Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/22

 stealthy way the seagreen man sits there, his feline eyes excellent in the twilight. Also understand this other, a single fact worth many: that Marat is not only there, but has a seat of honour assigned him, a tribune particulière. How changed for Marat; lifted from his dark cellar into this luminous 'peculiar tribune'! All dogs have their day; even rabid dogs. Sorrowful, incurable Philoctetes Marat; without whom Troy cannot be taken! Hither, as a main element of the Governing Power, has Marat been raised. Royalist types, for we have 'suppressed' innumerable Durosoys, Royous, and even clapt them in prison,—Royalist types replace the worn types often snatched from a People's-Friend in old ill days. In our 'peculiar tribune' we write and redact: Placards, of due monitory terror; Amis-du-Peuple (now under the name of Journal de la République); and sit obeyed of men. 'Marat,' says one, 'is the conscience of the Hôtel-de-Ville.' Keeper, as some call it, of the Sovereign's Conscience; which surely in such hands will not lie hid in a napkin!

Two great movements, as we said, agitate this distracted National mind: a rushing against domestic Traitors, a rushing against foreign Despots. Mad movements both, restrainable by no known rule; strongest passions of human nature driving them on: love, hatred, vengeful sorrow, braggart Nationality also vengeful,—and pale Panic over all! Twelve-hundred slain Patriots, do they not, from their dark catacombs there, in Death's dumb-show, plead (O ye Legislators) for vengeance? Such was the destructive rage of these Aristocrats on the ever-memorable Tenth. Nay, apart from vengeance, and with an eye to Public Salvation only, are there not still, in this Paris (in round numbers) 'Thirty-thousand Aristocrats,' of the most malignant humour; driven now to their last trump-card?—Be patient, ye Patriots: our new High Court, 'Tribunal of the Seventeenth,' sits; each Section has sent Four Jurymen; and Danton, extinguishing improper judges, improper practices wheresoever found, is 'the same man you