Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/34

 the Night of Spurs, tremble ye! Procureur Sausse and the Magistracy of Varennes have fled; brave Boniface Le Blanc of the Bras d'Or is to the woods: Mrs. Le Blanc, a young woman fair to look upon, with her young infant, has to live in greenwood, like a beautiful Bessy Bell of Song, her bower thatched with rushes; catching premature rheumatism. Clermont may ring the tocsin now, and illuminate itself! Clermont lies at the foot of its Cow (or Vache, so they name that Mountain), a prey to the Hessian spoiler: its fair women, fairer than most, are robbed; not of life, or what is dearer, yet of all that is cheaper and portable; for Necessity, on three half-pence a-day, has no law. At Sainte-Menehould the enemy has been expected more than once,—our Nationals all turning out in arms; but was not yet seen. Postmaster Drouet, he is not in the woods, but minding his Election; and will sit in the Convention, notable King-taker, and bold Old-Dragoon as he is.

Thus on the Northeast all roams and runs; and on a set day, the date of which is irrecoverable by History, Brunswick 'has engaged to dine in Paris,'—the Powers willing. And at Paris, in the centre, it is as we saw; and in La Vendée Southwest, it is as we saw; and Sardinia is in the Southeast, and Spain in the South, and Clairfait with Austria and sieged Thionville is in the North;—and all France leaps distracted, like the winnowed Sahara waltzing in sand colonnades! More desperate posture no country ever stood in. A country, one would say, which the Majesty of Prussia (if it so pleased him) might partition and clip in pieces, like a Poland; flinging the remainder to poor Brother Louis,—with directions to keep it quiet, or else we will keep it for him!

Or perhaps the Upper Powers, minded that a new Chapter in Universal History shall begin here and not further on, may have ordered it all otherwise? In that case, Brunswick will not dine in Paris on the set day; nor, indeed, one knows not when!—Verily, amid this wreckage, where poor France seems