Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/257

 General Houchard, it would appear, stood behind a hedge on this Hondschooten occasion; wherefore they have since guillotined him. A new General Jourdan, late Sergeant Jourdan, commands in his stead: he, in long-winded Battles of Watigny, 'murderous artillery-fire mingling itself with sound of Revolutionary battle-hymns,' forces Austria behind the Sambre again; has hopes of purging the soil of Liberty. With hard wrestling, with artillerying and ça-ira-ing, it shall be done. In the course of a new Summer, Valenciennes will see itself beleaguered; Condé beleaguered; whatsoever is yet in the hands of Austria beleaguered and bombarded: nay, by Convention Decree, we even summon them all 'either to surrender in twenty-four hours, or else be put to the sword';—a high saying, which, though it remains unfulfilled, may show what spirit one is of.

Representative Drouet as an Old-dragoon, could fight by a kind of second nature: but he was unlucky. Him, in a night-foray at Maubeuge, the Austrians took alive, in October last. They stript him almost naked, he says; making a show of him, as King-taker of Varennes. They flung him into carts; sent him far into the interior of Cimmeria, to 'a Fortress called Spitzberg' on the Danube River; and left him there, at an elevation of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, to his own bitter reflections. Reflections; and also devices! For the indomitable Old-dragoon constructs wing machinery, of Paperkite; saws window-bars; determines to fly down. He will seize a boat, will follow the River's course; land somewhere in Crim Tartary, in the Black-Sea or Constantinople region: à la Sindbad! Authentic History, accordingly, looking far into Cimmeria, discerns dimly a phenomenon. In the dead night-watches, the Spitzberg sentry is near fainting with terror:—Is it a huge vague Portent descending through the night-air? It is a huge National Representative Old-dragoon, descending by Paperkite; too rapidly, alas! For Drouet had taken with him 'a small provision-store, twenty pounds weight or thereby'; which proved accelerative: so he