Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/252

 the Abbaye; wending, one may fear, towards Tinville and the Axe; and 'people say to me'—what seems to be proving true! Bazire's blood was all inflamed with Revolution Fever; with coffee and spasmodic dreams. Chabot, again, how happy with his rich Jew-Austrian wife, late Fraulein Frey! But he lies in Prison; and his two Jew-Austrian Brothers-in-Law, the Bankers Frey, lie with him; waiting the urn of doom. Let a National Convention, therefore, take warning, and know its function. Let the Convention, all as one man, set its shoulder to the work; not with bursts of Parliamentary eloquence, but in quite other and serviceabler ways!

Convention Commissioners, what we ought to call Representatives, 'Représentans on mission,' fly, like the Herald Mercury, to all points of the Territory; carrying your behests far and wide. In their 'round hat, plumed with tricolor feathers, girt with flowing tricolor taffeta; in close frock, tricolor sash, sword and jack-boots,' these men are powerfuler than King or Kaiser. They say to whomso they meet, Do; and he must do it: all men's goods are at their disposal; for France is as one huge City in Siege. They smite with Requisitions and Forced-loan; they have the power of life and death. Saint-Just and Lebas order the rich classes of Strasburg to 'strip-off their shoes,' and send them to the Armies, where as many as 'ten-thousand pairs' are needed. Also, that within four-and-twenty hours, 'a thousand beds' be got ready; wrapt in matting and sent under way. For the time presses!—Like swift bolts, issuing from the fuliginous Olympus of Salut Public, rush these men, oftenest in pairs; scatter your thunder-orders over France; make France one enormous Revolutionary thunder-cloud.