Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/73

JULY 2–12, 1790] and tricolor streamers: they have shouldered, soldier-wise, their shovels and picks; and with one throat are singing ça-ira. Yes, pardieu ça-ira, cry the passengers on the streets. All corporate Guilds, and public and private Bodies of Citizens, from the highest to the lowest, march; the very Hawkers, one finds, have ceased bawling for one day. The neighbouring Villages turn out: their able men come marching, to village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash. As many as one hundred and fifty thousand workers; nay at certain seasons, as some count, two hundred and fifty thousand; for, in the afternoon especially, what mortal but, finishing his hasty day's work, would run! A stirring City: from the time you reach the Place Louis-Quinze, southward over the River, by all Avenues, it is one living throng. So many workers; and no mercenary mock-workers, but real ones that lie freely to it: each Patriot stretches himself against the stubborn glebe; hews and wheels with the whole weight that is in him.

Amiable infants, aimables enfans! They do the police de l’atelier too, the guidance and governance, themselves; with that ready will of theirs, with that extemporaneous adroitness. It is a true brethren's work; all distinctions confounded, abolished; as it was in the beginning, when Adam himself delved. Long-frocked tonsured Monks, with short-skirted Water-carriers, with swallow-tailed well-frizzled Incroyables of a Patriot turn; dark Charcoalmen, meal-white Peruke-makers; or Peruke-wearers, for Advocate and Judge are there, and all Heads of Districts: sober Nuns sisterlike with flaunting Nymphs of the Opera, and females in common circumstances named unfortunate: the patriot Ragpicker, and perfumed dweller in palaces; for Patriotism, like New-birth, and also like Death, levels all. The Printers have come marching, Prudhomme's all in Paper-caps with Révolutions de Paris printed on them;—as Camille notes; wishing that in these great days there should be a Pacte des Écrivains too, or