Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/36

20 batteries, in the deadly fire-hail; wriggling invincible from under his horse, at Closterkamp of the Netherlands, though tethered with 'crushed stirrup-iron and nineteen wounds'; tough, minatory, standing at bay, as forlorn hope, on the skirts of Poland; intriguing, battling in cabinet and field; roaming far out, obscure, as King's spial, or sitting sealed up, enchanted in Bastille; fencing, pamphleteering, scheming and struggling from the very birth of him, —the man has come thus far. How repressed, how irrepressible! Like some incarnate spirit in prison, which indeed he was; hewing on granite walls for deliverance; striking fire-flashes from them. And now has the general earthquake rent his cavern too? Twenty years younger, what might he not have done! But his hair has a shade of grey; his way of thought is all fixed, military. He can grow no further, and the new world is in such growth. We will name him, on the whole, one of Heaven's Swiss; without faith; wanting above all things work, work on any side. Work also is appointed him; and he will do it.

Not from over France only are the unrestful flocking towards Paris; but from all sides of Europe. Where the carcass is, thither will the eagles gather. Think how many a Spanish Guzman, Martinico Fournier named 'Fournier l'Américain,' Engineer Miranda from the very Andes, were flocking or had flocked. Walloon Pereyra might boast of the strangest parentage: him, they say, Prince Kaunitz the Diplomatist heedlessly dropped; like ostrich-egg, to be hatched of Chance,—into an ostrich-eater! Jewish or German Freys do business in the great Cesspool of Agio; which Cesspool this Assignat-fiat has quickened, into a Mother of dead dogs. Swiss Clavière could found no Socinian Genevese Colony in Ireland; but he paused, years ago, prophetic, before the Minister's Hôtel at Paris; and said, it was borne on his mind that he one day was to be Minister, and