Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/138

120 Priests; unconquerable Martyrs according to some, incurable chicaning Traitors according to others. And so there has arrived what we once foreshadowed: with Religion, or with the Cant and Echo of Religion, all France is rent asunder in a new rupture of continuity; complicating, embittering all the older;—to be cured only by stem surgery, in La Vendée!

Unhappy Royalty, unhappy Majesty, Hereditary Representative, Représentant Héréditaire, or howsoever they may name him; of whom much is expected, to whom little is given! Blue National Guards encircle that Tuileries; a Lafayette, thin constitutional Pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water turned to thin ice; whom no Queen's heart can love. National Assembly, its pavilion spread where we know, sits near by, keeping continual hubbub. From without, nothing but Nanci Revolts, sack of Castries Hôtels, riots and seditions; riots North and South, at Aix, at Douai, at BéfortBelfort [sic], UsezUzès [sic], Perpignan, at NismesNîmes [sic], and that incurable Avignon of the Pope's: a continual crackling and sputtering of riots from the whole face of France;—testifying how electric it grows. Add only the hard winter, the famished strikes of operatives; that continual nmning-bass of Scarcity, ground-tone and basis of all other Discords!

The plan of Royalty, so far as it can be said to have any fixed plan, is still, as ever, that of flying towards the frontiers. In very truths the only plan of the smallest promise for it! Fly to Bouillé; bristle yourself round with cannon, served by your 'forty-thousand undebauched Germans': summon the National Assembly to follow you, summon what of it is Royalist, Constitutional, gainable by money; dissolve the rest, by grapeshot if need be. Let Jacobinism and Revolt, with one wild wail, fly into Infinite Space; driven by grapeshot. Thunder over France with the cannon's mouth; commanding, not entreating, that this riot cease. And then to rule afterwards with utmost possible Constitutionality; doing justice, loving mercy; being Shepherd of this indigent People,