Chapter 2: 5.ix

Minister Roland.

About the vernal equinox, however, one unexpected gleam of hope
does burst forth on Patriotism: the appointment of a thoroughly
Patriot Ministry. This also his Majesty, among his innumerable
experiments of wedding fire to water, will try. _Quod bonum sit_.
Madame d’Udon’s Breakfasts have jingled with a new significance;
not even Genevese Dumont but had a word in it. Finally, on the
15th and onwards to the 23d day of March, 1792, when all is
negociated,—this is the blessed issue; this Patriot Ministry that
we see.

General Dumouriez, with the Foreign Portfolio shall ply Kaunitz
and the Kaiser, in another style than did poor Delessarts; whom
indeed we have sent to our High Court of Orléans for his
sluggishness. War-minister Narbonne is washed away by the
Time-flood; poor Chevalier de Grave, chosen by the Court, is fast
washing away: then shall austere Servan, able Engineer-Officer,
mount suddenly to the War Department. Genevese Clavière sees an
old omen realized: passing the Finance Hotel, long years ago, as
a poor Genevese Exile, it was borne wondrously on his mind that
_he_ was to be Finance Minister; and now he is it;—and his poor
Wife, given up by the Doctors, rises and walks, not the victim of
nerves but their vanquisher.[460] And above all, our Minister of
the Interior? Roland de la Platrière, he of Lyons! So have the
Brissotins, public or private Opinion, and Breakfasts in the
Place Vendôme decided it. Strict Roland, compared to a _Quaker
endimanché_, or Sunday Quaker, goes to kiss hands at the
Tuileries, in round hat and sleek hair, his shoes tied with mere
riband or ferrat! The Supreme Usher twitches Dumouriez aside:
‘_Quoi, Monsieur!_ No buckles to his shoes?’—‘Ah, Monsieur,’
answers Dumouriez, glancing towards the ferrat: ‘All is lost,
_Tout est perdu_.’[461]

And so our fair Roland removes from her upper floor in the Rue
Saint-Jacques, to the sumptuous saloons once occupied by Madame
Necker. Nay still earlier, it was Calonne that did all this
gilding; it was he who ground these lustres, Venetian mirrors;
who polished this inlaying, this veneering and or-moulu; and made
it, by rubbing of the proper _lamp_, an Aladdin’s Palace:—and now
behold, he wanders dim-flitting over Europe, half-drowned in the
Rhine-stream, scarcely saving his Papers! _Vos non vobis_.—The
fair Roland, equal to either fortune, has her public Dinner on
Fridays, the Ministers all there in a body: she withdraws to her
desk (the cloth once removed), and seems busy writing;
nevertheless loses no word: if for example Deputy Brissot and
Minister Clavière get too hot in argument, she, not without
timidity, yet with a cunning gracefulness, will interpose. Deputy
Brissot’s head, they say, is getting giddy, in this sudden
height: as feeble heads do.

Envious men insinuate that the Wife Roland is Minister, and not
the Husband: it is happily the worst they have to charge her
with. For the rest, let whose head soever be getting giddy, it is
not this brave woman’s. Serene and queenly here, as she was of
old in her own hired garret of the Ursulines Convent! She who has
quietly shelled French-beans for her dinner; being led to that,
as a young maiden, by quiet insight and computation; and knowing
what that was, and what she was: such a one will also look
quietly on or-moulu and veneering, not ignorant of these either.
Calonne did the veneering: he gave dinners here, old Besenval
diplomatically whispering to him; and was great: yet Calonne we
saw at last “walk with long strides.” Necker next: and where now
is Necker? Us also a swift change has brought hither; a swift
change will send us hence. Not a Palace but a Caravansera!

So wags and wavers this unrestful World, day after day, month
after month. The Streets of Paris, and all Cities, roll daily
their oscillatory flood of men; which flood does, nightly,
disappear, and lie hidden horizontal in beds and trucklebeds; and
awakes on the morrow to new perpendicularity and movement. Men go
their roads, foolish or wise;—Engineer Goguelat to and fro,
bearing Queen’s cipher. A Madame de Staël is busy; cannot clutch
her Narbonne from the Time-flood: a Princess de Lamballe is busy;
cannot help her Queen. Barnave, seeing the Feuillants dispersed,
and Coblentz so brisk, begs by way of final recompence to kiss
her Majesty’s hand; augurs not well of her new course; and
retires home to Grenoble, to wed an heiress there. The Café
Valois and Méot the Restaurateur’s hear daily gasconade; loud
babble of Half-pay Royalists, with or without Poniards; remnants
of Aristocrat saloons call the new Ministry
_Ministère-Sansculotte_. A Louvet, of the Romance _Faublas_, is
busy in the Jacobins. A Cazotte, of the Romance _Diable
Amoureux_, is busy elsewhere: better wert thou quiet, old
Cazotte; it is a world, this, of magic become _real!_ All men are
busy; doing they only half guess what:—flinging seeds, of tares
mostly, into the ‘Seed-field of TIME’ this, by and by, will
declare wholly what.

But Social Explosions have in them something dread, and as it
were mad and magical: which indeed Life always secretly has; thus
the dumb Earth (says Fable), if you pull her mandrake-roots, will
give a dæmonic mad-making _moan_. These Explosions and Revolts
ripen, break forth like dumb dread Forces of Nature; and yet they
are Men’s forces; and yet _we_ are part of them: the Dæmonic that
is in man’s life has burst out on us, will sweep us too away!—One
day here is like another, and yet it is not like but different.
How much is growing, silently resistless, at all moments!
Thoughts are growing; forms of Speech are growing, and Customs
and even Costumes; still more visibly are actions and
transactions growing, and that doomed Strife, of France with
herself and with the whole world.

The word _Liberty_ is never named now except in conjunction with
another; _Liberty_ and _Equality_. In like manner, what, in a
reign of Liberty and Equality, can these words, “Sir,” “obedient
Servant,” “Honour to be,” and such like, signify? Tatters and
fibres of old Feudality; which, were it only in the Grammatical
province, ought to be rooted out! The Mother Society has long
since had proposals to that effect: these she could not
entertain, not at the moment. Note too how the Jacobin Brethren
are mounting new symbolical headgear: the Woollen Cap or
Nightcap, _bonnet de laine_, better known as _bonnet rouge_, the
colour being _red_. A thing one wears not only by way of Phrygian
Cap-of-Liberty, but also for convenience” sake, and then also in
compliment to the Lower-class Patriots and Bastille-Heroes; for
the Red Nightcap combines all the three properties. Nay cockades
themselves begin to be made of wool, of tricolor yarn: the
riband-cockade, as a symptom of Feuillant Upper-class temper, is
becoming suspicious. Signs of the times.

Still more, note the travail-throes of Europe: or, rather, note
the birth she brings; for the successive throes and shrieks, of
Austrian and Prussian Alliance, of Kaunitz Anti-jacobin Despatch,
of French Ambassadors cast out, and so forth, were long to note.
Dumouriez corresponds with Kaunitz, Metternich, or Cobentzel, in
another style that Delessarts did. Strict becomes stricter;
categorical answer, as to this Coblentz work and much else, shall
be given. Failing which? Failing which, on the 20th day of April
1792, King and Ministers step over to the Salle de Manége;
promulgate how the matter stands; and poor Louis, “with tears in
his eyes,” proposes that the Assembly do now decree War. After
due eloquence, War is decreed that night.

War, indeed! Paris came all crowding, full of expectancy, to the
morning, and still more to the evening session. D’Orléans with
his two sons, is there; looks on, wide-eyed, from the opposite
Gallery.[462] Thou canst look, O Philippe: it is a War big with
issues, for thee and for all men. Cimmerian Obscurantism and this
thrice glorious Revolution shall wrestle for it, then: some
Four-and-twenty years; in immeasurable Briareus’ wrestle;
trampling and tearing; before they can come to any, not
agreement, but compromise, and approximate ascertainment each of
what is in the other.

Let our Three Generals on the Frontiers look to it, therefore;
and poor Chevalier de Grave, the Warminister, consider what he
will do. What is in the three Generals and Armies we may guess.
As for poor Chevalier de Grave, he, in this whirl of things all
coming to a press and pinch upon him, loses head, and merely
whirls with them, in a totally distracted manner; signing himself
at last, “De Grave, _Mayor of Paris;_” whereupon he demits,
returns over the Channel, to walk in Kensington Gardens;[463] and
austere Servan, the able Engineer-Officer, is elevated in his
stead. To the post of Honour? To that of Difficulty, at least.