Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/499

Rh aside. But it is remarkable that after the ceremony began in the Champ de Mars no rain of moment fell upon it, though very black showers fell immediately to right and left at different times. The King looked better than I expected; the Queen well, fat, and sulky, and, as may well be guessed, not at all at home. There was a large gallery at the back of the throne, where the Queen was, and where a sort of Court was held, but few ladies were present except of the immediate attendants, &c.

The spectators were animated and cheerful in spite of the rain, and considered it as the coup de grace of aristocracy. The military people below, who were only in side arms, danced about during the delays of the ceremony and the chill from the rain like so many kittens and monkeys, and as if they were out of their wits. The sublime was nowhere found but in the artillery. The King's marching to the altar would have produced it in an affecting manner. The form of the field will be seen in the next sheet: as to the detail of the procession, it is mechanical and not worth sending. The troops of the line have made no figure apart from others. They speak of them as in a state of sad indiscipline, and as if it would not be a point to consider whether they would not be better en corps against them, than ready to disband as idlers and robbers, the real friends of nobody.

The people also do not in many parts know how little portion of an intermeddling power is given to them by liberty, unless expressly appointed to the exercise of such. They want to put in force their own ideas without any intermediate agents in many cases, and consequently appear often with little subordination. I believe they will be stopped in attempts at agrarian laws, but it is only because they have missed their time. It seems likely that the nobility may preserve their noble names, but not their titles.

As to the 14th, there is no mischief except from the fault of workmen, that can last for five minutes. No mob, disarmed as they are intended to be, can resist a very large effective army, ready on the spot for instant action. Weather is the only equivocal thing. The enclosed will tell the rest. (It is not yet out.) All the heights of Chaillot and Passy will be covered, as well as the streets, independent of the borders of the Champ de Mars. The children of the Duke of Orleans, ladies, priests, gentry, have all been handling barrows and spades, to alter the levels of the spot, in spite of showers.

Paris at certain hours is idle, but in the shops in the Palais Royal they find time to work, in spite of the Political Exchange daily held there. At Peronne I found them at work at five in the morning. The same, early and late, in the fields, which have unusual crops, though much laid, but luckily the fields laid are