Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/273

OCT. 1, 1789] other heroes of the Veto lie in durance. People's-Friend Marat was seized; Printers of Patriotic Journals are fettered and forbidden; the very Hawkers cannot cry, till they get licence and leaden badges. Blue National Guards ruthlessly dissipate all groups; scour, with levelled bayonets, the Palais Royal itself. Pass, on your affairs, along the Rue Taranne, the Patrol, presenting his bayonet, cries, To the left! Turn into the Rue Saint-BénoitBenoît [sic], he cries. To the right! A judicious Patriot (like Camille Desmoulins, in this instance) is driven, for quietness' sake, to take the gutter.

O much-suffering People, our glorious Revolution is evaporating in tricolor ceremonies and complimentary harangues! Of which latter, as Loustalot acridly calculates, 'upwards of two thousand have been delivered within the last month at the Townhall alone.' And our mouths, unfilled with bread, are to be shut, under penalties? The Caricaturist promulgates his emblematic Tablature: Le Patrouillotisme chassant le Patriotisme, Patriotism driven out by Patrollotism. Ruthless Patrols; long superfine harangues; and scanty ill-baked loaves, more like baked Bath bricks,—which produce an effect on the intestines! Where will this end? In consolidation?

, alas, neither is the Townhall itself without misgivings. The Nether Sansculottic world has been suppressed hitherto: but then the Upper Court-world! Symptoms there are that the Œil-de-Bœuf is rallying.

More than once in the Townhall Sanhedrim, often enough from those outspoken Bakers'-queues, has the wish uttered itself: O that our Restorer of French Liberty were here; that he could see with his own eyes, not with the false eyes