Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/236

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218
PARLIAMENT FIRST
[BK. V. CH. III.

restoration, pacification, and, if so might anyhow be, an end! Which vote ultimately prevails. So the Southwest smoulders and welters again in an 'Amnesty,' or Non-remembrance, which alas cannot but remember, no Lethe flowing above ground! Jourdan himself remains unhanged; gets loose again, as one not yet gallows-ripe; nay, as we transiently discern from the distance, is 'carried in triumph through the cities of the South.'[1] What things men carry!


With which transient glimpse, of a Copper-faced Portent faring in this manner through the cities of the South, we must quit these regions;—and let them smoulder. They want not their Aristocrats; proud old Nobles, not yet emigrated. Arles has its 'Chiffonne,' so, in symbolical cant, they name that Aristocrat Secret-Association; Arles has its pavements piled up, by and by, into Aristocrat barricades. Against which Rebecqui, the hot-clear Patriot, must lead Marseillese with cannon. The Bar of Iron has not yet risen to the top in the Bay of Marseilles; neither have these hot Sons of the Phoceans submitted to be slaves. By clear management and hot instance, Rebecqui dissipates that Chiffonne, without bloodshed; restores the pavement of Arles. He sails in Coast-barks, this Rebecqui, scrutinising suspicious Martello-towers, with the keen eye of Patriotism; marches overland with despatch, singly, or in force; to City after City; dim scouring far and wide;[2]—argues, and if it must be, fights. For there is much to do; Jalès itself is looking suspicious. So that Legislator Fauchet, after debate on it, has to propose Commissioners and a Camp on the Plain of Beaucaire; with or without result.

Of all which, and much else, let us note only this small consequence, that young Barbarous, Advocate, Town-Clerk of Marseilles, being charged to have these things remedied, arrives at Paris in the month of February 1792. The beautiful and

  1. Deux Amis (Paris, 1797), vii. pp. 59–71.
  2. Barbarous, p. 21; Hist. Parl. xiii. 421–4.