Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/205

JUNE 25, 1791] hate and revenge: but in silence, with vague look of conjecture, and curiosity mostly scientific. A Saint-Antoine Placard has given notice this morning that 'whosoever insults Louis shall be caned, whosoever applauds him shall be hanged.' Behold then, at last, that wonderful New Berline; encircled by blue National sea with fixed bayonets, which flows slowly, floating it on, through the silent assembled hundreds of thousands. Three yellow Couriers sit atop bound with ropes; Pétion, Barnave, their Majesties, with Sister Elizabeth, and the Children of France, are within.

Smile of embarrassment, or cloud of dull sourness, is on the broad phlegmatic face of his Majesty; who keeps declaring to the successive Official persons, what is evident, 'Eh bien, me voilà, Well, here you have me'; and what is not evident, 'I do assure you I did not mean to pass the frontiers'; and so forth: speeches natural for that poor Royal Man; which Decency would veil. Silent is her Majesty, with a look of grief and scorn; natural for that Royal Woman. Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious Royal Procession, through many streets, amid a silent-gazing people: comparable, Mercier thinks, to some Procession du Roi de Basoche; or say, Procession of King Crispin, with his Dukes of Sutormania and royal blazonry of Cordwainery. Except indeed that this is not comic; ah no, it is comico-tragic; with bound Couriers, and a Doom hanging over it; most fantastic, yet most miserably real. Miserablest flebile ludibrium of a Pickleherring Tragedy! It sweeps along there, in most ungorgeous pall, through many streets in the dusty summer evening; gets itself at length wriggled out of sight; vanishing in the Tuileries Palace,—towards its doom, of slow torture, peine forte et dure.

Populace, it is true, seizes the three rope-bound yellow Couriers; will at least massacre them. But our august Assembly, which is sitting at this great moment, sends out Deputation of rescue; and the whole is got huddled up. Barnave, 'all dusty,' is already there, in the National Hall; making brief