Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 02.djvu/99

MARCH–APRIL 1787] an eloquent Controller, with his 'Madame, if it is but difficult,' had been persuasive: but, alas, the cause is now carried elsewhither. Behold him, one of these sad days, in Monsieur's Bureau; to which all the other Bureaus have sent deputies. He is standing at bay: alone; exposed to an incessant fire of questions, interpellations, objurgations, from those 'hundred and thirty-seven' pieces of logic-ordnance,—what we may well call bouches à feu, fire-mouths literally! Never, according to Besenval, or hardly ever, had such display of intellect, dexterity, coolness, suasive eloquence, been made by man. To the raging play of so many fire-mouths he opposes nothing angrier than light-beams, self-possession, and fatherly smiles. With the imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps answering the incessant volley of fiery captious questions, reproachful interpellations; in words prompt as lightning, quiet as light. Nay, the cross-fire too: such side-questions and incidental interpellations as, in the heat of the main-battle, he (having only one tongue) could not get answered; these also he takes up, at the first slake; answers even these. Could blandest suasive eloquence have saved France, she were saved.

Heavy-laden Controller! In the Seven Bureaus seems nothing but hindrance: in Monsieur's Bureau, a Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, with an eye himself to the Controllership, stirs up the Clergy; there are meetings, underground intrigues. Neither from without anywhere comes sign of help or hope. For the Nation (where Mirabeau is now, with stentor-lungs, 'denouncing Agio') the Controller has hitherto done nothing, or less. For Philosophedom he has done as good as nothing,—sent out some scientific Lapérouse, or the like: and is he not in 'angry correspondence' with its Necker? The very Œil-de-Bœuf looks questionable; a falling Controller has no friends. Solid M. de Vergennes, who with his phlegmatic judicious punctuality might have kept down many things, died the very week before these sorrowful