Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/102

86 in that City are perhaps the worst. The Officers there have it all, as they have long had it, to themselves; and unhappily seem to manage it ill. 'Fifty yellow furloughs,' given out in one batch, do surely betoken difficulties. But what was Patriotism to think of certain light-fencing Fusileers 'set on,' or supposed to be set on, 'to insult the Grenadier-club,'—considerate speculative Grenadiers and that reading-room of theirs? With shoutings, with hootings; till the speculative Grenadier drew his side-arms too; and there ensued battery and duels! Nay more, are not swashbucklers of the same stamp 'sent out' visibly, or sent out, presumably, now in the dress of Soldiers, to pick quarrels with the Citizens; now, disguised as Citizens, to pick quarrels with the Soldiers? For a certain Roussière, expert in fence, was taken in the very fact; four Officers (presumably of tender years) hounding him on, who thereupon fled precipitately! Fence-master Roussière, haled to the guardhouse, had sentence of three months' imprisonment: but his comrades demanded 'yellow furlough' for him of all persons; nay thereafter they produced him on parade; capped him in paper-helmet, inscribed Iscariot; marched him to the gate of the City; and there sternly commanded him to vanish for evermore.

On all which suspicions, accusations and noisy procedure, and on enough of the like continually accumulating, the Officer could not but look with disdainful indignation; perhaps disdainfully express the same in words, and 'soon after fly over to the Austrians.'

So that when it here, as elsewhere, comes to the question of Arrears, the humour and procedure is of the bitterest. Regiment Mestre-de-Camp getting, amid loud clamour, some three gold louis a-man,—which have, as usual, to be borrowed from the Municipality; Swiss Château-Vieux applying for the like, but getting instead instantaneous courrois, or cat-o'-nine-tails, with subsequent unsufferable hisses from the women and children: Regiment du Roi, sick of hope deferred, at length