Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/251

JULY-AUG., 1789] the Clergy, you have to be shaved; if you wriggle too much, you will get cut.'

The Left side is also called the D'Orléans side; and sometimes, derisively, the Palais Royal. And yet, so confused, real-imaginary seems everything, 'it is doubtful,' as Mirabeau said, 'whether D'Orléans himself belong to that same D'Orléans party.' What can be known and seen is, that his moon-visage does beam forth from that point of space. There likewise sits seagreen Robespierre; throwing in his light weight, with decision, not yet with effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian, he would make away with formulas; yet lives, moves, and has his being wholly in formulas, of another sort. Peuple,' such, according to Robespierre, ought to be the Royal method of promulgating Laws, Peuple, this is the Law I have framed for thee; dost thou accept it?'—answered, from Right side, from Centre and Left, by inextinguishable laughter. Yet men of insight discern that the Seagreen may by chance go far: 'This man,' observes Mirabeau, 'will do somewhat; he believes every word he says.'

Abbé Sieyes is busy with mere Constitutional work; wherein, unluckily, fellow-workmen are less pliable than, with one who has completed the Science of Polity, they ought to be. Courage, Sieyes, nevertheless! Some twenty months of heroic travail, of contradiction from the stupid, and the Constitution shall be built; the top-stone of it brought out with shouting,—say rather, the top-paper, for it is all Paper; and thou hast done in it what the Earth or the Heaven could require, thy utmost. Note likewise this Trio; memorable for several things; memorable were it only that their history is written in an epigram: 'Whatsoever these Three have in hand,' it is said, 'Duport thinks it, Barnave speaks it, Lameth does it.'

But royal Mirabeau? Conspicuous among all parties, raised above and beyond them all, this man rises more and