Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/126

108 croaks harsh thunder, and that alone continually,—of indignation, suspicion, incurable sorrow. The People are sinking toward ruin, near starvation itself: 'My dear friends,' cries he, 'your indigence is not the fruit of vices nor of idleness; you have a right to life, as good as Louis ., or the happiest of the century. What man can say he has a right to dine, when you have no bread?' The People sinking on the one hand: on the other hand, nothing but wretched Sieur Motiers, treasonous Riquetti Mirabeaus: traitors, or else shadows and simulacra of Quacks to be seen in high places, look where you will! Men that go mincing, grimacing, with plausible speech and brushed raiment; hollow within: Quacks political; Quacks scientific, academical: all with a fellow-feeling for each other, and kind of Quack public-spirit! Not great Lavoisier himself, or any of the Forty, can escape this rough tongue; which wants not fanatic sincerity, nor, strangest of all, a certain rough caustic sense. And then the 'three thousand gaming-houses,' that are in Paris; cesspools for the scoundrelism of the world; sinks of iniquity and debauchery,—whereas without good morals Liberty is impossible! There, in these Dens of Satan, which one knows, and perseveringly denounces, do Sieur Motier's mouchards consort and colleague; battening vampyre-like on a People next-door to starvation. Ô Peuple! cries he ofttimes, with heart-rending accent. Treason, delusion, vampyrism, scoundrelism, from Dan to Beersheba! The soul of Marat is sick with the sight: but what remedy? To erect 'Eight Hundred gibbets,' in convenient rows, and proceed to hoisting; 'Riquetti on the first of them!' Such is the brief recipe of Marat, Friend of the People.

So blow and bluster the Hundred and thirty-three: nor, as would seem, are these sufficient; for there are benighted nooks in France, to which Newspapers do not reach; and everywhere is 'such an appetite for news as was never seen in