Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/28

 and demanded a Decree to search for arms, since they were not yielded voluntarily. Let 'Domiciliary visits,' with rigour of authority, be made to this end. To search for arms; for horses,—Aristocratism rolls in its carriage, while Patriotism cannot trail its cannon. To search generally for munitions of war, 'in the houses of persons suspect,'—and even, if it seem proper, to seize and imprison the suspect persons themselves! In the Prisons their Plots will be harmless; in the Prisons they will be as hostages for us, and not without use. This Decree the energetic Minister of Justice demanded last night, and got; and this same night it is to be executed; it is being executed at the moment when these dusty soldiers get saluted with Mourir. Two-thousand stand of arms, as they count, are foraged in this way; and some four-hundred head of new Prisoners; and, on the whole, such a terror and damp is struck through the Aristocrat heart, as all but Patriotism, and even Patriotism were it out of this agony, might pity. Yes, Messieurs! if Brunswick blast Paris to ashes, he probably will blast the Prisons of Paris too: pale Terror, if we have got it, we will also give it, and the depth of horrors that lie in it; the same leaky bottom, in these wild waters, bears us all.

One can judge what stir there was now among the 'thirty-thousand Royalists': how the Plotters, or the accused of Plotting, shrank each closer into his lurking-place,—like Bertrand-Moleville, looking eager towards Longwi, hoping the weather would keep fair. Or how they dressed themselves in valet's clothes, like Narbonne, and 'got to England as Dr. Bollman's famulus': how Dame de Staël bestirred herself, pleading with Manuel as a Sister in Literature, pleading even with Clerk Tallien; a prey to nameless chagrins! Royalist Peltier, the Pamphleteer, gives a touching Narrative (not deficient in height of colouring) of the terrors of that night. From five in the afternoon, a great city is struck suddenly silent; except for the beating of drums, for the tramp of