The French Revolution · Thomas Carlyle
Chapter 1.7.III. Black Cockades.
Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least, to vanish. Them Patrollotism itself will not protect. Nay, sharp-tempered “M. Tassin,” at the Tuileries parade on Sunday morning, forgets all National military rule; starts from the ranks, wrenches down one black cockade which is swashing ominous there; and tramples it fiercely into the soil of France. Patrollotism itself is not without suppressed fury. Also the Districts begin to stir; the voice of President Danton reverberates in the Cordeliers: People’s-Friend Marat has flown to Versailles and back again;—swart bird, not of the halcyon kind![232] And so Patriot meets promenading Patriot, this Sunday; and sees his own grim care reflected on the face of another. Groups, in spite of Patrollotism, which is not so alert as usual, fluctuate deliberative: groups on the Bridges, on the Quais, at the patriotic Cafés. And ever as any black cockade may emerge, rises the many-voiced growl and bark: _À bas_, Down! All black cockades are ruthlessly plucked off: one individual picks his up again; kisses it, attempts to refix it; but a “hundred canes start into the air,” and he desists. Still worse went it with another individual; doomed, by extempore _Plebiscitum_, to the Lanterne; saved, with difficulty, by some active _Corps-de-Garde_.—Lafayette sees signs of an effervescence; which he doubles his Patrols, doubles his diligence, to prevent. So passes Sunday, the 4th of October 1789.
Sullen is the male heart, repressed by Patrollotism; vehement is the female, irrepressible. The public-speaking woman at the Palais Royal was not the only speaking one:—Men know not what the pantry is, when it grows empty, only house-mothers know. O women, wives of men that will only calculate and not act! Patrollotism is strong; but Death, by starvation and military onfall, is stronger. Patrollotism represses male Patriotism: but female Patriotism? Will Guards named National thrust their bayonets into the bosoms of women? Such thought, or rather such dim unshaped raw-material of a thought, ferments universally under the female night-cap; and, by earliest daybreak, on slight hint, will explode.
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