第185章

The French Monarchy may now therefore be considered as, in all human probability, lost; as struggling henceforth in blindness as well as weakness, the last light of reasonable guidance having gone out. What remains of resources their poor Majesties will waste still further, in uncertain loitering and wavering. Mirabeau himself had to complain that they only gave him half confidence, and always had some plan within his plan. Had they fled frankly with him, to Rouen or anywhither, long ago!

They may fly now with chance immeasurably lessened; which will go on lessening towards absolute zero. Decide, O Queen; poor Louis can decide nothing: execute this Flight-project, or at least abandon it.

Correspondence with Bouille there has been enough; what profits consulting, and hypothesis, while all around is in fierce activity of practice? The Rustic sits waiting till the river run dry: alas with you it is not a common river, but a Nile Inundation; snow melting in the unseen mountains; till all, and you where you sit, be submerged.

Many things invite to flight. The voice Journals invites; Royalist Journals proudly hinting it as a threat, Patriot Journals rabidly denouncing it as a terror. Mother Society, waxing more and more emphatic, invites;--so emphatic that, as was prophesied, Lafayette and your limited Patriots have ere long to branch off from her, and form themselves into Feuillans; with infinite public controversy; the victory in which, doubtful though it look, will remain with the unlimited Mother. Moreover, ever since the Day of Poniards, we have seen unlimited Patriotism openly equipping itself with arms. Citizens denied 'activity,' which is facetiously made to signify a certain weight of purse, cannot buy blue uniforms, and be Guardsmen; but man is greater than blue cloth; man can fight, if need be, in multiform cloth, or even almost without cloth--as Sansculotte. So Pikes continued to be hammered, whether those Dirks of improved structure with barbs be 'meant for the West-India market,' or not meant. Men beat, the wrong way, their ploughshares into swords. Is there not what we may call an 'Austrian Committee,' Comite Autrichein, sitting daily and nightly in the Tuileries? Patriotism, by vision and suspicion, knows it too well! If the King fly, will there not be Aristocrat-Austrian Invasion; butchery, replacement of Feudalism; wars more than civil? The hearts of men are saddened and maddened.

Dissident Priests likewise give trouble enough. Expelled from their Parish Churches, where Constitutional Priests, elected by the Public, have replaced them, these unhappy persons resort to Convents of Nuns, or other such receptacles; and there, on Sabbath, collecting assemblages of Anti-Constitutional individuals, who have grown devout all on a sudden, (Toulongeon, i. 262.) they worship or pretend to worship in their strait-laced contumacious manner; to the scandal of Patriotism. Dissident Priests, passing along with their sacred wafer for the dying, seem wishful to be massacred in the streets; wherein Patriotism will not gratify them.

Slighter palm of martyrdom, however, shall not be denied: martyrdom not of massacre, yet of fustigation. At the refractory places of worship, Patriot men appear; Patriot women with strong hazel wands, which they apply. Shut thy eyes, O Reader; see not this misery, peculiar to these later times,--of martyrdom without sincerity, with only cant and contumacy! A dead Catholic Church is not allowed to lie dead; no, it is galvanised into the detestablest death-life; whereat Humanity, we say, shuts its eyes. For the Patriot women take their hazel wands, and fustigate, amid laughter of bystanders, with alacrity: broad bottom of Priests; alas, Nuns too reversed, and cotillons retrousses! The National Guard does what it can:

Municipality 'invokes the Principles of Toleration;' grants Dissident worshippers the Church of the Theatins; promising protection. But it is to no purpose: at the door of that Theatins Church, appears a Placard, and suspended atop, like Plebeian Consular fasces,--a Bundle of Rods! The Principles of Toleration must do the best they may: but no Dissident man shall worship contumaciously; there is a Plebiscitum to that effect; which, though unspoken, is like the laws of the Medes and Persians. Dissident contumacious Priests ought not to be harboured, even in private, by any man: the Club of the Cordeliers openly denounces Majesty himself as doing it. (Newspapers of April and June, 1791 (in Hist. Parl. ix. 449; x, 217).)