Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/161

APRIL 4, 1791] Father of the People, is dead!' King Mirabeau is now the lost King; and one may say with little exaggeration, all the People mourns for him.

For three days there is low wide moan; weeping in the National Assembly itself. The streets are all mournful; orators mounted on the bornes, with large silent audience, preaching the funeral sermon of the dead. Let no coachman whip fast, distractively with his rolling wheels, or almost at all, through these groups! His traces may be cut; himself and his fare, as incurable Aristocrats, hurled sulkily into the kennels. The bourne-stone orators speak as it is given them; the Sansculottic People, with its rude soul, listens eager,—as men will to any Sermon, or Sermo, when it is a spoken Word meaning a Thing, and not a Babblement meaning No-thing. In the Restaurateur's of the Palais-Royal, the waiter remarks, 'Fine weather. Monsieur':—'Yes, my friend,' answers the ancient Man of Letters, 'very fine; but Mirabeau is dead.' Hoarse rhythmic threnodies come also from the throats of ballad-singers; are sold on grey-white paper at a sou each. But of Portraits, engraved, painted, hewn and written; of Eulogies, Reminiscences, Biographies, nay Vaudevilles, Dramas and Melodramas, in all Provinces of France, there will, through these coming months, be the due immeasurable crop; thick as the leaves of Spring. Nor, that a tincture of burlesque might be in it, is Gobel's Episcopal Mandement wanting; goose Gobel, who has just been made Constitutional Bishop of Paris. A Mandement wherein Ça ira alternates very strangely with Nomine Domini; and you are, with a grave countenance, invited to 'rejoice at possessing in the midst of you a body of Prelates created by Mirabeau, zealous followers of his doctrine, faithful imitators of his virtues.' So speaks, and cackles manifold, the Sorrow of France; wailing