 22. The Procession, from The French Revolution, by Thomas Karla. We dwell no longer on the mixed shouting multitude, for now, behold, the commons deputies are at hand. Which of these six hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, white one guess would become their king? For a king or leader, they, as all bodies of men, must have, be their work what it may. There is one man there who, by character, faculty position, is fittest of all to do it. That man, as future not yet elected king, walks there among the rest. He, with the thick black locks, will it be? With the oar, as himself calls it, or black boar's head, fit to be shaken as a senatorial portent, through whose shaggy beetle-brows and rough hewn seemed carbuncled face, their look natural ugliness, smallpox incontinence, bankruptcy, and burning fire of genius, like comet fire, glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions. It is Gabriel Honoré Riccati de Mirabeau, the world-compeller, man-ruling deputy of X. According to the Baronest Estal, he steps proudly along, though looked at a scant here, and shakes his black chevelure, or lion's mane, as if prophetic of great deeds. Yes, reader, that is the type Frenchman of this epoch, as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices, perhaps more French than any other man, and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National Assembly were all different without that one. Nay, he might say with the old despot, the National Assembly, I am that. Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood, for the Riccates, or Arrigates, had to fly from Florence and the Guelphs, long centuries ago, and settled in Provence, where from generation to generation they have ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred, irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they wore, of an intensity and activity that sometimes verged towards madness, yet did not reach it. One ancient Riccati, in mad fulfilment of a mad vow, chains two mountains together, and the chain with its iron star of five rays is still to be seen. May not a modern Riccati unchain so much, and set it drifting, which also shall be seen. Destiny has worked for that sort burly-headed Mirabeau. Destiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his grandfather, Stout Coll d'Agent, Silverstock, so they named him, shattered and slashed by seven and twenty wounds in one fell day, lie sunk together on the bridge at Cassano, while Prince Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him. Only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp kettle over that loved head, and Vendôme, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out, Mirabeau is dead then. Nevertheless, he was not dead. He awoke to breath and miraculous surgery, for Gabriel was yet to be. With his Silverstock he kept his scarred head erect through long years, and wedded, and produced, tough Marquis Victor, the friend of men. Whereby at last, in the appointed year, 1749, this long-expected rough-hewn Gabriel honoree did likewise see the light, roughest lion's welp ever littered of that rough breed. How the old lion, for our old Marquis too, was lion-like, most unconquerable, kingly, genial, most perverse, gazed wonderingly on his offspring, and determined to train him as no lion had yet been. It is in vain, O Marquis, this cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will not learn to draw in dog-cart of political economy and be a friend of men. He will not be thou, but must and will be himself another than thou. Divorce lawsuits, whole family save one in prison, and three-score letter the cachet for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world. Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle of Wray, and heard the Atlantic from his tower, in the Castle of Ife, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseille. He has been in the Fortress of Jus, and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes, all by letter the cachet from his lion father. He has been in Pont-Aliès jails, self-constituted prisoner, was noticed fording estuaries of the sea at low water, in flight from the face of men. He has pleaded before ex-parlements to get back his wife, the public gathering on roofs to sea since they could not hear. The clatter-teeth clacton snarls singular old mirabeau, discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones and a head vacant sonorous of the drum-species. But as for Gabriel Honoré in these strange wayfarings, what has he not seen and tried, from drill-surgeons to prime ministers to foreign and domestic book-sellers, all manner of men he has seen, all manner of men he has gained, for at bottom it is a social loving heart, that wild, unconquerable one, more especially all manner of women. From the archer's daughter at Sainte, to that fair young Sophie, Madame Monnier, whom he could not but steal and be beheaded for in effigy. For indeed, hardly since the Arabian prophet lay dead to Ali's admiration, was there seen such a love-hero with the strength of thirty men. In war again he has helped to conquer Corsica, fought duels, irregular brawls, horse-whipped columnius barons. In literature he has written on despotism, on letter de cachet, erotics sapphic verterien, obscenities profanities, books on the Prussian monarchy, on caliostro, on cologne, on the water-companies of Paris, each book comparable, we will say, to a bituminous alarm-fire, huge, smoky, sudden. The fire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen, were his own, but the lumber of rags old wood, and nameless combustible rubbish, for all his fuel to him, was gathered from hucksters and ass-paniers of every description under heaven, whereby indeed hucksters enough have been heard to exclaim, out upon it, the fire is mine. Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for borrowing, the idea, the faculty of another man, he can make his, the man himself he can make his. All reflex and echo, to le reflet et de rê verbert, snarls old Mirabeau, who can see but will not, crabbed old friend of men. It is his sociality, his aggregative nature, and will now be the quality of qualities for him. In that forty years struggle against despotism, he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union this man can live self-sufficing, yet lives also in the life of other men, can make men love him, work with him, a born king of men. But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has made away with, umay, swallowed, snuffed up, all formulas. A fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man of system, then. He is only a man of instincts and insights, a man nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any object, and see through it, and conquer it. For he has intellect, he has will, force, beyond other men, a man not with logic spectacles, but with an eye, unhappily without decalogue, moral code, or theorem of any fixed sort, yet not without a strong living soul in him, and sincerity there, a reality, not an artificiality, not a sham. And so he, having struggled forty years against despotism, and made away with all formulas, shall now become the spokesman of a nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off despotism, to make away with her old formulas, having found them not, worn out, far from the reality. She will make away with such formulas, and even go bare, if need be, till she have found new ones. Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riccati Mirabeau, in fiery rough figure, with black samson locks under the slouch hat, he steps along there, a fiery, fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke, and now it has got air, it will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke atmosphere too, and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! forty years of that smoldering with foul fire damp and vapour enough, then victory over that, and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven high, and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out in flame and molten fire torrents, all that is in him, the pharaohs and wonder sign of an amazed Europe, and then lies hollow, cold forever. Pass on, thou questionable Gabrielle Honoré, the greatest of them all, in the whole national deputies, in the whole nation, there is none like thee, and none second to thee. But now, if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these six hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty in spectacles? His eyes were the glasses off, troubled, careful, with upturned face snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time, complexion of a multiplex-aphrabilier colour, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green. That greenish-coloured verdatra-individual is an advocate of Arras. His name is Maximilien Robespierre, the son of an advocate, his father founded Mason lodges under Charles Edward, the English prince or pretender. Maximilien, the first-born, was thriftily educated. He had brisk Camille des Moulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis-Lecron at Paris. But he begged our famed necklace cardinal, Rouen, the patron, to let him depart thence and resign in favour of a younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed, home to paternal Arras, and even had a law-case fair and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, in favour of the first Franklin Thunder rod. With a strict, painful mind, an understanding small but clear and ready, he grew in favour with official persons who could foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius. The bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints him judge of his diocese, and he faithfully does justice to the people, till behold, one day a culprit comes whose crime merits hanging, and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die. A strict-minded, straight-laced man, a man unfit for revolutions whose small soul transparent, wholesome-looking as small ale could, by no chance, ferment into virulent alegar, the mother of ever-new alegar, till all France were grown acitus virulent. We shall see. Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so many grand and mean roll on towards their several destinies in that procession. There is Casalès, the learned young soldier, who shall become the eloquent orator of royalism, and earn the shadow of a name. Experienced Mounier, experienced Malouet, whose presidential parliamentary experience the stream of things shall soon leave stranded. A pation has left his gown and briefs at Chartres for a stormy sort of pleading, has not forgotten his violin being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he is still young. Convictions, beliefs, placid, unalterable are in that man, not hind most of them belief in himself. A Protestant clerical, Rabbo Saint-etienne, a slender, young, eloquent and vehement Barnab will help to regenerate France. There are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry, but how many men here under thirty, coming to produce not one sufficient citizen but a nation in the world of such. The old to heal up rents, the young to remove rubbish, which latter is it not indeed the task here? Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou noticesst the deputies from nont? To us mere cloth screens with slouch hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a cahier of dolience with this singular clause and more such in it, that the master wig-makers of nont be not troubled with new guild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two being more than sufficient. The ren people have elected farmer Gérard, a man of natural sense and rectitude without any learning. He walks there with solid step, unique in his rustic firmer clothes, which he will wear always, careless of short cloaks and costumes. The name Gérard, or Père Gérard, Father Gérard, as they please to call him, will fly far, born about in endless banter in royalist satires in republican didactic almanacs. As for the man Gérard, being asked once what he did, after trial of it, candidly think of this parliamentary work, I think, answered he, that there are a good many scoundrels among us. So walks Father Gérard, solid in his thick shoes wither so ever bound. And were the Dr. Guilleterre whom we hoped to behold one other time. If not here the doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of prophecy, for indeed the Parisian deputies are all a little late. Singular Guilleterre, respectable practitioner, doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting place, the bosom of oblivion. Guilleterre can improve the ventilation of the hall. In all cases of medical police and EGN be a present aid, but, greater far, he can produce his report on the penal code, and reveal therein a cunningly devised beheading machine which shall become famous and world famous. This is the product of Guilleterre's endeavours, gained not without meditation and reading, which product, popular gratitude, or levity, christened by a feminine derivative name as if it were his daughter, La Guillotine. With my machine, monsieur, I whisk off your head, vous faissez le tête, in a twinkling, and you have no pain. Where at they all laugh? Unfortunate doctor, for two and twenty years he un guillotine, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine. Then, dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe, his name like to outlive Caesars. See by ye, likewise of Paris, time-honoured historian of astronomy ancient and modern, poor by ye, how thy serenely beautiful philosophizing with its soft moon-shiny clearness and thinness ends in foul thick confusion of presidency, mayorship, diplomatic officiality, rabid triviality, and the throat of everlasting darkness. Far was it to descend from the heavenly galaxy to the drapeau rouge? Beside that fatal dung-heap, on that last hell day, thou must tremble, though only with cold, de foie. Speculation is not practice. To be weak is not so miserable, but to be weaker than our task. Woe the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild hippogriff of a democracy, which, spurning the firm earth, nay, lashing at the very stars, no yet known estolfo could have ridden. In the Commons deputies there are merchants, artists, men of letters, three hundred and seventy-four lawyers, and at least one clergyman, the Abbey C.A.S. Him also parascends among its twenty. Behold him, the light, thin man, cold but elastic, wiry, instinct with the pride of logic, passionless, or with but one passion that of self-conceit, if indeed that can be called a passion which in its independent concentrated greatness seems to have soared into transcendentalism and to sit there with a kind of godlike indifference and look down on passion. He is the man, and wisdom shall die with him. This is the C.A.S. who shall be system-builder, constitution-builder general, and build constitutions as many as wanted, sky-high, which shall all, unfortunately, fall before he get the scaffolding away. La politique, said he to Dumont, polity is a science I think I have completed, aschevez. What things, O. C.A.S., with thy clear, assiduous eyes are thou to see, but were it not curious to know how, C.A.S., now in these days, for he is said to be still alive, looks out on all that constitution-masonry through the roomy soberness of extreme age. May we hope, still with the old irrefutable transcendentalism, the victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished one pleased C.A.S., Victor Katonim. Thus, however, amid sky-rending vivats and blessings from every heart, has the procession of the commons deputies rolled by. Next follow the noblesse, and next the clergy, concerning both of whom it might be asked what they specially have come for, specially little as they dream of it, to answer this question put in a voice of thunder. What are you doing in God's fair earth and task garden, where whosoever is not working is begging or stealing? Woe, woe to themselves and to all, if they can only answer collecting tithes, preserving game. Remark, meanwhile, how D'Orléans affects to step before his own order and mingle with the commons, for him are vivats, few for the rest, though all wave in plumed hats of a feudal cut, and have soared on thigh, though among them is D'Entrébe, the young Langadocian gentleman, and indeed many appear more or less noteworthy. There are Lyancourt and La Rochefoucault, the liberal anglomaniac dukes. There is a filially pious lali, a couple of liberal lamiths. Above all, there is a Lafayette, whose name shall be Cromwell Grandison, and fill the world. Many a formula has this Lafayette too made away with, yet not all formulas. He sticks by the Washington formula, and by that he will stick, and hang by it, as by sure bower anchor hangs and swings the tight warship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water, is found still hanging. Happy for him be it glorious or not. Alone, of all Frenchmen, he has a theory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto. He can become a hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note further our old parliamentary friend, Qu'est-ce ben Catellin d'Esprémini? He is returned from the Mediterranean islands, a red-hot royalist, repentant to the finger ends, unsettled looking, whose light, the ski glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket, whom the National Assembly will buy and buy to save time, regard as in a state of distraction. Note, lastly, that globular younger Mirabeau, indignant that his elder brother is among the commons, it is Vicente Mirabeau, named oftener Mirabeau Canot, Barrel Mirabeau, on account of his rotundity and the quantities of strong liquor he contains. There, then, walks our French noblesse, all in the old pomp of chivalry, and yet alas how changed from the old position, drifted far down from their native latitude, like arctic icebergs got into the equatorial sea, and fast thawing there. Once these chivalry duches, dukes as they are still named, did actually lead the world, were it only toward battle-spoil, where lay the world's best wages then. Moreover, being the ableist leaders going, they had their lions share these duches, which none could grudge them. But now, when so many looms, improved plowshares, steam engines, and bills of exchange have been invented, and for battle-browling itself, men hire drill sergeants at 18 pence a day, what mean these gold-mantled chivalry figures, walking there in black velvet cloaks, in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut, reeds shaken in the wind. The clergy have got up, with cahier for abolishing pluralities, enforcing residents of bishops better payment of tithes. The dignitaries we can observe walk stately apart from the numerous undignified, who indeed are properly little other than commons disguised in curate frocks. Here, however, though by strange ways shall the precept be fulfilled, and they that are greatest, much to their astonishment, become least, for one example out of many, mark that plausible grégoire, one des curés grégoire, shall be a bishop, when the now stately are wandering distracted as bishops in partibus. With other thought mark also the abeimory, his broad bald face, mouth accurately primmed, full eyes that ray out intelligence, falsehood, the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find it sophistical. Skillfulist vampir up of old rotten leather to make it look like new, always a rising man, he used to tell Mercier, you will see, I shall be in the academy before you. Likely indeed, thou skillfulist mori, nay, thou shalt have a cardinal's hat and plush and glory, but alas, also in the long run, mere oblivion, like the rest of us, and six feet of earth, what boots it vamping rotten leather on these terms? Glorious in comparison is the livelihood thy good old father earns by making shoes, one may hope in a sufficient manner. Mori does not want for audacity, he shall wear pistols by and by, and at death cries of la lanterne, the lamp-iron, answer coolly, friends, will you see better there? But yonder, halting lemely along, thou noticest next, Bishop Talleyrand Perrigor, his reverence of hautein, a sardonic grimness lies in that irreverent reverence of hautein. He will do and suffer strange things, and will become surely one of the strangest things ever seen or like to be seen, a man living in falsehood and on falsehood, yet not what you can call a false man, there is the specialty. It will be an enigma for future ages, one may hope. Hitherto such a product of nature and art was possible only for this age of ours, age of paper and of the burning of paper. Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafayette as the topmost of their two kinds, and say once more, looking at what they did and what they were, O tempus ferrax rerum. On the whole, however, has not this unfortunate clergy also drifted in the time stream, far from its native latitude, an anomalous mass of men of whom the whole world has already a dim understanding that it can understand nothing. They were once a priesthood, interpreters of wisdom, revealers of the holy that is in man, a true clarus or inheritance of God on earth, but now they pass silently with such cahier as they have been able to redact, and none cries, God bless them. King Louis with his court brings up the rear. He, cheerful in this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits, still more necker his minister. Not so the queen, on whom hope shines not steadily any more. Ill-fated queen, her hair is already gray with many cares and crosses, her firstborn son is dying in these weeks. Black falsehood has ineffacably soiled her name, ineffacably while this generation lasts. Instead of vive la reine, voices insult her with vive d'Orléans. Of her queenly beauty little remains except its stateliness, not now gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling wherein joy has no part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette, with thy quick noble instincts, vehement glancings, vision all too fitful narrow for the work thou hast to do. Oh, there are tears in store for thee, bitterest wailings, soft, womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an imperial Theresa's daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the future. And so in stately procession have passed the elected of France, some toward honour and quick-fire consummation, most toward dishonour, not a few toward massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation, all toward eternity. So many heterogeneities cast together into the fermenting vat, there with incalculable action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments, to work out healing for a sick, moribund system of society. Probably the strangest body of men, if we consider well, that ever met together on our planet on such an errand. So thousandfold complex a society, ready to burst up from its infinite depths, and these men, its rulers and healers, without life rule for themselves, other life rule than a gospel according to Jean Jacques. To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man is properly an accident under the sky. Man is without duty round him, except it be to make the constitution. He is without heaven above him, or hell beneath him. He has no God in the world. What further or better belief can be said to exist in these twelve hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut, in heraldic scuttions, in the divine right of kings, in the divine right of game destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting half-belief, or worst of all, mere Machiavellic pretense of belief, in consecrated dough-wafers, in the godhood of a poor old Italian man. Nevertheless, in that immeasurable confusion and corruption which struggles there so blindly to become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of a new life discernible, the deep, fixed determination to have done with shams. A determination which consciously or unconsciously is fixed, which waxes ever more fixed into very madness and fixed idea, which in such embodiment as lies provided there shall now unfold itself rapidly, monstrous, stupendous, unspeakable, new for long thousands of years. How has the heavens light, often times in this earth, to clothe itself in thunder and electric murkiness and descend as molten lightning, blasting if purifying? Nay, is it not rather the very murkiness and atmospheric suffocation that brings the lightning and the light? The new evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the destruction of a world? End of Section 22. Section 23 of Library of the Board's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 8. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Fanu Jahangiri. Library of the Board's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 8. Section 23. Siege of the Bastille, from the French Revolution, by Thomas Carly. But to the living and the struggling, a new 14th morning dance under all roofs of this distracted city is the notice of a drama, not untragical, crowding toward solution. The bustlings and preparings, the tremors and menaces, the tears that fall from old eyes. This day, my sons, ye shall quake you like men, by the memory of your fathers' wrongs. By the hope of your children's rights, tyranny impeds in red wrath, help for you is none, if not in your own right hands. This day ye must do or die. From earliest light, a sleepless permanent committee has heard all cry, now waxing almost frantic mutinous, arms, arms, provost flessils. Or what traitors there are among you may think of those Charlevee boxes. 150,000 of us, and but the third man furnished with so much as a pike. Arms are the one thing needful, with arms we are an unconquerable, man-defying national guard, without arms rubble to be whipped with grape-shot. Happily the world has arisen, for no secret can be kept, that there lie muskets at the Hotel des Invalides. Tider will be, King's procureur de M. E. Thie, de Cournie, and whatsoever of authority a permanent committee can lend, shall go with us. Besson Wall's camp is there, perhaps he will not fire on us, if he kill us, we shall but die. Alas, poor Besson Wall, with his troops melting away in that manner, has not their smallest humor to fire. At five o'clock this morning, as he lay dreaming oblivious in the Ecole militaire, a figure stood suddenly at his bedside, with face rather handsome, eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, erudacious. Such a figure drew Priam's curtains. The message and munition of the figure was that resistance would be hopeless, that if blood flowed, woe to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure and vanished. With all there was a kind of eloquence that struck one. Besson Wall admits that he should have arrested him, but did not. Who this figure, with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid and curt, might be. Besson Wall knows, but mentions not. Camille de Smoline, Pythagorean Marquis Valadie, inflamed with violent motions all night at the Palais Royale, fame names him Young Monsieur Milard, then shots her lips about him forever. In any case, behold, about nine in the morning, our national volunteers rolling in long wide-flat south-westward to the Hotel des Invalides, in search of the one thing needful. Kingsborough Coureur, M. E. The corny, and officials are there. The Coureur of San Diti and Dumon marches on pacific at the head of his militant parish. The clerks of the Pasoche in red coats, we see marching, now volunteers of the Palais Royale, national volunteers numerable by tens of thousands, of one heart and mind. The king's muskets are the nations. Think, old M. Dosomboi, how in this extremity thou wilt refuse them. All M. Dosomboi would faint whole Pali, send couriers, but it is keels not. The walls are scoured, no invalid firing a shot. The gates must be flung open. Patriotism rushes into Miltrus, from Grunzelop to Richtile, through all rooms and passages, rummaging distractedly for arms. What cellar or what cranny can escape it? The arms are found, all safe there, lying packed in straw, apparently with a view to being burnt, more ravenous than famishing lions over dead prey. The multitude with clangor and vociferation pounces on them, struggling, dashing, clutching, to the jamming up to the pressure fracture, probable extinction of the weaker Patriot. And so, with such projected crash of deafening, most discordant orchestra music, the scene is changed, and 8 and 20,000 sufficient firelocks are on the shoulders of as many national guards lifted thereby out of darkness into fiery light. Let Bussonois look at the glitter of these muskets as they flash by. Guard Francaise, it is said, have cannon leveled on him, ready to open if naïve were, from the other side of the river. Motionless is he, astonished, one may flatter oneself at the proud bearing, via continents of the Parisians. And now to the Bastille, ye interpret Parisians. Their grape shut still threatens, to their old men's thoughts, and steps are now tending. All the loney, as we hinted, withdrew into his interior, soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains there, ever since, hampered, as all military gentlemen now are, in the saddest conflict of uncertainties. The Hotel de Vee invites him to admit national soldiers, which is a soft name for surrendering. On the other hand, his Majesty's orders were precise, his garrison is but 82 old in value. Reinforced by 32 young Suisse, his walls indeed are nine feet thick, he has cannon and powder, but alas, only one day's provision of victuals. The city too is French, the poor garrison mostly French, rigorous all though loney think what thou wilt do. All morning since nine, there has been a cry everywhere. To the Bastille, repeated, deputation of citizens have been here. Passionate for arms, whom though loney has got dismissed by soft speeches through portals. Towards noon, Elector Thoriote de la Rosière, games admittance, finds the loney in disposed for surrender, nay, disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thoriote mounts with him to the battlements, heaps of paving stones all iron and missiles lie piled. Cannon all duly levelled in every embrasure, a cannon only drawn back a little, but outwards, behold, Elector Thoriote, how the multitude flows on. Welling through every street, toxin furiously peeling, all drums beating the general, the superb saint Antoine, rolling hitherward, holy as one man. Such vision, a spectral, yet real, thou, O Thoriote, as from thy mount of vision, behold us in this moment, prophetic of what other phantasmagories and loud gibbering spectral realities, which thou yet behold us not, but shalt. Kovalevul, said though loney, turning pale at the side, with an air of reproach, almost of menace, Musio, said Thoriote, rising into the mora sublime, what mean you? Consider if I could not precipitate both of us from this height, say only a hundred feet exclusively of the wall ditch. Whereupon Tholoney fell silent, Thoriote shows himself from some pinnacle to comfort the multitude becoming suspicious. Fremson, then, descends, departs with protest, with warning addressed also to the invalids, on whom however it produces but a mixed indistinct impression. The old heads are none of the clearest, besides it is said Tholoney has been profuse of beverages. Predict the bisons. They think they will not fire, if not fire done, if they can help it, but must, on the whole, be ruled considerably by circumstances. Woe to thee, Tholoney, in such an hour, if thou canst not taking some one firm decision. Rule circumstances. Soft speeches will not serve. Hard grape shots is questionable, but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Overwider swells the tide of men, their infinite hum waxing even louder into imprecations, perhaps, into crackle of a stray muscotry, which latter on the walls nine feet thick cannot do execution. The outer drop bridge has been lowered for Thoriote. Now, deputation of citizens, it is the third and noisiest of all, penetrates that way into the outer coat. Soft speeches producing no clearance of these, Tholoney gives fire, pulls up his drop bridge. A slight sputter, which has kindled the two combustible chaos, made it a roaring fire chaos. Bursts force insurrection at sight of its own blood, for there were deaths by that sputter of fire into endless rolling explosion of muscotry, distraction, execration, and overhead from the fortress, let one great gun with its grape shot go booming to show what we could do. The pasty is besieged. Undone all Frenchmen that have hearts in your bodies. Roar with all your throats of cartilage and metal, ye sons of liberty. Steer spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculties in you, soul, body, or spirit, for it is the hour. Spite thou, Louis Tornay, cartwright of the merri, all soldier of the regiment of Inet. Spite at that utter drop bridge chain, thou the fiery hail whistles round thee. Never, over nave or fellows, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man, down with it, to orcas. Let the whole accursed edifice sing thither, and tyranny be swallowed up forever. Mounted some say on the roof of the guard room, some unbionets stuck into joints at the wall. Louis Tornay smites brave oban bonhumeur, also an old soldier, seconding him. The chain yields breaks, the huge drop bridge slams down, thundering, avec fracas. Glorious and yet alas. It is a still body artworks. The eight grim towers with their invalid musket tree. Their paving stones and cannon mouths are still so aloft intact. Ditch yawning impassable. Stone face the inner drop bridge with its back toward us. The Bastille is still to take. To describe this siege of the Bastille, though, to be one of the most important in history, perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading, get to understand so much as the plan of the building. But there is open as planned at the end of Rue Saint Antoine. There are such four courts. Couravon, say, Courdollot. Arched gateway where Louis Tornay now fights. Then new drop bridges, dormant bridges, rampart bastions, and the grim eight towers. A labyrinthic mass, high frowning there, of all ages from 20 years to 420. Beleagered in this its last hour, as we said, by mere chaos come again. Ordinance of all calibos. Threat of all capacities. Men of all plans. Every man his own engineer. Sell them since the war of pig mace and cranes was their scene so anomalous a thing. Half-Pay-Elleyi is home for a suit of regimentals. No one would heed him in his colored cloth. Half-Pay-Houline is haranguing, Francaise, in the place de Grève. Frantic patriots pick up the grape shots. Bear them, still hot or seemingly so, to the hotel de vie. Paris you perceive is to be burnt. Flessel is pale to the very leaves, for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy. World always by panic madness. At every street barricade, there was simmering a minor whirlpool, strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming. And all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand fire maelstrom which is lashing round the bastille. And so it lashes and it draws. Cholat the wine merchant has become an impromptu canineer. See your jets of the marine service, fresh from breast, ply the king of Siam's cannon. Singler if we were not used to like. Giorgettes lay last night, taking his ease at his inn. The king of Siam's cannon also lay, knowing nothing of him, for a hundred years. Yet now, at the right instant, they have got together and discourse illiquid music. For hearing what was toward, Giorgettes sprang from the breast, diligence, and rad. Gert Francis also will be here, with real artillery. We're not the wall so thick. Abbad from the esplanade. Horizontally from all neighboring roofs and windows flashes one irregular deluge of musketry. Without effect. In valley's lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease from behind a stone, hardly through portholes, show the tip of their nose. We fall, shut, and make no impression. Let conflagration rage at what's over is combustible. Guard rooms are burned in valley's mess rooms. A distracted parook maker with two fiery torches is for burning the salt petter of the arsenal. Had not a woman run screaming, had not a patriot with some tincture of natural philosophy instantly struck the wind out of him, but of muskets and bit of a stomach, overturned barrels, and stayed a devouring element. A young, beautiful lady sees escaping in these outer course, and though fastly to be Dolona's daughter, shall be burnt in Dolona's sight. She lies, soon, on a peyes. But again a patriot, it is brave Oban Bonhemev, the old soldier, dashes in and rescues her. A strized bird, three cartloads of it, hauled hither, go of in white smoke, almost to the chalking of patriotism itself, so that a lee hat with singed brows to drag back one cart, and reel the gigantic haberdasher another, smoke as of tofuet, confusion as of babble, noise as of the crack of doom. Blood flows, the ailment of new madness. The wounded are carried into houses of the Ruse-Rise. The dying leave their last mandate, not to yield till the accursed stronghold fall, and yet alas, how fall. The walls are so thick, deputations three in number, arrive from the hotel de Ville, a bafo shed who was of one, can say with what all my superhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their town flag in the arched gateway, understand rolling their drum, but to no purpose. In such crack of doom, the olone can not hear them. They are not believe them. They return with justified rage. The woo of lee is still singing in their ears. What to do? The firemen are here, squirting with their fire pumps, on the invalid's cannon, to wet the touch holes. They unfortunately cannot squirt so high, but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous brewer of the suburb of Saint Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired by the mixture of phosphorus and oil of turpentines pouted up through forcing pumps. Oh, spinola, Santerre, has thou the mixture ready? Every man his own engineer, and still the fire deluge abates not, even women are fighting in turks. At least one woman with her sweetheart, and one torque. Gertrond says, have come, real cannon, real cannon nears. Usher meyer is busy. Half pay a lee, half pay hoolene, rage in the midst of thousands. How the great busty clock ticks, inaudible, in its inner coat. They are at its ease hour after hour, as if nothing special for the ordered world were passing. It's all won when the firing began, and is now pointing toward five, and still the firing slakes not. Far down in their walls the seven prisoners, here muffled in as of earthquakes, their turn keys answer vaguely. Woe to thee, Dolone, with thy poor hundred in ballots. Broke Lee is distant and his ears heavy. Besson Wall hears but can send no help. One poor troupe of haussers has crept, reconwatering cautiously along the cave as well as the pond-nove. We are come to join you, said the captain. A large-headed dwarf-fished individual of a small blared aspect shampals forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in him, and croaks. A light and give up your arms. The whole sir-captain is too happy to be escorted to the barriers and dismissed on parole. Who the squad individual was? Main answer, it is M. Maga, also of the excellent pacific Avizu Popl. Great, truly old, I remark about Duck Leech. Is this die day of emergence and new birth, and yet this same day come four years? But let the curtains of the future hang. What shall Dolone do? One thing only Dolone could have done. What he said, he would do. Fancy him sitting from the first with lighted taper, within arm's length of the powder magazine, motionless like all Roman senator or bronze lamp-holder called the apprising toriot, and all men by a slight motion of his eyes. What his resolution was, harmless he sat there while unharmed, but the king's fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should in no wise be surrendered safe to the king's messenger. One old man's life is worthless, so it be last with honor, but think ye brawling cannae. How will it be when a whole besties springs skyward? In such statuesque taper-holding attitude, one fancies Dolone might have left toriot, the red-clerk of the bassoge, courier of Saint Stephen, and all the tag-rag-and-bob-tail of the world who walk their wheel. And yet, with all, he could not do it. Has thou considered how each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the house of old man? Has thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek of indignation pelsies the strong soul? Their howl of customary widows with unfurled pangs? The reader glockened first that the ground-tone of the noblest passage is one of his noblest operas was the voice of the populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their case, or bread, bread, great is the combined voice of men, the utterance of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts. It is the greatest a man encounters among the sounds and shadows which make up this world of time. He who can resist that has his footing somewhere beyond time. The lone could not do it, distracted he hovers between two. Hopes in the middle of despair, surrenders not his fortress, declares that he will blow it up, sees torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old the lone, it is the death agony of dynasty and thee. Jail-jailering and jailer, all three such as they may have been, must finish. For four hours now has the warp at Lamrod called it the world chimera, blowing fire. The poor in valleys have sunked under their battlements, or rise only with reverse muskets. They have made the white flag of napkins, go boating the shamade, or seeming to beat for one can hear nothing. The very suise at the port coulis, look weary of firing. Disheartened in the fire, the luge port hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See who is here Malar, the shifty man on his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone ditch. Plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of patriots, he hovers perilous, such a dove towards such an arc. Deathly doubt shifty Asher, one man already fell and lies a smash far down there against the masonry. Asher may yard falls not, deathly unerring he walks with outspread palm. The suise holds a paper through his portal, the shifty Asher snatches it and returns, terms of surrender, pardon immunity to all. Are they accepted, foie d'officier, on the word of an officer? Answers half pay hoolien, or half pay elly, for men do not agree on it. They are, since the drawbridge's Asher may yard, bolting it when dawn, rushes in the living deluge, the pastilles fallen, with duar, la pastille prise. Why dwell on what follows? All in foie d'officier should have been kept, but could not. The suise's stem drawn up, disguised in white canvas marks, dain valids without disguise, their arms all piled against the wall. The first rush of victors in ecstasy, that the death peril is past, leaps joyfully on their necks, but neo-victors rush, and ever new also in ecstasy, not holy of joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlock. Had not the Gad frontiers in their cool military way wheeled round with arms levelled, it would have plunged suicidally by the hundred or the thousand into the pastilles ditch. And so it goes plunging through court and corridor, billowing uncontrollable firing from windows on itself in hot frenzy of triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor invalids will fare ill. Once suise running off in his white smock is driven back with a death trust, let all prisoners be marched to the town hall to be judged. Alas, all rid one poor invalid has his right hand stashed off him. His main body dragged to the place d'au creve and hanged there. This same right hand, it is said, turned back Dolonnais from the powder magazine and saved Paris. Dolonnais discovered in gray frock with puppy-colored ribbon is for killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shall to the hotel d'au vie, Olien, Maillard, and others scouting him, a lean marching foremost with the capitulation paper on his soul's point. Through roaring and cursing, through hustling, clutching, and at last through strokes, your escort is hustled aside. Fall down, Olien sinks, exhausted on a heap of stones. Miserable Dolonnais, he shall never enter the hotel d'au vie, only his bloody airqueue, held up in a bloody hand, that shall enter for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on a step's dirt, the head is off through the streets, ghastly aloft on a pike. Rigorous Dolonnais has died, crying out, oh friends, kill me fast. Merciful Dolonnais must die, though gratitude embraces him in this fearful hour and will die for him, it avails not. Brothers, your wrath is cruel, your place to curve is become a throat of the tiger, full of mere fierce bellowings and thirst of blood. One other officer is massacred, one other invalid is hanged on the lamp iron, with difficulty, with generous perseverance. The gath, one says, will save the rest. Provost for the cell, stricken long since with the paleness of death, must descend from his seat to be judged at the Palais Royal, alas to be shot dead by an unknown hand at the turning of the first street. Oh, evening, son of July, how at this hour thy beams falls land on reapers amid peaceful footy fields. And all women spinning in cottages, on ships far out on the silent main, on balls at the orangery of Versailles, where high rouge dames of the palace are even now dancing with double jackets whose are officers, and also on this rolling hill porch of a hotel though we. Bubble tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not bedlam-added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles, endless in front of an electoral committee, points itself in hurriedly ready against this and the other accused breast. It was the titans varying with Olympus, and they scarcely crediting it, have concurred, prodigy of prodigies, delirious as it could not yet be. Denunciation vengeance plays of triumph on a dark ground of terror, all outward, all inward things fallen into one general reg of madness. End of Section 23, Recording by Farno Jahangiri. Section 24 of Library of the Bold's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern Volume 8. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For my re-information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Farno Jahangiri. Library of Bold's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern Volume 8, Section 24. Charlotte Corday from the French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle. In the leafy month of June and July, several French departments germinated a set of rebellious paper leaves named proclamations, resolutions, journals or diarnals of the Union for resistance to oppression. In particular, the town of Cayenne in Calvados sees its paper leaf of Bolatín de Cayenne, suddenly but suddenly establish itself as newspaper under the editorship of Girondin national representatives. For among the proscribed Girondins are certain of a more desperate humor, some as Virgniá, Valézé, Jensón arrested in their own house will await with a stoical resignation what the issue may be. Some as Brissot, Rabbo will take to fly to Concealment, which as the Paris barriers are opened again in a day or two, is not yet difficult. But others there are who will rush with Boussot to Calvados, or far over France, to Lyon, Toulon, Nantes, and El Svidere, and then on the Vue at Cayenne. To awaken as with war trumpet the respectable departments and strike down an anarchic mountain faction, at least not yield without a stroke at it. Of this latter temper we count some score or more of the arrested and of the not yet arrested. A Boussot, a Barbaró, Louvert, Godet, Petion, who have escaped from arrestment in their own homes, a Sal, a Vitegória, Valézé, a Duchetel, the Duchetel that came in blanket and night cab to vote for the life of Louis, who have escaped from danger and likelihood of arrestment. These to the number at one time of 27 do accordingly lodge here in the Entendance or departmental mansion of the town of Cayenne in Calvados. Welcome by persons in authority, welcomed and afraid, having no money of their own. And the bulletin do Cayenne comes forth with the most animating photographs, how the Bordeaux department, the Lyon department, this department after the other is declaring itself 60 or say 69 or 72 respectable departments, either declaring or ready to declare. Nay, Marseilles seems will march on Paris by itself, it need be. So has Marseilles town said that she will march, but on the other hand, that Montelimov town has said no thought of her and means even to bury herself under her own stone and mortar first of this be no mention in bulletin do Cayenne. Such animating paragraphs we read in this new newspaper and fervor and eloquent sarcasm tirades against the mountain from the pen of deputy sal, which resemble safe friends Pascal's provincials. What is more to the purpose these gerondins have got a general in chief, one Wimphen formerly under the Morielles, also a secondary questionable general poise and others and are doing their best to raise a force for war. National volunteers, whosoever is of right heart, gather in ye national volunteers, friends of liberty, from Orcalvados townships, from the Ure, from Brittany, from far and near, forward to Paris and extinguish anarchy. Thus at Cayenne in the early July days, there is a drumming and parading, a parading and consulting, a stefan army, council, club of carabots and hijack of being friends of freedom to denounce atrocious maga, with all which and the editing of bulletins and national representative has his hands full. At Cayenne it is most animated and as one hoax more or less animated in the 72 departments that adhere to us. And in the France bejured with chimerion invading coalitions and torn with an internal Lavendee, this is the conclusion, we have arrived at, to put down anarchy by civil war, the rum at the rum, that proverbs us, non-fassuin morum, Lavendee burns, Santur can do nothing there, he may return home and brew beer, chimerion bombshells fly all along the north, that siege of men's is become famed, lovers of the picturesque as go-table testify, wise country people of both sexes, stroll-titter on Sundays to see the artillery work and counterwork, you only duck a little while the shot wheezes past. Condé is capitulating to the Austrians, royal highness of York, these several weeks fiercely batters valencians, for alas or fortify camp of farmers was stormed, General Dampierre was killed, General Cousteen was blamed and indeed is now come to Paris to leave explanations. Against all which the mountain and atrocious maghams must even make hell as they can, they anarchy convention as they are, published decrees, expositulatory, explanatory, yet not without severity, they ray forth commissioners, singly or in pairs, the olive branch in one hand, yet the sword in the other, commissioners come even to Caen, but without effect, mathematical Rome and Perior, named of the Côte d'Eux, venturing to their with their olive and sword are packed into prison, there may Rome lie under luck and key for fifty days, and meditate his new calendar, if he please. Cimmeria Lavendee and Civil War, never was republic one and indivisible at a lower ab. Amid which the infirmance of Caen and the world, history especially notices one thing, in the lobby of the mansion though Lenton dons, where busy deputies are coming and going, a young lady with an aged valet, taking grave graceful leave of deputies while barrow, she is of stately normand figure, in her twenty-fifth year of beautiful steel continents, her name is Charlotte Corday, here too for a star d'Arman, while nobility still was. Barbaro has given her a note to deputy d'Opore, him who once threw his sword in the effervescence, apparently she will do parries on some errand, she was a republican before the revolution and never wanted energy. A completeness a decision is in this fair female figure, by energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his country. What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged from her secluded astoundness suddenly like a star, cruel, lovely, with half angelic, half demonic splendor. To glean for a moment and in a moment be extinguished, to be held in memory so bright complete, was she through long centuries. Coeiting Cimmerian coalitions without and the team simmering 25 million within, history will look fixedly at this one fair apparition of a Charlotte Corday, will note whether Charlotte moves, how the little life burns forth so radiant, then vanishes swallowed of the night. With Barbaro's note of introduction and a slight stuck of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday the 9th of July seated in the Cayenne Delay Jones, with a place for parries. None takes farewell of her, wishes her good journey, her father will find a line left, signifying that she is gone to England, that he must pardon her and forget her. The drowsy diligence lumbers along amid drowsy talk of politics and praise of the mountain, in which she mingles not, all night, all day, and again all night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Newoli. Here is Paris with her thousand black domes, the golden purpose of thy journey, arrived at the end de la Providence in the Rue de Vieux-Augustine. Charlotte demands a room, hastens to bed, sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning. On the morrow morning, she delivers her note to the Boca, it relates to certain family papers which are in the minister of the interior's hands. Which, and none at Cayenne, an all-convent friend of Charlotte's, has need of, which the Poiré shall assist her in getting. This then was Charlotte's errand to Paris. She has finished this in the course of Rider, yet says nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things, the convention in bodily reality she has seen, what the mountain is like, the living physiognomy of Magha she could not see. He is sick at present and confined to home. About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large sheath knife in the Palais Royal, then a straight way in the place though Victoire takes a hackney coach. To the Rue de la Coule, the medicine. Number 44. It is the residence of the Citillon Magha. The Citillon Magha is ill and cannot be seen, which seems to disappoint her much. Her business is with Magha then? Hapless, beautiful Charlotte, hapless, a squatted Magha. From Cayenne in the Atmos de Vest, from Nechertel in the Atmos is they too are drawing now each other. They too have very strangely business together. Charlotte returning to her inn dispatches a short note to Magha, signifying that she is from Cayenne, the seat of rebellion, that she desires earnestly to see him and will put it in his power to do France a great service. No answer. Charlotte writes another note, still more pressing, sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening herself. Pired day laborers have again finished their week. Huge Paris is circling and simmering manifold according to its vague want. This one fair figure has decision in it, drives straight to other purpose. It is yellow July evening, we say, the thirteenth of the months, eve of the Bastille day. When Monsieur Magha four years ago in the crowd of the Pontuneau, shrewdly required of that person while who saw a party, which had such friendly dispositions to dismount and give up their arms then, and became notable among patriot men. Four years, what a road he has traveled, and sits now about half-bast seven of the clock, stewing in a slipper bath. So reflected, ill of revolution fever, of what other melody this history had rather not named. Excessively sick and worn poor man, with precisely eleven pens, half-penny of breading money in paper, with a slipper bath, strong three-footed stool for writing on, the wild and squalid washerwoman one may call her, that is her civic establishment in medical school street, thither and not all swither has his road led him. Not to the rain of brotherhood and perfect velocity, yet surely on the way toward that. Hark her up again, a musical woman's voice refusing to be rejected, it is the Citoyenne who would do France a service. Mara recognizing from within Christ, admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted. Citoyenne Mara, I am from Cayenne, the seat of rebellion, and wish to speak with you. Be seated mon enfant. Now what are the traitors doing at Cayenne? What deputies are at Cayenne? Charlotte named some deputies. Their heads shall fall within a fortnight. Crocs the eager people's friend. Crouching his tablets to write. Barbarot Petion writes he, with bare shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath. Petion and Louvre and Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath, plunges it with one short stroke into the writer's heart. Amoua Sheghami, health dear. No more could the death choke say or shriek, the helpful washerwoman running in, there is no friend of the people or friend of the washerwoman left, but his life with the grown gushes out, indignant to the shades below. Asomaga, people's friend, is ended. The lone stylus has got hulled down suddenly from his pillar, with a wart. He that made him knows. Patriot Parry may sound triple and tenfold, indolent wail, reacquired by Patriot France and the convention. Chappopale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated, may decree him pantheon honor. Public funeral, Mirabbo's dust making a way for him and Jacoban societies. In lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to one whom they think in honor to call the good Tsongkulot, whom we name not here, also a chapel may be made for the urn that holds his heart in the Place du Cossel. And newborn children be named Maga and Lago de Como, hawkers, big mountains of stucco into unbeautiful busts, and David paint his picture or death scene and such other apotheosis take place as the human genius in these circumstances can devise. But Mara returns no more to the light of this sun, one sole circumstance we have read with clear sympathy in the old Monetel newspaper. How Mara's brother comes from Nacho Tell to ask of the convention that the deceased Jean-Paul Maga's muscat be given to him, for Mara too had the brother and natural affection, and was wrapped once in swaddling clothes and slept safe in a cradle like the rest of us, ye children of men. A sister of his, they say, leaves still to this day in Paris. As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished. The recompense of it is near and short. The Chérenmy and the neighbors of the house, flying at her, she overturns some moveables, entrenched herself till the gendarmes arrive. The inquietly surrenders, goes quietly to the abbey prison. She alone quiet all Paris, sounding in wonder in rage or admiration, round her. The pouret is put in arrest on account of her, his paper sealed, which may lead to consequences. Fauché, in like manner, though Fauché had not so much as heard of her, Charlotte confronted with these two deputies, praises the grave firmness of the pouret, censures the dejection of Fauché. On Wednesday morning, the drunk Palais de Justice and Revolutionary Tribunal can see her face, beautiful and calm. She takes it, fourthly, of the preparation of peace. A strange murmur ran through the hall, at sight of her, you could not say of what character. Thin Will has his indictments and tape papers. The cutlers of the Palais Royale will testify that he sold her the sheath knife. All these details are needless, interrupted Charlotte. It is I that killed Mara. By whose instigation? By no one's. What tempted you then? His crimes. I killed one man, added she, raising her voice extremely excommon, as they went on with their question. I killed one man to save a hundred thousand, a villain to save innocence, a savage wild beast to give repose to my country. I was a republican before the revolution. I never wanted energy. There is therefore nothing to be said. The public gaze is astonished. The hasty limners sketch her features. Charlotte's not disapproving. The men of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is death as a murderous. To her advocate she gives thanks, in gentle phrase, in high-flung classical spirit. To the priest they send her she gives thanks, but needs not any shriving. Any ghostly or other aid from him. On the same evening, therefore, about half past seven o'clock, from the gate of the Concierge-Ghie, to a city all on tiptoe, the fatal cart issues, seated on it a fair rayon creature, sheeted in red smock of murderous, so beautiful, serene, so full of life, journeying to our death. Alone amid the world, many take off their hats, saluting reverently, for what hot but must be touched. Others growl and howl. Adam looks of men's declares that she is greater than Brutus, that it were beautiful to die with her. The head of this young man seemed turned. At the Place de la Révolution, the continence of Charlotte wears the same steel smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet. She resists, think, it meant as an insult. On the word of explanation she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act all being now ready, they take their neckerchief from her neck, a blush of maidenly shame overspreads her fair face and neck. The cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner left that the severeth had to show it to the people. It is most true, says Forster, that he struck the cheek insultingly, for I saw it with my eyes, the police imprisoned him for it. And this matter hath the beautifulest and the squalidest come in collision, and extinguished one another. Jean Paul Magau and Mary on Charlotte Corday both suddenly are no more. Day after preparation of peace, alas, how were peace possible or preparable, while, for example, the hearts of lovely maidens in their convent stillness are dreaming not of love-paradises and the light of life, but of cordial sacrifices and death well-earned. That 25 million hearts have got to such temper, this is the anarchy, the soul of it lies in this, whereof not peace can be the embodiment. The death of Magau, wetting all animosity, is tenfold, will be worse than any life. O ye hapless too, mutually extinctive, the beautiful and the squalid, sleep ye well in the mother's bosom that bore you both. This is the history of Charlotte Corday, most definite, most complete, angelic, demonic, like a star. 25 The scapegoat from the French Revolution by Thomas Carlisle To this conclusion then hast thou come, O hapless Louis. The sun of sixty kings is to die on the scaffold by form of law. Under sixty kings this same form of law, form of society, has been fashioning itself together these thousand years, and has become, one way and another, a most strange machine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful this machine, dead, blind, not what it should be, which with swift stroke or by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable men. And behold now a king himself, or say rather kinghood in his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures, like a phalaris shot in the belly of his own red heated brazen bull. It is ever so, and thou shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man. Injustice breeds injustice. Curses and falsehoods do verily return, always home, wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears the sins of many generations. He too experiences that man's tribunal is not in this earth, that if he had no higher one it were not well with him. A king dying by such violence appeals impressively to the imagination, as the like must do and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not the king dying, but the man. Kingship is a coat. The grand loss is of this skin. The man from whom you take his life. To him can the whole combined world do more? Lally went on his hurdle, his mouth filled with a gag. Miserabilist mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act tragedy in them. In that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows, unregarded, they consume the cup of trembling down to the leaves. For kings and for beggars, for the justly doomed and the unjustly, it is a hard thing to die. Pity them all, thy utmost pity, with all aids and appliances and throne and scaffold contrasts, how far short it is of the thing pitied. A confessor has come. Abe Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom the king knew by good report, has come promptly on this solemn mission. Leave the earth alone, then, thou hapless king. It, with its malice, will go its way. Thou also canst go thine. A hard scene yet remains, the parting with our loved ones, kind hearts, environed in the same grim peril with us, to be left here. Let the reader look with the eyes of Valais Clarie through these glass doors, where also the municipality watches, and see the cruelest of scenes. At half-passage, the door of the ante-room opened. The queen appeared first, leading her son by the hand, then Madame Royale and Madame Elizabeth. They all flung themselves into the arms of the king. Silence reigned for some minutes, interrupted only by sobs. The queen made a movement to lead his majesty towards the inner room, where M. Edgeworth was waiting, unknown to them. No, said the king. Let us go into the dining-room. It is there only that I can see you. They entered there. I shut the door of it, which was of glass. The king sat down, the queen, on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right, Madame Royale almost in front. The young prince remained standing between his father's legs. They all leaned toward him, and often held him embraced. This scene of woe lasted an hour and three quarters, during which we could hear nothing. We could see only that always when the king spoke, the sobbing of the princesses redoubled, continued for some minutes, and that then the king began again to speak. And so our meetings and partings do now end. The sorrows we gave each other, the poor joys we faithfully shared, and all our lovelings and our sufferings, and confused toilings under the earthly sun, are over. Thou good soul, I shall never, never, through all ages of time, see thee any more, never. O reader, knowest thou that hard word? For nearly two hours this agony lasts. Then they tear themselves asunder. Promise that you will see us on the morrow. He promises, ah yes, yes, yet once, and go now ye loved ones, cry to God for yourselves and me. It was a hard scene, but it is over. He will not see them on the morrow. The queen, in passing through the anti-room, glanced at the Cerberus municipals, and with women's vehemence said through her tears, King Louis slept sound till five in the morning. When Clary, as he had been ordered to woke him, Clary dressed his hair. While this went forward Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept trying it on his finger. It was his wedding ring, which he is now to return to the queen as a mute farewell. At half-past six he took the sacrament, and continued in devotion and conference with Abe Edgeworth. He will not see his family. It were too hard to bear. At eight the municipals enter. The king gives them his will, and messages, and effects, which they at first brutally refuse to take charge of. He gives them a roll of gold pieces. A hundred and twenty-five Louis. These are to be returned to Malesherb, who would lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The king begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of three minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come, stamping on the ground with his right foot Louis answers, pardon, let us go. How the rolling of those drums comes in through the temple bastions and bulwarks on the heart of a queenly wife, soon to be a widow. He is gone then, and has not seen us. A queen weeps bitterly. A king's sister and children. Over all these four does death also hover. All shall perish miserably save one. She, as Duchess d'Angulème, will live, not happily. At the temple gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of pitiful women. Gras, gras. Through the rest of the streets there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to be there. The armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each man overawed by all his neighbors. All windows are down, none seem looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel carriage rolls this morning in these streets, but one only. Eighty thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men, cannons bristle, canoneers with match burning, but no word or movement. It is as a city enchanted into silence and stone. One carriage with its escort slowly rumbling is the only sound. Louis reads in his book of devotion the prayers of the dying. Clatter of this death march falls sharp on the ear in the great silence, but the thought would feign struggle heavenward and forget the earth. As the clock strikes ten, behold the Place de la Révolution. Once Place de Louis cans. The guillotine mounted near the old pedestal where once stood the statue of that Louis. Far round, all bristles with cannons and armed men, spectators crowding in the rear, d'Orléans égalité therein cabriolet, swift messengers au couton speeding to the town hall every three minutes. Nearby is the convention sitting, vengeful for le pelletier. Heedless of all, Louis reads his prayers of the dying. Not till five minutes yet has he finished. Then the carriage opens. What temper is he in? Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of it. He is in the collision of all tempers, arrived now at the black maelstrom and descent of death, in sorrow, in indignation, in resignation struggling to be resigned. Take care of M. Edgeworth. He straightly charges the lieutenant, who is sitting with them. Then they too descend. The drums are beating. Tesez-vous, silence. He cries, in a terrible voice, d'une voix terrible. He mounts the scaffold, not without delay. He is in puce coat, breeches of gray, white stockings. He strips off the coat, stands disclosed in a sleeve waistcoat of white flannel. The executioner's approach to bind him, he spurns, resists. Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him how the saver in whom men trust submitted to be bound. His hands are tied, his head bare. The fatal moment is come. He advances to the edge of the scaffold, his face very red, and says, Frenchman, I die innocent. It is from the scaffold, and near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies. I desire that France, a general on horseback, Santere, or another, prances out with uplifted hands. Tambour, the drums drown the voice. Executioner's do your duty. The executioner's, desperate lest themselves be murdered, for Santere and his armed ranks will strike if they do not. Seize the hapless Louis, six of them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling there, and bind him to their plink. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping, bespeaks him. Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven. The axe clanks down. A king's life is shorn away. It is Monday, the 21st of January, 1793. He was aged thirty-eight years, four months, and twenty-eight days. Executioner's Samson shows the head. Fierce shout of, Vive la République, rises and swells, caps raised on bayonets, hats waving, students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on the far quay, fling it over Paris. Dorleon drives off in his cabriolet. The town hall counselors rub their hands, saying, It is done, it is done. There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of pike points in the blood. Hedsman Samson, though he afterward denied it, sells locks of the hair. Fractions of the puce coat are long after worn in rings, and so in some half hour it is done, and the multitude has all departed. Pastry cooks, coffee sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian cries. The world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the coffee houses that evening, says Proudhon, Patriot shook hands with Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after, according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was. A grave thing it indisputably is, and will have consequences. On the morrow morning, Roland, so long steeped to the lips in disgust and chagrin, sends in his demission. His accounts lie already, correct in black on white to the utmost farthing, these he wants but to have audited, that he might retire to remote obscurity to the country and his books. They will never be audited, those accounts. He will never get retired thither. It was on Tuesday that Roland admitted, On Thursday comes Le Peretier Saint-Fargo's funeral, and passage to the pantheon of great men. Notable as the wild pageant of a winter day, the body is borne aloft, half bare, the winding sheet disclosing the death wound. Sabre and bloody clothes parade themselves, a lugubrious music wailing harsh nénia. Oak crowns shower down from windows, President Vergineau walks there with convention, with Jacobin society, and all patriots of every color, all mourning brother-like. Notable also for another thing, this burial of Le Peretier, it was the last act these men ever did with concert. All parties and figures of opinion that agitate this distracted France in its convention now stand as it were face to face and dagger to dagger, the king's life round which they all struck and battled, being hurled down. Dumourier, conquering Holland, growls ominous discontent at the heads of armies. Men say Dumourier will have a king, that young Dorleian Egalité shall be his king. Deputy Faucher, in the Journal des Amis, curses his day more bitterly than Job did, invokes the pognards of regicides, of RS Vipers, or Robespiers, of Plutot d'Anton, of Horrid Butcher's Legendre and Simulacre d'Herbois, to send him swiftly to another world than theirs. This is today un faucher of the Bastille victory of the Sercle social. Sharp was the death-hail rattling round one's flag of truce on that Bastille day, but it was soft to such rackage of high hope as this, one's new golden era going down in leaden dross and Sulfuras black of the everlasting darkness. World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 8, Section 26 Selected Excerpts by Bliss Carmen Bliss Carmen, 1861 by Charles J. D. Roberts Bliss Carmen was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, on April 15, 1861. On both sides of the house, he belongs to that united empire loyalist stock which at the time of the American revolution sacrificed wealth and ease to a principal, an angrily withdrew from the young republic to carve out new commonwealths in the wilds of Canada. His father was William Carmen, clerk of the pleas, a man of influence and distinction in his province. His mother was one of the blisses of Fredericton, the loyalist branch of the Connecticut family to which Emerson's mother belonged. Mr. Carmen was educated at the collegiate school and the University of New Brunswick, both at Fredericton. He distinguished himself in classics and mathematics, took his BA in 1881, his MA in 1884, and afterwards took partial courses at Edinburgh and Harvard. He has been connected editorially with several American periodicals, the independent and the chapbook among them, but now devotes himself exclusively to literature. He divides his time between Boston and Washington, returning to the Maritime provinces for the hot months of each year. Mr. Carmen issued his first volume of poems in 1893, when he had already won reputation as a contributor to the magazines. The volume was called Low Tide on Grand Pray, a book of lyrics. It was published in New York and London and ran quickly into a second edition. Equally successful was the volume called Songs from the Vagabondia, published in 1894. About half of the poems in this volume are by Mr. Richard Hovey, whose name appears on the title page with that of Mr. Carmen. In 1895 appeared Behind the Errors, a book of the unseen. Much of Mr. Carmen's known work remains still uncollected. In that outburst of intellectual energy, which has of late won for Canada, a major recognition in the world of letters, Mr. Carmen's work has played a large part. The characteristics of the Canadian school may perhaps be defined as a certain semi-sophistic worship of nature, combined with freshness of vision and keenness to interpret the significance of the external world. These characteristics find intense expression in Mr. Carmen's poems, and they find expression in an utterance so new and so distinctive that its influence is already active in the verse of his contemporaries. There are two terms which apply preeminently to Mr. Carmen. These are lyricist and symbolist. His note is always the lyric note. The lyric cry thrills all his cadences. If it be true that poetry is the rhythmical expression in words of thought fused in emotion, then in his work we are impressed by the completeness of the fusion. Every phrase is filled with lyric passion. At its best, the result is a poem which not only haunts the ear with its harmonies, but at the same time makes appeal to the heart and intellect. When the result is less successful, it seems sometimes as if the thought were too much diluted with words, as if in fact verbal music and verbal coloring were allowed to take the place of the legitimate thought process. Even in such cases, the verse however nebulous in meaning is rarely without some subtly of technique, some charm of dictum to justify its existence. But there are poems of Mr. Carmen's, wherein what seems at first to be the obscurity of an over attenuated thought is really an attempt to express thought in terms of pure music or pure color. In a curious and beautiful poem called Beyond the Gamut, he elaborates a theory of the oneness and interchangeability of form, sound, and color. In the matter of conception interpretation, Mr. Carmen is a symbolist. This word is not used here in any restricted sense and must be divorced from all association with the shibboleths of warring schools. The true symbolist and all the supreme artists of the world have been in this sense symbolists, recognizes that there are truths too vast and too subtle to endure definition in scientific phrase. The elude set words. As a faint star the coming on of evening eludes the eye which seeks for it directly while unveiling itself to a side glance. Mr. Carmen conveys to us by the suggestion of thrilling color or inimitable phrase perceptions and emotions which a more strictly defined method could never capture. In subject matter Mr. Carmen is simple and elemental. He looks at his themes curiously, often whimsically, but the themes are those of universal and eternal import, life, love, and death, and broad aspects of the outer world, the deep heart of man, and the spirit that informs them all. His song is sometimes in a minor key, plungent and piercing, sometimes in a large and virile major, as for instance when he sings the worst song of Gamelba. To his gifts of imagination, insight, and lyric passion, he adds a fine humor, the outflowing of a broad and tolerant humanity. This is well exemplified in resignation and a more ancient mariner. His chief defects, besides the occasional obscurity already referred to, are a tendency to looseness of structure in his longer poems, and once in a while, as in parts of the silent lodger, a Brownian-esque lapse into hardness and boldness when the effect aimed at is colloquial simplicity. Hack and Hugh Hack and Hugh were the sons of God in the earlier earth than now, one at his right hand, one at his left, to obey as he taught them how. And Hack was blind and Hugh was dumb, but both had the wild, wild heart, and God's calm will was their burning will, and the gist of their toil was art. They made the moon and the belted stars, they set the sun to ride, they loose the girdle and veil of the sea, the wind and the purple tide. Both flower and beast beneath their hands to beauty and speed outgrew, the furious fumbling hand of Hack and the glowing hand of Hugh. Then fire and clay they fashioned a man and painted him rosy brown, and God himself blew hard in his eyes. Let them burn till they smoldered down. And there, said Hack, and there thought Hugh, we'll rest for our toil is done. But nay, the master workman said, for your toil is just begun. And ye who serve me of old as God shall serve me and you as man, till I compass the dream that is in my heart and perfect the vaster plan. And still the craftsman over his craft in the vague white light of dawn, with God's calm will for his burning will, while the mounting day comes on. Yearning, wind-swift, indolent, wild, toils with those shadowy too, the faltering restless hand of Hack and the tireless hand of Hugh. From behind the ours copyrighted 1895 by Lampson Wolfe and Company at the Granite Gate. There paused to shut the door a fellow called the wind, with mystery before and reticence behind. A portal waits me too in the glad house of spring. One day I shall pass through and leave you wondering. It lies beyond the marge of evening or prime, silent and dim and large, the gateway of all time. There troop by night and day my brothers of the field, and I shall know the way their wood songs have revealed. The dusk will hold some trace of all my radiant crew, who vanished to that place ephemeral as do. Into the twilight dome, blue moth and dragonfly adventuring alone shall be more brave than I. Their innocence shall bloom and the white cherry-tree, with birch and willow-plume, to strew the road for me. The wilding orioles then shall make the golden air heavy with joy again, and the dark heart shall dare. Resume the old desire, the exigence of spring, to be the orange fire that tips the world's gray wing, and the lone woodbird, Hark! the whipper-wheel night long, threshing the summer dark with his dim flail of song. Shall be the lyric lift when all my senses creep to bury through the rift in the blue range of sleep. And so I pass beyond the solace of your hand, but also brave and fond within that morrow land, where deed and daring fail, but joy for evermore shall tremble and prevail against the narrow door, where sorrow knocks too late and grief is overdue beyond the granite gate. There will be thoughts of you, from behind the arse, copyrighted 1895, by Lampson-Wolfe & Co., a sea-child. The lover of child-marjorie had one white hour of life rim-full. Now the old nurse, the rocking-sea, hath him to lull. The daughter of child-marjorie hath in her veins to beat and run the glad indomitable sea, the strong white sun, copyrighted by Bliss Carmen. End of section 26