Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/132

114 counting only some Thirty, seated now on the extreme tip of the Left, separate from the world. A virtuous Pétion; an incorruptible Robespierre, most consistent, incorruptible of thin acrid men; Triumvirs Barnave, Duport, Lameth, great in speech, thought, action, each according to his kind; a lean old Goupil de PrefelnGoupil de Préfelne [sic]: on these and what will follow them has pure Patriotism to depend.

There too, conspicuous among the Thirty, if seldom audible, Philippe d'Orléans may be seen sitting: in dim fuliginous bewilderment; having, one might say, arrived at Chaos! Gleams there are, at once of a Lieutenancy and Regency; debates in the Assembly itself, of succession to the Throne 'in case the present Branch should fail'; and Philippe, they say, walked anxiously, in silence, through the corridors, till such high argument were done: but it came all to nothing; Mirabeau, glaring into the man, and through him, had to ejaculate in strong untranslatable language: 'Ce j— f— ne vaut pas la peine qu'on se donne pour lui.' It came all to nothing; and in the meanwhile Philippe's money, they say, is gone! Could he refuse a little cash to the gifted Patriot, in want only of that; he himself in want of all but that? Not a pamphlet can be printed without cash; or indeed written without food purchasable by cash. Without cash your hopefulest Projector cannot stir from the spot; individual patriotic or other Projects require cash; how much more do wide-spread Intrigues, which live and exist by cash; lying wide-spread, with dragon-appetite for cash; fit to swallow Princedoms! And so Prince Philippe, amid his Sillerys, Lacloses and confused Sons of Night, has rolled along: the centre of the strangest cloudy coil; out of which has visibly come, as we often say, an Epic Preternatural Machinery of ; and within which there has dwelt and worked,—what specialities of treason, stratagem, aimed or aimless endeavour towards mischief, no party living (if it be not the presiding Genius of it. Prince of the Power of the Air) has now any chance to know. Camille's conjecture is the likeliest: that poor Philippe did mount up, a little