Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/170

 Behind, around, before, it is one huge Preternatural Puppet-play of Plots; Pitt pulling the wires. Almost I conjecture that I, Camille myself, am a Plot, and wooden with wires.—The force of insight could no farther go.

Be this as it will, History remarks that the Commission of Twelve, now clear enough as to the Plots; and luckily having 'got the threads of them all by the end,' as they say,—are launching Mandates of Arrest rapidly in these May days; and carrying matters with a high hand; resolute that the sea of troubles shall be restrained. What chief Patriot, Section-President even, is safe? They can arrest him; tear him from his warm bed, because he has made irregular Section Arrestments! They arrest Varlet Apostle of Liberty. They arrest Procureur-Substitute Hébert, Père Duchesne; a Magistrate of the People, sitting in Townhall; who, with high solemnity of martyrdom, takes leave of his colleagues; prompt he, to obey the Law; and solemnly acquiescent, disappears into prison.

The swifter fly the Sections, energetically demanding him back; demanding not arrestment of Popular Magistrates, but of a traitorous Twenty-two. Section comes flying after Section;—defiling energetic, with their Cambyses-vein of oratory: nay the Commune itself comes, with Mayor Pache at its head; and with question not of Hébert and the Twenty-two alone, but with this ominous old question made new, 'Can you save the Republic, or must we do it?' To whom President Max Isnard makes fiery answer: If by fatal chance, in any of those tumults which since the Tenth of March are ever returning, Paris were to lift a sacrilegious finger against the National Representation, France would rise as one man, in never-imagined vengeance, and shortly 'the traveller would ask, on which side of the Seine Paris had stood'! Whereat the Mountain bellows only louder, and every Gallery; Patriot Paris boiling round.