speaker 1: the mind confused, and noise great processional marches. Not a few.
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  Speaker 1: Our world has seen Roman triumphs and ovations, Cabiric symbol beatings,
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  Speaker 1: Royal progresses, Irish funerals, But this of the French monarchy
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  Speaker 1: marching to its bed remained to be seen, miles long
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  Speaker 1: and of breadth, losing itself in vagueness for all the
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  Speaker 1: neighboring country crowds to see, slow stagnating along like shawless lake,
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  Speaker 1: yet with a noise like Niagara, like babel and bedlam,
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  Speaker 1: a splashing and a tramping, a hurrahing, uproaring, musket volleying
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  Speaker 1: the truest segment of chaos seen in these latter ages,
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  Speaker 1: till slowly it disembogue itself in the thickening dusk into
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  Speaker 1: expectant Paris through a double row of faces all the
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  Speaker 1: way from Pussy to the Hotel de Ville. Consider this
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  Speaker 1: vanguard of national troops with trains of artillery, of pikemen
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  Speaker 1: and pike women, mounted on cannons, on carts, hackney coaches,
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  Speaker 1: or on foot, tripudiating in tricola ribbons from heel to heel,
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  Speaker 1: loaves struck on the points of bayonets, green boughs stuck
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  Speaker 1: in gun barrels. Next as main March fifty cart loads
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  Speaker 1: of corn which have been lent for peace from the
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  Speaker 1: stores of Versailles, behind which follows stragglers of the Guard
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  Speaker 1: de Corps, all humiliated in grenadier bonnets. Close on these
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  Speaker 1: comes the royal carriage. Come royal carriages. For there are
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  Speaker 1: an hundred national deputies too, among whom sits Mirabeau, his
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  Speaker 1: remarks not given. Then finally pell mell as rearguard fly
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  Speaker 1: under a Swiss hundred Swiss other bodyguards, brigands, whosoever cannot
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  Speaker 1: get before between and among all which masses flows without limits.
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  Speaker 1: Sant antoine and the menadic cohort manatic, especially about the
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  Speaker 1: royal carriage tripudiating there covered with tricola, sing elusive songs,
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  Speaker 1: pointing with one hand to the royal carriage, which the
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  Speaker 1: illusions hit, and pointing to the provision wagons with the
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  Speaker 1: other hand, and these words, courage friends, we shall not
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  Speaker 1: want bread. Now we are bringing you the baker, the
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  Speaker 1: bakers and baker's boy, l boulangees l boulanger e la
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  Speaker 1: petit mitron. The wet day draggles the trickler, But the
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  Speaker 1: joy is unextinguishable. Is not all well now, ah Madame
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  Speaker 1: not tra bon rain, said some of these strong women
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  Speaker 1: some days. Hence, ah, Madame, our good queen, don't be
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  Speaker 1: a traitor any more, nassoyes blue treetre, and we will
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  Speaker 1: all love you. Poor Weber went splashing along close by
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  Speaker 1: the royal carriage with a tear in his eye. Their
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  Speaker 1: majesties did me the honor or I thought. They did
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  Speaker 1: to testify from time to time by shrugging of the shoulders,
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  Speaker 1: by looks directed to Heaven the emotions they felt. Thus,
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  Speaker 1: like frail cockle floats the royal lifeboat, helmless on black
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  Speaker 1: deluges of rascality mercy are in his loose way, estimates
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  Speaker 1: the procession and assistance at two hundred thousand. He says
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  Speaker 1: it was one boundless, inarticulate ha ha, transcendent world laughter,
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  Speaker 1: comparable to the saturnalia of the ancients. Why not here too,
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  Speaker 1: as we said, is human nature once more human? Shudder
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  Speaker 1: at it, whoso is of shuddering humor? Yet behold it
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  Speaker 1: is human. It has swallowed all formulas, it repudiates. Even so,
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  Speaker 1: for which reason they that collect vases and antiques with
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  Speaker 1: figures of dancing bacantes in wild and orbit impossible positions
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  Speaker 1: may look with some interest on it. Thus, however, has
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  Speaker 1: the slow moving chaos or modern saturnalia of the ancients
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  Speaker 1: reached the barrier and must halt to be harangued by
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  Speaker 1: mayor by Thereafter it has to lumber along between the
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  Speaker 1: double row of faces in the transcendent heaven, lashing ha
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  Speaker 1: ha two hours longer, towards the Hotel de Ville, then
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  Speaker 1: again to be harangued there by several persons, by Moreau
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  Speaker 1: de Saint Marie, among others. Moreau of the three thousand Orders,
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  Speaker 1: now National Deputy for San Domingo, to all which poor Lewis,
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  Speaker 1: who seemed to experience a slight emotion on entering this
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  Speaker 1: town hall, can answer only that he comes with pleasure
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  Speaker 1: with confidence among his people, whereby ye, in reporting it
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  Speaker 1: forgets confidence, and the poor queen says eagerly add with confidence,
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  Speaker 1: Monsieur rejoins, by ye, you are happier than if I
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  Speaker 1: had not forgot. Finally, the king is shown on an
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  Speaker 1: upper balcony by torchlight, with a huge trickler in his hat,
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  Speaker 1: and all the people, says Weber, grasped one another's hands,
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  Speaker 1: thinking now, surely the new era was born hardly till
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  Speaker 1: eleven at night can royalty get to its vacant, long
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  Speaker 1: deserted palace of the Tuileries to lodge their somewhat in
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  Speaker 1: strolling play a fashion. It is Tuesday, the sixth of
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  Speaker 1: October seventeen eighty nine. Poor Lewis has two other Paris
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  Speaker 1: processions to make, one ludicrous ignominious like this, the other
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  Speaker 1: not so ludicrous nor ignominious, but serious, nay sublime. End
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  Speaker 1: of Book seven, Chapter eleven. End of the French Revolution,
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  Speaker 1: A History by Thomas Carlyle, Volume one,