Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/68

42 be subjected to taxes like the People! One shriek of indignation and astonishment reverberates through all the Château galleries; M. de Maurepas has to gyrate: the poor King, who had written few weeks ago, 'Il n'y a que vous et moi qui aimions le peuple (There is none but you and I that has the people's interest at heart),' must write now a dismissal; and let the French Revolution accomplish itself, pacifically or not, as it can.

Hope, then, is deferred? Deferred; not destroyed, or abated. Is not this, for example, our Patriarch Voltaire, after long years of absence, revisiting Paris? With face shrivelled to nothing; with 'huge peruke à la Louis Quatorze, which leaves only two eyes visible, glittering like carbuncles,' the old man is here. What an outburst! Sneering Paris has suddenly grown reverent; devotional with Hero-worship. Nobles have disguised themselves as tavern-waiters to obtain sight of him: the loveliest of France would lay their hair beneath his feet. 'His chariot is the nucleus of a Comet; whose train fills whole streets': they crown him in the theatre, with immortal vivats; finally 'stifle him under roses,'—for old Richelieu recommended opium in such state of the nerves, and the excessive Patriarch took too much. Her Majesty herself had some thought of sending for him; but was dissuaded. Let Majesty consider it, nevertheless. The purport of this man's existence has been to wither-up and annihilate all whereon Majesty and Worship for the present rests: and is it so that the world recognises him? With Apotheosis; as its Prophet and Speaker, who has spoken wisely the thing it longed to say? Add only, that the body of this same rose-stifled, beatified Patriarch cannot get buried except by stealth. It is wholly a notable business; and France, without doubt, is big (what the Germans call 'Of good Hope'): we shall wish her a happy birth-hour, and blessed fruit.

Beaumarchais too has now winded-up his Law-Pleadings