Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/207

JULY 1791] caput mortuum! But of him, known as one defunct, no man now dreams. Depose it not; say that it is inviolable, that it was spirited away, was enlevé; at any cost of sophistry and solecism, reëstablish it! so answer with loud vehemence all manner of Constitutional Royalists; as all your pure Royalists do naturally likewise, with low vehemence, and rage compressed by fear, still more passionately answer. Nay Barnave and the two Lameths, and what will follow them, do likewise answer so. Answer, with their whole might: terrorstruck at the unknown Abysses on the verge of which, driven thither by themselves mainly, all now reels, ready to plunge.

By mighty effort and combination, this latter course is the course fixed on; and it shall by the strong arm, if not by the clearest logic, be made good. With the sacrifice of all their hard-earned popularity, this notable Triumvirate, says Toulongeon, 'set the Throne up again, which they had so toiled to overturn: as one might set up an overturned pyramid, on its vertex'; to stand so long as it is held.

Unhappy France; unhappy in King, Queen, and Constitution; one knows not in which unhappiest! Was the meaning of our so glorious French Revolution this, and no other. That when Shams and Delusions, long soul-killing, had become body-killing, and got the length of Bankruptcy and Inanition, a great People rose and, with one voice, said, in the Name of the Highest: Shams shall be no more? So many sorrows and bloody horrors, endured, and to be yet endured through dismal coming centuries, were they not the heavy price paid and payable for this same: Total Destruction of Shams from among men? And now, O Barnave Triumvirate! is it in such double-distilled Delusion, and Sham even of a Sham, that an effort of this kind will rest acquiescent? Messieurs of the popular Triumvirate, never!—But, after all, what can poor popular Triumvirates, and fallible august Senators, do? They can, when the Truth is all-too horrible, stick their heads ostrich-like into what sheltering Fallacy is nearest; and wait there, à vosteriori.