'But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or lifeguards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality; sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity: Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed thee!... There are nods and sagacious glances, go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for this constellation, sighs for that: there is tremor, of hope or desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale, grinning Shadow of Death, ceremoniously ushered along by another grinning Shadow, of Etiquette; at intervals the growl of Chapel Organs, like prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of horrid diabolic horse-laughter, _Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!_' At every stage in the narrative, the reader is impressed with the dramatic texture of Carlyle's mind. No dramatic writer surpasses him in the art of producing effects by contrasts. In the midst of a vigorous description of the storming of the Bastille, he rings down the curtain for a moment in order to introduce the following scene of idyllic beauty: 'O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers;--and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hotel-de-Ville!'