Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/141

1791] with hearsays, wind-projects, unfruitful fanfaronades. Young Royalists, at the Théâtre de Vaudeville, 'sing couplets'; if that could do anything. Royalists enough, Captains on furlough, burnt-out Seigneurs, may likewise be met with, 'in the Café de Valois, and at Méot the Restaurateur's.' There they fan one another into high loyal glow; drink, in such wine as can be procured, confusion to Sansculottism; show purchased dirks, of an improved structure, made to order; and, greatly daring, dine. It is in these places, in these months, that the epithet SansculotteSans-culottes [sic] first gets applied to indigent Patriotism; in the last age we had Gilbert Sansculotte, the indigent Poet. Destitute-of-Breeches: a mournful Destitution; which however, if Twenty millions share it, may become more effective than most Possessions!

Meanwhile, amid this vague dim whirl of fanfaronades, wind-projects, poniards made to order, there does disclose itself one punctum-saliens of life and feasibility: the finger of Mirabeau! Mirabeau and the Queen of France have met; have parted with mutual trust! It is strange; secret as the Mysteries; but it is indubitable. Mirabeau took horse, one evening; and rode westward, unattended,—to see Friend Clavière in that country-house of his? Before getting to Clavière's, the much-musing horseman struck aside to a back gate of the Garden of Saint-Cloud: some Duke D'Aremberg, or the like, was there to introduce him; the Queen was not far; on a 'round knoll, rond point, the highest of the Garden of Saint-Cloud,' he beheld the Queen's face; spake with her, alone, under the void canopy of Night. What an interview; fateful, secret for us, after all searching; like the colloquies of the gods! She called him 'a Mirabeau': elsewhere we read that she 'was charmed with him,' the wild submitted Titan; as indeed it is among the honourable tokens of this high ill-fated heart that no mind of any endowment, no Mirabeau, nay no Barnave, no Dumouriez, ever came face to face