Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/71

JULY 1, 1790]

to Paris, ever going and returning, day after day, and all day long, towards that Field of Mars, it becomes painfully apparent that the spadework there cannot be got done in time. There is such an area of it; three hundred thousand square feet: for from the École Militaire (which will need to be done up in wood with balconies and galleries) westward to the Gate by the River (where also shall be wood, in triumphal arches), we count some thousand yards of length; and for breadth, from this umbrageous Avenue of eight rows, on the South side, to that corresponding one on the North, some thousand feet more or less. All this to be scooped out, and wheeled up in slope along the sides; high enough; for it must be rammed down there, and shaped stair-wise into as many as 'thirty ranges of convenient seats,' firm-trimmed with turf, covered with enduring timber;—and then our huge pyramidal Fatherland's-Altar, Autel de la Patrie, in the centre, also to be raised and stair-stepped. Force-work with a vengeance; it is a World's Amphitheatre! There are but fifteen days good: and at this languid rate, it might take half as many weeks. What is singular too, the spademen seem to work lazily; they will not work double-tides, even for offer of more wages, though their tide is but seven hours; they declare angrily that the human tabernacle requires occasional rest!

Is it Aristocrats secretly bribing? Aristocrats were capable of that. Only six months since, did not evidence get afloat that subterreanean Paris,—for we stand over quarries and catacombs, dangerously, as it were midway between Heaven and the Abyss, and are hollow underground,—was charged with gunpowder, which should make us 'leap'? Till a