Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/240

222 windows of Cap Français, thick clouds of smoke girdle our horizon, smoke in the day, in the night fire; preceded by fugitive shrieking white women, by Terror and Rumour. Black demonised squadrons are massacring and harrying, with nameless cruelty. They fight and fire 'from behind thickets and coverts,' for the Black man loves the Bush; they rush to the attack, thousands strong, with brandished cutlasses and fusils, with caperings, shoutings and vociferation,—which, if the White Volunteer Company stands firm, dwindle into staggerings, into quick gabblement, into panic flight at the first volley, perhaps before it. Poor Ogé could be broken on the wheel; this fire-whirlwind too can be abated, driven up into the Mountains: but Saint-Domingo is shaken, as Ogé's seedgrains were; shaking, writhing in long horrid death-throes, it is Black without remedy; and remains, as African Haiti, a monition to the world.

O my Parisian Friends, is not this, as well as Regraters and Feuillant Plotters, one cause of the astonishing dearth of Sugar! The Grocer, palpitant, with drooping lip, sees his Sugar taxé; weighed out by female Patriotism, in instant retail, at the inadequate rate of twenty-five sous, or thirteen pence a pound. 'Abstain from it?' Yes, ye Patriot Sections, all ye Jacobins, abstain! Louvet and Collot-d'Herbois so advise; resolute to make the sacrifice; though 'how shall literary men do without coffee?' Abstain, with an oath; that is the surest!

Also, for like reason, must not Brest and the Shipping Interest languish? Poor Brest languishes, sorrowing, not without spleen; denounces an Aristocrat Bertrand-Moleville, traitorous Aristocrat Marine-Minister. Do not her Ships and King's Ships lie rotting piecemeal in harbour; Naval Officers mostly fled, and on furlough too, with pay? Little stirring there; if it be not the Brest Galleys, whip-driven, with their Galley-Slaves,—alas, with some Forty of our hapless Swiss