Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/249

1791–92] over the Frontiers, now in drops, now in streams, in various humours of fear, of petulance, rage and hope, ever since those first Bastille days when D'Artois went, 'to shame the citizens of Paris,'—has swollen to the size of a Phenomenon for the world. Coblentz is become a small extra-national Versailles; a Versailles in partibus: briguing, intriguing, favouritism, strumpetocracy itself, they say, goes on there; all the old activities, on a small scale, quickened by hungry Revenge.

Enthusiasm, of loyalty, of hatred and hope, has risen to a high pitch; as, in any Coblentz tavern you may hear, in speech and in singing. Maury assists in the interior Council; much is decided on: for one thing, they keep lists of the dates of your emigrating; a month sooner, or a month later, determines your greater or your less right to the coming Division of the Spoil. Cazalès himself, because he had occasionally spoken with a Constitutional tone, was looked on coldly at first: so pure are our principles, And arms are a-hammering at Liége; 'three thousand horses' ambling hitherward from the Fairs of Germany: Cavalry enrolling; likewise Foot-soldiers, 'in blue coat, red waistcoat and nankeen trousers.' They have their secret domestic correspondences, as their open foreign: with disaffected Crypto-Aristocrats, with contumacious Priests, with Austrian Committee in the Tuileries. Deserters are spirited over by assiduous crimps; Royal-Allemand is gone almost wholly. Their route of march, towards France and the Division of the Spoil, is marked out, were the Kaiser once ready. 'It is said, they mean to poison the sources; but,' adds Patriotism making report of it, 'they will not poison the source of Liberty'; whereat on applaudit, we cannot but applaud. Also they have manufactories of False Assignats; and men that circulate in the interior, distributing and disbursing the same; one of these we denounce now to Legislative Patriotism: 'a man Lebrun by name; about thirty years of age, with blonde