Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/208

190 Readers who saw the Clermontais and Three-Bishopricks gallop in the Night of Spurs; Diligences ruffling up all France into one terrific terrified Cock of India; and the Town of Nantes in its shirt,—may fancy what an affair to settle this was. Robespierre, on the extreme Left, with perhaps Pétion and lean old Goupil, for the very Triumvirate has defalcated, are shrieking hoarse; drowned in Constitutional clamour. But the debate and arguing of a whole Nation; the bellowings through all Journals, for and against; the reverberant voice of Danton; the Hyperion shafts of Camille, the porcupine-quills of implacable Marat:—conceive all this.

Constitutionalists in a body, as we often predicted, do now recede from the Mother Society, and become Feuillans; threatening her with inanition, the rank and respectability being mostly gone. Petition after Petition, forwarded by Post, or borne in Deputation, comes praying for Judgment and Déchéance, which is our name for Deposition; praying, at lowest, for Reference to the Eighty-three Departments of France. Hot Marseillese Deputation comes declaring, among other things: 'Our Phocean Ancestors flung a Bar of Iron into the Bay at their first landing; this Bar will float again on the Mediterranean brine before we consent to be slaves.' All this for four weeks or more, while the matter still hangs doubtful; Emigration streaming with double violence over the frontiers; France seething in fierce agitation of this question and prize-question: What is to be done with the fugitive Hereditary Representative?

Finally, on Friday the 15th of July 1791, the National Assembly decides; in what negatory manner we know. Whereupon the Theatres all close, the Bourne-stones and Portable-chairs begin spouting. Municipal Placards flaming on the walls, and Proclamations published by sound of trumpet, 'invite to repose'; with small effect. And so, on Sunday the 17th, there shall be a thing seen, worthy of remembering.