e 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. (Histoire Parlementaire (i. 356). Mercier,
Nouveau Paris, &c.) Thick buzz among them, between majority and minority
of Couvrezvous, Decrouvrez-vous (Hats off, Hats on)! To which his
Majesty puts end, by taking off his own royal hat again.