Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/22

6 pathetic is Cazalès. Keen-trenchant, on the other side, glitters a young Barnave; abhorrent of sophistry; shearing, like keen Damascus sabre, all sophistry asunder,—reckless what else he shear with it. Simple seemest thou, O solid Dutch-built Pétion; if solid, surely dull. Nor lifegiving is that tone of thine, livelier polemical Rabaut. With ineffable serenity sniffs great Sieyes, aloft, alone; his Constitution ye may babble over, ye may mar, but can by no possibility mend: is not Polity a science he has exhausted? Cool, slow, two military Lameths are visible, with their quality sneer, or demi-sneer; they shall gallantly refund their Mother's Pension, when the Red Book is produced; gallantly be wounded in duels. A Marquis Toulongeon, whose Pen we yet thank, sits there; in stoical meditative humour, oftenest silent, accepts what Destiny will send. Thouret and Parlementary Duport produce mountains of Reformed Law; liberal, Anglomaniac; available and unavailable. Mortals rise and fall. Shall goose Gobel, for example,—or Göbel, for he is of Strasburg German breed,—be a Constitutional Archbishop?

Alone of all men there, Mirabeau may begin to discern clearly whither all this is tending. Patriotism, accordingly, regrets that his zeal seems to be getting cool. In that famed Pentecost-Night of the Fourth of August, when new Faith rose suddenly into miraculous fire, and old Feudality was burnt up, men remarked that Mirabeau took no hand in it; that, in fact, he luckily happened to be absent. But did he not defend the Veto nay Veto Absolu; and tell vehement Barnave that six hundred irresponsible senators would make of all tyrannies the insupportablest? Again, how anxious was he that the King's Ministers should have seat and voice in the National Assembly;—doubtless with an eye to being Minister himself! Whereupon the National Assembly decides, what is very momentous, that no Deputy shall be Minister; he, in his haughty stormful manner, advising us to make it, 'no Deputy called Mirabeau.' A man of perhaps inveterate