Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/231

JULY 15, 1789] crowding and shouting. The Château Musicians, with a felicitous promptitude, strike up the Sein de sa Famille (Bosom of one's Family): the Queen appears at the Balcony with her little boy and girl, 'kissing them several times'; infinite Vivats spread far and wide,—and suddenly there has come, as it were, a new Heaven-on-Earth.

Eighty-eight august Senators, Bailly, Lafayette, and our repentant Archbishop among them, take coach for Paris, with the great intelligence; benedictions without end on their heads. From the Place Louis Quinze, where they alight, all the way to the Hôtel-de-Ville, it is one sea of Tricolor cockades, of clear National muskets; one tempest of huzzaings, hand-clappings, aided by 'occasional rollings' of drum-music. Harangues of due fervour are delivered; especially by Lally Tollendal, pious son of the ill-fated murdered Lally; on whose head, in consequence, a civic crown (of oak or parsley) is forced,—which he forcibly transfers to Bailly's.

But surely, for one thing, the National Guard should have a General! Moreau de Saint-Méry, he of the 'three thousand orders,' casts one of his significant glances on the Bust of Lafayette, which has stood there ever since the American War of Liberty. Whereupon, by acclamation, Lafayette is nominated. Again, in room of the slain traitor or quasi-traitor Flesselles, President Bailly shall be—Provost of the Merchants? No: Mayor of Paris! So be it. Maire de Paris! Mayor Bailly, General Lafayette; vive Bailly, vive Lafayette! the universal out-of-doors multitude rends the welkin in confirmation.—And now, finally, let us to Notre-Dame for a Te Deum.

Towards Notre-Dame Cathedral, in glad procession, these Regenerators of the Country walk, through a jubilant people; in fraternal manner; Abbé Lefevre, still black with his gunpowder services, walking arm in arm with the white-stoled Archbishop. Poor Bailly comes upon the Foundling Children, sent to kneel to him; and 'weeps.' Te Deum, our Archbishop officiating, is not only sung, but shot—with blank cartridges.