Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/171

APRIL 1791] Observatoire Battalion, are there; not on duty; alas, in quasi-mutiny; speaking rude disobedient words; threatening the mounted Guards with sharp shot if they hurt the people. Lafayette mounts and dismounts; runs haranguing, panting; on the verge of despair. For an hour and three-quarters; 'seven quarters of an hour,' by the Tuileries Clock! Desperate Lafayette will open a passage, were it by the cannon's mouth, if his Majesty will order. Their Majesties, counselled to it by Royalist friends, by Patriot foes, dismount; and retire in, with heavy indignant heart; giving up the enterprise. Maison-bouche may eat that cooked dinner themselves: his Majesty shall not see Saint-Cloud this day,—nor any day.

The pathetic fable of imprisonment in one's own Palace has become a sad fact, then? Majesty complains to Assembly; Municipality deliberates, proposes to petition or address; Sections respond with sullen brevity of negation. Lafayette flings down his Commission; appears in civic pepper-and-salt frock; and cannot be flattered back again; not in less than three days; and by unheard-of entreaty; National Guards kneeling to him, and declaring that it is not sycophancy, that they are free men kneeling here to the Statue of Liberty. For the rest, those Centre Grenadiers of the Observatoire are disbanded,—yet indeed are reinlisted, all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new quarters. The King must keep his Easter in Paris; meditating much on this singular posture of things; but as good as determined now to fly from it, desire being whetted by difficulty.

above a year, ever since March 1790, it would seem, there has hovered a project of Flight before the royal mind;