Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/264

246 in Austria; comes leaning on the arm of Joseph Chénier, Poet Chénier, to demand Liberty for the hapless Swiss of Château-Vieux. Be of hope, ye forty Swiss; tugging there, in the Brest waters; not forgotten!

Deputy Brissot perorates from that Tribune; Desmoulins, our wicked Camille, interjecting audibly from below, Coquin! Here, though oftener in the Cordeliers, reverberates the lion-voice of Danton; grim Billaud-Varennes is here; Collot d'Herbois, pleading for the forty Swiss, tearing a passion to rags. Apophthegmatic Manuel winds up in this pithy way: 'A Minister must perish!'—to which the Amphitheatre responds:'Tous, Tous, All, All!' But the Chief Priest and Speaker of this place, as we said, is Robespierre, the longwinded incorruptible man. What spirit of Patriotism dwelt in men in those times, this one fact, it seems to us, will evince: that fifteen hundred human creatures, not bound to it, sat quiet under the oratory of Robespierre; nay listened nightly, hour after hour, applausive; and gaped as for the word of life. More insupportable individual, one would say, seldom opened his mouth in any Tribune. Acrid, implacable-impotent; dull-drawling, barren as the Harmattan wind. He pleads, in endless earnest-shallow speech, against immediate War, against Wollen Caps or Bonnets Rouges, against many things; and is the Trismegistus and Dalai-Lama of Patriot men. Whom nevertheless a shrill-voiced little man, yet with fine eyes and a broad beautifully sloping brow, rises respectfully to controvert; he is, say the Newspaper Reporters, 'M. Louvet, Author of the charming Romance of Faublas.' Steady, ye Patriots! Pull not yet two ways; with a France rushing panic-stricken in the rural districts, and a Cimmerian Europe storming in on you!