Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/124

98 seems feasible, it is eminently needful: be it once well executed, great deliverance is wrought. Silent, then, and steady; now or never!—the World shall see one other Historical Scene; and so singular a man as Loménie de Brienne still the Stage-manager there.

Behold, accordingly, a Home-Secretary BréteuilBreteuil [sic] 'beautifying Paris,' in the peaceablest manner, in this hopeful spring weather of 1788; the old hovels and hutches disappearing from our Bridges: as if for the State too there were halcyon weather, and nothing to do but beautify. Parlement seems to sit acknowledged victor. Brienne says nothing of Finance; or even says, and prints, that it is all well. How is this; such halcyon quiet; though the Successive Loan did not fill? In a victorious Parlement, Counsellor Goeslard de Monsabert even denounces that 'levying of the Second Twentieth on strict valuation'; and gets decree that the valuation shall not be strict,—not on the Privileged classes. Nevertheless Brienne endures it, launches no Lettre-de-Cachet against it. How is this?

Smiling is such vernal weather; but treacherous, sudden! For one thing, we hear it whispered, 'the Intendants of Provinces have all got order to be at their posts on a certain day.' Still more singular, what incessant Printing is this that goes on at the King's Château, under lock and key? Sentries occupy all gates and windows; the Printers come not out; they sleep in their workrooms; their very food is handed in to them! A victorious Parlement smells new danger. D'Espréménil has ordered horses to Versailles; prowls round that guarded Printing-Office; prying, snuffing, if so be the sagacity and ingenuity of man may penetrate it.

To a shower of gold most things are penetrable. D'Espréménil descends on the lap of a Printer's Danaë, in the shape of 'five hundred louis d'or': the Danaë's Husband smuggles a ball of clay to her; which she delivers to the golden Counsellor of Parlement. Kneaded within it, there stick printed