Chapter 1: 5.ix

The Lanterne.

The Fall of the Bastille may be said to have shaken all France to
the deepest foundations of its existence. The rumour of these
wonders flies every where: with the natural speed of Rumour; with
an effect thought to be preternatural, produced by plots. Did
d’Orléans or Laclos, nay did Mirabeau (not overburdened with
money at this time) send riding Couriers out from Paris; to
gallop “on all radii,” or highways, towards all points of France?
It is a miracle, which no penetrating man will call in
question.[192]

Already in most Towns, Electoral Committees were met; to regret
Necker, in harangue and resolution. In many a Town, as Rennes,
Caen, Lyons, an ebullient people was already regretting him in
brickbats and musketry. But now, at every Town’s-end in France,
there do arrive, in these days of terror,—“men,” as men will
arrive; nay, “men on horseback,” since Rumour oftenest travels
riding. These men declare, with alarmed countenance, _The_
BRIGANDS to be coming, to be just at hand; and do then—ride on,
about their further business, be what it might! Whereupon the
whole population of such Town, defensively flies to arms.
Petition is soon thereafter forwarded to National Assembly; in
such peril and terror of peril, leave to organise yourself cannot
be withheld: the armed population becomes everywhere an enrolled
National Guard. Thus rides Rumour, careering along all radii,
from Paris outwards, to such purpose: in few days, some say in
not many hours, all France to the utmost borders bristles with
bayonets. Singular, but undeniable,—miraculous or not!—But thus
may any chemical liquid; though cooled to the freezing-point, or
far lower, still continue liquid; and then, on the slightest
stroke or shake, it at once rushes wholly into ice. Thus has
France, for long months and even years, been chemically dealt
with; brought below zero; and now, shaken by the Fall of a
Bastille, it instantaneously congeals: into one crystallised
mass, of sharp-cutting steel! _Guai a chi la tocca;_ ’Ware who
touches it!

In Paris, an Electoral Committee, with a new Mayor and General,
is urgent with belligerent workmen to resume their handicrafts.
Strong Dames of the Market (_Dames de la Halle_) deliver
congratulatory harangues; present “bouquets to the Shrine of
Sainte Genevieve.” Unenrolled men deposit their arms,—not so
readily as could be wished; and receive “nine francs.” With _Te
Deums_, Royal Visits, and sanctioned Revolution, there is halcyon
weather; weather even of preternatural brightness; the hurricane
being overblown.

Nevertheless, as is natural, the waves still run high, hollow
rocks retaining their murmur. We are but at the 22nd of the
month, hardly above a week since the Bastille fell, when it
suddenly appears that old Foulon is alive; nay, that he is here,
in early morning, in the streets of Paris; the extortioner, the
plotter, who would make the people eat grass, and was a liar from
the beginning!—It is even so. The deceptive “sumptuous funeral”
(of some domestic that died); the hiding-place at Vitry towards
Fontainbleau, have not availed that wretched old man. Some living
domestic or dependant, for none loves Foulon, has betrayed him to
the Village. Merciless boors of Vitry unearth him; pounce on him,
like hell-hounds: Westward, old Infamy; to Paris, to be judged at
the Hôtel-de-Ville! His old head, which seventy-four years have
bleached, is bare; they have tied an emblematic bundle of grass
on his back; a garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck:
in this manner; led with ropes; goaded on with curses and
menaces, must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward; the
pitiablest, most unpitied of all old men.

Sooty Saint-Antoine, and every street, mustering its crowds as he
passes,—the Place de Grève, the Hall of the Hôtel-de-Ville will
scarcely hold his escort and him. Foulon must not only be judged
righteously; but judged there where he stands, without any delay.
Appoint seven judges, ye Municipals, or seventy-and-seven; name
them yourselves, or we will name them: but judge him![193]
Electoral rhetoric, eloquence of Mayor Bailly, is wasted
explaining the beauty of the Law’s delay. Delay, and still delay!
Behold, O Mayor of the People, the morning has worn itself into
noon; and he is still unjudged!—Lafayette, pressingly sent for,
arrives; gives voice: This Foulon, a known man, is guilty almost
beyond doubt; but may he not have accomplices? Ought not the
truth to be cunningly pumped out of him,—in the Abbaye Prison? It
is a new light! Sansculottism claps hands;—at which
hand-clapping, Foulon (in his fainness, as his Destiny would have
it) also claps. ‘See! they understand one another!’ cries dark
Sansculottism, blazing into fury of suspicion.—‘Friends,’ said “a
person in good clothes,” stepping forward, ‘what is the use of
judging this man? Has he not been judged these thirty years?’
With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred
hands: he is whirled across the Place de Grève, to the
“_Lanterne_,” Lamp-iron which there is at the corner of the _Rue
de la Vannerie;_ pleading bitterly for life,—to the deaf winds.
Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering
voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His Body
is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike,
the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a
grass-eating people.[194]

Surely if Revenge is a “kind of Justice,” it is a “wild” kind! O
mad Sansculottism hast thou risen, in thy mad darkness, in thy
soot and rags; unexpectedly, like an Enceladus, living-buried,
from under his Trinacria? They that would make grass be eaten do
now eat grass, in _this_ manner? After long dumb-groaning
generations, has the turn suddenly become thine?—To such abysmal
overturns, and frightful instantaneous inversions of the
centre-of-gravity, are human Solecisms all liable, if they but
knew it; the more liable, the falser (and topheavier) they are!—

To add to the horror of Mayor Bailly and his Municipals, word
comes that Berthier has also been arrested; that he is on his way
hither from Compiègne. Berthier, Intendant (say, _Tax-levier_) of
Paris; sycophant and tyrant; forestaller of Corn; contriver of
Camps against the people;—accused of many things: is he not
Foulon’s son-in-law; and, in that one point, guilty of all? In
these hours too, when Sansculottism has its blood up! The
shuddering Municipals send one of their number to escort him,
with mounted National Guards.

At the fall of day, the wretched Berthier, still wearing a face
of courage, arrives at the Barrier; in an open carriage; with the
Municipal beside him; five hundred horsemen with drawn sabres;
unarmed footmen enough, not without noise! Placards go brandished
round him; bearing legibly his indictment, as Sansculottism, with
unlegal brevity, “in huge letters,” draws it up.[195] Paris is
come forth to meet him: with hand-clappings, with windows flung
up; with dances, triumph-songs, as of the Furies! Lastly the Head
of Foulon: this also meets him on a pike. Well might his “look
become glazed,” and sense fail him, at such sight!—Nevertheless,
be the man’s conscience what it may, his nerves are of iron. At
the Hôtel-de-Ville, he will answer nothing. He says, he obeyed
superior order; they have his papers; they may judge and
determine: as for himself, not having closed an eye these two
nights, he demands, before all things, to have sleep. Leaden
sleep, thou miserable Berthier! Guards rise with him, in motion
towards the Abbaye. At the very door of the Hôtel-de-Ville, they
are clutched; flung asunder, as by a vortex of mad arms; Berthier
whirls towards the Lanterne. He snatches a musket; fells and
strikes, defending himself like a mad lion; is borne down,
trampled, hanged, mangled: his Head too, and even his Heart,
flies over the City on a pike.

Horrible, in Lands that had known equal justice! Not so unnatural
in Lands that had never known it. _Le sang qui coule est-il donc
si pure?_ asks Barnave; intimating that the Gallows, though by
irregular methods, has its own.—Thou thyself, O Reader, when thou
turnest that corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, and discernest
still that same grim Bracket of old Iron, wilt not want for
reflections. “Over a grocer’s shop,” or otherwise; with “a bust
of Louis XIV. in the niche under it,” or now no longer in the
niche,—_it_ still sticks there: still holding out an ineffectual
light, of fish-oil; and has seen worlds wrecked, and says
nothing.

But to the eye of enlightened Patriotism, what a thunder-cloud
was this; suddenly shaping itself in the radiance of the halcyon
weather! Cloud of Erebus blackness: betokening latent electricity
without limit. Mayor Bailly, General Lafayette throw up their
commissions, in an indignant manner;—need to be flattered back
again. The cloud disappears, as thunder-clouds do. The halcyon
weather returns, though of a grayer complexion; of a character
more and more evidently _not_ supernatural.

Thus, in any case, with what rubs soever, shall the Bastille be
abolished from our Earth; and with it, Feudalism, Despotism; and,
one hopes, Scoundrelism generally, and all hard usage of man by
his brother man. Alas, the Scoundrelism and hard usage are not so
easy of abolition! But as for the Bastille, it sinks day after
day, and month after month; its ashlars and boulders tumbling
down continually, by express order of our Municipals. Crowds of
the curious roam through its caverns; gaze on the skeletons found
walled up, on the _oubliettes_, iron cages, monstrous
stone-blocks with padlock chains. One day we discern Mirabeau
there; along with the Genevese Dumont.[196] Workers and onlookers
make reverent way for him; fling verses, flowers on his path,
Bastille-papers and curiosities into his carriage, with _vivats._

Able Editors compile Books from the _Bastille Archives;_ from
what of them remain unburnt. The Key of that Robber-Den shall
cross the Atlantic; shall lie on Washington’s hall-table. The
great Clock ticks now in a private patriotic Clockmaker’s
apartment; no longer measuring hours of mere heaviness. Vanished
is the Bastille, what we call vanished: the _body_, or
sandstones, of it hanging, in benign metamorphosis, for centuries
to come, over the Seine waters, as _Pont Louis Seize_;[197] the
soul of it living, perhaps still longer, in the memories of men.

So far, ye august Senators, with your Tennis-Court Oaths, your
inertia and impetus, your sagacity and pertinacity, have ye
brought us. ‘And yet think, Messieurs,’ as the Petitioner justly
urged, ‘you who were our saviours, did yourselves need
saviours,’—the brave Bastillers, namely; workmen of Paris; many
of them in straightened pecuniary circumstances! [198]
Subscriptions are opened; Lists are formed, more accurate than
Elie’s; harangues are delivered. A Body of _Bastille Heroes_,
tolerably complete, did get together;—comparable to the
Argonauts; hoping to endure like them. But in little more than a
year, the whirlpool of things threw them asunder again, and they
sank. So many highest superlatives achieved by man are followed
by new higher; and dwindle into comparatives and positives! The
Siege of the Bastille, weighed with which, in the Historical
balance, most other sieges, including that of Troy Town, are
gossamer, cost, as we find, in killed and mortally wounded, on
the part of the Besiegers, some Eighty-three persons: on the part
of the Besieged, after all that straw-burning, fire-pumping, and
deluge of musketry, One poor solitary invalid, shot stone-dead
(_roide-mort_) on the battlements;[199] The Bastille Fortress,
like the City of Jericho, was overturned by miraculous _sound._