Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/71

 the dell, ineffectual; regain his old position on La Lune; not unbattered by the way. And so, for the length of a September day,—with bluster and bark; with bellow far-echoing! The cannonade lasts till sunset; and no impression made. Till an hour after sunset, the few remaining Clocks of the District striking Seven; at this late time of day Brunswick tries again. With not a whit better fortune! He is met by rock-ranks, by shout of Vive la Patrie; and driven back, not unbattered. Whereupon he ceases; retires 'to the Tavern of La Lune'; and sets to raising a redoute lest he be attacked!

Verily so, ye dulled-bright Seigneurs, make of it what ye may. Ah, and France does not rise round us in mass; and the Peasants do not join us, but assassinate us; neither hanging nor any persuasion will induce them! They have lost their old distinguishing love of King and King's-cloak,—I fear, altogether; and will even fight to be rid of it: that seems now their humour. Nor does Austria prosper, nor the siege of Thionville. The Thionvillers, carrying their insolence to the epigrammatic pitch, have put a Wooden Horse on their walls, with a bundle of Hay hung from him, and this Inscription: 'When I finish my hay, you will take Thionville.' To such height has the frenzy of mankind risen.

The trenches of Thionville may shut; and what though those of Lille open? The Earth smiles not on us, nor the Heaven; but weeps and blears itself, in sour rain, and worse. Our very friends insult us; we are wounded in the house of our friends: 'His Majesty of Prussia had a greatcoat, when the rain came; and (contrary to all known laws) he put it on, though our two French Princes, the hope of their country, had none'! To which indeed, as Goethe admits, what answer could be made? —Cold and Hunger and Affront, Colic and Dysentery and Death; and we here, cowering redouted, most unredoubtable, amid the 'tattered cornshocks and deformed stubble,' on the splashy Height of La Lune, round the mean Tavern de la Lune!—