The French Revolution · Thomas Carlyle
Chapter 1.4.IV. The Procession.
See _Bailly_, likewise of Paris, time-honoured Historian of Astronomy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beautiful Philosophising, 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. Wo 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; three hundred and seventy-four Lawyers;[136] and at least one Clergyman: the _Abbé 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) skyhigh,—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 (_achevée_).’[137] 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)[138] 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 skyrending 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? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game!—Remark, meanwhile, how _D’Orléans_ 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 Anglomaniac 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’Espréménil_. He is returned from the Mediterranean Islands, a redhot 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 towards battle-spoil, where lay the world’s best wages then: moreover, being the ablest Leaders going, they had their lion’s share, those _Duces;_ which none could grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Ploughshares, 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 goldmantled 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.[139] 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 _Grégoire:_ one day Curé Grégoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are wandering distracted, as Bishops _in partibus_. With other thought, mark also the _Abbé 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. Skilfulest 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.’[140] Likely indeed, thou skilfullest Maury; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal’s Hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in the longrun—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 irreverent 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.
And so, in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France. Some towards honour and quick fire-consummation; most towards dishonour; not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all towards 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 Macchiavellic pretence-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?
But how the Deputies assisted at High Mass, and heard sermon, and applauded the preacher, church as it was, when he preached politics; how, next day, with sustained pomp, they are, for the first time, installed in their _Salles des Menus_ (Hall no longer of _Amusements_), and become a States-General,—readers can fancy for themselves. The King from his _estrade_, gorgeous as Solomon in all his glory, runs his eye over that majestic Hall; many-plumed, many-glancing; bright-tinted as rainbow, in the galleries and near side spaces, where Beauty sits raining bright influence. Satisfaction, as of one that after long voyaging had got to port, plays over his broad simple face: the innocent King! He rises and speaks, with sonorous tone, a conceivable speech. With which, still more with the succeeding one-hour and two-hour speeches of Garde-des-Sceaux and M. Necker, full of nothing but patriotism, hope, faith, and deficiency of the revenue,—no reader of these pages shall be tried. We remark only that, as his Majesty, on finishing the speech, put on his plumed hat, and the Noblesse according to custom imitated him, our Tiers-Etat Deputies did mostly, not without a shade of fierceness, in like manner clap-on, and even crush on their slouched hats; and stand there awaiting the issue.[141] Thick buzz among them, between majority and minority of _Couvrezvous, Décrouvrez-vous_ (Hats off, Hats on)! To which his Majesty puts end, by taking _off_ his own royal hat again. The session terminates without further accident or omen than this; with which, significantly enough, France has opened her States-General.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.