Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/175

MAY-JUNE, 1791] a Hereditary Representative be carried in leather vache, how easy were it! But it is not so.

New Clothes are needed; as usual, in all Epic transactions, were it in the grimmest iron ages; consider 'Queen Chrimhilde, with her sixty sempstresses,' in that iron Nibelungen Song! No Queen can stir without new clothes. Therefore, now, Dame Campan whisks assiduous to this mantua-maker and to that: and there is clipping of frocks and gowns, upper clothes and under, great and small; such a clipping and sewing as—might have been dispensed with. Moreover, her Majesty cannot go a step anywhither without her Nécessaire; dear Nécessaire, of inlaid ivory and rosewood; cunningly devised; which holds perfumes, toilette-implements, infinite small queenlike furnitures: necessary to terrestrial life. Not without a cost of some five hundred louis, of much precious time, and difficult hoodwinking which does not blind, can this same Necessary of life be forwarded by the Flanders Carriers,—never to get to hand. All which, you would say, augurs ill for the prospering of the enterprise. But the whims of women and queens must be humoured.

Bouillé, on his side, is making a fortified Camp at Montmédi; gathering Royal-Allemand, and all manner of other German and true French Troops thither, 'to watch the Austrians.' His Majesty will not cross the frontiers, unless on compulsion. Neither shall the Emigrants be much employed, hateful as they are to all people. Nor shall old war-god Broglie have any hand in the business; but solely our brave Bouillé; to whom, on the day of meeting, a Marshal's Baton shall be delivered, by a rescued King, amid the shouting of all the troops. In the meanwhile, Paris being so suspicious, were it not perhaps good to write your Foreign Ambassadors an ostensible Constitutional Letter; desiring all Kings and men to take heed that King Louis loves the Constitution, that he has voluntarily sworn, and does again swear, to maintain the same, and will reckon those his