Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/118

92 in a Session; and indeed to enter, against such registry, his individual humble Protest. 'Vous êtes bien le maître (You will do your pleasure),' answers the King; and thereupon, in high state, marches out, escorted by his Court-retinue; D'Orléans himself, as in duty bound, escorting him, but only to the gate. Which duty done, D'Orléans returns in from the gate; redacts his Protest, in the face of an applauding Parlement, an applauding France; and so—has cut his Court-moorings, shall we say? And will now sail and drift, fast enough, towards Chaos?

Thou foolish D'Orléans; Equality that art to be! Is Royalty grown a mere wooden Scarecrow; whereon thou, pert scaldheaded crow, mayest alight at pleasure, and peck? Not yet wholly.

Next day, a Lettre-de-Cachet sends D'Orléans to bethink himself in his Château of Villers-CotteretsVillers-Cotterêts [sic], where, alas, is no Paris with its joyous necessaries of life; no fascinating indispensable Madame de Buffon,—light wife of a great Naturalist much too old for her. Monseigneur, it is said, does nothing but walk distractedly, at Villers-Cotterets; cursing his stars. Versailles itself shall hear penitent wail from him, so hard is his doom. By a second, simultaneous Lettre-de-Cachet, Goody Fréteau is hurled into the Stronghold of Ham, amid the Norman marshes; by a third, Sabatier de Cabre into Mont St. Michel, amid the Norman quicksands. As for the Parlement, it must, on summons, travel out to Versailles, with its Register-Book under its arm, to have the Protest biffé (expunged); not without admonition, and even rebuke. A stroke of authority, which, one might have hoped, would quiet matters.

Unhappily, no: it is a mere taste of the whip to rearing coursers, which makes them rear worse! When a team of Twenty-five Millions begins rearing, what is Loménie's whip? The Parlement will nowise acquiesce meekly; and set to register the Protestant Edict, and do its other work, in