Chapter VIII: Act I (4)

But with regard to Cromwell's "lying," we will make one remark. This, I suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to be meaning _this_, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out to have been meaning _that_! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must have _reticences_ in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to other men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are impertinent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer _un_informed on that matter; not, if you can help it, _mis_informed, but precisely as dark as he was!

This, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and faithful man would aim to answer in such a case.

Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small subaltern parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. Each little party thought him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find him not of their party, but of his own party! Was it his blame? At all seasons of his history he must have felt, among such people, how if he explained to them the deeper insight he had, they must either have shuddered aghast at it, or believing it, their own little compact hypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. They could not have worked in his province any more; nay perhaps they could not have now worked in their own province. It is the inevitable position of a great man among small men. Small men, most active, useful, are to be seen everywhere, whose whole activity depends on some conviction which to you is palpably a limited one; imperfect, what we call an _error_. But would it be a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to disturb them in that? Many a man, doing loud work in the world, stands only on some thin traditionality, conventionality to him indubitable, to you incredible: break that beneath him, he sinks to endless depths! "I might have my hand full of truth," said Fontenelle, "and open only my little finger."

And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, how much more in all departments of practice! He that cannot withal _keep his mind to himself_ cannot practice any considerable thing whatever. And we call it "dissimulation," all this? What would you think of calling the general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and private soldier who pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were about everything?--Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all this in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An endless vortex of such questioning "corporals" rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you say so much?

But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to the very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about their "ambition," "falsity," and suchlike. The first is what I might call substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and starting-point of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had determined on being Protector of England, at the time when he was plowing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all mapped-out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step dramatically unfolded with all manner of cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow scheming [Greek: Ypochrites], or Play-actor, that he was! This is a radical perversion; all but universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the fact is! How much does one of _us_ foresee of his own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an _un_wound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had _not_ his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall away of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History! Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view;--but look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this Cromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of History only remember it now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in the fact it _stood_, requires indeed a rare faculty; rare, nay impossible. A very Shakespeare for faculty; or more than Shakespeare; who could _enact_ a brother man's biography, see with the brother man's eyes at all points of his course what things _he_ saw; in short, _know_ his course and him, as few "Historians" are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort our image of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to represent them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as they are thrown down before us.

But a second error which I think the generality commit refers to this same "ambition" itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in that sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A _great_ man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a hospital than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the _emptiness_ of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in this way.

Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be "noticed" by noisy crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was already there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray; and Life from the down-hill slope was all seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter _how_ it went,--he had been content to plow the ground, and read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer, without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers haunting him, "Decide this, decide that," which in utmost sorrow of heart no man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for this man? From of old was there not in his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splendor as of Heaven itself? His existence there as man set him beyond the need of gilding. Death, Judgment, and Eternity: these already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did. All his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no speech of a mortal could name. God's Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had read it: this was great, and all else was little to him. To call such a man "ambitious," to figure him as the prurient wind-bag described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will say: "Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone; there is _too much of life_ in me already!" Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was not ambitious. "Corsica Boswell" flaunted at public shows with printed ribbons round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. The world-wide soul, wrapt-up in its thoughts, in its sorrows;--what could paradings and ribbons in the hat, do for it?

Ah yes, I will say again: The great _silent_ men! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great Empire of _Silence_. The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his own department; silently thinking; silently working; whom no Morning Newspaper makes mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had no _roots_; which had all turned into leaves and boughs;--which must soon wither and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we can _show_, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher than the stars; deeper than the Kingdoms of Death! It alone is great; all else is small.--I hope we English will long maintain our _grand talent pour le silence_. Let others that cannot do without standing on barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all the market-place, cultivate speech exclusively,--become a most green forest without roots! Solomon says, There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep silence. Of some great silent Samuel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he was, by _want of money_ and nothing other, one might ask, "Why do not you too get up and speak; promulgate your system, found your sect?" "Truly," he will answer, "I am _continent_ of my thought hitherto; happily I have yet had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system' is not for promulgation first of all; it is for serving myself to live by. That is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 'honor'? Alas, yes;--but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is Cato's statue?"

But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that there are two kinds of ambition: one wholly blamable, the other laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent Samuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. "Seekest thou great things, seek them not:" this is most true. And yet, I say, there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself according to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak out, to act out, what Nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay, it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a man. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting in this: To unfold your _self_, to work what thing you have the faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks that the infant learns to _speak_ by this necessity it feels.--We will say therefore: To decide about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two things to take into view. Not the coveting of the place alone, but the fitness for the man of the place withal: that is the question. Perhaps the place was _his_, perhaps he had a natural right, and even obligation to seek the place! Mirabeau's ambition to be Prime Minister, how shall we blame it, if he were "the only man in France that could have done any good there"? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly _felt_ how much good he could do! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, and had even felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because they had flung him out and he was now quit of it, well might Gibbon mourn over him.--Nature, I say, has provided amply that the silent great man shall strive to speak withal; _too_ amply, rather!

Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old Samuel Johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible for him to do priceless divine work for his country and the whole world. That the perfect Heavenly Law might be made Law on this Earth; that the prayer he prayed daily, "Thy kingdom come," was at length to be fulfilled! If you had convinced his judgment of this; that it was possible, practicable; that he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a part in it! Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed-up into a divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act; casting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet, counting all affliction and contradiction small,--the whole dark element of his existence blazing into articulate radiance of light and lightning? It were a true ambition this! And think now how it actually was with Cromwell. From of old, the sufferings of God's Church, true zealous Preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, whipt, set on pillories, their ears cropt off, God's Gospel-cause trodden under foot of the unworthy: all this had lain heavy on his soul. Long years he had looked upon it in silence, in prayer; seeing no remedy on Earth; trusting well that a remedy in Heaven's goodness would come,--that such a course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. And now behold the dawn of it; after twelve years' silent waiting, all England stirs itself; there is to be once more a Parliament, the Right will get a voice for itself: inexpressible well-grounded hope has come again into the Earth. Was not such a Parliament worth being a member of? Cromwell threw down his plow, and hastened thither.

He spoke there,--rugged bursts of earnestness, of a self-seen truth, where we get a glimpse of them. He worked there; he fought and strove, like a strong true giant of a man, through cannon-tumult and all else,--on and on, till the Cause _triumphed_, its once so formidable enemies all swept from before it, and the dawn of hope had become clear light of victory and certainty. That _he_ stood there as the strongest soul of England, the undisputed Hero of all England,--what of this? It was possible that the Law of Christ's Gospel could now establish itself in the world! The Theocracy which John Knox in his pulpit might dream of as a "devout imagination," this practical man, experienced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to consider as capable of being _realized_. Those that were highest in Christ's Church, the devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in some considerable degree, it might be so and should be so. Was it not _true_, God's truth? And if _true_, was it not then the very thing to do? The strongest practical intellect in England dared to answer, Yes! This I call a noble true purpose; is it not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter into the heart of Statesman or man? For a Knox to take it up was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience of what our world _was_,--History, I think, shows it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating point of Protestantism; the most heroic phasis that "Faith in the Bible" was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it were made manifest to one of us, how we could make the Right supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed and prayed for, as the highest good to England and all lands, an attainable fact!

Well, I must say, the _vulpine_ intellect, with its knowingness, its alertness and expertness in "detecting hypocrites," seems to me a rather sorry business. We have had but one such Statesman in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in the course of fifteen hundred years; and this was his welcome. He had adherents by the hundred or the ten; opponents by the million. Had England rallied all round him,--why, then, England might have been a _Christian_ land! As it is, vulpine knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, "Given a world of Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action;"--how cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery Law Courts, and some other places! Till at length, by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's great grace, the matter begins to stagnate; and this problem is becoming to all men a _palpably_ hopeless one.

THE PROCESSION

From 'The French Revolution'

We dwell no longer on the mixed shouting Multitude, for now, behold, the Commons Deputies are at hand! Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their _king_? For a king or leader they, as all bodies of men, must have, be their work what it may; there is one man there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it; that man, as future, not-yet-elected king walks there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be? With the _hure_, as himself calls it, or black _boar's-head_, fit to be "shaken" as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows and rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face there look natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,--and burning fire of genius, like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau, the world-compeller; man-ruling Deputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de Stael, he steps proudly along, though looked at askance here, and shakes his black _chevelure_, or lion's mane, as if prophetic of great deeds.

Yes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch, as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than any other man;--and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National Assembly were all different without that one; nay, he might say, with the old Despot:--"The National Assembly? I am that."

Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood:--for the Riquettis, or Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long centuries ago, and settled in Provence, where from generation to generation they have ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred, irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they wore; of an intensity and activity that sometimes verged towards madness, yet did not reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfillment of a mad vow, chains two Mountains together, and the chain, with its "iron star of five rays," is still to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti _un_chain so much, and set it drifting--which also shall be seen?

Destiny has work for that swart, burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his Grandfather, stout Col-d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named him), shattered and slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one fell day, lie sunk together on the Bridge at Casano, while Prince Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him--only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head; and Vendome, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out, "Mirabeau is _dead_, then!" Nevertheless he was not dead; he awoke to breath and miraculous surgery--for Gabriel was yet to be. With his _silver stock_ he kept his scarred head erect, through long years, and wedded, and produced tough Marquis Victor, the _friend of men_. Whereby at last in the appointed year, 1749, this long-expected, rough-hewn Gabriel Honore did likewise see the light; roughest lion's-whelp ever littered of that rough breed. How the old lion (for our old Marquis, too, was lion-like, most unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on his offspring, and determined to train him as no lion had yet been! It is in vain, O Marquis! This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will not learn to draw in dog-cart of Political Economy, and be a _friend of men_; he will not be Thou, but must and will be Himself, another than Thou. Divorce law-suits, "whole family save one in prison, and threescore _lettres-de-cachet_" for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.

Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle of Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the Castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the Fortress of Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes;--all by _lettre-de-cachet_, from his lion father. He has been in Pontarlier Jails (self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has pleaded before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife), the public gathering on roofs, to see, since they could not hear: "The clatter-teeth (_claque-dents_)!" snarls singular old Mirabeau; discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.

But as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfarings, what has he not seen and tried! From drill-sergeants to prime ministers, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen. All manner of men he has gained; for at bottom it is a social loving heart, that wild unconquerable one--more especially all manner of women. From the Archer's Daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie, Madame Monnier, whom he could not but "steal" and be beheaded for--in effigy! For indeed, hardly since the Arabian Prophet lay dead, to Ali's admiration, was there seen such a Love-hero, with the strength of thirty men. In War again, he has helped to conquer Corsica; fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons. In Literature, he has written on 'Despotism,' on 'Lettres-de-Cachet'; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities; Books on the 'Prussian Monarchy,' on 'Cagliostro,' on 'Calonne,' on 'The Water-Companies of Paris':--each book comparable, we will say, to a bituminous alarum-fire, huge, smoky, sudden! The fire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen, were his own; but the lumber, of rags, old wood, and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters and ass-panniers of every description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is _mine_!

Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man, he can make his; the man himself he can make his. "All reflex and echo (_tout de reflet et de reverbere_)!" snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of qualities for him. In that forty years' "struggle against despotism," he has gained the glorious faculty of _self-help_, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of _fellowship_, of being helped. Rare union: this man can live self-sufficing--yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him; a born king of men!

But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has "made away with (_hume_, swallowed, snuffed-up) all _Formulas_"; a fact which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man, nevertheless, who will glare fiercely on any object, and see through it, and conquer it: for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with _logic-spectacles_, but with an _eye_! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and Sincerity there; a Reality, not an artificiality, not a Sham! And so he, having struggled "forty years against despotism," and "made away with all formulas," shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off despotism, to make away with _her_ old formulas,--having found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will make away with _such_ formulas;--and even go _bare_, if need be, till she have found new ones.

Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the slouch hat, he steps along there. A fiery, fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke! And now it has got _air_; it will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor enough; then victory over that, and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high; and for twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder-sign of an amazed Europe;--and then lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honore, the greatest of them all: in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none like and none second to thee.

But now, if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may be the meanest? Shall we say that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green. That greenish-colored (_verdatre_) individual is an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre. The son of an Advocate; his father founded Mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince or Pretender. Maximilien, the first-born, was thriftily educated; he had brisk Camille Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron, to let him depart thence, and resign in favor of a younger brother. The strict-minded Max departed, home to paternal Arras; and even had a Law-case there, and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, "in favor of the first Franklin thunder-rod." With a strict, painful mind, an understanding small but clear and ready, he grew in favor with official persons, who could foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints him Judge of his diocese, and he faithfully does justice to the people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime merits hanging, and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die. A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions? whose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small-ale, could by no chance ferment into virulent _alegar_,--the mother of ever-new alegar;--till all France were grown acetous virulent? We shall see.

Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so many grand and mean roll on, towards their several destinies, in that Procession! There is Cazales, the learned young soldier, who shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the shadow of a name. Experienced Mounier, experienced Malouet, whose Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things shall soon leave stranded. A Petion has left his gown and briefs at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten his violin, being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he is still young; convictions, beliefs placid-unalterable, are in that man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself. A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Etienne, a slender young eloquent and vehement Barnave, will help to regenerate France. There are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry: but how many men here under thirty; coming to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of such! The old to heal up rents, the young to remove rubbish:--which latter is it not, indeed, the task here?

Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou noticest the Deputies from Nantes? To us mere clothes-screens, with slouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a _Cahier_ of _doleances_ with this singular clause, and more such, in it:--"That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with new guild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two being more than sufficient!" The Rennes people have elected farmer Gerard, "a man of natural sense and rectitude without any learning." He walks there with solid step; unique, "in his rustic farmer-clothes;" which he will wear always, careless of short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gerard, or "Pere Gerard, Father Gerard," as they please to call him, will fly far, borne about in endless banter, in Royalist satires, in Republican Didactic Almanacks. As for the man Gerard, being asked once what he did, after trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,--"I think," answered he, "that there are a good many scoundrels among us." So walks Father Gerard, solid in his thick shoes, whithersoever bound.

And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one other time? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of prophecy; for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late. Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner: doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in all cases of medical police and _hygiene_ be a present aid: but greater far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal Code,' and reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of Guillotin's endeavors, gained not without meditation and reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: _La Guillotine_! "With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais sauter la tete) in a twinkling, and you have no pain;"--whereat they all laugh. Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Caesar's.

See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honored Historian of Astronomy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beautiful Philosophizing, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thinness, ends in foul thick confusion--of Presidency, Mayorship, diplomatic officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of everlasting Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly Galaxy to the _Drapeau Rouge_: beside that fatal dung-heap, on that last hell-day, thou must "tremble", though only with cold--"_de froid_." Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not so miserable, but to be weaker than our task. Woe the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hippogriff of a Democracy, which, spurning the firm earth, nay, lashing at the very _stars_, no yet known Astolpho could have ridden!

In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters; 374 Lawyers, and at least one Clergyman, the Abbe Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light, thin man; cold, but elastic, wiry; instinct with the pride of Logic; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which in its independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into transcendentalism; and to sit there with a kind of godlike indifference, and look down on passion! He is the man, and wisdom shall die with him. This is the Sieyes who shall be System-builder, Constitution-builder General, and build Constitutions (as many as wanted) sky-high,--which shall all unfortunately fall before he get the scaffolding away. "_La Politique_", said he to Dumont, "polity is a science I think I have completed (_achevee_)." What things, O Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see! But were it not curious to know how Sieyes, now in these days (for he is said to be still alive) looks out on all that Constitution masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme age? Might we hope, still with the old irrefragable transcendentalism? The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished one pleased Sieyes (_victa Catoni_).

Thus, however, amid sky-rending _vivats_, and blessings from every heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by.

Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of whom it might be asked What they specially have come for. Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this question, put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God's fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is begging or stealing? Woe, woe to themselves and to all, if they can only answer; Collecting tithes, Preserving game! Remark, meanwhile, how D'Orleans affects to step before his own Order and mingle with the Commons. For him are _vivats_; few for the rest, though all wave in plumed "hats of a feudal cut," and have sword on thigh; though among them is D'Antraigues, the young Languedocian gentleman,--and indeed many a peer more or less noteworthy.

There are Liancourt and La Rochefoucault, the liberal Anglo-maniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal Lameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette; whose name shall be Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the world. Many a "formula" has this Lafayette, too, made away with; yet not _all_ formulas. He sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick;--and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water, is found still hanging. Happy for him, be it glorious or not! Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note further our old parlementary friend, Crispin-Catiline d'Espremenil. He is returned from the Mediterranean islands, a red-hot royalist, repentant to the finger-ends;--unsettled-looking; whose light, dusky-glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the National Assembly will by and by, to save time, "regard as in a state of distraction." Note lastly that globular _Younger_ Mirabeau, indignant that his elder Brother is among the Commons; it is _Viscomte_ Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau _Tonneau_ (Barrel Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of strong liquor he contains.

There, then, walks our French noblesse. All in the old pomp of chivalry; and yet, alas, how changed from the old position; drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these Chivalry _Duces_ (Dukes, as they are still named) did actually _lead_ the world,--were it only toward battle-spoil, where lay the world's best wages then; moreover, being the ablest leaders going, they had their lion's share, these _Duces_, which none could grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Plow-shares, Steam-Engines, and Bills of Exchange have been invented; and for battle-brawling itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at eighteen pence a day,--what mean these gold-mantled Chivalry Figures, walking there in "black-velvet cloaks," in high-plumed "hats of a feudal cut"? Reeds shaken in the wind!

The clergy have got up; with _Cahiers_ for abolishing pluralities, enforcing residence of bishops, better payment of tithes. The Dignitaries, we can observe, walk stately, apart from the numerous Undignified,--who, indeed, are properly little other than Commons disguised in Curate-frocks. Here, however, though by strange ways, shall the Precept be fulfilled, and they that are greatest (much to their astonishment) become least. For one example out of many, mark that plausible Gregoire: one day Cure Gregoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are wandering distracted, as Bishops _in partibus_. With other thought, mark also the Abbe Maury; his broad bold face, mouth accurately primmed, full eyes, that ray out intelligence, falsehood,--the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should find it sophistical. Skillfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather, to make it look like new; always a rising man; he used to tell Mercier, "You will see; I shall be in the Academy before you." Likely indeed, thou skillfulest Maury; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal's hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in the long run--mere oblivion, like the rest of us, and six feet of earth! What boots it, vamping rotten leather on these terms? Glorious in comparison is the livelihood thy good old Father earns by making shoes,--one may hope, in a sufficient manner. Maury does not want for audacity. He shall wear pistols by-and-by; and at death-cries of "_La lanterne_, The Lamp-iron!" answer coolly, "Friends, will you see better there?"

But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop Talleyrand-Perigord, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grimness lies in that irreverend Reverence of Autun. He will do and suffer strange things; and will _become_ surely one of the strangest things ever seen, or like to be seen. A man living in falsehood and on falsehood; yet not what you can call a false man: there is the specialty! It will be an enigma for future ages, one may hope; hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was possible only for this age of ours--Age of Paper, and of the Burning of Paper. Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafayette as the topmost of their two kinds; and say once more, looking at what they did and what they were. _O tempus ferax rerum_!

On the whole, however, has not this unfortunate clergy also drifted in the Time-stream, far from its native latitude? An anomalous mass of men; of whom the whole world has already a dim understanding that it can understand nothing. They were once a Priesthood, interpreters of Wisdom, revealers of the Holy that is in Man; a true Clerus (or Inheritance of God on Earth): but now?--They pass silently, with such _Cahiers_ as they have been able to redact; and none cries, God bless them.

King Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits: still more Necker his Minister. Not so the Queen, on whom hope shines not steadily any more. Ill-fated Queen! Her hair is already gray with many cares and crosses; her first-born son is dying in these weeks: black falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name--ineffaceably while this generation lasts. Instead of _Vive la reine_, voices insult her with _Vive d'Orleans_. Of her queenly beauty little remains except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette; with thy quick, noble instincts, vehement glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store for thee, bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the future!

And so in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France. Some toward honor and quick fire-consummation; most toward dishonor; not a few toward massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all toward Eternity!--So many heterogeneities cast together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments, to work out healing for a sick, Moribund System of Society! Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thousandfold complex a Society, ready to burst up from its infinite depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without life-rule for themselves,--other life-rule than a Gospel according to Jean Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without Duty round him; except it be "to make the Constitution." He is without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in the world.

What further or better belief can be said to exist in these Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in heraldic scutcheons; in the divine right of Kings, in the divine right of Game-Destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting half-belief; or worst of all, mere Machiavellic pretense-of-belief,--in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless, in that immeasurable Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of a New Life discernible--the deep fixed Determination to have done with Shams. A determination which, consciously or unconsciously, is _fixed_; which waxes ever more fixed, into very madness and fixed-idea; which, in such embodiment as lies provided there, shall now unfold itself rapidly: monstrous, stupendous, unspeakable; new for long thousands of years!--How has the heaven's _light_, oftentimes in this Earth, to clothe itself in thunder and electric murkiness, and descend as molten _lightning_, blasting, if purifying! Nay, is it not rather the very murkiness, and atmospheric suffocation, that _brings_ the lightning and the light? The new Evangel, as the old had been, was it to be born in the Destruction of a World?

THE SIEGE OF THE BASTILLE

From 'The French Revolution'

But, to the living and the struggling, a new, Fourteenth morning dawns. Under all roofs of this distracted City is the nodus of a Drama, not untragical, crowding toward solution. The bustlings and preparings, the tremors and menaces; the tears that fell from old eyes! This day, my sons, ye shall quit you like men. By the memory of your fathers' wrongs; by the hope of your children's rights! Tyranny impends in red wrath: help for you is none, if not in your own right hands. This day ye must do or die.

From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has heard the old cry, now waxing almost frantic, mutinous: Arms! Arms! Provost Flesselles, or what traitors there are among you, may think of those Charleville Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty thousand of us, and but the third man furnished with so much as a pike! Arms are the one thing needful: with arms we are an unconquerable man-defying National Guard; without arms, a rabble to be whiffed with grape-shot.

Happily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept,--that there lie muskets at the Hotel des Invalides. Thither will we: King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of authority a Permanent Committee can lend, shall go with us. Besenval's Camp is there; perhaps he will not fire on us; if he kill us, we shall but die.

Alas! poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that manner, has not the smallest humor to fire! At five o'clock this morning, as he lay dreaming, oblivious in the Ecole Militaire, a "figure" stood suddenly at his bedside; "with face rather handsome, eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, air audacious:" such a figure drew Priam's curtains! The message and monition of the figure was that resistance would be hopeless; that if blood flowed, woe to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure: and vanished. "Withal there was a kind of eloquence that struck one." Besenval admits that he should have arrested him, but did not. Who this figure with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid and curt, might be? Besenval knows, but mentions not. Camille Desmoulins? Pythagorean Marquis Valadi, inflamed with "violent motions all night at the Palais Royal"? Fame names him "Young M. Meillar"; then shuts her lips about him forever.

In any case, behold, about nine in the morning, our National Volunteers, rolling in long wide flood south-westward to the Hotel des Invalides, in search of the one thing needful. King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny and officials are there; the Cure of Saint-Etienne du Mont marches unpacific at the head of his militant Parish; the Clerks of the Basoche in red coats we see marching, now Volunteers of the Palais Royal;--National Volunteers, numerable by tens of thousands; of one heart and mind. The King's Muskets are the Nation's; think, old M. de Sombreuil, how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de Sombreuil would fain hold parley, send couriers, but it skills not: the walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be flung open. Patriotism rushes in tumultuous, from grunsel up to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages; rummaging distractedly for arms. What cellar or what cranny can escape it? The arms are found; all safe there, lying packed in straw,--apparently with a view to being burnt! More ravenous than famishing lions over dead prey, the multitude, with clangor and vociferation, pounces on them; struggling, dashing, clutching,--to the jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture, and probable extinction of the weaker Patriot. And so, with such protracted crash of deafening, most discordant Orchestra-music, the Scene is changed; and eight-and-twenty thousand sufficient firelocks are on the shoulders of as many National Guards, lifted thereby out of darkness into fiery light.

Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets as they flash by! Gardes Francaises, it is said, have cannon leveled on him; ready to open, if need were, from the other side of the river. Motionless sits he; "astonished," one may flatter one's self, "at the proud bearing (_fiere contenance_) of the Parisians." And now to the Bastille, ye intrepid Parisians! There grape-shot still threatens; thither all men's thoughts and steps are now tending.

Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew "into his interior" soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since, hampered, as all military gentlemen now are, in the saddest conflict of uncertainties. The Hotel-de-Ville "invites" him to admit National Soldiers, which is a soft name for surrendering. On the other hand, his Majesty's orders were precise. His garrison is but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young Swiss; his walls, indeed, are nine feet thick; he has cannon and powder, but alas! only one day's provision of victuals. The city, too, is French, the poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous old De Launay, think what thou wilt do!

All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere: To the Bastille! Repeated "deputations of citizens" have been here, passionate for arms, whom De Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon, Elector Thuriot de la Rosiere gains admittance, finds De Launay indisposed for surrender, nay, disposed for blowing up the place, rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements; heaps of paving-stones, old iron, and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly leveled; in every embrasure a cannon,--only drawn back a little! But outwards, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through every street, tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating the _generale_; the suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hitherward wholly as one man! Such vision (spectral, yet real) thou, O Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this moment: prophetic of what other Phantasmagories and loud-gibbering Spectral Realities which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt! "_Que voulez-vous?_" said De Launay, turning pale at the sight, with an air of reproach, almost of menace. "Monsieur," said Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime, "what mean _you_? Consider if I could not precipitate _both_ of us from this height,"--say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch! Whereupon De Launay fell silent. Thuriot shows himself from some pinnacle to comfort the multitude becoming suspicious, fremes-cent, then descends, departs with protest, with warning addressed also to the Invalides, on whom however it produces but a mixed, indistinct impression. The old heads are none of the clearest; besides, it is said, De Launay has been profuse of beverages (_prodigue des buissons_). They think they will not fire--if not fired on--if they can help it; but must, on the whole, be ruled considerably by circumstances.

Wo to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some one firm decision, _rule_ circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve, hard grape-shot is questionable, but hovering between the two is _un_questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,--which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; now _deputation of citizens_ (it is the third and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the Outer Court; soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge. A slight sputter, which has _kindled_ the too combustible chaos, made it a roaring fire-chaos! Bursts forth Insurrection, at sight of its own blood (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire), into endless, rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, execration;--and over head, from the fortress, let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go booming, to show what we _could_ do. The Bastille is besieged!

On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in your bodies! Roar with all your throats of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite thou, Louis Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment Dauphine; smite at that Outer Drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man; down with it to Orcus: let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and tyranny be swallowed up forever! Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guard-room, some "on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall," Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (also an old soldier) seconding him; the chain yields, breaks; the huge Drawbridge slams down, thundering (_avec fracas_). Glorious! and yet, alas! it is still but the outworks. The Eight Grim Towers, with their _Invalide_ musketry, their paving-stones and cannon-mouths, still soar aloft intact;--Ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner Drawbridge with its _back_ toward us; the Bastille is still to take!

To describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of the most important in History) perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading, get to understand so much as the plan of the building! But there is open Esplanade at the end of the Rue Saint-Antoine; there are such Forecourts (_Cour Avance_), _Cour de l'Orme_, arched gateway (where Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and twenty;--beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere Chaos come again! Ordnance of all calibres; throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own engineer; seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals; no one would heed him in colored clothes; half-pay Hulin is haranguing Gardes Francaises in the Place de Greve. Frantic patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot (or seemingly so), to the Hotel-de-Ville:--Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt! Flesselles is "pale to the very lips," for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness. At every street-barricade, there whirls simmering a minor whirlpool,--strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-Maelstrom which is lashing round the Bastille.

And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget of the marine service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam's cannon. Singular (if we were not used to the like). Georget lay, last night, taking his ease at his inn; the King of Siam's cannon also lay, knowing nothing of _him_, for a hundred years; yet now, at the right instant, they have got together, and discourse eloquent music. For hearing what was toward, Georget sprang from the Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Francaises, also, will be here, with real artillery: were not the walls so thick!--Upward from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighboring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry, without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease from behind stone; hardly through port-holes show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make no impression!