Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/286

 Mother Society. But what no Sieur Resson nor Mother Society can do more than guess is this, That a council of rank Feuillants, your unabolished Staff of the Guard and who else has status and weight, is in these very moments privily deliberating at the General's: Can we not put down the Jacobins by force? Next day, a Review shall be held, in the Tuileries Gardens, of such as will turn out, and try. Alas, says Toulongeon, hardly a hundred turned out. Put it off till tomorrow, then, to give better warning. On the morrow, which is Saturday, there turn out 'some thirty'; and depart shrugging their shoulders! Lafayette promptly takes carriage again; returns musing on many things.

The dust of Paris is hardly off his wheels, the summer Sunday is still young, when Cordeliers in deputation pluck up that Mai of his: before sunset, Patriots have burnt him in effigy. Louder doubt and louder rises, in Section, in National Assembly, as to the legality of such unbidden Anti-jacobin visit on the part of a General: doubt swelling and spreading all over France, for six weeks or so; with endless talk about usurping soldiers, about English Monk, nay about Cromwell: O thou poor Grandison-Cromwell!—What boots it? King Louis himself looked coldly on the enterprise: colossal Hero of two Worlds, having weighed himself in the balance, finds that he is become a gossamer Colossus, only some thirty turning out.

In a like sense, and with a like issue, works our Department-Directory here at Paris; who, on the 6th of July, take upon them to suspend Mayor Pétion and Procureur Manuel from all civic functions, for their conduct, replete, as is alleged, with omissions and commissions, on that delicate Twentieth of June. Virtuous Pétion sees himself a kind of martyr, or pseudo-martyr, threatened with several things; drawls out due heroical lamentation; to which Patriot Paris and Patriot