Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/280

260 are not Petitions allowable, and the Patriotism of Mais? The tricolor Municipal returns without effect: your Sansculottic rills continue flowing, combining into brooks: towards noontide, led by tall Santerre in blue uniform, by tall Saint-Huruge in white hat, it moves westward, a respectable river, or complication of still-swelling rivers.

What Processions have we not seen: Corpus-Christi and Legendre waiting in his Gig; Bones of Voltaire with bullock chariots, and goadsmen in Roman Costume; Feasts of Château-Vieux and Simoneau; Gouvion Funerals, Rousseau Sham funeral, and the Baptism of Pétion-National-Pike! Nevertheless this Procession has a character of its own. Tricolor ribands streaming aloft from Pike-heads; ironshod batons; and emblems not a few; among which see specially these two, of the tragic and the untragic sort: a Bull's Heart transfixed with iron, bearing this epigraph, Cœur d'Aristocrate, Aristocrat's heart'; and, more striking still, properly the standard of the host, a pair of old Black Breeches (silk, they say), extended on cross-staff, high overhead, with these memorable words: Tremblez, tyrans; voilà les Sansculottes, Tremble, tyrants; here are the Sans-indispensables!' Also, the Procession trails two cannons.

Scarfed tricolor Municipals do now again meet it, in the Quai Saint-Bernard, and plead earnestly, having called halt. Peaceable, ye virtuous tricolor Municipals, peaceable are we as the sucking dove. Behold our Tennis-Court Mai. Petition is legal; and as for arms, did not an august Legislative receive the so-called Eight-thousand in arms, Feuillants though they were? Our Pikes, are they not of National iron? Law is our father and mother, whom we will not dishonour; but Patriotism is our own soul. Peaceable, ye virtuous Municipals;—and on the whole, limited as to time! Stop we cannot; march ye with us.—The Black Breeches agitate themselves, impatient; the cannon-wheels grumble: the many-footed Host tramps on.

How it reached the Salle de Manége, like an ever-waxing