Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/272

242 fifteen thousand, or sometimes that sixty thousand, 'will march to illuminate you.' The Paris Districts are astir; Petitions signing: Saint-Huruge sets forth from the Palais Royal with an escort of fifteen hundred individuals, to petition in person. Resolute, or seemingly so, is the tall shaggy Marquis, is the Café de Foy: but resolute also is Commandant-General-Lafayette. The streets are all beset by Patrols: Saint-Huruge is stopped at the Barrière des Bons Hommes; he may bellow like the bulls of Bashan, but absolutely must return. The brethren of the Palais Royal 'circulate all night,' and make motions, under the open canopy; all Coffeehouses being shut. Nevertheless Lafayette and the Townhall do prevail; Saint-Huruge is thrown into prison; Veto Absolu adjusts itself into Suspensive Veto, prohibition not for ever, but for a term of time; and this doom's-clamour will grow silent, as the others have done.

So far has Consolidation prospered, though with difficulty; repressing the Nether Sansculottic world; and the Constitution shall be made. With difficulty: amid jubilee and scarcity; Patriotic Gifts, Bakers'-queues; Abbé-Fauchet Harangues, with their Amen of platoon-musketry! Scipio-Americanus has deserved thanks from the National Assembly and France. They offer him stipends and emoluments to a handsome extent; all which stipends and emoluments he, covetous of far other blessedness than mere money, does, in his chivalrous way, without scruple, refuse.

To the Parisian common man, meanwhile, one thing remains inconceivable: that now when the Bastille is down, and French Liberty restored, grain should continue so dear. Our Rights of Man are voted. Feudalism and all Tyranny abolished; yet behold we stand in queue! Is it Aristocrat forestallers; a Court still bent on intrigues? Something is rotten somewhere.

And yet, alas, what to do? Lafayette, with his Patrols, prohibits everything, even complaint. Saint-Huruge and