France -- History -- Louis XVI, 1774-1793; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799
But what a stir in the outer courts of the Palais, when Paris
finds its Parlement trundled off to Troyes in Champagne; and
nothing left but a few mute Keepers of records; the Demosthenic
thunder become extinct, the martyrs of liberty clean gone!
Confused wail and menace rises from the four thousand throats of
Procureurs, Basoche-Clerks, Nondescripts, and Anglomaniac
Noblesse; ever new idlers crowd to see and hear; Rascality, with
increasing numbers and vigour, hunts _mouchards_. Loud whirlpool
rolls through these spaces; the rest of the City, fixed to its
work, cannot yet go rolling. Audacious placards are legible, in
and about the Palais, the speeches are as good as seditious.
Surely the temper of Paris is much changed. On the third day of
this business (18th of August), Monsieur and Monseigneur
d’Artois, coming in state-carriages, according to use and wont,
to have these late obnoxious _Arrêtés_ and protests “expunged”
from the Records, are received in the most marked manner.
Monsieur, who is thought to be in opposition, is met with vivats
and strewed flowers; Monseigneur, on the other hand, with
silence; with murmurs, which rise to hisses and groans; nay, an
irreverent Rascality presses towards him in floods, with such
hissing vehemence, that the Captain of the Guards has to give
order, ‘_Haut les armes_ (Handle arms)!’—at which thunder-word,
indeed, and the flash of the clear iron, the Rascal-flood
recoils, through all avenues, fast enough.[71] New features
these. Indeed, as good M. de Malesherbes pertinently remarks, ‘it
is a quite new kind of contest this with the Parlement:’ no
transitory sputter, as from collision of hard bodies; but more
like ‘the first sparks of what, if not quenched, may become a
great conflagration.’[72]
This good Malesherbes sees himself now again in the King’s
Council, after an absence of ten years: Loménie would profit if
not by the faculties of the man, yet by the name he has. As for
the man’s opinion, it is not listened to;—wherefore he will soon
withdraw, a second time; back to his books and his trees. In such
King’s Council what can a good man profit? Turgot tries it not a
second time: Turgot has quitted France and this Earth, some years
ago; and now cares for none of these things. Singular enough:
Turgot, this same Loménie, and the Abbé Morellet were once a trio
of young friends; fellow-scholars in the Sorbonne. Forty new
years have carried them severally thus far.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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