Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/129

MAY–JULY 1788] bayonets menacing behind. D'Espréménil's stern question to the populace, 'Whether they have courage?' is answered by silence. They mount, and roll; and neither the rising of the May sun (it is the 6th morning), nor its setting shall lighten their heart: but they fare forward continually; D'Espréménil towards the utmost Isles of Sainte Marguerite, or Hières (supposed by some, if that is any comfort, to be Calypso's Island); Goeslard towards the land-fortress of Pierre-en-Cize, extant then, near the City of Lyons.

Captain D'Agoust may now therefore look forward to Majorship, to Commandantship of the Tuileries; —and withal vanish from History; where nevertheless he has been fated to do a notable thing. For not only are D'Espréménil and Goeslard safe whirling southward, but the Parlement itself has straightway to march out: to that also his inexorable order reaches. Gathering up their long skirts, they file out, the whole Hundred and Sixty-five of them, through two rows of unsympathetic grenadiers: a spectacle to gods and men. The people revolt not; they only wonder and grumble: also, we remark, these unsympathetic grenadiers are Gardes Françaises,—who, one day, will sympathise! In a word, the Palais de Justice is swept clear, the doors of it are locked; and D'Agoust returns to Versailles with the key in his pocket,—having, as was said, merited preferment.

As for this Parlement of Paris, now turned out to the street, we will without reluctance leave it there. The Beds of Justice it had to undergo, in the coming fortnight, at Versailles, in registering, or rather refusing to register, those new-hatched Edicts; and how it assembled in taverns and taprooms there, for the purpose of Protesting; or hovered disconsolate, with outspread skirts, not knowing where to assemble; and was reduced to lodge Protest 'with a Notary'; and in the end, to sit still (in a state of forced 'vacation'), and do nothing: all this, natural now, as the burying of the dead after battle, shall not concern us. The Parlement of