Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/263

AUG. 1789] famed in such work (for Abbé Lefèvre could only distribute powder) blesses tricolor cloth for the National Guard; and makes it a National Tricolor Flag; victorious, or to be victorious, in the cause of civil and religious liberty all over the world. Fauchet, we say, is the man for Te-Deums, and public Consecrations;—to which, as in this instance of the Flag, our National Guard will 'reply with volleys of musketry,' Church and Cathedral though it be; filling Notre Dame with such noisiest fuliginous Amen, significant of several things.

On the whole, we will say our new Mayor Bailly, our new Commander Lafayette named also 'Scipio-Americanus,' have bought their preferment dear. Bailly rides in gilt state-coach, with beef-eaters and sumptuosity; Camille Desmoulins, and others, sniffing at him for it: Scipio bestrides the 'white charger,' and waves with civic plumes in sight of all France. Neither of them, however, does it for nothing; but, in truth, at an exorbitant rate. At this rate, namely: of feeding Paris, and keeping it from fighting. Out of the City-funds, some seventeen thousand of the utterly destitute are employed digging on MontmarteMontmartre [sic], at tenpence a day, which buys them, at market price, almost two pounds of bad bread:—they look very yellow, when Lafayette goes to harangue them. The Townhall is in travail, night and day; it must bring forth Bread, a Municipal Constitution, regulations of all kinds, curbs on the Sansculottic Press; above all, Bread, Bread.

Purveyors prowl the country far and wide, with the appetite of lions; detect hidden grain, purchase open grain; by gentle means or forcible, must and will find grain. A most thankless task; and so difficult, so dangerous,—even if a man did gain some trifle by it! On the 19th of August, there is food for one day. Complaints there are that the food is spoiled, and produces an effect on the intestines: not corn but plaster-of-paris! Which effect on the intestines, as well as that 'smarting in the throat and palate,' a Townhall Proclamation