Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou noticest the Deputies from Nantes? To us mere clothes-screens, with slouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a Cahier of doleances with this singular clause, and more such in it: 'That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with new gild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two being more than sufficient!' (Histoire Parlementaire, i. 335.) The Rennes people have elected Farmer Gerard, 'a man of natural sense and rectitude, without any learning.' He walks there, with solid step; unique, 'in his rustic farmer-clothes;' which he will wear always; careless of short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gerard, or 'Pere Gerard, Father Gerard,' as they please to call him, will fly far; borne about in endless banter; in Royalist satires, in Republican didactic Almanacks. (Actes des Apotres (by Peltier and others); Almanach du Pere Gerard (by Collot d'Herbois) &c. &c.)
As for the man Gerard, being asked once, what he did, after trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,--"I think," answered he, "that there are a good many scoundrels among us." so walks Father Gerard; solid in his thick shoes, whithersoever bound.
And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one other time? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of prophecy: for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late.
Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner: doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in all cases of medical police and hygiene be a present aid: but, greater far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal Code;' and reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of Guillotin's endeavours, gained not without meditation and reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine! "With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais sauter la tete) in a twinkling, and you have no pain;"--whereat they all laugh. (Moniteur Newspaper, of December 1st, 1789 (in Histoire Parlementaire).) Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall near nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Caesar's.
See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honoured Historian of Astronomy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beautiful Philosophising, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thinness, ends in foul thick confusion--of Presidency, Mayorship, diplomatic Officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of everlasting Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly Galaxy to the Drapeau Rouge: beside that fatal dung-heap, on that last hell-day, thou must 'tremble,' though only with cold, 'de froid.'
Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not so miserable; but to be weaker than our task. Wo the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hippogriff of a Democracy; which, spurning the firm earth, nay lashing at the very stars, no yet known Astolpho could have ridden!
In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters; three hundred and seventy-four Lawyers; (Bouille, Memoires sur la Revolution Francaise (London, 1797), i. 68.) and at least one Clergyman: the Abbe Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light thin man; cold, but elastic, wiry; instinct with the pride of Logic; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which, in its independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into transcendentalism; and to sit there with a kind of godlike indifference, and look down on passion! He is the man, and wisdom shall die with him. This is the Sieyes who shall be System-builder, Constitution-builder General; and build Constitutions (as many as wanted) skyhigh,--which shall all unfortunately fall before he get the scaffolding away. "La Politique," said he to Dumont, "Polity is a science I think I have completed (achevee)." (Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 64.) What things, O Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see! But were it not curious to know how Sieyes, now in these days (for he is said to be still alive) (A.D. 1834.) looks out on all that Constitution masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme age? Might we hope, still with the old irrefragable transcendentalism? The victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished one pleased Sieyes (victa Catoni).
Thus, however, amid skyrending vivats, and blessings from every heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by.
Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of whom it might be asked, What they specially have come for? Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this question, put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God's fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is begging or stealing? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game!--Remark, meanwhile, how D'Orleans affects to step before his own Order, and mingle with the Commons. For him are vivats: few for the rest, though all wave in plumed 'hats of a feudal cut,' and have sword on thigh; though among them is D'Antraigues, the young Languedocian gentleman,--and indeed many a Peer more or less noteworthy.
There are Liancourt, and La Rochefoucault; the liberal Anglomaniac Dukes.