The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh — John Shaqi
The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. TitmarshThackeray, William Makepeace
General
The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Paris (France) -- Description and travel
“Between eleven and twelve o’clock, some young men, to the number of
400 or 500, assembled on the Place de la Bourse, one of them bearing a
tri-colored banner with an inscription, ‘TO THE MANES OF JULY:’ ranging
themselves in order, they marched five abreast to the Marché des
Innocens. On their arrival, the Municipal Guards of the Halle aux
Draps, where the post had been doubled, issued out without arms, and
the town-sergeants placed themselves before the market to prevent the
entry of the procession. The young men passed in perfect order, and
without saying a word—only lifting their hats as they defiled before
the tombs. When they arrived at the Louvre they found the gates shut,
and the garden evacuated. The troops were under arms, and formed in
battalion.
“After the passage of the procession, the Garden was again open to the
public.”
And the evening and the morning were the first day.
There’s nothing serious in mortality: is there, from the beginning of
this account to the end thereof, aught but sheer, open, monstrous,
undisguised humbug? I said, before, that you should have a history of
these people by Dickens or Theodore Hook, but there is little need of
professed wags;—do not the men write their own tale with an admirable
Sancho-like gravity and naïveté, which one could not desire improved?
How good is that touch of sly indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES!
how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the
splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how
touching the “APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution,” delivered by
the Protestant pastors! Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes
Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police agents in plain clothes,
and the troops with fixed bayonets, sobbing round the “expiatory
monuments of a pyramidical shape, surmounted by funeral vases,” and
compelled, by sad duty, to fire into the public who might wish to
indulge in the same woe! O “manes of July!” (the phrase is pretty and
grammatical) why did you with sharp bullets break those Louvre windows?
Why did you bayonet red-coated Swiss behind that fair white façade,
and, braving cannon, musket, sabre, perspective guillotine, burst
yonder bronze gates, rush through that peaceful picture-gallery, and
hurl royalty, loyalty, and a thousand years of Kings, head-over-heels
out of yonder Tuileries’ windows?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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