Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/96

70 Pamphlets On Cagliostro; writing, with pay, but not with honourable recognition, innumerable Despatches for his Government,—scents or descries richer quarry from afar. He, like an eagle or vulture, or mixture of both, preens his wings for flight homewards.

M. de Calonne has stretched out an Aaron's Rod over France; miraculous; and is summoning quite unexpected things. Audacity and hope alternate in him with misgivings; though the sanguine-valiant side carries it. Anon he writes to an intimate friend, 'Je me fais pitié à moi-même (I am an object of pity to myself)'; anon, invites some dedicating Poet or Poetaster to sing 'this Assembly of the Notables, and the Revolution that is preparing.' Preparing indeed; and a matter to be sung,—only not till we have seen it, and what the issue of it is. In deep obscure unrest, all things have so long gone rocking and swaying: will M. de Calonne, with this his alchemy of the Notables, fasten all together again, and get new revenues? Or wrench all asunder; so that it go no longer rocking and swaying, but clashing and colliding?

Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold men of weight and influence threading the great vortex of French Locomotion, each on his several line, from all sides of France, towards the Château of Versailles: summoned thither de par le roi. There, on the 22d day of February 1787, they have met, and got installed: Notables to the number of a Hundred and Thirty-seven, as we count them name by name: add Seven Princes of the Blood, it makes the round Gross of Notables. Men of the sword, men of the robe; Peers, dignified Clergy, Parlementary Presidents: divided into Seven Boards (Bureaux); under our Seven Princes of the Blood, Monsieur, D'Artois, Penthièvre, and the rest; among whom let not our new Duke d'Orléans (for, since 1785, he is Chartres no longer) be forgotten. Never yet made Admiral, and now