Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/202

172 Consigned to their barracks, the Gardes Françaises do but form a 'Secret Association,' an Engagement not to act against the National Assembly. Debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean; debauched by money and women! cry Besenval and innumerable others. Debauched by what you will, or in need of no debauching, behold them, long files of them, their consignment broken, arrive, headed by their Sergeants, on the 26th day of June, at the Palais Royal! Welcomed with vivats, with presents, and a pledge of patriot liquor; embracing and embraced; declaring in words that the cause of France is their cause! Next day and the following days the like. What is singular too, except this patriot humour, and breaking of their consignment, they behave otherwise with 'the most rigorous accuracy.'

They are growing questionable, these Gardes! Eleven ringleaders of them are put in the Abbaye Prison. It boots not in the least. The imprisoned Eleven have only, 'by the hand of an individual,' to drop, towards nightfall, a line in the Café de Foy; where Patriotism harangues loudest on its table. 'Two hundred young persons, soon waxing to four thousand,' with fit crowbars, roll towards the Abbaye; smite asunder the needful doors; and bear out their Eleven, with other military victims:—to supper in the Palais Royal Garden; to board, and lodging 'in camp-beds, in the Théâtre des Variétés'; other national Prytaneum as yet not being in readiness. Most deliberate! Nay so punctual were these young persons, that finding one military victim to have been imprisoned for real civil crime, they returned him to his cell, with protest.

Why new military force was not called out? New military force was called out. New military force did arrive, full gallop, with drawn sabre: but the people gently 'laid hold of their bridles'; the dragoons sheathed their swords; lifted their caps by way of salute, and sat like mere statues of dragoons,—except indeed that a drop of liquor being brought