Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/252

234 with Four hundred and nineteen thousand and the Chivalry of France; the gallows, one may hope, will get its own.

shall have War, then; and on what terms! With an Executive 'pretending,' really with less and less deceptiveness now, 'to be dead'; casting even a wishful eye towards the enemy: on such terms we shall have War.

Public Functionary in vigorous action there is none; if it be not Rivarol with his Staff of Genius and Two hundred and eighty Applauders. The Public Service lies waste; the very Taxgatherer has forgotten his cunning: in this and the other Provincial Board of Management (Directoire de Département) it is found advisable to retain what Taxes you can gather, to pay your own inevitable expenditures. Our Revenue is Assignats; emission on emission of Paper-money. And the Army; our Three grand Armies, of Rochambeau, of Lückner, of Lafayette? Lean, disconsolate hover these Three grand Armies, watching the Frontiers there; three Flights of longnecked Cranes in moulting-time;—wrecked, disobedient, disorganised; who never saw fire; the old Generals and Officers gone across the Rhine. War-Minister Narbonne, he of the rose-coloured Reports, solicits recruitments, equipments, money, always money; threatens, since he can get none, to 'take his sword,' which belongs to himself, and go serve his country with that.

The question of questions is: What shall be done? Shall we, with a desperate defiance which Fortune sometimes favours, draw the sword at once, in the face of this inrushing world of Emigration and Obscurantism; or wait, and temporise and diplomatise, till, if possible, our resources mature themselves