书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
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第487章

Vivent les Sans-Culottes! and, on a pitch-fork, the heart of a calf with this inscription: C?ur d'aristocrate, both significant emblems of the grim humor the imaginations of rag-dealers or butchers might come up with for a political carnival. -- This, indeed, it is, they have been drinking and many are drunk.[41] A parade is not enough, they want also to amuse themselves: traversing the hall they sing ?a ira and dance in the intervals. They at the same time show their civism by shouting Vive les patriotes! A bas le Veto! They fraternise, as they pass along, with the good deputies of the "Left"; they jeer those of the "Right" and shake their fists at them; one of these, known by his tall stature, is told that his business will be settled for him the first opportunity.[42] Thus do they flaunt their collaborators to the Assembly, everyone prepared and willing to act, even against the Assembly itself. -- And yet, with the exception of an iron-railing pushed in by the crowd and an irruption on to the terrace of the "Feuillants," no act of violence was committed. The Paris population, except when in a rage, is rather voluble and curious than ferocious;besides, thus far, no one had offered any resistance. The crowd is now sated with shouting and parading; many of them yawn with boredom and weariness;[43] at four o'clock they have stood on their legs for ten or twelve hours. The human stream issuing from the Assembly and emptying itself into the Carrousel remains stagnant there and seems ready to return to its usual channels. -- This is not what the leaders had intended. Santerre, on arriving with Saint-Huruge, cries out to his men, "Why didn't you enter the chateau? You must go in -- that is what we came here for."[44] A lieutenant of the Val-de-Grace gunners shouts: "We have forced open the Carrousel, we must force open the chateau too! This is the first time the Val-de-Grace gunners march --they are not j.... f.... Come, follow me, my men, on to the enemy![45] - "Meanwhile, outside the gate, some of the municipal officers selected by Pétion amongst the most revolutionary members of the council, overcome resistance by their speeches and commands.

'After all," says one of them, named Mouchet, "the right of petition is sacred." -- " Open the gate!" shout Sergent and Boucher-René, "nobody has a right to shut it. Every citizen has a right to go through it!"[46] A gunner raises the latch, the gate opens and the court fills in the winkling of an eye;[47] the crowd rushes under the archway and up the grand stairway with such impetuosity that a cannon borne along by hand reaches the third room on the first story before it stops. The doors crack under the blows of axes and, in the large hall of the Oeil de B?uf, the multitude find themselves face to face with the King.

In such circumstances the representatives of public authority, the directories, the municipalities, the military chiefs, and, on the 6th of October, the King himself, have all thus far yielded; they have either yielded or perished. Santerre, certain of the issue, preferred to take no part in this affair; he prudently holds back, he shies away, and lets the crowd push him into the council chamber, where the Queen, the young Dauphin, and the ladies have taken refuge.[48]

There, with his tall, corpulent figure, he formed a sort of shield to forestall useless and compromising injuries. In the mean time, in the Oeil de B?uf, he lets things take their course; everything will be done in his absence that ought to be done, and in this he seems to have calculated justly. -- On one side, in a window recess, sits the King on a bench, almost alone, while in front of him, as a guard, are four or five of the National Guards; on the other side, in the apartments, is an immense crowd, hourly increasing according as the rumor of the irruption spreads in the vicinity, fifteen or twenty thousand persons, a prodigious accumulation, a pell-mell traversed by eddies, a howling sea of bodies crushing each other, and of which the ****** flux and reflux would flatten against the walls obstacles ten times as strong, an uproar sufficient to shatter the window panes, "frightful yells," curses and imprecations, "Down with M. Veto!" "Let Veto go to the devil!" "Take back the patriot ministers!" "He shall sign; we won't go away till he does!"[49] -- Foremost among them all, Legendre, more resolute than Santerre, declares himself the spokesman and trustee of the powers of the sovereign people: "Sir," says he to the King, who, he sees, makes a gesture of surprise, "yes, Sir, listen to us; you are made to listen to what we say! You are a traitor! You have always deceived us; you deceive us now! But look out, the measure is full; the people are tired of being played upon ! " -- " Sire, Sire," exclaims another fanatic, "I ask you in the name of the hundred thousand beings around us to recall the patriot ministers. . . Idemand the sanction of the decree against the priests and the twenty thousand men. Either the sanction or you shall die!" -- But little is wanting for the threat to be carried out. The first comers are on hand, "presenting pikes," among them "a brigand," with a rusty sword blade on the end of a pole, "very sharp," and who points this at the King. Afterwards the attempt at assassination is many times renewed, obstinately, by three or four madmen determined to kill, and who make signs of so doing, one, a shabby, ragged fellow, who keeps up his excitement with "the foulest propositions," the second one, "a so-called conqueror of the Bastille," formerly porte-tête for Foulon and Berthier, and since driven out of the battalion, the third, a market-porter, who, "for more than an hour," armed with a saber, makes a terrible effort to make his way to the king.[50] -- Nothing is done.