istracted Patriot imagination, wavers, as a
last deliverance, some foreshadow of a National Guard. But conceive,
above all, the Wooden Tent in the Palais Royal! A universal hubbub
there, as of dissolving worlds: their loudest bellows the mad,
mad-making voice of Rumour; their sharpest gazes Suspicion into the
pale dim World-Whirlpool; discerning shapes and phantasms; imminent
bloodthirsty Regiments camped on the Champ-de-Mars; dispersed National
Assembly; redhot cannon-balls (to burn Paris);--the mad War-god and
Bellona's sounding thongs. To the calmest man it is becoming too plain
that battle is inevitable.

Inevitable, silently nod Messeigneurs and Broglie: Inevitable and brief!
Your National Assembly, stopped short in its Constitutional labours, may
fatigue the royal ear with addresses and remonstrances: those cannon of
ours stand duly levelled; those troops are here. The King's Declaration,
with its Thirty-five too generous Articles, was spoken, was not listened
to; but remains yet unrevoked: he himself shall effect it, seul il fera!

As for Broglie, he has his headquarters at Versailles, all as in a
seat of war: clerks writing; significant staff-officers, inclined to
taciturnity; plumed aides-de-camp, scouts, orderlies flying or hovering.
He himself looks forth, important, impenetrable; listens to Besenval
Commandant of Paris, and his warning and earnest counsels (for he has
come out repeatedly on purpose), with a silent smile. (Besenval, iii.
398.) The Parisians resist? scornfully cry Messeigneurs. As a meal-mob
may! They have sat quiet, these five generations, submitting to all.
Their Mercier declared, in these very years, that a Parisian revolt was
henceforth 'impossible.' (Mercier, Tableau de Paris, vi. 22.) Stand
by the royal Declaration, of the Twenty-third of June. The Nobles of
France, valorous, chivalrous as of old, will rally round us with one
heart;--and as for this which you call Third Estate, and which we call
canaille of unwashed Sansculottes, of Patelins, Scribblers, factious
Spouters,--brave Broglie, 'with a whiff of grapeshot (salve de canons),
if need be, will give quick account of it. Thus reason they: on their
cloudy Ida; hidden from men,--men also hidden from them.

Good is grapeshot, Messeigneurs, on one condition: that the shooter also
were made of metal! But unfortunately he is made of flesh; under his
buffs and bandoleers your hired shooter has instincts, feelings, even a
kind of thought.