Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/300

 Mother Society herself. Also, what in such ferment and danger of effervescence is surely proper, the Forty-eight Sections have got their Central Committee; intended 'for prompt communication.' To which Central Committee the Municipality, anxious to have it at hand, could not refuse an Apartment in the Hôtel-de-Ville.

Singular City! For overhead of all this, there is the customary baking and brewing; Labour hammers and grinds. Frilled promenaders saunter under the trees; white-muslin promenaderess, in green parasol, leaning on your arm. Dogs dance, and shoeblacks polish, on that Pont-Neuf itself, where Fatherland is in danger. So much goes its course; and yet the course of all things is nigh altering and ending.

Look at that Tuileries and Tuileries Garden. Silent all as Sahara; none entering save by ticket! They shut their Gates, after the day of the Black Breeches; a thing they had the liberty to do. However the National Assembly grumbled something about Terrace of the Feuillants, how said Terrace lay contiguous to the back-entrance to their Salle, and was partly National Property; and so now National Justice has stretched a Tricolor Riband athwart it, by way of boundary-line; respected with splenetic strictness by all Patriots. It hangs there, that Tricolor boundary-line; carries 'satirical inscriptions on cards,' generally in verse; and all beyond this is called Coblentz, and remains vacant; silent as a fateful Golgotha; sunshine and umbrage alternating on it in vain. Fateful Circuit: what hope can dwell in it? Mysterious Tickets of Entry introduce themselves; speak of Insurrection very imminent. Rivarol's staff of Genius had better purchase blunderbusses; Grenadier bonnets, red Swiss uniforms may be useful. Insurrection will come; but likewise will it not be met? Staved off, one may hope, till Brunswick arrive?

But consider withal if the Bourne-stones and Portable-chairs remain silent; if the Herald's College of Bill-Stickers sleep! Louvet's Sentinel warns gratis on all walls; Sulleau is busy; People's-Friend Marat and King's-Friend Royou croak and