Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/269

MARCH 1792] So wags and wavers this unrestful World, day after day, month after month. The streets of Paris, and all Cities, roll daily their oscillatory flood of men; which flood does nightly disappear, and lie hidden horizontal in beds and truckle-beds; and awakes on the morrow to new perpendicularity and movement. Men go their roads, foolish or wise;—Engineer Goguelat to and fro, bearing Queen's cipher. A Madame de Staël is busy; cannot clutch her Narbonne from the Time-flood: a Princess de Lamballe is busy; cannot help her Queen. Barnave, seeing the Feuillants dispersed, and Coblentz so brisk begs by way of final recompense to kiss her Majesty's hand; 'augurs not well of her new course'; and retires home to Grenoble, to wed an heiress there. The Café Valois and Méot the Restaurateur's hear daily gasconade; loud babble of Half-pay Royalists, with or without poniards. Remnants of Aristocrat saloons call the new Ministry Ministère-Sansculotte. A Louvet, of the Romance Faublas, is busy in the Jacobins. A Cazotte, of the Romance Diable Amoureux, is busy elsewhere: better wert thou quiet, old Cazotte; it is a world, this, of magic become real! All men are busy; doing they only half guess what:—flinging seeds, of tares mostly, into the 'Seed-field of ': this, by and by, will declare wholly what.

But Social Explosions have in them something dread, and as it were mad and magical; which indeed Life always secretly has: thus the dumb Earth (says Fable), if you pull her mandrake-roots, will give a dæmonic mad-making moan. These Explosions and Revolts ripen, break forth like dumb dread Forces of Nature; and yet they are Men's forces; and yet we are part of them: the Dæmonic that is in man's life has burst out on us, will sweep us too away!—One day here is like another, and yet it is not like but different. How much is growing, silently resistless, at all moments! Thoughts are growing; forms of Speech are growing, and Customs and even Costumes; still more visibly are actions and transactions growing, and that doomed Strife of France with herself and with the whole world.