Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/139

1791] not Shearer merely, and Shepherd's-similitude! All this, if ye dare. If ye dare not, then, in Heaven's name, go to sleep: other handsome alternative seems none.

Nay, it were perhaps possible; with a man to do it. For if such inexpressible whirpool of Babylonish confusions (which our Era is) cannot be stilled by man, but only by Time and men, a man may moderate its paroxysms, may balance and sway, and keep himself unswallowed on the top of it,—as several men and Kings in these days do. Much is possible for a man; men will obey a man that kens and cans, and name him reverently their Ken-ning or King. Did not Charlemagne rule? Consider, too, whether he had smooth times of it; hanging 'four-thousand Saxons over the Weser-Bridge,' at one dread swoop! So likewise, who knows but, in this same distracted fanatic France, the right man may verily exist? An olive-complexioned taciturn man; for the present, Lieutenant in the Artillery-service, who once sat studying Mathematics at Brienne? The same who walked in the morning to correct proof-sheets at Dole, and enjoyed a frugal breakfast with M. Joly? Such a one is gone, whither also famed General Paoli his friend is gone, in these very days, to see old scenes in native Corsica, and what Democratic good can be done there.

Royalty never executes the evasion plan, yet never abandons it; living in variable hope; undecisive, till fortune shall decide. In utmost secrecy, a brisk Correspondence goes on with Bouillé; there is also a plot, which emerges more than once, for carrying the King to Rouen: plot after plot emerging and submerging, like ignes fatui in foul weather, which lead nowhither. 'About ten o'clock at night,' the Hereditary Representative, in partie quarréecarrée [sic], with the Queen, with Brother Monsieur, and Madame, sits playing 'wisk, or whist. Usher Campan enters mysteriously, with a message he only half comprehends: How a certain Comte D'Inisdal waits