Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 04.djvu/78

 In such untriumphant Procession has the Brunswick Manifesto issued! Nay in worse, 'in Negotiation with these miscreants,'—the first news of which produced such a revulsion in the Emigrant nature, as put our scientific World-Poet 'in fear for the wits of several.' There is no help: they must fare on, these poor Emigrants, angry with all persons and things, and making all persons angry in the hapless course they struck into. Landlord and landlady testify to you, at tables-d'hôte, how insupportable these Frenchmen are: how, in spite of such humiliation, of poverty and probable beggary, there is ever the same struggle for precedence, the same forwardness and want of discretion. High in honour, at the head of the table, you with your own eyes observe not a Seigneur, but the automaton of a Seigneur fallen into dotage; still worshipped, reverently waited on and fed. In miscellaneous seats is a miscellany of soldiers, commissaries, adventurers; consuming silently their barbarian victuals. 'On all brows is to be read a hard destiny; all are silent, for each has his own sufferings to bear, and looks forth into misery without bounds.' One hasty wanderer, coming in, and eating without ungraciousness what is set before him, the landlord lets off almost scot-free. 'He is,' whispered the landlord to me, 'the first of these cursed people I have seen condescend to taste our German black bread.'

And Dumouriez is in Paris; lauded and feasted; paraded in glittering saloons, floods of beautifulest blonde-dresses and broadcloth-coats flowing past him, endless, in admiring joy. One night, nevertheless, in the splendour of one such scene, he sees himself suddenly apostrophised by a squalid unjoyful Figure, who has come in uninvited, nay despite of all lackeys; an unjoyful Figure! The Figure is come 'in express mission from the Jacobins,' to inquire sharply, better then than later, touching certain things: 'Shaven eyebrows of Volunteer