The French Revolution

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What will not mortals attempt? From remote Annonay in the Vivarais, the
Brothers Montgolfier send up their paper-dome, filled with the smoke of
burnt wool. (5th June, 1783.) The Vivarais provincial assembly is to
be prorogued this same day: Vivarais Assembly-members applaud, and
the shouts of congregated men. Will victorious Analysis scale the very
Heavens, then?

Paris hears with eager wonder; Paris shall ere long see. From
Reveilion's Paper-warehouse there, in the Rue St. Antoine (a noted
Warehouse),--the new Montgolfier air-ship launches itself. Ducks and
poultry are borne skyward: but now shall men be borne. (October and
November, 1783.) Nay, Chemist Charles thinks of hydrogen and glazed
silk. Chemist Charles will himself ascend, from the Tuileries Garden;
Montgolfier solemnly cutting the cord. By Heaven, he also mounts, he and
another? Ten times ten thousand hearts go palpitating; all tongues are
mute with wonder and fear; till a shout, like the voice of seas, rolls
after him, on his wild way. He soars, he dwindles upwards; has become
a mere gleaming circlet,--like some Turgotine snuff-box, what we call
'Turgotine Platitude;' like some new daylight Moon! Finally he descends;
welcomed by the universe. Duchess Polignac, with a party, is in the Bois
de Boulogne, waiting; though it is drizzly winter; the 1st of December
1783. The whole chivalry of France, Duke de Chartres foremost, gallops
to receive him. (Lacretelle, 18me Siecle, iii. 258.)

Beautiful invention; mounting heavenward, so beautifully,--so
unguidably! Emblem of much, and of our Age of Hope itself; which
shall mount, specifically-light, majestically in this same manner; and
hover,--tumbling whither Fate will. Well if it do not, Pilatre-like,
explode; and demount all the more tragically!--So, riding on windbags,
will men scale the Empyrean.

Or observe Herr Doctor Mesmer, in his spacious Magnetic Halls.
Long-stoled he walks; reverend, glancing upwards, as in rapt commerce;
an Antique Egyptian Hierophant in this new age. Soft music flits;
breaking fitfully the sacred stillness. Round their Magnetic Mystery,
which to the eye is mere tubs with water,--sit breathless, rod in
hand, the circles of Beauty and Fashion, each circle a living circular
Passion-Flower: expecting the magnetic afflatus, and new-manufactured
Heaven-on-Earth. O women, O men, great is your infidel-faith! A
Parlementary Duport, a Bergasse, D'Espremenil we notice there; Chemist
Berthollet too,--on the part of Monseigneur de Chartres.

Had not the Academy of Sciences, with its Baillys, Franklins,
Lavoisiers, interfered! But it did interfere. (Lacretelle, 18me Siecle,
iii.258.) Mesmer may pocket his hard money, and withdraw. Let him walk
silent by the shore of the Bodensee, by the ancient town of Constance;
meditating on much. For so, under the strangest new vesture, the old
great truth (since no vesture can hide it) begins again to be revealed:
That man is what we call a miraculous creature, with miraculous power
over men; and, on the whole, with such a Life in him, and such a
World round him, as victorious Analysis, with her Physiologies,
Nervous-systems, Physic and Metaphysic, will never completely name, to
say nothing of explaining. Wherein also the Quack shall, in all ages,
come in for his share. (August, 1784.)



Chapter 1.2.VII.

Contrat Social.

In such succession of singular prismatic tints, flush after flush
suffusing our horizon, does the Era of Hope dawn on towards fulfilment.
Questionable! As indeed, with an Era of Hope that rests on mere
universal Benevolence, victorious Analysis, Vice cured of its deformity;
and, in the long run, on Twenty-five dark savage Millions, looking
up, in hunger and weariness, to that Ecce-signum of theirs 'forty feet
high,'--how could it but be questionable?

Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be, the parent
of misery. This land calls itself most Christian, and has crosses
and cathedrals; but its High-priest is some Roche-Aymon, some
Necklace-Cardinal Louis de Rohan. The voice of the poor, through long
years, ascends inarticulate, in Jacqueries, meal-mobs; low-whimpering
of infinite moan: unheeded of the Earth; not unheeded of Heaven. Always
moreover where the Millions are wretched, there are the Thousands
straitened, unhappy; only the Units can flourish; or say rather, be
ruined the last. Industry, all noosed and haltered, as if it too were
some beast of chase for the mighty hunters of this world to bait, and
cut slices from,--cries passionately to these its well-paid guides and
watchers, not, Guide me; but, Laissez faire, Leave me alone of your
guidance! What market has Industry in this France? For two things there
may be market and demand: for the coarser kind of field-fruits, since
the Millions will live: for the fine kinds of luxury and spicery,--of
multiform taste, from opera-melodies down to racers and courtesans;
since the Units will be amused. It is at bottom but a mad state of
things.

To mend and remake all which we have, indeed, victorious Analysis.
Honour to victorious Analysis; nevertheless, out of the Workshop and
Laboratory, what thing was victorious Analysis yet known to make?
Detection of incoherences, mainly; destruction of the incoherent. From
of old, Doubt was but half a magician; she evokes the spectres which she
cannot quell. We shall have 'endless vortices of froth-logic;' whereon
first words, and then things, are whirled and swallowed. Remark,
accordingly, as acknowledged grounds of Hope, at bottom mere precursors
of Despair, this perpetual theorising about Man, the Mind of Man,
Philosophy of Government, Progress of the Species and such-like; the
main thinking furniture of every head. Time, and so many Montesquieus,
Mablys, spokesmen of Time, have discovered innumerable things: and now
has not Jean Jacques promulgated his new Evangel of a Contrat Social;
explaining the whole mystery of Government, and how it is contracted and
bargained for,--to universal satisfaction? Theories of Government! Such
have been, and will be; in ages of decadence. Acknowledge them in their
degree; as processes of Nature, who does nothing in vain; as steps in
her great process. Meanwhile, what theory is so certain as this, That
all theories, were they never so earnest, painfully elaborated, are,
and, by the very conditions of them, must be incomplete, questionable,
and even false? Thou shalt know that this Universe is, what it professes
to be, an infinite one. Attempt not to swallow it, for thy logical
digestion; be thankful, if skilfully planting down this and the other
fixed pillar in the chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee. That a new
young generation has exchanged the Sceptic Creed, What shall I believe?
for passionate Faith in this Gospel according to Jean Jacques is a
further step in the business; and betokens much.

Blessed also is Hope; and always from the beginning there was some
Millennium prophesied; Millennium of Holiness; but (what is notable)
never till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease and plentiful
Supply. In such prophesied Lubberland, of Happiness, Benevolence, and
Vice cured of its deformity, trust not, my friends! Man is not what one
calls a happy animal; his appetite for sweet victual is so enormous.
How, in this wild Universe, which storms in on him, infinite,
vague-menacing, shall poor man find, say not happiness, but existence,
and footing to stand on, if it be not by girding himself together for
continual endeavour and endurance? Woe, if in his heart there dwelt no
devout Faith; if the word Duty had lost its meaning for him! For as to
this of Sentimentalism, so useful for weeping with over romances and on
pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily will avail nothing; nay less.
The healthy heart that said to itself, 'How healthy am I!' was already
fallen into the fatalest sort of disease. Is not Sentimentalism
twin-sister to Cant, if not one and the same with it? Is not Cant the
materia prima of the Devil; from which all falsehoods, imbecilities,
abominations body themselves; from which no true thing can come? For
Cant is itself properly a double-distilled Lie; the second-power of a
Lie.

And now if a whole Nation fall into that? In such case, I answer,
infallibly they will return out of it! For life is no cunningly-devised
deception or self-deception: it is a great truth that thou art alive,
that thou hast desires, necessities; neither can these subsist and
satisfy themselves on delusions, but on fact. To fact, depend on it, we
shall come back: to such fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom
for. The lowest, least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous
mortals have ever based themselves, seems to be the primitive one of
Cannibalism: That I can devour Thee. What if such Primitive Fact were
precisely the one we had (with our improved methods) to revert to, and
begin anew from!



Chapter 1.2.VIII.

Printed Paper.

In such a practical France, let the theory of Perfectibility say what
it will, discontents cannot be wanting: your promised Reformation is
so indispensable; yet it comes not; who will begin it--with himself?
Discontent with what is around us, still more with what is above us,
goes on increasing; seeking ever new vents.

Of Street Ballads, of Epigrams that from of old tempered Despotism, we
need not speak. Nor of Manuscript Newspapers (Nouvelles a la main) do
we speak. Bachaumont and his journeymen and followers may close those
'thirty volumes of scurrilous eaves-dropping,' and quit that trade; for
at length if not liberty of the Press, there is license. Pamphlets can
be surreptititiously vended and read in Paris, did they even bear to
be 'Printed at Pekin.' We have a Courrier de l'Europe in those years,
regularly published at London; by a De Morande, whom the guillotine has
not yet devoured. There too an unruly Linguet, still unguillotined, when
his own country has become too hot for him, and his brother Advocates
have cast him out, can emit his hoarse wailings, and Bastille Devoilee
(Bastille unveiled). Loquacious Abbe Raynal, at length, has his wish;
sees the Histoire Philosophique, with its 'lubricity,' unveracity, loose
loud eleutheromaniac rant (contributed, they say, by Philosophedom at
large, though in the Abbe's name, and to his glory), burnt by the common
hangman;--and sets out on his travels as a martyr. It was the edition of
1781; perhaps the last notable book that had such fire-beatitude,--the
hangman discovering now that it did not serve.

Again, in Courts of Law, with their money-quarrels, divorce-cases,
wheresoever a glimpse into the household existence can be had, what
indications! The Parlements of Besancon and Aix ring, audible to all
France, with the amours and destinies of a young Mirabeau. He, under
the nurture of a 'Friend of Men,' has, in State Prisons, in marching
Regiments, Dutch Authors' garrets, and quite other scenes, 'been for
twenty years learning to resist 'despotism:' despotism of men, and
alas also of gods. How, beneath this rose-coloured veil of Universal
Benevolence and Astraea Redux, is the sanctuary of Home so often a
dreary void, or a dark contentious Hell-on-Earth! The old Friend of Men
has his own divorce case too; and at times, 'his whole family but one'
under lock and key: he writes much about reforming and enfranchising
the world; and for his own private behoof he has needed sixty
Lettres-de-Cachet. A man of insight too, with resolution, even with
manful principle: but in such an element, inward and outward; which he
could not rule, but only madden. Edacity, rapacity;--quite contrary to
the finer sensibilities of the heart! Fools, that expect your verdant
Millennium, and nothing but Love and Abundance, brooks running wine,
winds whispering music,--with the whole ground and basis of your
existence champed into a mud of Sensuality; which, daily growing deeper,
will soon have no bottom but the Abyss!

Or consider that unutterable business of the Diamond Necklace.
Red-hatted Cardinal Louis de Rohan; Sicilian jail-bird Balsamo
Cagliostro; milliner Dame de Lamotte, 'with a face of some piquancy:'
the highest Church Dignitaries waltzing, in Walpurgis Dance, with
quack-prophets, pickpurses and public women;--a whole Satan's Invisible
World displayed; working there continually under the daylight visible
one; the smoke of its torment going up for ever! The Throne has been
brought into scandalous collision with the Treadmill. Astonished Europe
rings with the mystery for ten months; sees only lie unfold itself
from lie; corruption among the lofty and the low, gulosity, credulity,
imbecility, strength nowhere but in the hunger. Weep, fair Queen, thy
first tears of unmixed wretchedness! Thy fair name has been tarnished by
foul breath; irremediably while life lasts. No more shalt thou be loved
and pitied by living hearts, till a new generation has been born,
and thy own heart lies cold, cured of all its sorrows.--The Epigrams
henceforth become, not sharp and bitter; but cruel, atrocious,
unmentionable. On that 31st of May, 1786, a miserable Cardinal
Grand-Almoner Rohan, on issuing from his Bastille, is escorted by
hurrahing crowds: unloved he, and worthy of no love; but important
since the Court and Queen are his enemies. (Fils Adoptif, Memoires de
Mirabeau, iv. 325.)

How is our bright Era of Hope dimmed: and the whole sky growing bleak
with signs of hurricane and earthquake! It is a doomed world: gone all
'obedience that made men free;' fast going the obedience that made men
slaves,--at least to one another. Slaves only of their own lusts they
now are, and will be. Slaves of sin; inevitably also of sorrow. Behold
the mouldering mass of Sensuality and Falsehood; round which
plays foolishly, itself a corrupt phosphorescence, some glimmer of
Sentimentalism;--and over all, rising, as Ark of their Covenant, the
grim Patibulary Fork 'forty feet high;' which also is now nigh rotted.
Add only that the French Nation distinguishes itself among Nations by
the characteristic of Excitability; with the good, but also with the
perilous evil, which belongs to that. Rebellion, explosion, of unknown
extent is to be calculated on. There are, as Chesterfield wrote, 'all
the symptoms I have ever met with in History!'

Shall we say, then: Wo to Philosophism, that it destroyed Religion, what
it called 'extinguishing the abomination (ecraser 'l'infame)'? Wo rather
to those that made the Holy an abomination, and extinguishable; wo
at all men that live in such a time of world-abomination and
world-destruction! Nay, answer the Courtiers, it was Turgot, it was
Necker, with their mad innovating; it was the Queen's want of etiquette;
it was he, it was she, it was that. Friends! it was every scoundrel that
had lived, and quack-like pretended to be doing, and been only eating
and misdoing, in all provinces of life, as Shoeblack or as Sovereign
Lord, each in his degree, from the time of Charlemagne and earlier.
All this (for be sure no falsehood perishes, but is as seed sown out
to grow) has been storing itself for thousands of years; and now the
account-day has come. And rude will the settlement be: of wrath laid up
against the day of wrath. O my Brother, be not thou a Quack! Die rather,
if thou wilt take counsel; 'tis but dying once, and thou art quit of it
for ever. Cursed is that trade; and bears curses, thou knowest not how,
long ages after thou art departed, and the wages thou hadst are all
consumed; nay, as the ancient wise have written,--through Eternity
itself, and is verily marked in the Doom-Book of a God!

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is
but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable. It is very notable, and
touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the French Nation
through all its wild destinies. For we shall still find Hope shining, be
it for fond invitation, be it for anger and menace; as a mild heavenly
light it shone; as a red conflagration it shines: burning sulphurous
blue, through darkest regions of Terror, it still shines; and goes sent
out at all, since Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era
still to be named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,--when there is
nothing left but Hope.

But if any one would know summarily what a Pandora's Box lies there for
the opening, he may see it in what by its nature is the symptom of all
symptoms, the surviving Literature of the Period. Abbe Raynal, with
his lubricity and loud loose rant, has spoken his word; and already the
fast-hastening generation responds to another. Glance at Beaumarchais'
Mariage de Figaro; which now (in 1784), after difficulty enough, has
issued on the stage; and 'runs its hundred nights,' to the admiration of
all men. By what virtue or internal vigour it so ran, the reader of our
day will rather wonder:--and indeed will know so much the better that
it flattered some pruriency of the time; that it spoke what all were
feeling, and longing to speak. Small substance in that Figaro: thin
wiredrawn intrigues, thin wiredrawn sentiments and sarcasms; a thing
lean, barren; yet which winds and whisks itself, as through a wholly
mad universe, adroitly, with a high-sniffing air: wherein each, as was
hinted, which is the grand secret, may see some image of himself, and
of his own state and ways. So it runs its hundred nights, and all France
runs with it; laughing applause. If the soliloquising Barber ask: "What
has your Lordship done to earn all this?" and can only answer: "You took
the trouble to be born (Vous vous etes donne la peine de naitre)," all
men must laugh: and a gay horse-racing Anglomaniac Noblesse loudest of
all. For how can small books have a great danger in them? asks the Sieur
Caron; and fancies his thin epigram may be a kind of reason. Conqueror
of a golden fleece, by giant smuggling; tamer of hell-dogs, in the
Parlement Maupeou; and finally crowned Orpheus in the Theatre Francais,
Beaumarchais has now culminated, and unites the attributes of several
demigods. We shall meet him once again, in the course of his decline.

Still more significant are two Books produced on the eve of the
ever-memorable Explosion itself, and read eagerly by all the world:
Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie, and Louvet's Chevalier de Faublas.
Noteworthy Books; which may be considered as the last speech of old
Feudal France. In the first there rises melodiously, as it were,
the wail of a moribund world: everywhere wholesome Nature in unequal
conflict with diseased perfidious Art; cannot escape from it in the
lowest hut, in the remotest island of the sea. Ruin and death must
strike down the loved one; and, what is most significant of all, death
even here not by necessity, but by etiquette. What a world of prurient
corruption lies visible in that super-sublime of modesty! Yet, on the
whole, our good Saint-Pierre is musical, poetical though most morbid: we
will call his Book the swan-song of old dying France.

Louvet's again, let no man account musical. Truly, if this wretched
Faublas is a death-speech, it is one under the gallows, and by a felon
that does not repent. Wretched cloaca of a Book; without depth even as
a cloaca! What 'picture of French society' is here? Picture properly of
nothing, if not of the mind that gave it out as some sort of picture.
Yet symptom of much; above all, of the world that could nourish itself
thereon.



BOOK 1.III.

THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS


Chapter 1.3.I.

Dishonoured Bills.

While the unspeakable confusion is everywhere weltering within, and
through so many cracks in the surface sulphur-smoke is issuing, the
question arises: Through what crevice will the main Explosion carry
itself? Through which of the old craters or chimneys; or must it, at
once, form a new crater for itself? In every Society are such chimneys,
are Institutions serving as such: even Constantinople is not without its
safety-valves; there too Discontent can vent itself,--in material fire;
by the number of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the
Reigning Power can read the signs of the times, and change course
according to these.

We may say that this French Explosion will doubtless first try all the
old Institutions of escape; for by each of these there is, or at least
there used to be, some communication with the interior deep; they are
national Institutions in virtue of that. Had they even become personal
Institutions, and what we can call choked up from their original uses,
there nevertheless must the impediment be weaker than elsewhere. Through
which of them then? An observer might have guessed: Through the Law
Parlements; above all, through the Parlement of Paris.


Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not inaccessible to
the influences of their time; especially men whose life is business;
who at all turns, were it even from behind judgment-seats, have come
in contact with the actual workings of the world. The Counsellor of
Parlement, the President himself, who has bought his place with hard
money that he might be looked up to by his fellow-creatures, how shall
he, in all Philosophe-soirees, and saloons of elegant culture, become
notable as a Friend of Darkness? Among the Paris Long-robes there may
be more than one patriotic Malesherbes, whose rule is conscience and the
public good; there are clearly more than one hotheaded D'Espremenil, to
whose confused thought any loud reputation of the Brutus sort may seem
glorious. The Lepelletiers, Lamoignons have titles and wealth; yet, at
Court, are only styled 'Noblesse of the Robe.' There are Duports of deep
scheme; Freteaus, Sabatiers, of incontinent tongue: all nursed more or
less on the milk of the Contrat Social. Nay, for the whole Body, is not
this patriotic opposition also a fighting for oneself? Awake, Parlement
of Paris, renew thy long warfare! Was not the Parlement Maupeou
abolished with ignominy? Not now hast thou to dread a Louis XIV., with
the crack of his whip, and his Olympian looks; not now a Richelieu and
Bastilles: no, the whole Nation is behind thee. Thou too (O heavens!)
mayest become a Political Power; and with the shakings of thy horse-hair
wig shake principalities and dynasties, like a very Jove with his
ambrosial curls!

Light old M. de Maurepas, since the end of 1781, has been fixed in the
frost of death: "Never more," said the good Louis, "shall I hear his
step overhead;" his light jestings and gyratings are at an end. No more
can the importunate reality be hidden by pleasant wit, and today's evil
be deftly rolled over upon tomorrow. The morrow itself has arrived; and
now nothing but a solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull
matter of fact, like some dull punctual Clerk (which he originally was);
admits what cannot be denied, let the remedy come whence it will. In
him is no remedy; only clerklike 'despatch of business' according to
routine. The poor King, grown older yet hardly more experienced, must
himself, with such no-faculty as he has, begin governing; wherein also
his Queen will give help. Bright Queen, with her quick clear glances
and impulses; clear, and even noble; but all too superficial,
vehement-shallow, for that work! To govern France were such a
problem; and now it has grown well-nigh too hard to govern even the
Oeil-de-Boeuf. For if a distressed People has its cry, so likewise,
and more audibly, has a bereaved Court. To the Oeil-de-Boeuf it remains
inconceivable how, in a France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty
should run dry: did it not use to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his
revenue of parsimony, has 'suppressed above six hundred places,' before
the Courtiers could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was.
Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian manoeuvres;
with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be
the rule of promotion, has disaffected military men; the Mousquetaires,
with much else are suppressed: for he too was one of your suppressors;
and unsettling and oversetting, did mere mischief--to the Oeil-de-Boeuf.
Complaints abound; scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Oeil-de-Boeuf.
Besenval says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy
(such a tristesse) about Court, compared with former days, as made it
quite dispiriting to look upon.

No wonder that the Oeil-de-Boeuf feels melancholy, when you are
suppressing its places! Not a place can be suppressed, but some purse is
the lighter for it; and more than one heart the heavier; for did it
not employ the working-classes too,--manufacturers, male and female,
of laces, essences; of Pleasure generally, whosoever could manufacture
Pleasure? Miserable economies; never felt over Twenty-five Millions!
So, however, it goes on: and is not yet ended. Few years more and the
Wolf-hounds shall fall suppressed, the Bear-hounds, the Falconry; places
shall fall, thick as autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac demonstrates, to
the complete silencing of ministerial logic, that his place cannot be
abolished; then gallantly, turning to the Queen, surrenders it, since
her Majesty so wishes. Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny, and yet not
luckier: "We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I," said King Louis;
"but if he had even struck me, I could not have blamed him." (Besenval,
iii. 255-58.) In regard to such matters there can be but one opinion.
Baron Besenval, with that frankness of speech which stamps the
independent man, plainly assures her Majesty that it is frightful
(affreux); "you go to bed, and are not sure but you shall rise
impoverished on the morrow: one might as well be in Turkey." It is
indeed a dog's life.