Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 08
Religion
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 08
Literature -- Collections
It was on Tuesday that Roland demitted. On Thursday comes Lepelletier
St.-Fargeau's Funeral, and passage to the Pantheon of Great Men.
Notable as the wild pageant of a winter day. The Body is borne aloft,
half-bare; the winding-sheet disclosing the death-wound; sabre and
bloody clothes parade themselves; a "lugubrious music" wailing harsh
næniæ. Oak-crowns shower down from windows; President Vergniaud walks
there, with Convention, with Jacobin Society, and all Patriots of
every color, all mourning brother-like.
Notable also for another thing this Burial of Lepelletier; it was the
last act these men ever did with concert! All parties and figures of
Opinion, that agitate this distracted France and its Convention, now
stand, as it were, face to face, and dagger to dagger; the King's
Life, round which they all struck and battled, being hurled down.
Dumouriez, conquering Holland, growls ominous discontent, at the head
of Armies. Men say Dumouriez will have a King; that young D'Orléans
Égalité shall be his King. Deputy Fauchet, in the Journal des Amis,
curses his day more bitterly than Job did; invokes the poniards of
Regicides, of "Arras Vipers" or Robespierres, of Pluto Dantons, of
horrid Butchers Legendre and Simulacra d'Herbois, to send him swiftly
to another world than _theirs_. This is Te-Deum Fauchet, of the
Bastille Victory, of the Cercle Social. Sharp was the death-hail
rattling round one's Flag-of-truce, on that Bastille day: but it was
soft to such wreckage of high Hope as this; one's New Golden Era going
down in leaden dross, and sulphurous black of the Everlasting
Darkness!
BLISS CARMAN
(1861-)
BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
[Illustration: BLISS CARMAN]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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