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T A L E S
Opp TPIF,
FRENCH REVOLUTION,
RY
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
NEW YORK:
JOHN W. LOWELL COMPANY.,
14 & 16 VESEY STREET.

__**
TRENCH WINES AND POLITICS.
.* CHAPTER I.
WINE-GROWING.
It was on a glorious afternoon in July, 1788,
that an Englishman, named Steele, landed on
the banks of the Garonne, a few miles south of
Bordeaux, whence he had come up in a boat on
an excursion of part business, part pleasure.
Steele was settled as a factor at Bordeaux, and
his business was to purchase wines from the
growers, and ship them to his employers in Eng-
land. His occupation had brought him acquaint-
ed with almost every vine-grower within fifty
leagues of Bordeaux; and in the case of one of
these, Antoine Luyon, the acquaintance had
ripened into a friendship. Antoine was part own-
er of soyne vineyards on the western bank of the
Garonne, one of which produced claret of a sin-
6 VINE-GROWING.
gularly fine quality, too good to command an
advantageous sale at Paris, where second and
third-rate wines are in aearly equal esteem with
the first. The produce of this small and rich
vineyard was therefore set apart for English sale,
and had been bargained for by the house which
Steele represented, and the terms agreed upon
for the vintage of the five next seasons. Other
vineyards belonging to the same parties touched
upon this peculiarly favored one; but not all
the care and pains that could be taken availed to
make their produce better than second or third-
rate. Their aspect was a little more to the east
and less to the south; they were not so perfectly
sheltered behind; and no art could temper their
soil to the exact point of perfection enjoyed by
La Haute Favorite, as this distinguished vineyard
was called. Their produce was, however, as
valuable as that of most of the estates around,
and was in good esteem at Paris, where Antoine's
partner, his brother Charles, was settled as a
wine-merchant; and where he bestowed as much
pains on the maturing of the stock in his cellars
as Antoine did on its first ripening in the form of
grapes, or their friend Steele on the processes of
fining, racking, and mixing, which were carried

WIN E- GRO WING, 7
on at his employers' depôt at Bordeaux. Much
care and skill were required in all these depart-
ments of business; and the young men wére ex-
emplary in both, pursuing their occupation as a
matter of taste as well as of necessity. Steele
watched the thermometer in his cellars as care-
fully as Antoine observed winds and clouds; and
their common interest in the welfare of Favorite
quickened their friendship, in one way among
many, by occasioning more frequent meetings
than they would otherwise have thought prae-
ticable. Many a trip to Bordeaux did Antoine
contrive to ascertain the effects of heat or cold
on the wines in their third or fourth season; or
to give the alarm if he heard rumors of build-
ings being pulled down or erected so near the
premises as to have any influence over the tem-
perature within; and during the summer, Steele
was wont to go up the river on Saturdays, and
spend the Sunday with his friend Antoine for the
avowed purpose of paying his devoirs to La Fa-
vorite.—There was much to tempt him to these
excursions, if wine had made no part of his in-
terest, for a fairer territory than that through
which the Garonne held its course was seldom
seen. There were harvests of a more pictur-
8 WINE-GROW ING.
esque growth than even those which embellish-
ed the vineyards. Interspersed with the mea-
dows which sloped down to the river, were
groves of olives and forests of chestnuts, and in
due season, the almond trees put forth their pink
blossoms amidst the dark shadows of the ever-
green woods. Boats heavily laden with the mer-
chandise of the Levant, brought hither by means
of the grand Languedoc canal, passed down the
blue and brimming river, or returned, borne rap-
idly on the tide, and empty of all but the boat-
men in their red jackets, whose snatches of song
reached the shore on the fragrant breeze. The
cottages of the peasantry were indeed few, and
comfortless in appearance; but the chateaux of
the gentry arose here and there, not half buried
in woods, like English mansions, but conspicuous
on terraces, and rendered in some degree impos-
ing by the appliances of art, which did not, how-
ever, in the eye of the Englishman, compensate
for the natural attractions which a fine taste
would have gathered round them. Even stone
balustrades and fountains, and artificial terraces,
however, as long as they were intermixed with
corn-fields and olive groves, had charms for one
whose residence was commonly in the city; and

WINE-GROWING. 9
in process of time, he began to contemplate the
chateau of the marquis de Thou, which com-
manded the vicinity of Antoine's residence, with
something of the admiration, though with nothing
of the awe, with which it was regarded by the
peasantry round.
Whether this admiration was increased or
lessened by the glimpses he occasionally obtained
of its inhabitants, he could himself have hardly
determined. The first time he saw the marquis
he was moved to laughter; but then the marquis
was alone (except the laquais in his rear) sitting
bolt upright on his horse, with his enormous
queue reaching down to the little skirts of his
coat, and his large light blue eyes and pursed-
up mouth giving a ludicrous mixture of vacancy
and-solemnity to his countenance. But when
the marquis de Thou was seen parading the ter-
race with his beautiful daughter, the lady Alice,
by his side, or following the sports of the field
with a train of the noblesse, assembled in all the
grandeur of feudal array, he who looked insig-
nificant in his individuality gathered some advan-
tage from the grace or splendor around him.
He was regarded as the father and protector
of the fair creature who seemed to tread on air
10 WINE-GROWING.
within the vast circumference of her hoop, and
whose eyes shone forth from beneath her enor-
mous headdress like glowworms in a thicket;
and again, the marquis was ºne host of the
wealthy and the gay who held sway in the land
which was forever boasting its own likeness to
Paradise: so that, in time, the marquis became
mixed up with his connexions even in the mind
of the Englishman; and instead of laughing,
Steele learned to uncover and bow low at the
approach of the great man, in the same manner
as Antoine. If he had known as much as the
natives of the territory of certain deeds which
were done, and certain customs which were pre-
valent there, his English heart might have for-
bidden his raising his hand to his head in token
of respect; but though he disliked the French
peasantry, he was not fully aware how many of
their bad qualities were directly attributable to
the influence of the order of which the marquis
de Thou was one of the representatives.
On the present occasion, Antoine awaited on
the bank the landing of his friend.
“Ah hal’ cried the Frenchman, as soon as
he could make himself heard; “you look up in
to our blue sky with the same admiration as
\ WINE-GROWING. 11
when you first saw it, four seasons ago. Well;
even Bordeaux has its smoke, and now and then
a sea haze.”
“So thick an one this morning,” replied
Steele, ‘that I could have fancied myself in an
English port.’
“Do the captains foretell a change of wind?”
inquired Antoine. “I rather apprehend one;
and it is a pity that Favorite should risk losing
a particle of her beauty. Come and see her,
as bright as a May morning; as rich and mellow
as an autumn noon. It would grieve my soul if
an unkind wind should hurt her; but there are
signs of a change.”
The young men turned their steps towards
the vineyards, instead of to Antoine's dwelling,
as Steele needed no refreshment but that of see-
ing how his dearly-beloved vines flourished, and
enjoying the beautiful walk which led to the en-
closures. On this occasion, he looked about
him more than usual as he passed, as the peas-
antry were abroad, and evidently in a state of ex-
citement and uneasiness. One and another stop-
ped the young men to ask if they knew what
direction the hunt had taken, and whether it
could be conjectured how long a chase the boar
12 WINE-GROWING. .4 *-ºs
might cause the gentry. Steele now ºned
for the first time, how eminently a boar hunt
was an occasion of terror and hardship to the
country people. He saw them mount the high-
est trees to look out, and lay their ears to the
ground to detect the distant tread of horses. He
heard them mutter prayers that their fences
might remain unbroken, and their crops un-
trodden. -
“I should not have thought your peasants
could be so anxious about their little harvests,’
he observed to Antoine. “Judging from the
state of their plots of land, I should suppose them
careless about their tillage. How weedy this
field is . And the hay in that meadow was, as
I remember, not cut for weeks after the proper
time.”
“It is no fault of theirs, replied Antoine. ‘The
law forbids hoeing and weeding, lest the young
partridges should be hurt; and the hay must not
be cut before a certain day, let the season be
what it will, lest the game should be deprived
of shelter. Many crops are thus spoiled.”
“What tyranny!’ exclaimed the Englishman.
*But some fault seems still to remain with the
cultivators. They do not use half the manure
VINE GROWING. 13
P.
at their disposal, while their land evidently wants
it much. Yonder field is an instance.”
‘Certain sorts of manure are thought to give
an unpleasant flavor to the birds which subsist
on the grain which springs from them,” replied
Antoine. “Such manure is not allowed to be
used.’
On Steele's exclaiming again that such pro-
hibitions were too arbitrary to be endured, An-
toine laughed, and wondered what he would say
to certain other regulations, in comparison with
which these were trifles. What did he think
of the lot of those who were sent to the galleys
for having entered or approached the groves
where the wild pigeons of the marquis were ap-
pointed to breed undisturbed; or of such as were
ruined by being taken from their tillage to make
for him ornamental roads which led nowhere;
or by the fines which they had to pay in-com-
mutation of the service of keeping the frogs qui-
et by night? On one side the chateau, a marsh
extended for some distance, and its frogs great-
~ ly annoyed a former marquis by their croaking.
His peasantry were employed to beat the ponds.
By degrees, as the nuisance decreased, this ser-
vice was commuted for a fine,—and a very op-
14 y1NE-GRow ING.
pressive one it was found at this day. Antoine
was proceeding to describe another grievance
of great magnitude, when his description was
superseded by an example.
The young men were now in a chestnut grove,
within which the distant sounds of the hunt were
beginning to be heard. A figure of a peasant
crossed the glades at intervals, and an occa-
sional voice hailed them from overhead, where
lookers out were perched on the loftiest trees to
watch what course the devastation of the boar
and its hunters would take. After a few mo-
ments of quiet, a cry burst forth, and was echo-
ed from mouth to mouth through the wood, a
heavy plunging tread was heard, and a rushing
and crashing in the thicket, which warned Steele
to fly to the protection of the largest trunk at
hand, while Antoine climbed a tree as nimbly as
a squirrel. The ferocious, clumsy animal im-
mediately appeared, its small eyes red and
flaming, its coarse hide bristling, and its terrific
tusks looking as if they could plough up the very
ground over which it rushed headlong. The
moment the danger was past, Antoine descend-
ed, and followed at full speed to see the issue
of the chase; Steele keeping up with his com-
*...
WINE-GROWING. 15
panion as well as he could, but not without
some qualms lest the beast should be met at
the extremity of the wood, and driven, back
upon his steps. The hunt was a little too late,
however, to accomplish this manoeuvre, and
Steele began to feel himself somewhat more com-
fortable, when a cry of horror from Antoine, who
was a little way in advance, renewed all his fears.
‘Q, Favorite! O La Haute Favorite l’ cried
he. “She is spoiled,—she will be wholly deso-
lated by the monster and the hunters!’ And
poor Antoine threw himself down at the foot of
a tree, and would look no more. His com-
panion saw one horseman after another leap the
ſence which had been kept in such perfect re-
pair, watched them wheeling round and round
among the choice vines, which they must be
treading like so much common grass, and finally
follow the boar out at the opposite side, while
the servants who attended in the rear wantonly
rode over the same ground, when they might
just as easily have kept the road. In a great
passion, Steele flew to warn, and threaten, and
scold; but before he had time to commit him-
self, Antoine was at hand to interpose, and
silence the indignant Englishman.

2.
16 WIN E-GROWING.
‘I cannot conceive what you mean, Antoine,’
cried Steele, the moment they had the place to
themselves. “You flung yourself upon the
ground in as great an agony as if your bride had
been snatched from you; and presently you
come to speak these rascals as fair as if they
had done you a favor l’
‘It is the only way to keep what we have
left, replied Antoine, mournfully. “Thºrg is
no use, but much peril, in complaint. Redress
there is none; and ill-will towards the lord’s
Tleasure is resented more deeply and lastingly
than injury to his property. You may rob his
chateau of its plate, and be more easily forgiven
than for repining at any thing which happens in
the course of his sports.”
Steele was ready to burst with indignation
against the people which permitted such usages
to endure. He was answered by a reference
to the cruel old forest laws of England, and
certain national blemishes of an analogous char-
acter which still remained; and the friends were
in danger of quarrelling, for the first time, when
they remembered that it would be more to the
purpose to contemplate the present than the past
and the absent, and to help one another under
the vexatious event which had befallen them.
*
* WINE-GROWING. 17
It was mournful to look around, and see what
had been done within a few minutes;–the clean
soil trodden and strewed, the props thrown down,
the laden branches snapped off, the ripening fruit
crushed and scattered, and the whole laid open
to intruders; whether men to steal, or troops of
deer to browze. If, by any exertion, these in-
truders could be kept out, there was hope that
some, even a considerable portion, of the expect-
ed vintage might be saved, as some rows of
vines had not been touched, and others had fall
en merely from their supports being removed.
Antoine set off in search of laborers. Not one
would follow him till the issue of the hunt was
known, and it became certain whose fields would
be devastated before the sun went down, and
whose not; but when the boar’s head was at
length carried towards the chateau, with the usu-
al honors, and the proud train returned to their
stately festivities, a gang of peasants, safe for this
bout, set to work, under Antoine and Steele, to
stop up the fences till they could be properly
repaired; while their less fortunate neighbors hid
themselves to groan over the destroyed harvests
which were their only hope;—hid themselves,
because if their own little children had spoken
B
18 WINE-GROWING.
of their grief, the galleys would infallibly isiºn º
destination ere long. Neither those who chant-
ed over their work, however, nor those who
brooded over wrongs within, nor the two young
men who toiled, went home, and retired to rest
in gloomy silence, anticipated what would be
their relative position at the same hour the next
evening. Nothing could now appear more cer-
tain to Antoine than that he and his brother had
sustained a great loss in the destruction of half
the crop of their best vineyard, or to Steele than
that it would be a misfortune to his employers to
be disappointed of half the quantity of that su-
perlative wine which they were to have on ſa-
vorable terms, and might sell at almost any price
they might choose to set upon it: yet another
turn of ſortune happened within a few hours
which promised to do more than repair the pe-
cuniary damage, though it still remained to be
lamented that La Haute Favorite should have
been exposed to wanton devastation.
The next day was the day of the extraordi-
nary hurricane which spread affright through va-
rious regions of France, where there was want
and wo enough before to shake the courage
and perplex the judgment of rulers, and to ap
WINE-GROWING. J.9
pal the hearts of the ruled. The timid had
long been inquiring how the national burdens
were to be borne for the future, and the popular
discontents much longer soothed. When this
dreadful tempest came, extinguishing the light
of day like an eclipse, changing the aspect of
the scenery like an earthquake, and convulsing
the atmosphere like a hurricane, mere timidity
pecame deepened into a superstitious horror,
and the powers of hell were thought to be let
loose against the devoted land. Few could won-
der much at this who knew the people in their
state of ignorance and hardship, and who wit-
nessed the ravages of the storm.
The morning had risen fair and bright, though
cold, from the change of wind which Antoine
had predicted. The clouds soon began to gath-
er, with an appearance of unusual blackness;
‘but this did not prevent the country people from
setting out for church, and making their way
thither in defiance of the rising blasts. When
assembled, however, they found it perilous to
remain under the shelter of a roof which threat-
ened to fall in upon them; and they rushed out
into the road, where, carefully avoiding the
neighborhood of trees, they supported one anoth-
20 WIN E-G ROW ING,
er during the dreadful hour that the storm last
ed. Cries of grief and despair broke from
them at every step as they returned homewards.
Drifts of hail stopped up their path. The corn-
fields were one vast morass. The almond
groves were level with the ground; and of the
chestnut woods nothing remained but an assem-
blage of bare poles. The more exposed vine-
yards were so many quagmires, and many dwel-
lings were mere heaps of ruins. All who wit-
nessed were horror-struck at the conviction of
general, immediate, pressing want; and the more
thoughtful glanced forwards in idea to the num-
ber of seasons that must pass away before all
this damage could be repaired. Not a few, in
the midst of their own distress, however, jested
on the ſate of the marquis's partridges, and con-
soled one another with the certainty that it
would be long before the lord's game could
trouble them again.
As for Antoine, he hurried past his ruined
garden to La Favorite, gloomily followed by the
Englishman, who could not be comforted by his.
companion's suggestion, that, at the worst, the
soil would be finely manured by its produce
being beaten into it. This was not exactly the
WINE-GROWING. 21
opject for which Steele had anticipated the fine
crop would be used, and he could not, so rapid-
ly as a Frenchman, acquiesce in so complete a
change of purposes. It would be difficult to say
whichyas the most astonished and the most joy-
ful when they found their beloved Favorite smil-
ing amidst the general devastation, and scarcely
more injured than when they had left her the
night before. Sheltered by the hill behind, and
by a wood on the side whence the hurricane
approached, she had escaped its worst fury; and
a few torn branches, a few scattered hailstones,
were the only witnesses of the storm which had
passed over her.
‘My beauty My beloved l’exclaimed. An-
toine; ‘though man and beast have dared to
insult thee, the elements have known how to
respect thy beauty. They just paid thee agen-
tle homage as they passed, and left thee serene
and verdant, while all besides is prostrated before
them. My’homage shall restore the few charms
that have been defaced.”
And, somewhat to Steele's surprise, Antoine
began the homage he spoke of, reverentially
liſting the trailing branches, coaxing the battered
bunches of grapes, and restoring props with a
22 WINE-GROWING.
sort of joyful solemnity, as if rendering *
to one who could appreciate his devotion. The
cooler Englishman meanwhile looked abroad into
the neighboring vineyards, and saw with con-
cern that the losses of Antoine and his brother
must be great. Antoine would scarcely allow
this, however, not only because the safety of
Favorite had filled him with joy, but because
he believed that his fortunes would be rather
amended than the contrary by what had hap-
pened.
‘How should that be?” inquired Steele.
“The enormous rise in value of the produce of
this vineyard will not benefit you, but my em-
ployers, as our terms are fixed for five years to
come. How can you gain by being deprived
of the rest of your vintage?’
“We shall gain by others being deprived of
theirs. Vast labor will be required to render
these lands productive once more, and the price
of wines will therefore be much raised.”
“But you will have to employ and pay for
this labor as well as others.”
“True; but meanwhile, we have a large stock
of wine at Paris and Bordeaux. For some little
time there has been no demand; for the country
VINE-GROWMNº. 23
is troubled, and no one will buy more than can-
not be avoided. This has made Charles uneasy,
and he has often lately complained of the large-
ness of our stock. Now that there will be a
failure in the supply of wines, our stock will be
in request, and at such prices as shall pay all the
labor of repairs in our vineyards, and leave no
small advantage besides. And then, how our
grounds are manured What crops they will
yield !’
‘Ay; but when?—You never will see the
dark side of an affair, Antoine. It will be three
or four years before yon quagmires can become
a firm soil, full of well-settled and bearing
vines.’
“Meantime, things will become more tranquil
at Paris, perhaps, so that people may enjoy their
wine as formerly.”
“Some persons, observed Steele, “woul
repine at the terms we have fixed beyond recall
for the produce of Favorite; but I hear no com-
plaints from you of the large profits which will
be made by my employers.”
“Where would be the use?’ replied Antoine.
Since the bargain is, as you say, beyond recall,
it is no longer my affair. On the contrary, I
24 WINE-GROWING.
congratulate your gentlemen with all my heart.
—There is but one thing that I would suggest;-
that if their gains prove great, they should pur-
chase the blessing of heaven on them by devoting
some small portion to the peasants here who are
ruined by the same cause which brings your
friends prosperity.’
“There will no doubt be a general subscrip-
tion, observed Steele; ‘and it is fitting that
those foreigners should give who will profit by
the disasters of your country.”
“If your gentlemen,” replied Antoine, “will
do it in the form of remitting a portion of Fa-
vorite's wealth, they will add grace to their
bounty. How graceful will it be in this, our
beauty, to thank heaven for having spared her
charms by giving in alms a portion of her
dowry l’
‘Will your people distinguish, think you,'
asked Steele, laughing, ‘between alms issuing
from an English merchant’s pocket, in his own
name and in the name of a personified vine-
yard?”
Antoine warmly replied that no people on
earth had so nice a sense of the morally graceful
and sublime as the French; and offered a wager
WINE. GROWING, 25
that in the straightforward case, plain thanks in
prose would be all that Messrs. Mason and Co.
would receive; while, if the moral grace he
recommended were put into the act, La Haute
Favorite would be celebrated in song under
many a clump of elms.
“Meanwhile,” said Steele, “what measures
will you take about your private affairs, and how
can I help you?”
‘I will this day write to Charles tidings of
what has happened. To-morrow. I will see
what portion of the crops out of this enclosure
can be saved. The produce must be housed at
Bordeaux, and no more transported to Paris
this year.—You can aid me no otherwise than
in the care of Favorite, and in soothing the poor
whom I dread to meet on my way home. Ex-
hort them, as I ever do, to make the best of
inevitable evils.”
‘Your example will do more than my ex-
hortations. But what is left to make the best
of 2 ”
‘The marquis and his daughter. They can
no longer be a torment, and may be a help.
The new works, for which he oppressed the
people, are destroyed. His pigeons are blown
26 WINE-GROW ING,
Qı
away, and his partridges are drowned; and even
the frogs may be found to be eternally silenced
by this excessive beating of their ponds: while
still the people have an equitable claim for food.
Let us go and comfort them thus.’
And the good-natured Antoine carried his
cheerful countenance among the shivering and
dismayed peasantry who were waiting for advice
and guidance, and led them to the chateau to
ask for relief.
The marquis laid his hand upon his heart,
and the lady Alice took trinkets from her hair to
give to the hungry people before her, who were
loud in their praises of her condescension; though,
to be sure, as trinkets could not be eaten, and
there was nothing eatable for them to be ex-
changed against, they only served at present to
hush little crying babies for a minute or two. In
time it was clearly conveyed to the lady that a
more effectual measure would be to order the
housekeeper to distribute the contents of the
larder among the hungry; and to the gentleman,
that now was the occasion for his steward to
unlock the granary. These stores being soon
exhausted, and no more being at once procurable,
from the whole neighboring country having been
WINE-GROWING!. 27
laid waste, the cottagers were obliged to subsist
themselves as well r-they could on boiled acorns,
stewed nettles, ...,d on the lord’s frogs; a race
which seemed destined to extermination, man
and the elements having apparently combined
against them.
As many of the sufferers as yet survive look
back upon that dreadful time with a horror which
is not lessened even by the political horrors
which ensued. Throughout Guienne, the Or-
leannois, and other provinces, not a score of
revolutions could efface the recollections and
traditions of the hurricane of July, 1788. Per-
haps it may be still a subject of dispute a century
hence whether it was charged, in addition to the
natural agents of destruction, with a special mes-
sage to warn the French nation of their ap-
proaching social convulsion. Superstition has
not yet been abolished in France, any more than
in some other countries which have suffered less
deplorably from its sway.
28 SIGNS OF THE TIME.
2
CHAPTER II.
SIG N S OF THE TIME.
CHARLEs LUyon was wont to hasten home
at dinner-time with as much cheerfulness in his
countenance as alacrity in his gait. He always
had a smile ready when his timid wife looked
anxiously in his face, and generally some tidings
which were not bad, when her aged father, M.
Raucourt, asked his invariable question,-‘What
news, Charles?’ Times were now, however,
altering so speedily that it was evident that
Charles must vary his entré. His smile he was
likely enough to preserve, happen what might;
but in the article of news he began to be per-
plexed; for whatever was now stirring was of a
kind with which it was painful to confuse and
trouble a very old man, who never went abroad,
but yet managed to know something of what was
going on by fixing his seat constantly at the
window, and using his eyes, which were less
infirm than his understanding. The children
too, who were old enough to be inquisitive, be-
gan to be very pertinacious in their questions
SIGNS OF THE TIME, 29
why their walks were circumscribed, and what
was the meaning of various strange sights and
sounds which they met at every turn. In Satisfy-
ing them why the drums beat, and why orators
talked so loud in the mobs, Charles never used
the word riot, much less rebellion, or revolution,
either of which might have been fatal to his
wife's peace; for she had been bred a royalist by
her father, and had a perfect horror of even a
disrespectful word against the royal family or
the noblesse. What Charles was in politics, she
could never tell. He seemed to adopt no party,
to talk sensibly on what took place before his
eyes, and (judging by what had already come to
pass) to prophesy clearly respecting the future.
He pointed out to her that the people were
starving, and of course disaffected; but he
did not say where the blame rested, contenting
himself with hoping the best, as he did on all
occasions.
On the day that he recieved the tidings of the
ravages of the storm in Guienne, Marguerite did,
for once, perceive a slight shade on her hus-
band's brow. The family were standing at the
window, beside the old man’s easy chair, eagerly
gazing into the street, which was filled from end
30 SIGNS OF THE TIME.
to end with a mob. The aspect of the people
was terrific, and their clamor, compounded of
the shrill voices of the fishwomen and the more
deep-toned yells of haggard and half-famished
men, was deafening. The old gentleman looked
full of glee, for he had contrived to persuade
himself that all this was rejoicing for some royal
festival. The wiser children looked in their
mother's face for an explanation; but she could
attend to nothing else when she saw her husband
enter
*Thank God, Charles, you are home ! How
did you get in f'
‘I have been in this half hour.”
‘And shut up by yourself? There is some-
thing the matter, Charles.’
Charles gave in brief the story of the storm,
which included the tidings that certain olive and
almond groves, her own property, were utterly
destroyed.
‘Charles, Charles,’ interrupted the old man,
as soon as the mob had passed; “what news
to-day?’
‘I am afraid what you have just seen tells
only too plainly, sir. The people are gone to
the palace to vociferate for bread.”
SIGNS OF THE TIME, 31
“Well, well, fashions change, observed M.
Raucourt. “In my days the king gave away
wine instead of bread.” -
“If he did so now, sir, it would be a good
thing for my trade. It would empty my cellars
to supply such a crowd as has just gone by.”
“Does not your wine sell, this year?’
“Not very well, sir. People buy little of
any thing at present; but better times will cer-
tainly come.”
“But, papa, why do not all these people buy
bread, if they want it so very much?’ asked
Julien. -
“Because there is very little to be bought;
and that little is too dear for poor people to
buy.”
“So they want the king to buy it for them?”
‘Yes; but the king says he has no money.
He is borrowing some, however, and I hope the
people will soon be relieved, somehow or other’
‘Who lends the king money, papa?”
‘I am going to lend him some ; and so will
every body else that has any.’
Little Pauline thought it would be the better
and quicker way for her papa to buy the bread
himself for the poor, instead of lending money to

32 SIGNS OF THE TIME.
the king to do so. She was told that perhaps
the people might begin to love the king again if
he tried to relieve them; and that his majesty
would be much pleased at this, for they had not
been at all fond of him lately. This news set
Marguerite sighing, and the children thinking
what they had that they could lend the king.
Grandpapa was consulted, while his son and
daughter retired from the window to read An-
toine's letter. M. Raucourt thought the king
would not wish for Julien's bird-organ, as he of.
ten heard finer music than it could make, and it
would now buy very little bread; but it
would buy so little, he could not tell. He're-,
commended Pauline's making her offering to the
queen;–that beautiful, graceful lady that every
Frenchman worshipped when she became his
queen, and whom every Frenchman would mourn
in the dust when the time must come for her to
die. The old man was entering upon his favor-
ite long story of the queen's entry into her cap-
ital, when Pauline stopped him with an inquiry
whether this beautiful lady would like to have
her silk-worms, and how much bread they would
puy. As soon as grandpapa could speak for
laughing, he told the child that the queen carried
SIGNS OF THE TIME. 33
more silk on her head at that moment than these
worms would spin in a hundred years. The lit-
tle dog Joli, with his collar and silver bell, was
next proposed, and thought more eligible. Joli
was called, and looked for in vain under sofa,
and chairs, and behind mama’s harp. While
Pauline went in search of him, Julien interrupt-
ed papa to know why his bird-organ would buy
very little bread, when it had once cost so much
money.
* Money enough, papa, to buy many loaves
of bread.”
‘Yes, my dear; because the men who made
that organ ate up several loaves of bread while
they were at work upon it; and it was necessary
to pay themselves for that bread, as well as for
the wood, and the steel, and the brass, and the
wear of their tools.”
“Then would not people eat as much bread if
they made another bird-organ to-day?’
* Yes; and such an organ would cost me twice
as much money as I gave for yours last year.
It would buy only the same number of loaves,
however, because each loaf costs twice as much
money as it used to do.”
C;
34 $IGN 5 OF THE TIME, *
“But grandpapa says my organ will buy very
little bread.”
* True ; because it was made when bread
was cheap; and an organ made to-day would be
made when bread is very dear. I gave the organ-
maker money enough to buy twelve loaves; and
now the same money would buy only six loaves.”
‘And perhaps six loaves would not be enough
for the people while they were making the or-
gan ”
* Certainly not. They must have twelve;
and so I should have to pay twice as much for
another organ made to-day as you could sell
yours for, supposing it as good as new.”
“But why is not there more bread, papa? I
should like that there should be so much that I
might give the people twenty-four loaves when I
give the king my organ.”
“When that time comes, my dear, the people
will not want to beg bread, and you shall have a
better present to offer at court.—But, do you
know, Julien, there is going to be less bread
than ever, I am afraid.’
Marguerite drew her little son to her, and de-
scribed to him the state of the peasantry round
uncle Antoine's vineyards; and how grandpapa's
SIGNS OF THE TIME, 35
olives were all blown down, and everything eat-
able destroyed, except what had hitherto been
considered food for swine.
* One woman,’ she continued, ‘offered a com-
fortable coat of her husband's to several shiver-
ing people who would have liked it very much;
but they could not give so much as a single hand-
ful of barley for it. There were some who would
have given a whole field for a sack of wheat; but
they could not get it.’
‘One miserly person,’ observed Charles, ‘hap-
pened to save a small stock of cabbages, of which
he was willing to sell three. He was offered a
blanket, and would not take it; and then a pretty
crucifix; and then a cloc 3.
“But perhaps he did not want any of these
things?’ *
“Neither could he be said to want what he
took at last. When he found that the highest
price was offered that he was likely to get, he
accepted it; and it was a diamond pin, given by
lady Alice de Thou to a destitute family.”
* Was it like the diamond in mama’s watch?’
“Much larger. It was so valuable that, a
month ago, it would have bought uncle Antoine's
best vineyard.—It bought only three cabbages
36 SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
now, because the people must have cabbages
and did not want diamonds.”
“Then the very poor people pay much more
than the rich, I suppose? The poorer they are,
the more they pay?’
“Not when there is enough of what they
want. The baker over the way knows that if
he charged a poor man too high, the man would
go to some other baker to buy; so they keep
their prices pretty equal. But as soon as there
is too little of what every body wants, every one
is eager to get his share, and promises more than
his neighbor; till, as we see, a diamond pin may
be given for three cabbages. There is too little
corn in France now; and that is the reason why
we give more for it than will pay the baker, and
the miller, and the farmer, and his laborers for
what it cost them to prepare it for us.”
“The same will be the case with your papa's
wine,” added Marguerite. ‘He charged yester-
day as much as it had cost him to cultivate the
ground, and ripen the wine, and pay for having
it brought here, and for the use of his cellars,
and a certain sum over for us to live upon. Af.
ter to-day, every body will know how the storm
has ruined the vineyards; every one will be afraid
SIGNS OF THE TIME. 37
º
that there will not be wine enough, and they will
offer more and more for it, till—"
*Till papa is rich enough to take Pauline and
me to Versailles, to see the court.”
Charles told how much money he should want
to get his vineyards into repair again, and what
high wages he must pay the country people,
while provisions continued as dear as at present.
—Marguerite meanwhile sighed, and observed
that there was little pleasure now in going to
Versailles, to hear people, even of the "better
classes, criticise the expensiveness of the queen's
dress, and the haughtiness of her air, as often as
she appeared.
Pauline now burst into the room in a state of
wonder and consternation. She had not been
able to find Joli any where about the house, and
on employing the servants in the search, had re-
covered her favorite in a somewhat different con-
dition from that in which she had last seen him.
He was found crouching in the street, just out-
side the door, no longer the beautiful animal, with
a silky white coat, enamelled collar and silver bell,
but actually dyed, the hind part red, the fore
part blue, with a stripe of white left in the middle.
Instead” of the collar, were bands of ribbon of
38 8 IGNS , f' THE TIME,
the same three colors. The poor animal and its
mistress seemed equally.terrified, and both per-
haps felt themselves insulted when every body
laughed. Pauline cried, and Joli whined.
“Is he hurt, my love?' inquired mamma.
Julien waved his handkerchief, and Joli jump-
ed and snapped at it as usual; and even Pauline
laughed through her tears, when she saw the
gaudy little creature frisking about in masque-
rade.
‘Silice he is safe,” said Charles, “never mind
the collar and bell. We will get another when
times are better, and there are fewer thieves
about.”
“There is something worse than theft here,’
observed Marguerite, sadly. “I abhor those
colors.”
‘Then let us wash them off, if we can; and
mind, Pauline, if you wish your dog to be safe,
you must keep him within doors till his coat is
perfectly white again.”
The washing availed little, as the dog was not
besmeared but dyed. To get rid of as much
red and blue as possible, mamma cut off the new
collar, and gave Pauline a piece of white satin
ribbon. Grandpapa helped the child to tie it
sº
SIGNS OF THE TIME. $9
*
on, and sent her also for a white lily,–his favor-
ite flower, and fastened it where the bell nad
been; and then Joli looked something like a
royalist dog again.
‘I do wonder, Charles,” said his wife, while
this was doing, ‘that you go on always talking
of better times coming, and of the fine things
that are to happen by and by. You have done
so ever since I knew you; ever since y
‘Yes, love, ever since the days when you
were so very sure that your father would never
approve me; that my business would never
flourish; that, for one reason or another, we
should never come together.’
“Ah! I was not a cool judge in that case.”
“Nor I, I am sure, my dear.’
‘You seldom are, if there is any room at all
for hope. Plunge you into an abyss of distress,
and you are the calmest of judges. I would
trust you to find your way in utter darkness;
but the least glimmering you take for daylight.
At this very moment, when you know that all
affairs have been looking more and more gloomy
for these ten years past; when the people are
starving and rebellious, when your trade is al-
most annihilated, and my dowry destroyed, with
40 SIGNS OF THE TIME.
that of thousands of your neighbors, you still
talk of the good times that are coming.’
‘You think this very senseless, my love, I
dare say?’
‘It is very provoking, Charles. At first it
was always said in the spring that things would
be better in the autumn; and in the autumn,
that all would come right in the spring. Now,
you have somewhat extended your hope : it is
either next year, or by and by, or hereafter;
but still you go on hoping, when every body else
is preparing.’
“Cannot one hope and prepare at the same
time P’ asked Charles. “It seems to me that it
is for want of this that so much evil now threatens
us. The court goes on hoping without making
any preparation; and the people, having no hope
from the present system, are preparing to over-
throw it too completely and too suddenly.”
‘Mercy P cried Marguerite; ‘what will be-
come of us?”
“We shall live to grow wise in the experience
of a state of transition, or die, leaving this wis-
dom to be inherited by others. In either case,
the wisdom will remain; and the world (inclu-
ding our children) will be the better for it
SIGNS OF THE TIME. 4i.
Meanwhile, there is dinner waiting below for
those who are hungry. Do not let the thoughts
of to-morrow spoil the comfort of to-day.”
Before the day was over, however, its com-
fort was spoiled, and even Charles was compel-
led to look anxiously to the morrow. After
dinner, a shriek of anguish was heard from the
children. They had forgotten to secure Joli;
and he was found hung up on the next lamp-
post, strangled in his new white collar, and the
lily stuck insultingly in his mouth. There was
no use now in blaming the folly and carelessness
which had occasioned the catastrophe. The
only thing to be done was to impress upon the
entire household the necessity of parading no
more lilies, and avoiding all ornaments of white,
red, or blue.

42 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
CHAPTER III.
T H E T E M P E R O F THE TIME.
THE stagnation of trade was now a serious
evil to Charles, not only as it occasioned his capi-
tal to be locked up, and his income to be impair-
ed, nor because he was of so active a tempera-
ment that nothing troubled him like the having
no business to do, but because those were the
safest amidst the troubles of the times who were
supposed to be fully occupied in their private
concerns. There was no lack of interest, indeed,
for the most restless seeker of excitement; and
Charles might have busied himself from morning
to night of every day in tracking the progress of
the public discontent, if such had been the spe-
cies of employment he had desired or approved
He might, like other people, have shouted the
praises of Necker in every street and square.
He might have amused himself with watching
with how many different airs the passengers on
the Pont Neuf submitted to bow uncovered be-
fore the statue of Henry IV., under the penalty
of having squibs let off in their faces. He might
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME. 43
have witnessed the burning in effigy of obnox-
ious ministers, and have stood by the great fire
unto which the king's decrees for suspending the
parliament were cast, and have listened, through
the live-long day, to the harangues of popular
orators, or joined in the midnight processions by
which the repose of all quiet citizens was dis-
turbed. But Charles did not see that such at-
tendance on his part could do any good at
present, however the case might hereafter be
altered. Whether or not he was turning over
in his mind plans for his conduct when the time
should come for him to act, he now appeared to
direct his attention to private affairs, and talked
more of wine and olives than of political matters.
He had been accustomed to furnish a large
proportion of the home supply of olives and
almonds for which there was a demand in Paris,
from the produce of the estates of his wife and
father-in-law; and now he had applications, day
after day, for fruits which he might have sºld at
a high price, while scarcely a customer came
for wine. He had already invested the little
floating capital he could spare from the restora.
tion of his vineyards in fruits from Italy and the
Levant, which his brother purchased for him as

44 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
they came up the great canal and the Garonne,
on their way to Bordeaux. He now began to
wish that he could exchange a part of his large
stock of wine for fruits. He knew that wines
would rise enormously in price, as soon as the
demand should revive; but fruits had already
risen enormously, and he wished to turn some
of his capital into money by their means. It
was easy to do this by extending his transactions
with Steele, who purchased fruit in large quanti-
ties at Bordeaux to send to England. The de-
mand for fruit in London being at present insig-
nificant in comparison with that for claret, and
the direct reverse being the case at Pagis, it was
Steele's interest to transmit more wine and less
fruit, and Charles's to take fruit in exchange for
his wine. It was therefore settled that, in addi-
tion to their standing bargain for first-rate wine,
Steele should have a large choice of second-rate
claret, in payment for chestnuts from Spain,
oranges and citrons from the Madeiras, olives
from the Levant, and almonds from Italy. The
terms of exchange were the only difficulty.
Neither Steele nor Charles were speculators,
in the common sense of the term. They were
prudent men of business, attached to one line of
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME. 45
Q.
occupation, and in no particular hurry to be
richer than every body else. They now, how-
ever, found themselves obliged to speculate, and
became more fully aware than they had been
before that all trading for purposes of sale is, in
fact, speculation. It is necessary for traders not
only to take into account all the past and present
circumstances which affect the value of the article
in which they deal, but to look forward to such
as may influence its sale. Their success depends
on the foresight which they have exercised, and
the sagacity with which they have calculated:
in other words, on their skill in speculation.
When they extend their views to a further ex-
tent than they can command, and found their
calculations on contingencies, they become game-
sters of that class which is held in horror under
the name of speculators: and hence arises a
somewhat indistinct dread and dislike of all
speculation; while the fact is, no exchange what-
ever could go on without more or less real spec-
ulation. The farmer must speculate on the
seasons; the manufacturer on tastes and fashions,
and on the supply of raw material; the merchant
must speculate on war and peace, and all do-
mestic and much foreign policy. In ordinary
46 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
times, Charles must speculate on the increase or
decline of the taste for claret, or of the number
of claret-drinkers in Paris; and now, a new and
wide field of calculation was opened before him,
on which he must enter if he meant to prosecute
his business at all.
From the time that the brothers had entered
into business till now, there had been established
a tolerably steady rate of understood value, at
which goods had been exchanged for one another.
There had been occasional and slight variations,
according to seasons, and other fluctuating cir-
cumstances; so that four pipes of wine might
at one time exchange for the same quantity of
fruit as three and a half would buy at another;
but the circumstances which determined these
variations in value being usually foreseen by all
parties concerned, their vigilance prevented any
very sudden and perplexing convulsions in trade.
As long as there were average seasons, an ave-
rage supply of food, an average quantity of labor
to be, had, wages and profits (on which price
depends) could be calculated, and relied on for
remaining nearly at the average rate. But now,
there had been both natural and political disasters,
whoseconsequences defied all calculation. There
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME. 47
º
was an over-supply of labor, as far as the num-
ber of laborers went; for thousands of the peas-
antry had been stripped of all they had, and ren-
dered dependent on neighboring capitalists for
employment and support. At the same time,
food was dreadfully deficient, and therefore.
enormously dear; so that to what price labor
would rise, in spite of the over-supply, it was
impossible to guess.-The same cause rendered
the amount of profits uncertain. Unless it could
be settled how much the laborers would appro-
priate, it must continue unsettled how much
would remain over for the capitalist,-even if it
could be ascertained how extensive would be the
demand.for the article. This, again, was doubt-
ful, from the uncertainty of political affairs, which
impaired the security of property, and stopped
up the channels of mutual exchange. Thus, not
only was the permanent original element of ex-
changeable value, cost of production,-render-
ed incalculable, in the case both of wine and
fruits, but all the causes which occasion temporary
fluctuations were violently at work; and it re-
quired a clear head and a strong heart to antici-
pate and rely upon their issues. Steele's part
was the less perplexing of the two. He knew
48 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
no more than Charles, it is true, how the sudden
rise in the value of labor, from the scarcity of
food, would affect the price of the stock laid
in before labor became so dear; and he could
not therefore judge of the probable amount of
Charles's profits; but on the head of his em-
ployers' profits he felt very secure. The English
market was steady: the demand could be nearly
estimated, and if it was pretty sure to be good
with an abundant supply of wine in the market,
it was certain to be very brisk as soon as the
supply was known to be deficient. Though,
therefore, he might ask less than he need in ex-
change for his fruit, there was every probability
of his gaining more than the usual profit on the
wine thus purchased.—Charles, on the other
hand, had not only to discover what expense his
brother and other vine-growers were at in main-
taining laborers, and how much of this was to be
charged by tacit agreement upon their present
stock, and the same facts with regard to the fruit;
but to speculate on the ability and disposition of
the people of Paris to buy either wine or fruit,
and how much the demand for the one was likely
to fall short of, or exceed, the demand for the
other.—The result was that the two parties to
\
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME. 49
the bargain fixed upon an exchange which ap-
peared likely to be mutually advantageous, but
which proved the value of their commodities to
have deviated widely from the ordinary propor-
tion. Setting off an equal expense of labor, and
an equal amount of profit, on each side, fifty
chests of fruit (from almonds and citrons down
to chestnuts) would exchange for a pipe of claret,
in ordinary times. Now, twenty chests were
all that such a pipe would buy; and yet Charles
believed he had made a good bargain, as the de-
mand of thirsty orators for juicy fruits, and of
loungers in the-streets for chestnuts, was extraor-
dinarily great, while wine was, just then, little in
request. His wife, knowing that he had lately
been rather pressed for money, watched with
interest the process by which it began once more
to flow in. By half emptying a cellar in Bor-
deaux, fruit was made to arrive in Paris by
wagon loads, and these were presently convert-
ed into cash. But there was one point on which
she was not satisfied. {º}
*I see,” said she, “the convenience to us and
to the Englishmen of our mutual exchange. It
is really charming; as welcome as the traffic
between the first maker" of weapons and the
D
a0 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
hunter, when the one had more bows and fish-ſines
than he could use, and the other more venison
and trout than he could eat while they were good.
But, Charles, are you either of you just in taking
advantage of the vengeance of heaven, he to
enrich himself, and you to repair your losses?
Ought you not to sell wine at the price it profes-
sed to bear in your cellars before the hurricane
happened? And why is Italian fruit dear, when
in Italy there has been no storm?’
“If we sold our goods at last year's prices,’
replied Charles, ‘all our wine and our fruit
would be exhausted long before we should have
a further supply. Is it not better that they
should bear such a price as will make people
sparing in their use till we have once more an
abundance?’
‘And is this the reason why there are grana-
ries not yet exhausted, amidst the cries of the
people for bread?’
‘It is; and if bread had borne its usual price
all this time, there would now be absolute famine
in every street of Paris. If the people under-
stood this, they would not storm the flour mills,
and throw hundreds of sacks into the Seine, in
their rage against the owners. These owners,
THE TEMPER of THE TIME. 51
by causing a gradual distribution, are the best
friends of those who are their own bitter enemies;
—whewaste bread now, because they were not
permitted to waste it before.” -
“But why should the corn-owners be enriched
by scarcity of bread, and you by the destruction
of vineyards? You tell me that your gains b
this storm will nearly compensate the losses it
has cost you. Is this fair?” -
“Perfectly so. You know that the value of
every thing that is exchanged depends on the
labor required to produce it.”
‘Yes, yes: and therefore the wine that is to
be grown in your desolated vineyards will justly
be dear, because much and dear labor will be
needed to restore your estates to fertility. But
I speak of your present stock, prepared when
labor was not particularly high priced, and when
only the ordinary quantity of it was wanted.’
‘The plain factis, that labor is now very dear,
every where; my cellar-full of it, as well as that
which is now active in La Favorite. You will
hardly wish, my dear, that I should present the
public with a portion of it, in the present state of
my affairs. I am not exactly in a condition to
give away my substance unnecessarily; especial-
52 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
ly to buyers of wine, who are, for the most part,
richer than myself. If harps were suddenly to
become doubled in value, you would not sell
yours for what you gave for it, would you?”
‘No; harp-buyers would be better able to
give the market-price than I to do without it.
Ye 3.
‘Yet we have not considered that your case
would be stronger still if it was necessary for
you to buy another harp immediately, at the ad-
vanced price. Such is my case. I sell my
cellar-full of labor in order to purchase a further
supply at the present high price. Since I must
buy, and must pay dear for what I buy, would
1t not be folly to sell the same article cheap?'
“The same article ! I do not understand yob.
You would be wrong to hire yourself out for
the money wages of a year ago:—to give the
strength of your arm forewhat would buy much
less bread : but 3.
“But the wine in my cellars and the strength
of my arm are equally labor, possessed by me.
You may call the one primary, and the other
secondary, if you like ; but they are equally la-
bor. Yes; all the capital we have, whether
the furniture of this room, or your olive presses,
THE TEMPER of the TIME. 53
or my wine, is hoarded labor: the labor of the
work-people from whom we purchased it.”
‘That is curious. Then the price depends
upon the labor—O no, there are your profits
to be considered. The price depends upon the
cost of production; which includes your capital
as well as your men's labor.” ‘’Call it all labor
at once, if you like. Profits are the recom-
pense of labor as much as wages: wages of
primary, and profits of secondary or hoarded
labor; whichever you please to call it.”
“Then why have you been perplexing your-
self all this time about this exchange of goods
with Steele 2 Cannot you reckon easily endugh
the present value of the labor contained in a
pipe of wine? and will not this serve as a perfect
measure ?’
“Nothing ever served as a perfect measure of
value yet; or ever will, in my opinion,” replied
Charles. ‘Labor regulates the relative value
of Steele's fruit and my wine; but it can never
measure the one against the other, or both
against houses, or furniture, or money, or any
other commodity. Do not you see that, while
labor varies as it does, it pan never serve as a
measure ?’
54 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
“To be sure, it is very different in its value
this winter from what it was the last.”
“Suppose our milk-woman exchanged a quart
of cream daily for a pint of coffee, at the coffee-
shop opposite; and that the quart and pint pots
grew larger or smaller according as the air was
damp or dry. These pots would regulate the
quantity of cream and coffee; but it would be
absurd to call them measures, while the quantity
they yield is incessantly varying.’
* Labor is affected by the seasons, I know;
and it seems as if it must always be so, and as
if there could therefore never be a fixed measure
of value.”
* Not only does primary labor produce more
at some times, and under some circumstances,
than others, but it is impossible to tell beforehand
what will be the return to secondary labor; and
from this it follows that the shares of the capi-
talist and the laborer rise and fall against one
another, so that neither can be depended upon
for steadiness.”
‘Well: I suppose we can do without a fixed
measure of value, since we cannot get one; but
it does seem as if it would be convenient to know
always exactly how much food and clothing one
might have in exchange for so much money.’
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME. 55
* I am afraid it would be as mischievous in
one way as having no regulator would be in
another.” e
‘O, if there were no regulator, men would
snatch from one another like wild beasts; and
they would soon be in a very beast-like state as
to property. Food for the hour would be allany
one would think of, if the chances were that he
would get nothing by his labor, or be unable to
keep what he might obtain.”
‘On the other hand, if there were an unvary-
ing measure, men would be a wholly different
race from what they are created to be. There
is no anticipating the consequences of withdraw-
ing all the discipline by which their faculties are
exercised, sharpened, and strengthened. The
very supposition is absurd, however, for it in-
cludes the absence of all human vicissitudes.
Before there could be a true measure of the
relative value of human possessions, man must
have power to keep the whole surface of the
globe in a state of equal fertility, to regulate the
sunshine and the rain, and to ordain all who are
born to have an equal share of strength, both of
limbs and faculties. All lives must also be of
the same length, and even sickness would affect
**
56 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
his measure. No: that degree of sagacity which
can abstract averages is enough of a guide for
practical purposes, while it affords a fine exer-
cise for the intellect and the moral nature of
man.”
Marguerite shook her head mournfully, asking
how much the moral nature of their neighbors
was likely to be benefited by the present uncer-
tainty of affairs.
“Infinitely more than we can estimate, replied
Charles, eagerly. “I see every day, not only
splendid instances of intellectual effort, applied
to the most important departments of social phi-
losophy, but moral struggles and self-sacrifices
which dispose me more than ever to bow the
knee to human nature.”
“And, as usual, you overlook whatever would
not please you. You hear the patriotic haran-
gues of our new mob orators, but not the abomi-
nable commentaries of those who stand at your
elbow. You join in the shouts with which the
national colors are hailed as often as they appear,
but are not aware how the white cockade is trod-
den under foot. You are so taken up with
making your obeisance to the parliament you
think so virtuous, that you disregard the cruel
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME. 57
irreverence with which our anointed sovereigns
are blasphemed. This is not just, Charles; it is
foolish; and, what is worse, it is disloyal.’
‘Nay, my love 2
“It is not enough that, by your way of regard-
ing public affairs, you amuse my father, and
tranquillize me, and encourage in our children a
temper like your own. All this is well in ordi-
nary times: but these are days for higher objects
and a more intrepid conduct.”
Charles looked steadily at his wife, but she
would not yet let him speak. She went on,
“These are days when the true should pray
day and night for vengeance on the false, instead
of excusing them: when loyalty should weep in
dark corners, since it cannot show its face in the
daylight without being profaned. These are
days when our children should see a solemn sad-
ness in our countenances; and if they ask why,
they should be told in mournful mystery what
sympathy is due to suffering royalty.’
“And not to a suffering nation, Marguerite?
Is there to be no pride in intrepid patriotism 2
No joy in public virtue? Shall the birth of
liberty be looked upon as an evil omen? If the
king had chosen to stand its sponsor, the whole
58 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
of our mighty people might have peaceably re-
joiced together. His disowning it is no reason
why others should not hail its advent. His
choosing the part of Herod is reason enough
why there should be priests waiting and watch-
ing in the temple.”
‘You are speaking treason!' cried the terrified
Marguerite.
“By no means. I am ready to struggle for
the king and the throne till death; but it must
be for a wise king, and a throne founded in
justice. As it is, all things are made to bear
two aspects, and it is too much to require all to
perceive only one. A forcible division has been
made between the past and the future, and no
wonder that some incline to look forward, while
others persist in a reverted attitude.”
“Ah! how will you reconcile duties in this
perverse state of affairs?”
“Very easily. When I am in the mob, I re
fer the patriotic sentiments of the orators to the
new era of freedom, and pity the indecent vio-
lence of the hearers as the result of their pro-
longed subjugation. When heads are uncovered
before La Fayette, my heart glows as in the
very presence of liberty; when the queen is
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME. 59
insulted in the streets of her capital by the
refuse of her own sex, I sigh over the mischiefs
the oppression of ages has wrought, but still
hope that the day of their decline has arrived.”
“And what when Orleans sneaks away from
the rabble he has maddened? What when
every lamp-post in the Place de Grève bears its
strangled victim?”
* I see in one the monstrous offspring of a
deformed and an unformed system. Such a
birth can take place but once, and its life must
be as brief through want of vigor, as it is hate-
ful from its ugliness. The practice of slaughter
too belongs to the old time. The more degraded
slaves are, the more certain is it that their eman-
cipation will be signalized by murder.’
‘Why then not control, or at least resist
them? Is it not dastardly to sit smiling at home,
while the loyal and the noble 5
Charles liſted up his finger in token of silence,
and rose from his seat, saying,
‘Your reproaches impel me to a confidence
with which I did not intend to disturb yourºtran-
quillity. Follow me.”
Marguerite did so, suspecting that she might
soon wish to retract some things which she had
60 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
said. Her husband led her to his wine-cellars,
which were at the back of the house, separated,
from it by a small court, from which there was
an opening through a wide gateway into the
street. The few servants who remained at this
slack time on the premises were employed about
the fruit-store. The keys of the wine-cellars
were kept by a confidential clerk, who was
always on the spot, and was the only person
besides Charles who now ever entered the place.
“Remember,’ said Charles to his wife, as he
put the key into the first lock; ‘remember that
you have brought this disclosure upon yourself.
This will enable you to bear it well. The best
thing we can hope is that you may have to bear
it long. If calamity should shortly release you
from apprehension, you will see that the hope-
fulness you complain of in me does not arise from
levity. Pierre, bring the lantern, and lock usin.”
Marguerite felt half-stifled between her fear
of what was to come next, and the close air of
the cellars. Her husband held up the light, and
she saw that the door had been newly plated
with iron. The next thing she was shown was
a long train of gunpowder winding among the
stores of wine and brandy.
THE TEMPERw of THE TIME. 6i
‘O, Charles!’ she cried; “are you going to
blow us up?’
*Not ourselves, or the house either, he repli-
ed. “You see here is not enough to do any
great mischief;-only enough to bring down the
ceiling upon my wine-casks, and spoil the wine.
There are no buildings over this cellar, you
know; so there is no danger to human life.”
He then explained that, finding how invaria-
bly the worst excesses of the mob were to be
traced to their being plied with drink, it had oc-
curred to him to engage all the wine-merchants
of Paris in an agreement to refuse, on some pre-
tence or other, to sell wine or spirits to any but
private gentlemen who wanted it for their own
consumption. Some agreed, and others did not;
and these latter, when they had sold all their
stock, and could, from the scarcity, get no more,
had maliciously whispered in the mobs the secret
with which they had been entrusted. One after
another of the merchants, knowing the danger
to which they were exposed, had fallen off from
the agreement; and Charles, whose stock was
the largest now remaining in the city, was left
almost alone in his determination to refuse the
means of intoxicating the mob. He was aware
4.
62 The TEMPER QF THE TIME.
that his wine was longed for, and his life threat-
ened. He could not remove his stock to a dis-
tance, for his prémises were evidently watched
by spies. He had reason to believe that, on
the first occasion when the people were to be
excited to an extraordinary act of violence, they
were to be brought hither to burst open his stores,
and be plied with brandy and wine. He did
not choose to be thus made the means of promo-
ting riot and murder, and determined on blowing
up his stock, if matters came to extremity. On
the first alarm of the approach of a mob, he
should fire the train, and bring down the roof;
making a pit of what was now level ground.
Or, if he should be absent, Pierre knew how to
do it.
“But how 2° asked Marguerite, with as much
voice as she had left. “Must it not be fatal to
the one who fires?”
“I trust not,’ he replied; “though, if it were,
my purpose would stand. It is better to sacri-
fice one life thus, than to make murderous fiends
of many thousands. But, look here, this is our
contrivance.”
• And he showed her how a very small trap-door
had been made of one of the stones in the pave-
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME, 53
ment above, through which a light might be let
down immediately upon the train, and from any
distance, if the line were of sufficient length.
“It is but little that a quiet citizen can do in
times when men of a different make are sure to
gain the ascendency,” observed Charles: ‘but
no one is absolved from doing what he can. I
am no orator to rouse the people to patriotism,
or to soothe their madness; but here I have
power in having something like a monopoly of
the poison which helps to madden them; and it
shall be kept from inflaming their brains, whether
they tear me limb from limb, or compel me to
drown myself in my own wine, or let me live
till the days when they shall thank me for cross-
ing their will.’
Marguerite's terror was aggravated by a sense
of shame for having failed to anticipate her hus-
band's heroism, and being now unable to share
it. Her thoughts were ready to veer any way
in hope of escape, rather than anchor themselves
upon her husband's determination, and await
the event. No wonder, since she had so much
at stake, and was a very simpleton in political
matters. She had all possible fears, and no
wishes. A miserable state to be in, in such times.
64 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
Could not the whole family remove 7 Could
not her husband, at least, slip away by night?
Must they remain in the neighborhood of gun-
powder, and in daily expectation of the mob —
actually within hearing of the hated drums?
They must; her husband replied. Any at-
tempt to fly, or to alter their manner of living,
would be immediately detected, and would bring
a worse destruction than that which they might
possibly escape by remaining. Had not Mar-
guerite observed spies about the house?
O yes: every day since poor Joli was found
hanged. That was a sad piece of carelessness.
Charles thought so too, and even with more rea-
son than his wife. He knew that the dressing
up of that dog was set down in the list of his
sins against his country. If it had taken place
eighteen months later, it would have brought
upon him an immediate sentence of death: but
matters not having yet gone so far as they were
destined to proceed, the fact was only recorded
against him.
“Let us go,' said Marguerite, faintly, when she
found her husband bent on adhering to his plans,
for reasons which she could not gainsay. “I
cannot bear the air of this place.”
THE TEMPER OF THE TIME. 65
‘We will go presently, love,' replied Charles.
The first moment that I see you look like your-
self, I will call to Pierre to unlock. the door.
Meanwhile, here is a seat; and I will give you
air and something to revive you.’
Having seated her where a breath of fresh air
from the little trap-door might blow upon her
face, he brought a flask of rich wine, in a full
glass of which he pledged her, assuring her,
with a smile, that it did not yet taste of gunpow-
der. His pledge was,
‘Marguerite, my wife, life and safety to our-
selves and our household ! If not these, at
least the peace of our enlightened and steadfast
will!—Will you not pledge me?’
She bowed her head upon his shoulder, and
wept her shame at being unworthy of him,
unfit to live in such times.
“Then preserve yourself, love, to live in bet-
ter times. They will come; they must come;
and steady hopefulness will be our best security
till they arrive.”
Marguerite so far succeeded in her endeavor
to adopt her husband's principle, that she return-
ed with a smile the searching gaze which Pierre
fixed upon her as she issued from the cellar
E
66 THE TEMPER OF THE TIME.
but her countenance fell at the first words with
which he answered her intimation that she now
knew the great secret, and would guard it care-
fully.
‘Alas! Madame. I fear it has ceased to be
a Secret That is, he added, changing his
tone when he perceived her alarm, 'our men
yonder cannot but observe how carefully we
keep the place locked, and how many customers
we send away; and nothing escapes suspicion in
these times. But your having been down is a
happy circumstance, Madame; especially as you
emerge with an air so charmingly serene.”
This hint to look composed was not lost upon
the lady, who tripped across the court with a de-
meanor of assumed gaiety. It presently vanish-
ed; and she looked with astonishment on her
husband when at play with the children after din-
ner. It rent her heart to hear her father inquire
perpetually how early in the spring they should
set out for Guienne, that he might delight him-
self in his beloved olive-groves once more, with
the children by his side: but Charles answered
as if there had still been olive-groves; and as if
the family were at liberty to go whither they
pleased in their beautiful country. When, at in-
DE EDS OF THE TIME, 67
tervals, she saw him whipping his little girl's
wooden horse, and practising battledore with his
young son, laughing all the while as merrily as
either, she could scarcely believe him to be the
same who had so lately solemnly pledged her
over a train of gunpowder laid by his own reso
lute hands.
CHAPTER IV.
D E E D S OF THE TIME.
M. RAUcourt had abundance of leisure to
repeat his question about journeying southwards,
and to describe to his grandchildren the wealth
of fruit-grounds that they would inherit from him.
Month after month, as the days grew longer,
and the weather became hotter, he told them
that, when spring came, they should go with
him to groves where pink blossoms came out
before the green leaves, and where the young
oranges grew more golden amidst the verdure as
the season drew on.
“But, grandpapa,’ objected Julien, “the spring
is going away very fast already.”
68 DEED S OF THE TIME.
“Ah! well, then, we shall be too late for the
almond blossoms, but the oranges and the grapes
will be all the more beautiful.”
“But,’ observed Pauline, when two more
months had passed away, ‘the vintage will be
all over now before we can get there, mamma
says.”
“Well, my dear, but there is a spring every
year, and I am talking of next spring.’
And so the matter was settled for this year.
Marguerite began to hope that the affair of the
cellars would be so likewise, as Charles had of
late been less importuned to sell, and there had
been no fresh evidences, amidst the increasing
discontents of the people, that he was held in
suspicion. There was even a hope of removing
a large part of his stock openly and safely.
Steele wanted more wine, and Antoine, having
none left at Bordeaux, referred him to his bro-
ther; and the Englishman arrived in Paris to see
whether he could enter into another negotiation
with the house with which he had already dealt
so extensively. He took up his abode in Charles's
house, and consulted with him, and also with
some of the authorities of the city, as to the best
mode of removing his purchases, without excit-
DEED 5 OF THE TIME, 69
.
ing the rage of the mob, who by this time had
taken upon themselves to decide the right and
wrong of all matters that passed before their eyes,
whether of the nature of public or private busi-
ness. The magistrates, who politicly adopted
the tone of the people as often as they could,
sighed over the anomaly of a foreigner purchas-
ing wine in Paris, while there was too little left
for Frenchmen; and Steele wondered as em-
phatically at the state of affairs which obliged
two merchants to call in the interference of the
magistracy to repel that of the mob, while they
settled their private bargains. Marguerite
thought little of the one anomaly or the other,
in her strong wish to have her husband's cellars
emptied at all events. The greatest happiness
she could imagine was that of helping him and
Pierre to sweep away the gunpowder, and throw
open the doors of the vacant place to any one
who chose to enter. There was much to be
done, however, before they could arrive at this
fortunate issue.
One day, while Steele's business was pending,
a carriage drove up to the door, with consider-
able state, and the Marquis de Thou, having as-
certained that the wine-merchant was at home,
70 DE EDS OF THE TIME,
alighted, and requested to speak with him on
business. While Charles waited on him, Mar-
guerite anxiously inquired of Steele respecting
the marquis's politics; for she apprehended a
snare in every transaction. She thought it strange
that so stout an old royalist should have any deal-
ings with her husband, and was not comforted
by what she learned from Steele; namely, that
oeing forced by the hatred of his country neigh-
bors to leave his chateau in Guienne, and take
refuge in Paris in the middle of summer, he
seemed disposed to trim between the two par-
ties, and was therefore likely to be a dangerous
person to have dealings with. Immediately on
his arrival, he had contrived to place his daugh-
ter in the queen's train, while he kept upon terms
with the duke of Orleans. Pleading to himself,
and bidding lady Alice plead to the queen, if
called upon, his old companionship with Orleans,
he did much of the duke's dirty work, very un-
consciously, very complacently, and with the
comfortable conviction that his loyalty remained
unblemished, while he attended no public meet-
ings, and managed to be within the palace walls
whenever a popular movement was likely to take
place. While Steele was explaining what was
Ib EED 5 OF THE TIME, 71
reported of the Marquis at Bordeaux, Charles
appeared.
“The marquis wants to make large purchases
of wine,” he said. “Do you conceive he can
have occasion for a fourth part of my stock for
his own use P’
“His chateau is shut up,” replied Steele; * and
he is not occupying his hotel in Paris. Depend
upon it, he is shopping for Orleans, as usual.”
“He shall not have enough to intoxicate a
single bravo with,’ cried Charles. “Come with
me, Steele, and find some objection to every
sample. Claim as much as you please, and
disgust him with as much more as you can.”
Pierre was called in to help, and among the
three, all as solemn as himself, the marquis was
more eminently bamboozled than he had ever
been before in his life; which is saying a great
deal. He protested every sample to be better
than the last, whatever might have been mixed
with it by Pierre in the fetching. He made half
a hundred low bows when Steele claimed all that
was tolerable; and declared his admiration of
Charles’s magnanimity in pointing out the de-
fects of his own commodity. The civility of
M. Pierre also in vowing that the marquis should
72 DEEDS OF THE TIME,
have no wine but the best, which was all, un-
happily, sold already, was worthy of much ac-
knowledgment. Being under promise, however,
to purchase such and such quantities of wine, he
must waive their polite scruples, and obviate all
others by referring M. Charles Luyon to the
most wealthy nobleman in the kingdom for pay-
ment. This avowal decided the matter. Charles
shirked the marquis all the more speedily for his
naving owned that he came from the Duke of
Orleans, and the carriage conveyed away the
messenger without his errand.
From day to day other customers came : but,
as all might be traced as instruments of the duke,
they were all dismissed in the same way as the
marquis. Charles was convinced that some
popular commotion was at hand. He perceived
that the truly patriotic movers in the revolution
were more and more hated by Orleans, as his
purposes degenerated more and more from the
purity of theirs; and he could not restrain his
indignation at the efforts that were made to in-
fatuate and brutalize the people, that they might
disgrace or interrupt the measures of the enlight-
ened of their leaders, and bring down a nation
worthy of freedom to bow the knee to one who
IDE EDS OF THE TIME. 73
nourished the passions of a tyrant in the coward
heart of a slave. ‘He shall not madden the peo-
ple with my wine. Whatever they do shall be
done in a state of sanity, as far as I can con-
tribute thereto,” was still Charles’s resolution;
and he declined prices on which the hand of
many a brother in trade would have closed with-
out a question. He had too humble an idea of
his own consequence to adopt his wife's opinion
that it was designed to attach him to the Orleans
party by making him the creditor of its chief.
She was confirmed in her notion, however, by a
very disagreeable circumstance,—the appear-
ance of Orleans himself;-to purchase fruit, as
he declared.
From fruit the negotiation presently turned to
wine, as Charles expected ; and for which he
had prepared himself with a somewhat desperate
intent. Knowing the faint heart which his new
customer hid under his impudent address, he
thought he might calculate on the effect which
would be produced by a sight of his underground
preparations; and he accordingly requested his
Grace, with a compliment to his well-known
condescension, to enter the cellar. As soon as
they were fairly in, he called to Pierre to be very
74 JDEEDS OF THE TIME.
careful of the lantern, as a single spark might
be fatal; invited the duke, unless he objected to
approach so near to the magazine, to inspect the
date of a certain curious old wine ; begged to
go first among the fireworks for fear of an acci-
dental explosion, and so forth ; expatiating con
amore on his commodity, in the intervals.
“Bless my soul, M. Luyon!' cried the duke,
‘what can you mean by making a fortress of
your cellars? It is dangerous to set foot in
them, by your own account.”
‘Only to those who have no business here,’
replied Charles. “My man and I can tread in
security.”
And he coolly gave his reasons for rendering
his wine inaccessible; pointing out no party, but
merely with a reference to the perpetual danger
of disturbance in the present times.
“But it is absolutely a fortress,” repeated the
duke. “Your door is massive. Is there no
way of escape P I mean, no other entrance?”
“None whatever,” replied Charles; and at
this moment, Pierre, having set down the lan-
tern, slammed the plated door, and barred and
cross-barred it with a diligence which the guest
by no means approved.
IDE EID S OF THE TIME. 75
“A fortress is perfectly harmless when in
friendly hands, and unless attacked,” observed
Charles. ‘Here are no weapons of offence,
you observe; and it is far from being my inter-
est to blow up my stock, unless driven to it.”
“Or even then,’ argued the duke. ‘Sup-
posing your premises were attacked,—an idle
anticipation;–but supposing they were, it would
answer better to you to have them stripped than
destroyed.’
“To my pocket, doubtless,” answered Charles
occupying himself with opening a flask; “but
not to my conscience. If by my means a mob,
or any individual of a mob, were to be incited to
party violence,—if I were so treacherous as to
allow their impulses of patriotism to be corrupt-
ed into licentiousness, I should feel the man-
liness within me melting away. I should start
at shadows for the rest of my days. No, sir;
perish my possessions, rather than they should
go to corrupt public virtue.—Taste this, I advise
you, my lord duke.’
“Do not you think the air rather close here?’
asked Orleans, in his smoothest manner. “Are
not the fumes of this wine—
“And of the gunpowder, my lord * They
76 DEEDS OF THE TIME.
9.
are no doubt oppressive to those who are unused
to them. Open the door, Pierre.”
The duke found his faculty of taste more to
be relied upon in the open air; and took his
stand accordingly in the portal, where he stood
negotiating and gossiping for an unconscionable
time, till first one or two people appeared in the
court, then more, and more still, and in an in-
stant the well-known drum was heard close by,
and the shouts of a rabble which poured in with-
out the slightest warning. Orleans looked as if
he was going to be very angry; but Charles had
no time to parley with his hypocrisy.
It was too late to fasten the portal on the out-
side, and run to the house. Pierre’s motion
was to pull the duke with them into the cellar;
but his master forbade. He thrust Orleans out
of the portal, calling out,
* See, we carry a light in with us; and re-
member you tread on hollow ground,’—and
retreated, not allowing even his faithful Pierre to
enter the place of danger with him. He locked,
bolted, barred and double barred the door, went
and placed the lantern close by the train, looked
to his matches and tinder, and then sat down,
with folded arms, to await the issue of the ex-
DE EDS OF THE TIME. 77
pected siege. He was fully resolved to sacrifice
his life and property rather than be aiding and
abetting with Orleans in giving a licentious
character to the great act (whatever it might be)
which the people were evidently contemplating.
The more he had thought of the events of the
preceding day, when arms had been seized and
cannon laid hold of by the people, the more
convinced he had been that the present would
not pass away without being signalized by some
extraordinary deed, and the more resolutely
determined he felt to use such power as he had,
for the safety and honor of the state. The
fierce yells of the mob outside had no effect but
to increase his courage, as they served to justify
his object to himself; and as he looked through
the dim vault, from the further end of which
came the dull echo of the blows upon the door,
as he observed that the one feeble light did not
so much as flicker in the socket while all was
tumult outside, he felt a thrilling consciousness
of power which was not gloomy, though it was
fearful, and might involve his own destruction,
Whether it would involve any other life, he had
considered much and long; he believed not; or
that if one or a few should be injured by the
78 DE EDS OF THE TIME.
slight explosion which would effect his purpose,
this would be a less evil than would be perpe-
frated by a drunken mob in possession of such
means of destruction as they had seized the day
before.
One circumstance nearly unnerved him. He
had prevented Pierre from entering with him,
under the idea of saving his life from the peril
in which his own was placed; but the sudden
outcry which presently arose, the oaths evident-
ly directed at an individual, the cries of shrill
female voices, ‘To the lamp-post with him!”—
agonized Charles with the idea that the ven-
geance of the mob for his opposition was to fall
upon his unfortunate servant. He felt a mo-
mentary impulse to throw open the door and
take all the consequences, the first of which
would undoubtedly be that he would be taken to
the lamp-post,
* Not instead of Pierre, but with him,” he
thought, however, in another moment. “No. I
cannot save him; so I will persevere. And may
heaven hold me guiltless of his blood; for I
meant well towards. him —But what now?—
What a silence —Have they sent for fire to
smoke me out? I will throw up a thicker smoke
DE EDS OF THE TIME. 79
presently, if that be it.—O, what a horrible cry!
What can have put them in a new rage?’
If Charles could have looked through the thick
walls of his vault, he would have seen that
which might well have called down an immediate
sentence of death on all his household; that
which added new horrors to his wife's suspense,
and increased the agony of poor Pierre, standing
as he was in the grasp of two of the enemy, and
assured by the fish-women about him that he
was to be hanged as soon as they could find a
cord. He forgot his own situation for a moment
when he looked up to the balcony, and saw the
deplorable mistake which was likely to prove the
destruction of the whole family. Nobody with-
in doors had thought of M. Raucourt, whom
no event was now ever known to bring from his
easy chair at the front window. He was left
alone while the back of the house was being
barricaded with all speed, and messengers put
out upon the roof to find their way, if possible,
to the authorities; or at least to make signals
for assistance. But the children came in a state
of amazement to grandpapa, and the shouts
reached even his dull ear, and recalled the asso-
ciations which in the old royalist were always
80 IDE EDS OF THE TIME. ,’
the first to be awakened. He had no other
idea than that the people were hailing the royal
family, and he resolved not to be behind others in
his duty. He sent Pauline for the white cockade
he had given her, tottered to his chamber, got
out, under a new impulse of strength, upon the
balcony, and waved his white favor. It was
this which had silenced the mob with astonish-
ment; and in the depth of this silence, the feeble,
cracked voice of the old man was heard trying
to shout ‘Vive le Roi!’
The horrible burst of passion which followed
was not directed against him. The helplessness
of his attitude as he stood supporting himself
with both hands, and the gleam of foolish plea-
sure which came over his countenance, showed
his real state; and even the lowest of the mob
did not yet make war against dotards. It was
because his act was supposed to betoken the
politics of the family that it excited such an out-
cry; and there seemed some reason for Pierre's
fears that the very house would be presently
levelled with the ground. It made his heart
sick within him to see the old man smiling and
bowing, and trying to induce the shrinking chil-
dren to come and stand beside him, and resist-
DEEDS OF THE TIME. 81
ing his wretched daughter's attempts to withdraw
him. Pierre struggled fiercely, but in vain; he
implored, more humbly than he would have
stooped to do for his own life, to be allowed
two minutes' speech to the people. He met
only threats and laughter. The threats mattered
little to a man who expected to be hanged in a
few minutes, but the laughter stung him to the
soul. He cursed himself for the folly of having
appealed to those who could mock the innocence
of dotage and childhood, and disregard the agony
of a woman: and he recalled the words in which
he had at first spoken to them as the French
people.
Pierre was right. These were no sample of
the French people who had begun to cast off
the yoke of tyranny. These were a portion of
the brutalized class who, in using the word ty-
ranny, thought only of the difference between
suffering and inflicting it: who, when they talked
of liberty, asked for license to plunder palaces
and riot in wine-cellars. These were, in short,
the Orleans mob, and not the real authors of the
political changes now taking place. They aided
these changes at the time, indeed, by testifying
to the degree of oppression which the lower or-
82 DEEDS OF THE TIME,
ders had till now suffered; and they furnish, to
this day and forever, an instructive commentary
upon these changes, in as far as they exhibit
the operation of despotism in preparing its
own downfall by at once brutalizing and ex-
asperating its victims. But still these were per-
fectly distinct from the true protectors of liberty,
the wise and steady opponents of despotism.
These last were very differently employed this
morning, and tidings of their doings came justin
time to preserve Charles and his family.
The children had already been sent away by
the roof, in charge of the servants, and Margue-
rite had sat down alone beside the chair of her
father, (whom it was impossible to remove, and
whom she would not leave,) when sounds reach-
ed her which gave her back a little of the hope
she had wholly surrendered. It was not the ap-
proach of soldiers, nor the potential voices of
magistrates, nor any of the welcome intimations
of help at hand which conclude a riot and
disperse a rabble in an orderly country, and
under ordinary circumstances. Neither soldiers
nor magistrates could be depended upon, or had
any power in Paris at this time but that which
the outrageous mob chose to allow them. Mar-
DEEDS OF THE TIME. 83
guerite knew this so well, that, though she took
all precautions in sending for aid, she expected
none but that which might arise from accident.
Such a diversion of the people's rage as actually
happened was beyond her hopes.
While her father was still talking about the
king, and she was holding him down in his chair,
in opposition to his complaints of not being
allowed to go to the window to pay his duty, the
fearful sound of the tocsin was heard above all
the uproar in the court and street. One cry
seemed to come on the four winds,-4 To the
Bastille ! to the Bastille !’ At first confused
and reiterated, the clangor and the shout echoed
noisily from street to street, from steeple to
steeple. Presently the cry became more con-
centrated, as if the city sent up but one mighty
voice. Marguerite sank down on her knees,
overcome with the hope of deliverance for her
husband; but the mob did not yet cease to batter
the door which shielded him, and the fierce
women cried out that they would not be decoy-
ed away by a false alarm. After a few more
moments came the booming of cannon on the
ear, and a pause followed in the court. Again
it came, and again, and the windows rattled, and
84 D.E EDS OF THE TIME.
there was in the intervals quiet enough for the
rushing of a steady stream of people to be heard
from the streets, from whom arose, in alterna-
tion with silence, the deep and steady cry, “To
the Bastille !” The mob in the court mixed with
this stream, eager to learn what new scene was
to be enacted, what better hope of plunder was
presented than that afforded by the stores of an
obstinate and insignificant wine-merchant, who
had already caused them more trouble than he
and his goods were worth. They looked round
for a signal from their leader, but Orleans had
disappeared some time before, not choosing to
be held responsible for the violence to which he
had tempted his followers. They went to look
for him at the Bastille, where he was indeed pre-
sent, to help, as usual, to disgrace a work set
on foot by better men.
As soon as the court was empty, Marguerite
flew to release her husband. Charles was lis-
tening intently to ascertain whether this hush
was a treacherous calm, or whether he was in-
deed safe for the present, when he felt a breath
of fresh air, and saw a glimmer of daylight fall
into the midst of the vault, and heard a faint
voice calling to him,
DE EDS OF THE TIME. 85
‘Come out, love! If you are safe, all is
, safe.”
Not all, Charles remembered, when he had
time to think of any one but his wife. Before
he even went to seek his children, and to recall
the servants, he ascertained that Pierre had dis-
appeared, and hurried out to learn his fate, bend-
ing his steps to the Place de Grève, where he
feared he was most likely to find his faithful ser-
vant, dead or alive. He found two bodies
hanging, and cries of murderous exultation,
which made his blood run cold, still echoing
through the place; but Pierre was nowhere to
be seen, and the bodies were those of soldiers.
He saw more victims brought to the foot of the
lamp-posts; but they came from the direction
of the Bastille, and were evidently members
of the invalid garrison. Through some unseen
influence exerted in the crowd, these men
were spared, which gave Charles the hope that
Pierre, if yet living, would escape. In fact, he
was safe enough, being at this moment employed
in drawing the people to the attack upon that
gloomy fortress, which was regarded with more
detestation by Frenchmen than if it had been a
pest-house. When Pierre had by his energy
86 DEEDS OF THE TIME.
sufficiently attested his good citizenship to be
allowed to depart whither he would, he ran
homewards, met his master in search of him,
embraced the children, kissed Marguerite's
hand, and hastened back again to assist the
siege, as if nothing had happened to himself
that morning. Charles did the same, having
persuaded his wife that he should be safer be-
fore the Bastille than at home, and left her in
the protection of Steele, who had returned from
his fruitless errand to the magistrate; fruitless,
because they could listen to no petitions for pri-
vate succor while the grand work of the demo-
lition of the state-fortress was going on under
their sanction, and the control of their forces.
Steele had no more idea of remaining with
the women and children on such an occasion,
than his friend Charles. As soon as he had
persuaded Marguerite to lie down, and had
seen grandpapa and the children at play together
again, and called in two stout porters of the es-
tablishment to keep watch below, he also dis-
appeared. Often and vehemently did he protest
in after years that he would not for any consid-
eration have been absent from that siege; and
of all his possessions, none were so valued by
DEEDS OF THE TIME. 87
him as a link of the chain from which one of
the captives had been released by Steele's own
hands; which link the Englishman carried about
him to the day of his death.
While Marguerite slept, through pure exhaus-
tion, occasionally starting at the sound of can-
non, or scared with visions of the horrible faces
she had seen in the court so lately, her husband
was actively disproving, to as many as might
observe him, his being a royalist. He lent a
helping hand to one work after another; now
assisting in letting down the drawbridges succes-
sively; now in hauling forward the cannon; now
in demolishing the guard-houses; now in forcing
an entrance into the gloomy place itself; and
finally, shouting for the release of the prisoners.
Eyery thing was forgotten but the work before
his eyes: hours flew like minutes, amidst the
intenseness of the occupation; and yet, if his
thoughts reverted for a moment to the events of
the morning, they seemed of ancient date, as
if he had lived a lifetime in this one day.
The spectacles of a lifetime were indeed to
be beheld within the compass of this one scene.
The most vivid emotions to which all ranks and
all ages are subject were here in full play: all
88 DE EDS OF THE TIME.
the various grouping which life affords was here
presented; the entire elements of the scenery
of human character were here congregated in
infinite and magnificent combinations. The ap-
peals to eye and ear alone were of unprecedent-
ed force; those addressed to the spirit equalled
in stimulus the devotion of Leonidas in his de-
file, and excelled in pathos the meditation of
Marius among more extensive ruins than those
which were now tumbling around. From the
heights of the fortress might be seen a heaving
ocean of upturned faces, when the breeze dis-
persed at intervals the clouds of smoke which
veiled the sun, and gave a dun and murky hue
to whatever lay beneath. If a flood of sunshine
now and then poured in to make a hundred thou-
sand weapons glitter over the heads of the
crowd, the black row of cannon belched forth
their red fires to extinguish the purer light. The
foremost of the people, with glaring eyes, and
blackened and grinning faces, looked scarcely
human, in their excess of eagerness, activity, and
strength. Yet more terrific were the sounds.
the clang of the tocsin at regular intervals, the
shouts of the besiegers, the shrieks of the
wounded, the roar of the fire which was con-
DEEDS OF THE TIME. 89
suming the guard-houses, the crash of the ruins
falling on all sides, a heavy splash in the moat
from time to time, as some one was toppled
from the ramparts to be smothered in its mud,
and above all these, the triumphant cries of vic-
tory and liberty achieved,—these were enough
to dizzy weak brains, and give inspiration to
strong ones. Here were also the terrors which
sooner or later chill the marrow of despotism,
and the stern joy with which its retribution fires
the heart of the patriot. Here were the ser-
vants of tyranny quailing before the glance of
the people; kneeling soldiers craving mercy of
mechanics, of women, of some of every class
whom, in the execution of their fancied duty,
they had outraged. Here were men shrinking
from violence with a craven horror, and women
driven by a sense of wrong to show how dis-
gusting physical courage may be made. Here
were also sons led on to the attack by their
hitherto anxious fathers; husbands thrust for-
ward into danger by their wives; and little child-
ren upreared by their mothers amidst the fire
and smoke, to take one last look of the hated
edifice which was soon to be levelled with the
ground. The towers of palaces might be seen
90 DE EDS OF THE TIME.
afar, where princes were quaking at this final
assurance of the downfall of their despotic sway,
knowing that the assumed sanctity of royalty
was being wafted away with every puff of smoke
which spread itself over the sky, and their irre-
sponsibility melting in fires lighted by the hands
which they had vainly attempted to fetter, and
blown by the breath which they had imagined
they could stifle. They had denied the birth
of that liberty whose baptism in fire and in blood
was now being celebrated in a many-voiced
chaunt with which the earth should ring for cen-
turies. Some from other lands were already
present to hear and join in it; some free Britons
to aid, some wondering slaves of other despots
to slink homewards with whispered tidings of its
import; for from that day to this, the history of
the fall of the Bastille has been told as a secret
in the vineyards of Portugal, and among the
groves of Spain, and in the patriotic conclaves
of the youth of Italy, while it has been loudly
and joyfully proclaimed from one end to the
other of Great Britain, till her, lisping children
are familiar with the tale.
The congregation would not have been com-
plete without the presence of another class of
DEEDS OF THE TIME. 91
witnesses whose very existence will perhaps be
matter of incredulity in some future age of the
world;—that class which man has taken upon
himself to institute, and which will one day rise
up against him in judgment of his abused power.
There were captives present in this scene of
lawless freedom, or rather of freedom above
the law. They were there, first trembling be-
fore the assailants, and then marvelling at the
treatment they received, as the kid would mar-
vel at being dandled by the lion. So it appear-
ed to be with most of them, while one or two
caught the tone of popular triumph before the
doors of their cells were opened, and others
received their deliverance in a manner that rent
the heart of the deliverers.
When the capture of the place was complete,
and its defenders had been carried off, some to
be sacrificed for the sins of the government, and
others to meet with mercy, Charles pressed for-
ward, with a multitude of companions, to release
the captives. It was hard labor to pull the
clenched doors from their staples and hinges ;
and in some cases it was found easier to effect
the work in a yet more irregular manner: as in
one to which Steele called Charles's attention
32 DEEDS OF THE TIME.
when they accidentally met in the centre of the
fortress, where the light of day, however, stream-
ed upon them through the demolished roof.
Steele's face was working in strong emotion, and
he appeared speechless while he seized his friend
by the arm, and drew him to gaze on what
made his heart's blood boil. Steele pointed
through a breach in the enormous wall, whose
thickness shut out all sound from the inmate of
the dungeon it inclosed; and there, with eyes
drooped before the unwonted light, a light
which, however, only half displayed the squalid
sickliness of his countenance, sat one who seem-
ed to take no heed of any human presence.
His expanded nostrils and half-open mouth
seemed to betoken that there had been passion
and expectation within him; but the apathy and
despondency of his attitude exhibited a strange
contradiction to these evidences. When the
first face appeared through the opening, he ſum-
bled uneasily with his hands in his coarse dun-
geon dress; and when he was hailed, more and
more loudly, under the idea that he was deaf,
his beard was seen to stir upon his breast, and
his lips to move, as if he was attempting in vain
to articulate a sound. The endeavor presently
DE EDS OF THE TIME. 93
ceased, though voice after voice was heard in
importunity,+sometimes endearing, sometimes
rallying-that he would rise and help to free
himself. It was a work of time to make a
breach large enough to admit his deliverers;
and at last, just before the first of them clam-
bered in, the captive uplifted his broken and
unmodulated voice in a few words, one or two
of which Steele recognised to be English.
‘01 he is a Briton!' cried he, clenching his
hands above his head in the extremity of pas-
sion; and, staggering against the wall, he utter-
ed a deep curse on the tyranny by which a
countryman had been goaded into madness far
from his own land, and from all who could
know or avenge his state. Again and again he
looked; again and again he withdrew, unable
to bear the alternating aspects of idiotcy and
gibbering madness. At last, he made trial of a
new kind of stimulus; leaning through the
breach, and calling to the captive,
“O come, and take the hand of a brother
once more | Look up, and tell us that your de-
liverers are welcome! Let it be crime, or let
it be misery that has stricken you so deeply, the
last day of your dungeon life is over. Come,
$4 DEED's OF THE TIME.
and hear about England 1 Come and feel the
fresh air 2
The prisoner here shivered, as if already
chilled by the air of a warm July day. Encour-
aged by this sign of attention, Steele went on.
‘Only tell us whom you fear, and we will
carry you far from them. Only name those you
love, and I will get you tidings of them. Come
and help us to free yourself and others; for you
know more of the secrets of this horrible place
than we.’
He would not move, however; and when they
got to him, they found that he was chained by
the middle to the wall behind him. It was im-
possible to learn from him his name, alleged
offence, or period of imprisonment.
It was not till the Count de Solages was also
liberated that it was ascertained that his name
was White; that he had been confined for some
unknown offence for many years in the castle of
Vincennes, whence he was removed, in compa-
ny with the count, to the Bastille, seven years
before.
The Philosophy of BARGAINING. 95
*g.
CHAPTER W.
T H E PHILOSOPHY OF BAR G A IN IN G.
The people carried away all the prisoners on
their shoulders, intending to make them tell their
stories in the coffee-houses of Paris; but Steele
could not bear to see his countryman,—such
a mere wreck of humanity as he was, thus
exhibited. He thankfully accepted his friend
Charles's invitation to bring him first to his
house, and try whether the intellects of the
sufferer could be restored by any method of
treatment—treatment which was more likely to
be efficacious if administered by one who could
speak his own language than by strangers. Fired
as Steele had been in the achievement of the
great work of the day, he now left the comple-
tion of it to others. While the mayor and
executive were sending forth their popular de-
crees, while the king was informed for the first
time that his realm was in a state of revolution,
—while the helpless ministry looked in one
another's dismayed faces, while the city archi-
tects were employed under a regular commission
&
96 THE PHILosophy of BARGAINING.
to make a perfect blank where the Bastille had
stood, Steele was watching over his released
countryman, fondly hoping that he traced an
hourly growing resemblance to manhood, not
only in external appearance, but in thought and
action. He tried to make him vary his posture,
and to walk;-an exercise to which he was as
much averse as one who has taken laudanum.
The next thing was to induce him to speak,
which proved less difficult, provided he was
permitted to mix up French and English after
his own fashion. There was sometimes more
and sometimes less sense in what he said, and
it was occasionally interrupted by fits of impo-
...tent passion, for which no immediate cause could
be assigned. These, however, came on only
after his new way of life had continued for some
time, and were indeed stages in the growth
of the unmanageable madness which sent him,
after all remedial means had been tried, to end
his days in the lunatic asylum at Charenton.
Before these had become terrifying to
Charles's children, they did not shrink from
talking to him, and were encouraged to do so,
as he spoke more, and more sensibly to them
than to any one else.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF BARGAIN IN G. 07
‘Why are you so very fond of water, I
wonder P’ exclaimed Julien, one day, laughing,
when White held out his hand to snatch some
which looked cool and clear in the boy's hand.
“O yes, you may have it. I can get plenty more.
Why do you want so much water?”
‘I drink water. And my rat—Where is my
rat 2 °
None of the family could make out why he
looked about him for a rat: but Steele's conjec-
ture was that such an animal might have found
its way out of the moat of the prison into the cell
where no other living thing could enter but the
silent turnkey. On inquiry, this was found to
be the case; and the circumstances were touch-
ing in the extreme to those who had never
known what it was to want such a resource. It
was observed that White was as greedy of bread
as of water, though not always for the purpose
of eating it. Nothing could tempt him from it
when there was any in the room; and whatever
was offered in exchange for a crust, however
delicate to the taste, or glittering to the eye, was
rejected. ‘Bread, bread. Water, water, was
forever his cry.
‘He likes to play on my bird-organ,’ observ-
G
&
98 THE PHILosophy of BARGAINING.
ed Julien, “and I told him he might keep it:
but he thrust it back upon me for a piece of
bread. He sold it much cheaper, papa, for
far less bread, than the people that made it.
I think that is very silly.”
‘It depends upon the value he puts upon
what he has in exchange,” answered papa.
‘Well, you told me how much bread was
worth this organ; and it was much more than I
gave him.”
*Yes; but you might happen to be shut up,
as he has been, where one loaf of bread would
be more useful to you than ten such at home.’
‘Why more useful? I can but eat bread any
where.”
‘Yes; you can give it away,’ interposed
mamma. “If you were shut up for several
years in a silent and nearly dark place, where
nobody ever came to you, and were to hear a
noise one day, and to see something moving,
and to find out that it was a rat which had made
its way to your cell; and if you wished that the
rat should come again, and learn to know you,
and feed tamely out of your hand, would you
not desire to have some food to give it?”
“O yes: I would give it part of my dinner.”
THE PHILosophy of BARGAINING. 99
it seemed f you had very little dinner, scarcely
enough to satisfy your own hunger, you would
buy more bread for your rat if you could. If
your jailer asked you much more than the bread
would be worth out of prison, you would give it
him rather than your rat should not come and
play with you. You would pay him first all
your copper, and then all your silver, and then
all your gold.”
‘Yes, because I could not play with money
so pleasantly as with a live animal, and there
would be nothing else that I could buy in such
a place. I had rather have the company of my
rat than a pocket full of gold.”
“So White thought,” observed Marguerite,
‘and he gave the turnkey every thing he had
left for-bread, till his buttons, and his pencil
case, and even his watch were all gone. It was
a long time before he could bring himself to
part with his watch; for the moving of the
wheels was something to look at, and the ticking
kept his ears awake, and made him feel less
desolate: but when it came to giving up his
watch or his rat, he thought he could least spare
his live companion: so he carefully observed
for some time the shifting of the glimmering
100 THE PHILosophy of BARGAINING.
light upon the wall, as the morning pas
noon, and noon into afternoon and evening, and
then he thought this sort of dial might serve
him instead of a watch, and he gave it to the
turnkey on condition of having an ounce more
bread every day for a year.”
“He must have been pleased to have made
his bargain for a whole year.”
“His pleasure lasted a very short while. The
turnkey came earlier than usual one day when
the rat was there, and twisted its neck before
White could stop him.”
Julien stamped with grief and anger when he
heard this; but presently supposed the turn-
key was honest enough to restore the watch.
Charles shook his head in answer, and told his
little son that poor White had been quite crazy
since that day, and had talked about nothing but
a rat, and shown no desire for any thing but
bread and water since, though it was six years
ago that his misfortune had happened.
‘Did you ever hear of paying for water,
Julien ; or for air 2 °
No: Julien thought that God had given both
so freely that it would be a sin to sell them.
His father thought this not a good reason; for
THE PHILosophy of BARGAINING.. 101
it seemèd to him fair that men should buy and
sell whenever one wanted something that an-
other person had too much of; as much air and
water as corn and flax, which were also given
by God.
“Ah, but, papa, it costs men a great deal of
trouble to prepare corn and flax.’
“True ; and now you have hit upon the right
reason. If corn and flax grew of themselves
on land which belonged to nobody, would you
pay for them, or just gather them without pay-
ing P’
“I should be very silly to pay when I might
have them without.”
“So I think: but would corn and flax be less
valuable then than now, when we have to pay
very dear for them?”
“The corn would be just as good to eat, and
the flax to make linen of: but they would not
to change away.”
“No more than the air, which is very useful
in breathing, or water which we could not do
without, and which yet would be a very poor
thing to carry to market. Now, would you call
water a valuable thing or not, Julien 2°
‘No, not at all, because it will buy nothing
102 the PHILosophy of BARGAINING.
O yes, but it is though ; because we could
not do without it—Mamma, is water valuable
or not ?”
“Very valuable in use, but not usually in
exchange. When things are valuable in ex-
change, it is either because they cost labor be-
fore they could be used, or because they are
very scarce.”
“So,” observed Charles, * if a mine should
ever be dug so deep that the air is not fresh at
the bottom where the miners work, the owner
of the mine would be very glad to buy air of
any one who could convey it down by a ma-
chine. Such an one would be wise to charge
so much a gallon for the fresh air he supplied,
to pay for the labor and expense of his machine,
and for the trouble of working it.”
Marguerite then mentioned that she once
staid in a small country town during a drought.
There was no reservoir of water, and all the
pumps and cisterns were dry. The poor peo-
ple went out by night into the neighboring coun-
try, and watched the springs; and any one who
was fortunate enough to obtain a gallon of fresh
water was well paid for it. The price rose
every day, till at last one woman gave a calf
THE PHILos OPHY OF BARGAINING.. 103
for a pailful of water, hoping to save her cow,
it being certain that both must die without this
supply.
“And did she save her cow 2°
*Yes. While the woman was anxiously
sitting up in bed, planning what she should
change away next, she fancied there was a dif-
ſerent feel in the air; and on looking out of the
window, she found the sky covered with black
clouds; and before morning, the trade in water
was over. There was nobody to give a doit
for a cistern-full.”
* It was just so with me,’ observed Charles,
‘when I was besieged in the cellar. I was
parched with thirst, and would have given a
pipe of my best wine to any one who would
have let me down a quart of water through the
trap-door. Three hours after, I myself threw
hundreds of gallons on the fire at the guard-
houses, when the order was given to take them
down in an orderly way ; and I did not con-
sider such use of the water any waste. So
much for the value which is given by scarcity.’
“But, papa, though things are more valuable
to people when there is a scarcity of them, the
104 THE PHILosophy of BARGAINING.
people are less rich than they were before
That seems to me very odd.’
“Because you have been accustomed to con
sider value and wealth as the same things, which
they are not. Our wealth consists in whatevel
is valuable in use as well as in exchange. Ow-
ing to the storm of last year, I have less wealth
in my possession now than I had then, though
what I have may, perhaps, exchange for more
wealth still. I have as much furniture, and as
many clothes and luxuries, and as much money;
but I have fewer growing vines, and much less
wine. If I were to use up my own grapes and
wine instead of selling them, they would last a
much shorter time than my stock of the former
year would have lasted. So I have less wealth
in possession. But the value of wine has risen
so high, in consequence of scarcity, that I can
get as much now of other things in exchange
for a pint, as I could, fourteen months ago, in
exchange for a gallon.” 4.
“But that is partly because the wine is older.
Mr. Steele is very particular about the wine
being old, and he pays you much more, he told
me, the longer it has been kept.’
THE PHILosophy of BARGAINING.. 105
“And it is very fair he should, for reasons
which you can hardly understand yet.”
‘Tly him,” said Marguerite.
‘It is impossible, my dear. I refer to the
charges I am at for the rent of my cellar, the
wear of my casks, and the loss of interest upon
the capital locked up in the wine. All this must
be paid out of the improvement in the quality
of the article; and all this, Julien must wait a
few years to understand.
‘Now tell me, my boy, whether you think it a
good thing or not that there should be a scarcity
of wine * *
“Why, papa, as we do not want to drink all
you have ourselves, and as people will give you
as much for it as they would for twice as much,
I do not think it signifies to you; but it must be
a bad thing for the people of Paris that there is
so little wine to be had. At least you said so
about the bread.”
“But if my wine should be as dear next year,
and I should have no more losses from storms,
and no more expense than in common years, in
growing my wine, would the high price be a
good thing for me or not ?’
“It would be good for you, and bad for your
106 THE PHILosophy or BARGAINING.
customers; only I think they would not give
you so much for your wine. They would re-
member that there had been no more storms,
and they would find people that had cheaper
wine to sell, and then they would leave off buy-
ing of you.’
‘And they would be very right, if there was
any body to sell cheaper; as there would be, if
laborers had less wages, and so made it less
expensive to grow and prepare wine. But if
some way was ſound of making more wine than
ever, in a cheaper way than ever, who would be
the better for that?”
‘The people that buy of you, because I sup-
pose you would let them have it cheaper.”
“And papa too,” said Marguerite, “for many
people would buy wine who cannot afford it
now.”
“Therefore,” concluded Charles, ‘a high ex-
changeable value is not at all a good thing for "
every body, though it may be for a time to some
few. And a low exchangeable value is a very
good thing to every body, if it arises from the
only cause which can render it permanent, a
diminution of the cost of production.’
“But if this happened with every article,'
. The Philosophy of BARGAINING.. 107
pursued Marguerite, “there would be an end of
the cheapness, though not of the plenty. As
many of one thing would exchange for a certain
number of other things as before.”
“True; but less labor would purchase them
all; and this is the grand consideration. As less
labor will now purchase a deal table than was
once necessary to procure a rough hewn log in
its place, less labor still may hereafter buy a
mahogany one; and this is a desirable thing for
the purchasers of tables, and no less for the
makers, who will then sell a hundred times the
number they can dispose of now.”
108 NEW DEVICES
CHAPTER WI.
NEW DE VI C E S.
THE Parisians soon after showed that they
knew little of the resources on which the supply
of the wants of the state should depend, by
having recourse to a measure which, however
popular, was one of great folly;-ſolly to be
exceeded only by an act of the populace which
took place nearly at the same time.
The coffers of the government had long been
empty. Loans of almost every kind, and under
every species of pretence, had been raised upon
the suffering nation, some of which proved fail-
ures in their primary object, while others, how-
ever great the proceeds in amount, seemed to be
exhausted with somewhat the same speed as
water that is poured into a sieve. Never mon-
ey went away so fast before; and whilst the
government was dismayed at its magic property
of disappearance, the people grew more and
more angry at what they thought the extrav-
agance of their rulers. Neither of them took
into the account the scarcity of most of the
NEW DEVICES. 109
necessaries of life, and both regarded money as
having the same value as ever, as being, in it-
self, the thing required to supply the necessities
of the state. To both it was equally inconceiv-
able why, if so much had defrayed such and
such expenses in former years, double the sum
would go no way at all at present. The min-
isters and the court could only tremble at the
necessity of owning the truth, while the people
raged, and could be appeased only by court lar-
gesses for the relief of the starving: which lar-
gesses went as little way when they had changed
hands as before. Neither party suspected that
money, although scarce, had become very cheap
through the still greater scarcity of other things;
and in the absence of this necessary knowledge,
every body was eager about gold and silver.
The National Assembly had tried all means,
first by themselves, and then with the assistance
of Necker, to raise a supply, without which the
affairs of the state could not, they believed, pro-
ceed; and all in vain. Then Necker had leave
given him to pursue his own methods; and, pop-
ular as he was, no one had a doubt that he would
succeed. But he failed, though he issued the
most tempting proposals; offered the highest
110 NEW DEVICE 8.
interest that ever was heard of, even in such an
emergency; and exerted his utmost personal
influence in favor of the loan. The subscrip-
tion was not half filled: the reason of which was
that many had no money, having spent it all in
buying necessaries; and as many in France as
had taken their money, (much of it had gone
into other countries,) expected to want it them-
selves for the same purposes, or had not confi-
dence enough in the stability of the government
to take it for a creditor. So the king's horses
went on to eat borrowed hay or to want it; and
the king's servants to clamor for their wages;
and the king's tradesmen to decline orders on
cne pretence or another; and the police threat-
ened to leave the home minister to keep order
by himself; and state couriers went unwillingly
forth on their journies; and business lagged in
every department of the administration.
At this moment, it entered some wise head
that, if people would not lend money, they might
lend or give something else; not corn or hay,
or any of the necessaries of life; for every one
knew there was still less of these things than of
money; but gold and silver in any form. It
would have been hard to say what lasting good
NEW DEVICES. & 111
this could do amidst the impossibility of procur-
ing the necessaries of which gold and silver are
only the representatives: but no matter for that.
Nobody was asked to explain the affair, and ap-
parently none troubled themselves to think about
it; so delighted were all with the new notion of
giving away trinkets to save the state. The
idea of a patriotic contribution was charming,
a contribution in which almost every body could
join; women and children, and persons of many
degrees below the class of capitalists. The
court joined: the gentlemen sacrificing nearly
half their watches and seals, and the ladies
adopting simplicity as a fashion, and sending
away the jewellery they could not wear as
Arcadian shepherdesses and Sicilian nymphs.
The Assembly followed, every member thereof
stooping down at the same moment to strip his
shoes of their buckles, so that their act of pa-
triotic devotion made really a very fine show.
This gave the signal to the whole country, and
all France was forthwith unbuckled in respect
of the feet. She became also quakerlike as to
the hands, for not a maiden but took out her
lover's hair from his parting gift, and flung the
ring into the lap of the nation; not a wife that
112 NEW DEVICES.
did not part with the token of her wifehood in
the cause. Pecks of gold rings, bushels of sil-
ver buckles, with huge store of other baubles,
were at once in the possession of the state; and
the people no longer doubted that all would
henceforth be well.
And what was really the event?—The gold
answered the same purpose as it does when a
basin full of it coinet stands on the banker’s
counter during a run. It satisfied the ignorant
that all must be safe where there is so much
wealth actually before one's eyes. It hushed
the clamors of the people for a little while; and
made the servants of the government willing to
go on somewhat longer upon credit; so that
more industry and briskness prevailed for a time,
at the risk of ultimate disappointment, and an
aggravation of popular fury, now diverted but
not dispersed. A mob went about to levy these
voluntary offerings, an act ludicrously inconsist-
ent with their next proceeding; if, indeed, any
of the events of this extraordinary time could be
regarded as ludicrous.
They called at Charles's house among others,
whence, as it happened, no such offerings had
yet gone forth. Charles had resisted Pauline's
NEW DEVICES. 113
wish to lend the queen her thimble, and Julien's
offer to pay his first tax with the silver-tipped
riding-whip grandpapa had given him. Neither
would he allow Marguerite's few ornaments, all
keepsakes, to be thrown away in any such man-
ner. He would give the coat off his back to
the state, he said, when it could do any service;
but the proposed gifts could only help to make
jewellery a drug, without supplying one more
person with bread, or lessening by so much as
one scruple the burdens of the state. He was
disposed to be vexed when he came home one
day, and found a short allowance of spoons at the
dinner-table, the clock on the mantel-piece gone,
and his wife as destitute of external ornament
as any Arcadian shepherdess at Versailles. He
iaughed, however, at his wife's apologies for hav-
ing made a voluntary offering against her own will
as well as his, and hoped that she would be as
little the worse as the state would be the better
for the sacrifice. Goldsmiths and jewellers of
enterprise and capital would profit by the fancy,
he observed, if nobody else did; and the many
losers might find some comfort in sympathy with
tne very few winners.
The people, meanwhile, were bitterly com-
H
*~
114 NEW DEVICES.
plaining of famine, and the more gold was carried
to the treasury, the more bread was bought up
before the eyes of those who were deprived of
it from its increased price. It mattered not that
some was given away in charity by the king, and
more, to suit his own purposes, by the duke of
Orleans; the people were rendered unable to
purchase it, and furnished with the plea of want,
wherewith to make the streets of Paris echo. It
would have been better to have let the exchange
of wedding rings for bread be made without the
interposition of the king or his ministers, even
without taking into consideration the events which
followed. A report was soon industriously
spread that the bread furnished by court charity
was of a bad quality. It was believed, like
every thing that was then said against the court;
and the consequence was that an anomalous and
melancholy sight was seen by as many as walk-
ed in the city. Clamorous, starving crowds be--
sieged the bakers’ shops, and carried off all the
bread from their ovens, all the flour from their
bins; while the discontented among the mob po-
liticians of the Orleans faction were on the way
to snatch the food from the mouths of the hun-
gry and throw it into the river, and to cut the
NEW DEVICES. flä
sacks, and mix the flour with the puddles of the .
streets. Want and waste, faction and delusion
were here seen in their direct extremes.
At this time, Charles and Marguerite did not
allow their children to go out under any guar-
dianship but that of their father, as it was impos-
sible to foresee what might happen in the streets
before they could get home again. They were
as safe as any could be at such a time;—safer
than the few who ventured abroad in carriages
at the risk of insult wherever they turned; safer
than the sordidly fed and clad, who were seized
upon by the agents of faction to augment their
mobs, and be made the instruments of violence
under the penalty of suffering it themselves.
The parents and children were also safer togeth-
er than separate; as a domestic party, abroad
to take the air, presented as unsuspicious a
group, and one as likely to pass unnoticed, as
could well be imagined. Yet they had their
occasional alarms; and when there was no cause
to fear for themselves, were too often grieved
and shocked at what they beheld inflicted on
others.
“O papa!' cried Julien, one day, as they
were walking; ‘what are they doing at Mai-
116 NEW DEVICES
grot's shop I do believe the crowd is coming
there next.”
Maigrot was a baker, well known to Charles's
family, and much beloved by the children, on
account of the little hot cakes which seemed to
be always ready to pop out of the oven and into
their mouths, when they went with the servant
to deliver orders or pay bills.
Instead of his usual smiling face, Maigrot was
now seen in a state of desperate anxiety, as well
as could be judged from the glimpse of him at
his door, trying first to slip out, and then to
force his way between the two men who were
evidently placed at the entrance as guards till
the mob should come up. Foiled in his attempt,
Maigrot disappeared, and Charles thought that
it might depend on whether there was a way of
exit at the back of the house, whether his head
would presently be carried on a pike, between
two loaves of his own bread, or whether he would.
b. Kneading and baking in peace ten years hence.
There seemed to be just time to run and give a
word of advice to whomsoever might be waiting
in the shop, and Charles ran forward to do so.
He was prevented entering; but seeing Mai-
grot's wife sinking and trembling behind the
NEW DEVICES. 117
counter, and looking absolutely incapable of any
resolution whatever, he called out to her to as-
sist in emptying the flour bins and distributing
the bread, and to fear nothing, and all would be
well. The woman tossed off a glass of water
which stood beside her, and rallied for the ef-
fort. In such effort lay the only resource of
sufferers under violence in those days; for the
magistracy were unable to afford assistance ; or,
if able, were not to be depended on. The shop
was presently emptied and gutted, and its stock
carried away, without, however, being in this
instance preceded by the horrible display of a
human head. Maigrot had escaped and actually
joined in with the mob in time to see his own
flour cast into the Seine. Nobody thought more
of the baker, and he took advantage of this dis-
regard to learn a great deal of his own doings
which he did not know before. He now over-
heard that his flour was mixed with hurtful
ingredients by order of his customer, the king;
that an inferior kind was sold at high prices as
the best; and that there were stores of meal
concealed somewhere about his premises, to
victual the soldiers who were to be brought to
rule the city, and give the king his own way.
118 NEW DEVICE 3.
All this was news to Maigrot, who was compel-
led to listen to these falsehoods in silence: more
fortunate than many who had lost their lives as
well as their good name under similar charges.
A defender sprang up, however, when he least
expected it.
Charles and his little son could not help ſol-
lowing to look on, when the mob proceeded
with the flour down to the river. They stood
on the outskirts of the crowd, watching sack
after sack as, with hoarse shouts, it was heaved
into the water so as to make the heaviest splash
possible. A new amusement presently occurred
to some of the leaders; that of testing the po-
litical opinions of the passers by by the judgment
they should pronounce on the quality of the flour.
Those who declared it good must, of course, be
parasites of the court; those who made mouths
at it were the friends of the people; and the
moment this point was settled, every gazer from
a distance was hauled to the water's edge to
undergo the test; every approaching carriage was
waylaid and stopped, and its inmates brought
on the shoulders of the mob. Of course, all
gave judgment on the same side;—a thing likely
to happen without much dishonesty, when the
NEW DEVICE 8. 119
raw flour was crammed into the mouth by foul
and sometimes bloody hands. It would have
been difficult to pronounce it very good under
such circumstances of administration.
Among the most piteous looking of those
under test was the marquis de Thou, who was
taken from a non-descript sort of carriage, on
his way, as he vowed, to the duke of Orleans,
but certainly attended by more than one servant
of the royal household. While prosecuting his
explanations with gesture and grimace, uplifted
as he was above the crowd, he looked so like a
monkey riding a bear that a universal shout of
mockery arose. He was lowered for a moment,
out of sight; and the laugh rose louder than
ever when he reappeared, held at arms’ length
by a hundred hands, powdered all over like a
miller. His position made the judgment he had
to give all the more difficult, for it enabled him
to perceive the royal servants watching him on
one side, the duke of Orleans and some of his
fiercest followers on another, and the pitiless mob
around.
“Ah! it is very, very good food for the poor,
without doubt,’ he declared, while -in full view
of the court party, and with his mouth stuffed
120 NEW DEVICES.
with a compound which had just been taken
from a puddle underfoot. “Wery fine nourish-
ment for a good king to buy dear, and give
away to a hungry people.—Ah! no more, no
more, I pray you ! I shall presently dine, and it
is enough. I cannot praise it more than I have
done.—Ah! but,” (seeing the duke frowning,)
‘I do not say but it may be a little sour, and
somewhat bitter, yes, O yes, and gritty,
and, O do not murder me, and I will also say
hurtful.—And poisonous ! Yes, no doubt it
is poisonous, -clearly poisonous.-But, how
bountiful of the king to think of how the poor
should be fed l’
The marquis might think himself fortunate
in getting off with a ducking in the yeasty
flood, into which he was let down astride on a
flour sack. While sneaking away through the
crowd, after shaking his dripping queue, and
drawing along breath, he encountered Charles,
whom he immediately recognised, and with
inconsiderate selfishness, exposed to the no-
tice of the crowd by his appeal.
“Ah, my friend, here is a condition I am in
For our old friendship's sake, for the sake
of our vicinity in Guienne, aid me!’
NEW DEVICES. 121
* Do not answer him. Take no notice,” whis-
pered Maigrot from behind; ‘t’is as much as
your life is worth.”
But Charles could not be inhuman. He gave
the old man his arm to conduct him to the car-
riage which he intended to order to his own
house. Before he had well turned his back,
however, a piercing \hriek from Julien made
him look round. The mob were about to car-
ry the boy towards the sacks.
“Do not be alarmed, my dear,” said he.
‘Taste the flour, and say whether you think it
good; and I will come to you in a moment to
do the same.’
Julien shrieked no more, but he looked rue-
fully in his father's face, when Charles returned.
As soon as he had gulped down his share and
could speak, he said he had never tasted raw
flour before, but it was not so good as the hot
cakes that were made of it sometimes.—The
boy escaped with being only laughed at.—His
father's turn came next.
Charles stipulated, when laid hold of, to be
allowed to feed himself, and refused laughingly
to taste what came out of the puddle till his
neighbors should have separated the mud from
122 NEW DEVICES.
the flour. With a very oracular look, he then
proceeded from sack to sack, tasting and pro-y
nouncing, apparently unmoved by the specula-
tions he heard going on all round him as to
whether he was a royalist from about the court,
or a spy from Versailles, or only an ignorant
stranger from the provinces. When he had ap-
parently made up his mind, he began a sort of
conversation with those nearest to him, which
he exalted by degrees into a speech.
“When I,’ he observed, ‘I, the very first,
opened a prisoner’s cell in the Bastille y
He was interrupted by loud cheers from all
who heard; and this drew the attention of more.
& I found,’ continued Charles, ‘a mess
of wholesome food in that horrible place. Eve-
ry other kind of poison was there, the poi-
son of damps and a close atmosphere; the
poison of inactivity which brings on disease and
death; the poison of cruelty by which all the
kindly feelings are turned into bitterness in the
soul of the oppressed; and the poison of hope-
lessness, by which the currents of life are chill-
ed, and the heart of the captive is sunk within
him till he dies. All these poisons we found in
every cell; but to all their inmates was denied
NEW DEVICE 8. 123
that quicker poison which would have been
welcome to end their woes. Some, we know,
have lived thirty-five years under this slow death,
while a very small mixture of drugs with their
bread would have released them in fewer hours
That this quicker method was ever used, we
have no proof; that it was not used in the case
of those whom we released, we know, not by
their state of health alone; for that, alas! was
not to be boasted of;-but by the experience of
some of us. When we were heated with toil
and choked with dust, we drank the draughts
which the prisoners left untasted in their cells.
When a way was made among the ruins, wo-
men came to see what a work their husbands
had achieved; and when their children craved
food, rather than return home before all was fin-
ished, they gave their little ones the bread which
the captives had loathed. Many thus ate and
drank; and I appeal to you whether any evil
came of that day; whether the sleep of the next
night was not sound as became the rest which
succeeds to an heroic effort. No one was poi-
soned with the food then provided by the govern-
ment; and yet that horrible dungeon was the
place, if there be any, for poison to do its work.
124 NEW DEVICES.
And if not attempted there, will it be here?
Here, where there are a million of eyes on the
watch to detect treasons against the people?
Here, where there are hundreds of thousands
of defenders of the public safety 2 No, fellow
citizens: this is not the kind of treason which is
meditated against us. There are none that dare
practise so directly on your lives. But there
is a treason no less fatal, though more disguised,
which is even at this moment in operation
against you. You ask me two questions;–
whether this food is of a bad quality; and
whether you are not half starved; and both these
evils you ascribe to your rulers.--To the first I
answer, that this food is, to the best of my
judgment, good; and, whether good or bad,
that the government has nothing to do with it,
since it forms no part of the stores that the king
has bought up for distribution. It is flour of
the same harvest, the same field, the same mill,
the same bin, that I and mine have been sup-
plied from ; and it has nourished me well for
the work I have had to do; for letting in the
light of day upon the foulest dungeon that ever
deformed the earth, for watching over those
who have been released from it, for attending
NEW DEVICES. 125
to the proceedings of the Assembly,–for medi-
tating by night and consulting by day how the
rights of the people may best be attained and
secured, Keep the same food to strengthen you
for the same purposes. Do not forget your
other complaint;—that you are starving: and
remember that however much this may be
owing to the misrule and courtly extravagance
you denounce, the grievance will not be remov-
ed by your feeding the fishes with that which
your children are craving. I spoke of another
kind of treason than that which you suspect, and
I see about me too many tokens of its exist-
ence;—the treason which would not poison but
starve you.
“Of the motives of this treason I have nothing
to say, for I am wholly ignorant of them. I
only insist that there can be no truly patriotic
aim under the project of depriving you of the
food which is at best but scantly supplied. Do
you find in the most plentiful seasons that we
have corn enough to make sport with in the riv-
er? Are your houses even then so filled with
grain that, after feeding your children and do-
mestic animals, you have enough left for the
eels of the Seine? Is it to give you this over-
126 NEW DEVICES.
supply that the peasantry of the provinces live
under roofs of rushes, and couch upon beds of
straw? Tell me, is there in the happiest of
times such a superfluity that no Frenchman has
a want or wish for more?’
Furious cries of denial rose from all sides,
joined with curses upon the government which
year by year, by its extravagance, snatched the
hard-earned bread from the laborer’s hands.
‘This is all true,' replied Charles, ‘and is in
course of being reformed: but when did even
a tyrannical government inflict upon you such
evils as you are this day inflicting upon your-
selves * When has it robbed the shops of one of
the most useful class of men among you, and
carried away boat-loads of the food for which
thousands are pining, and destroyed your means
of life before your eyes A worse enemy than
even a weak king and a licentious court is mak-
ing sport of your miseries, and overwhelming
you with such as cannot be repaired. Yes! le.
it not hurt your pride to hear of woes that can-
not be repaired; for even the power of the sove-
reign people is not unlimited, great as you have
proved it to be. You have abolished servile
parliaments, and obtained a virtuous assembly
NEW DEVICES. 127
of representatives. You have swept away the
stronghold of oppression, and can tread with
free steps the turf from which its very founda-
tions have been extracted. You have rejected
a constitution which was an insufficient warrant
for your liberties, and are in the way to obtain
universal assent to that noble Declaration of
Rights which shall become the social contract
of every civilized nation.--All these things, and
others which would have been called impossi-
bilities ten years ago, you have achieved. But
there are impossibilities remaining which more
truly deserve the name. You cannot prevent
multitudes dying when famine is in the land;
you cannot call up a new harvest before the
seed has sprouted; you cannot insist upon sup-
plies from other lands which are already drain-
ed. You can waste your resources, but you
cannot recall them. With however much pride
or levity you may at this hour fling away the
staff of your life, you cannot retard the day
when you will sink for want of it, when you
will kneel in the mud by the brink of this very
current, and Serave the waters to give up what
you have buried in them, or to drown your mis-
eries with your life.—Will you suffer yourselves
123 NEW DEVICES,
thus to be made sport of 2 Will you permit
yourselves to be goaded into madness, in order
that you may be ready for madmen's deeds
Will you throw away what is in your own hands,
that others may reduce you to crave the small
pittance which will remain in theirs? Those
who have incited you to the deeds of this day
take very good care that all our granaries shall
not be emptied. They reserve a few, that you
may at length, when all their schemes are ripe,
—be their tools through your literal depend-
ance on them for bread.—Disappoint this plot
as far as you can. It is now too late to keep
plenty in your own hands; but baffle the ap-
proaches of famine to the last moment; for with
hunger comes slavery; or, if you will not have
slavery, death; and in either case, your country
must surrender your services at the very mo-
ment when she wants them most.—Where is
the patriotism of bringing things to this pass?—
Where also is the justice of condemning unheard
so useful a class of men as those from whom
you have taken their property without accusa-
tion, and, in many cases, their lives, on nothing
better than suspicion of their having communi.
cated with the court?—We must respect rights,
NEW DEVICES. 129
as well as frame a Declaration of them. We
must cherish the innocent and useful of society,
if we wish to restrain those who are neither the
one nor the other. Let there be a contrast
between the oppressors and the friends of the
people. Let tyrants tremble, while industrious
citizens dwell in peace.”
It was now easy to wind up the discourse to
the point contemplated. Charles proposed that
Maigrot should be permitted, under proper
guardianship, to bake a provision of loaves out
of this very flour; and if they proved good, that
all that remained of his property should be re-
stored to him. The crowd rather relished the
idea of waiting the operation, in full prospect
of a batch of hot rolls gratis as the result, and
the proposal was received with acclamations.—
Charles immediately singled out Maigrot, as he
stood on the outskirts of the mob, requested
him to lead the way hogtewards, put a loaf into
each arm of his little son, swung a sack of flour
on his own shoulders, and headed the most sin-
gular of all the extraordinary processions which
attracted the gaze of Paris in those times.
The duke of Orleans made no opposition.
He saw that the game was up for this day, and
I
130 MOB SOWEREIGNTY.
departed in an opposite direction, having no
particular wish to hear the verdict which he
knew would be passed upon the bread, or to
witness the exultation of the baker.—Before
night, Maigrot not only felt his head safe upon
his shoulders, but was the most eminent baker
in Paris; and, if he had but had any flour re-
maining, might have boasted such a business as
he had till now never thought of aspiring to.
CHAPTER VII.
MO B S OVE REIGNT Y.
The endeavors of individuals like Charles to
make the people wise were of little avail, how-
ever successful at the moment, in opposition to
influences of a different character which were
perpetually at work upon the mob of Paris.
The obstinacy of the king in refusing to sign the
declaration of rights, the imbecility of the min-
istry, the arts and clamors of the leaders of
different parties, and, above all, the destitution
of which they took advantage, overcame all
principles of subordination, all sentiments of
MOB SOVE REIGNTY. 131
loyalty, and filled the people with a rage which
rendered them as blind to their own interests as
unjust towards those of the ranks above them.
Riot and waste spread and grew from day to
day, and the wise saw no more prospect of
relief than the foolish of danger.
The king had been told, on the day the Bas-
tille was taken, that his capital was in a state of
revolution; but, nearly three months afterwards,
he was still wondering what the event might
mean ; talking over with the queen the kind-
nesses he had always intended showing to his
people, and assuring the people’s parliament
that the best thing he could do for them was
to preserve his dignity and prerogative. He
could still at Versailles ride abroad unmolested
in the mornings, feast his body-guard in the
middle of the day, and look on while the ladies
of the court were dancing in the evening, and
sleep the whole night without hearing the drums
and larums which kept all Paris awake; and
could not therefore believe that all would not
come right, when the people should have been
persuaded of the atrocious unreasonableness of
the Declaration they wanted him to sign. When
he heard that they drowned their flour in hatred
132 M OF SOVEREIGNTY.
of him, he did all he could think of in ordering
that more should be given them; and when the
queen discovered that which every one would
have kept from her, that she was hated,—she
curled her proud lip, and reared her graceful
head, and thought that the citizens must be
ignorant indeed if they fancied they could un-
derstand her springs of action, or believed that
they could intimidate her. With the dauphin
at her knee, she expatiated to the ladies of her
court on the misfortune of kings and queens
having any connexion at all with the people be-
neath them, whom it was at all times difficult to
manage, and who might, as now, cause serious
trouble, and interfere materially with the peace
of royalty. She had at that moment little idea
how the peace of royalty was to be invaded this
very day.
A murmur of horror and looks of dismay pene-
trated even into the presence of her majesty,
when tidings arrived of the approach of an army
of women from Paris. -
“Of women!' cried the gouvernante of the
lauphin. “Is it because they can crave bread
with a shriller wail?”
“Of women l' exclaimed the lady Alice de
M.O.B SOVEREIGNTY. 133
Thou. “They come to plead for the rights of
their children. I remember when they brought
the little ones in their arms after the storm, and
we gave them all we had.”
“Of women?” said the queen, thoughtfully.
Then, with fire in her eyes, she continued, look-
ing steadfastly on the trembling chamberlain who
brought the news, “Since they are women, it is
smy head they want. Is it not so? Speak. Are
they not come for me?’
As soon as the chamberlain could speak, he
muttered that he feared they were indeed not
women, but ruffians in disguise.
“Ay, just so,” observed the queen. ‘Their
womanhood is emblematical ; and the hint of
their purpose is not lost upon me. I hope they
are indeed men, and can handle arms. I would
take my death more willingly, being shot at as
a mark, than being torn to pieces by the fou
hands of the rabble. A death-blow from afar
rather than a touch from any one of them ſ”
All present, except the chamberlain, were
loud in their protestations against the possibility
of any such danger. It was inconceivable; it
was barbarous; it was horrific ; it was a thing
unheard of; in short, it was absolutely incon
134 MOB SOVE REIGNTY.
ceivable. The chamberlain mournfully admit-
ted that the whole was indeed inconceivable to .
all who had not witnessed the procession, like a
troop of furies from the regions below, taking
their way through every savage. district on the
earth, and swelling their ranks with all that
could be gathered up of hideous and corrupt.
That her majesty's sacred person should fall
into such hands
All now began to urge flight, and the queen
was for a moment disposed to listen; but finding
that the king was out shooting, had been sent
for, and was expected every instant, she resolv-
ed to wait his arrival, and then it was too late.
The poissardes, real and pretended, had by that
time rushed into the place, filled the streets,
stopped up the avenue, and taken up a position
of control in the Chamber of Assembly. The
king reached the palace through a back en-
trance, in Safety, but it was in vain to think of
leaving it again. &
A hasty council was summoned, consisting of
the royal family, and a few confidential servants,
whose attachment to the persons of majesty
might set against the enervating terror which
had seized upon the ministers, and prevented
MOB SOVEREIGNTY. 135
their exerting any influence over these new and
appalling circumstances. Within the circle,
rapid consultation went on in low voices, while
some kept watch at the doors. When discuss-
ing the necessity of signing the declaration of
rights, which was one of the demands of the
mob without, -the queen's manner and tone
were perceived suddenly to change, and she
appeared to make light of the danger under
which even her spirit had quailed but just before.
“Be careful;’ she whispèred to the person
next her. ‘There is a creature of the duke of
Orleans in the room. I wonder how he got in.”
The lady Alice, who was watching her, fol-
lowed the glance of her eye, and saw that it
rested on one whom she little expected to see.
‘..Madam l’ she exclaimed, “it is my father l’
‘Yes, my child; come to share your loyalty,
now that the women below have made him
afraid. If the palace is stormed, he must find
a refuge once more under the Orleans provision-
carts, which are, I suppose, in waiting, as usual.
We must give him no news to carry; and Alice,
as soon as he is gone, I must have your head-
dress to wear, as the best protection while your
father points the way to us. I would not, how-
136 . . MOB 8 OWEREIGNTY.
ever, be so cruel, my child, as to deck you with
mine. You would lose your pretty head in a
trice, and then the marquis would altogether
go from us. . It is through you that we are still
favored with his countenance occasionally.”
Alice's tearful eyes had besought mercy for
her parent long before the queen seemed dispos-
ed to yield it. While the adherence of the no-
blesse to the royal cause was regarded as a mat-
ter of course, and therefore not rewarded with
extraordinary gratitude, all symptoms of halt-
ing or defection were observed with scorn, and
commented on without reserve by the haughty
woman who regarded her rank and empire as
natural, instead of conventional, and would as
soon have dreamed of being denied the use of
her limbs and senses as the privileges of royalty.
It was through her influence that the king
refused to sign the declaration till the last mo-
ment, when he was compelled to do so at a
tremendous sacrifice of regal dignity;-at the
bidding, namely, of twelve poissardes who forc-
ed their way into the presence with the deputies
from the Assembly, and under the compulsion
of threats of what might be expected from the
army of eighteen thousand men who had march-
MOB SOWEREIGNTY. 137
ed from Paris during the afternoon, under the
enforced command of Lafayette. *
Never was any thing beheld more dreary
than the aspect, more disgusting than the inci-
dents of this day and night. The skiessſrowned
upon the scene, and wind and rain added to
the difficulty of what was achieved, and the
horror of what was witnessed. The deputies.
and their attendants, the poissardes, appeared
in the king's presence, covered with mud and
drenched with rain; the House of Assembly
was crowded with women, who came in for
shelter, taking their seats among the members,
now eating and drinking, and now lifting up an
outcry to drown the voice of an unpopular dep-
uty; the fires of the bivouacs in the streets were
quenched with torrents of rain, again and again,
and the peaceable inhabitants were in fear of
being compelled at length to throw open their
gates to the rabble. The leading figure of the
mob, however, had a peculiar reason for dislik-
ing the weather, as he took care to show every
body. He was a gaunt-looking ruffian, with a
high pointed cap, and grotesque garb, well
armed, but especially proud of an axe which
he carried, ready for immediate use at the slight-
138 Mob sover EIGNTY.
est hint from the leaders of the mob. With all
his fear, the only fear he seemed capable of,
—that it should be rusted with the wet, and he
thus delayed in his vocation, he could not re-
frain from brandishing it over his head, and dis-
playing it in sight of the sentinels, and such of
the body-guards as looked out now and then
from the palace. This ruffian took his stand
immediately under the king's window, prepared
a cannon as a convenient block, and waited im-
patiently for victims. He could not be per-
suaded to quit his post for shelter; but he did
once step aside for brandy. On his return, he
found two poissardes sitting astride on his can-
non, face to face, tossing off their drams, and
devouring the rations which their prompting de-
mon had taken care to provide. The execu-
tioner warned them off, and prevailed by the
offer of a better seat within five minutes. A
hint was enough to show them his meaning.
He just pointed towards an approaching group,
consisting of an unfortunate soldier with whom
some of the mob had picked a quarrel as he
was going to his post for the night-and his
captors. The victim looked dogged. He saw
the cold metal block on which the axe was pre
MOB SOWEREIGNTY. 139
sently to ring his death-stroke: he saw the
fidgetty executioner, and the fierce women, gath-
ering round, munching their suppers as if his
life-blood was the draught they looked for to
wash down the last mouthful: he saw that no
help was within reach or call. He saw all this,
and seemed disposed to take quietly, though
sullenly, what was inevitable. He stood firm
while they pulled off his stock; he moved for-
wards when they pushed him; he kneeled when
they pressed upon his shoulders; but some im-
patience in their mamner of doing so excited his
passions in a moment to their utmost strength.
Before they could keep him down, he was not
only on his feet again, but bounding high in the
air, grappling with the executioner for the axe,
kicking, trampling, buffeting all who laid hands
on him, and creating a hubbub which brought
the king to the window above, and conveyed to
the senses of the ladies a knowledge of what
was passing. It was a short struggle; but a
struggle it was to the last, and force alone could
subdue the victim. One virago clutched the
hair of his head, and others held down his feet.
When his blood flowed on the ground, and mix-
ed with the puddles of rain, one or two stooped
--
140 MOB SOWEREIGNTY,
down to see how the eyes rolled and the nos-
trils yet quivered, while, on the other side the
block, the executioner, mindful of his promise,
tossed the headless body to a little distance, so
that his friends might sit on it to finish their
meal. What are the invisible issues of life
there was no one present to think, during the
whole scene, unless the victim himself might
have been conscious of his thoughts darting that
way; but such was the visible issue of a life
which a stupendous and delicate natural appara-
tus had been appointed to create, sustain, and
develope. It had originated in the deepest pas-
sions of human nature; been maintained by ap-
pliances, both natural and moral, which the
keenest powers can barely recognise, and not
estimate; and developed for objects of which
man has only the remotest ken, Such was the
visible issue of this mighty series of operations.
That the handywork of Providence should ever
have been thus crushed, and its mysteries thus
boldly made sport of, may in time appear as in-
credible as it would now seem that children had
ever been encouraged to pull planets from their
spheres in mockery, and quench the milky way,
—wsupposing such power to have been left in
MOB SOVE REIGNTY. 141
their hands. In the latter case, who would be
answerable for the profanation? Surely those
who taught. mockery in the place of rever-
ence. Who then was answerable in the former
case? Those who made the perpetrators igno-
rant through oppression, and savage by misrule.
The responsibilities of a certain order through
many centuries were called to judgment during
the brief period before us; and the sentence of
condemnation not only went forth on the four
winds to the farthest corners of the globe, but
shall be repeated down to those remote ages
when it shall be forgotten on earth, though re-
corded in heaven, that man ever shed the blood
of man.
One or two more such murders on the cannon
and at the palace gates had not the effect of
alarming the court or the really patriotic leaders
of..the people so far as to keep them on the
watch through the night. The king believed that
all was safe when he had given the signature
which it was the professed object of the expedi-
tion to obtain. The queen was assured by La-
fayette that the people were wearied, and that
nothing was to be apprehended till morning; and
the general himself reposed in his hotel in full
142 MOB 50VE REIGNTY,
confidence of the security of all parties. All
were not, however, thus satisfied. Some of the
deputies refused to withdraw from their cham-
ber; and while all was sleep and silence in the
palace, except where some watchful ear caught
the soft tread of the sentinels in the corridors,
and the pattering of the rain without, and at in-
tervals, some tidings from the passing gust, of
revelry in the streets, while armed ruffians sang
their songs, or snored in their dreams round the
watch-fires where the shrill-voiced poissardes
were broiling their rations, or heating their
strong liquors, a few of the wiser deputies sat,
each in his place, with folded arms, and in per-
fect silence, while the light of a single lamp fell
on their uncovered heads and thoughtful coun-
tenances, and foresight was invisibly presenting
to each pictures of that which was about to
befall their monarchy and themselves. Re-
vellers, legislators, and sentinels were not the
only ones who watched. One or two, who did
not partake the general’s confidence in the peo-
ple thus strangely congregated, wandered from
watch-fire to watch-fire, and about the precincts
of the palace, to be in readiness to warn Lafay-
ette of the first symptoms of movement.
MOB SOWEREIGNTY. 143
Among these was Charles, whose anxiety had
been awakened by the aspect of Paris after the
departure of the army for Versailles. It was
well known that Lafayette's generalship on this
occasion was enforced; and not all the appara-
tus of triumph amidst which the troops marched
out, -not all the drumming, and military music,
and display of flags amidst the rain, and echo of
shouting heard above the strong winds, could
remove the impression of the hollowness of all
this rejoicing, the desperation of this defiance.
When the sights and sounds were gone, a deep
gloom settled down upon Paris. The shops
were shut, the streets were silent, except where.
the wagons, laden with meat, bread, and brandy,
converged towards the Versailles road, or where
groups of two or three observers whispered their
anticipations to each other, mindful of none but
political storms, and questioning only whether
the sun of royalty would not this night have a
crimson setting, to rise upon their state no
InOre.
Charles had been among these observers, and
the tidings he brought home made his wife
anxious to depart from this revolutionary city,
and take refuge in their country possessions.
144 MOB 5 OW E REIGNTY.
She would be ready to go at any moment, she
declared, and when would there be so favorable
a time as when the place was half emptied of its
inhabitants, the police otherwise engaged than
in watching the proceedings of private individu-
als, and all fear at an end of any attack upon the
wine-stores? Charles was half disposed to listen
to the scheme, though his views of what was
likely to happen differed as widely from his
wife's as the prevailing tone of mind by which
they were influenced. Marguerite feared the
worst: her husband hoped all might yet be well,
and thought it, at all events, a good thing that
something decided must arise out of the present
crisis. He determined to follow the march to
Versailles, and to return as soon as he could
anticipate the event, to bid Marguerite stay and
make herself easy, or to carry her, her father
and children into Guienne. While she was
packing up the few necessaries she meant- to
take with her, and persuading all the household
but herself to go early to rest, Charles was re-
connoitering the proceedings of such as were
preparing a terrible retribution for those under
whose tyranny they had suffered.
He was no spy; being devoted to no party,
MOB SOVE REIGNTY. 145
and acting for his own honest purposes; and he
therefore used no concealment. He conversed
with the riotous poissardes on public injuries,
conferred with the deputies on public order, and
exchanged a few words with the sentinels on
the probability of an attack on the palace in the
morning. The horrible threats breathed over
the fires against the queen, the brutal exultation
which appeared through mysterious and slang
expressions respecting the royal household,
made him wonder at the -apparent defenceless-
ness of the palace. He was by no means satis-
fied that all was safe till morning, and said so to
a little muffled up man whom he found standing
in the shadow, close by the great iron gates.
He could not make out whether this man was a
mere looker on, like himself, or a watch ap-
pointed by either party. &
“Is it your own choice to be out to-night,
Sir; or are you occupying a post? Because, in
the first case I would direct you where you,
might see more of the state of things than here;
and, in the other, I would strongly recommend
your appealing to the general for support.’
‘Alas! yes. I am sent hither,’ replied the
quavering voice of the muffled up person.
146 MOB SOWEREIGNTY.
“None would willingly be abroad this night, and
all my desire is to be left unobserved in this
shadow at present;-unless, indeed, some friend
should pass who might protect me, and from
whom I might learn that which I am sent to
ascertain. —You seem, sir, to be an orderly,
honest man. Can you tell me whether the
duke, -whether Orleans is at hand?”
‘Orleans being the most honest and orderly,
of men, hey, marquis?’ said Charles, laughing.
“So you are sent out by lady Alice for tidings
and you wait here for them till Orleans passes
by—Is it not so?”
*Ahºl what can I do? These canaille will
smother me again with flour, or drag me to the
cold cannon;’ and here the little man shivered,
and his teeth chattered. “Do but bring me to
Orleans, my good sir, or get me a reentrance
into the palace, and I will I will This
morning air is so raw 1 and I am I am—
not fit for enterprise.”
Charles fully agreed with him; but having
no interest to get a royal spy housed before his
errand was done, he could only tell him that, to
the best of his belief, Orleans was lingering
about the road between Versailles and Paris, or
MOB SOWEREIGNTY. 147
hanging somewhere on the outskirts of the en-
campment to witness the issue, without being
implicated.
“Ah! how he is happy in comparison with
me!’ cried the poor marquis. “I have never,
sir, meddled with politics—'
“Further than as all the noblesse have ope-
rated,’ interrupted Charles. “I mean in stimu-
lating the people to meddle with politics. You
have wrought at second hand, marquis, hitherto.
Now is your time for taking your part finally,
and acting in it.”
*Alas! what evils come of any one interfering
in such affairs but ministers and deputies! Let
them act, and let us be neutral. This is all
I ask.”
‘Ay, but, marquis, it is too late to ask this;
because there has been great mistake about what
is, and what is not, being neutral. I dare say
you believed yourself neutral when you lay sleep-
ing in bed, while your peasantry were keeping
the frogs quiet in your ponds. I dare say you
had no thought of politics in your boar hunts,
or when three fathers of families were sent to
the galleys for alarming the lady Alice's brood-
ing doves. Yet you were all the while—"
148 MOB SOWEREIGNTY.
The marquis’ light blue eyes were now seen
by the lamp light to be opened upon Charles with
such an expression of vacant wonderment that
it was plain there was no use in proceeding.
He evidently had yet to learn the true province
of politics; and, for his part, he thought the
merchant must have drank a little too deep in
his own wine, to be talking of peasants and
pigeons in connexion with an insurrection in
Paris.-He would never have had courage to
leave his nook by himself; but how that he had
met a face that he knew, it required more cou-
rage to remain there by himself, and he therefore
hooked Charles by the arm, and said he would
be wholly guided by him. Charles would
rather have dispensed with his attachment, but
could not shake off the old man into darkness
and helplessness, if he himself preferred ventur-
ing into the light of the watch-fires, and upon
the threshold of Lafayette's lodging, whither he
was warned he would be conveyed.
If the marquis had carried a bold front, no-
thing would have happened to him, any more
than to his companion; but his slouched hat,
halting gait, and shrinking deportment at once
drew attention upon him. The consequence
MOB So WEREIGNTY. 149
was that he heard double the number of threats,
and imprecations ten times more horrid than
had met Charles's ears before. If he had now
regained entrance into the palace, he could have
told that which would have made even the
queen's fiery blood run cold, and have given the
whole household a foretaste of worse horrors
than even those of the ensuing day.
When they had arrived at the last of the line
of fires, the marquis believed his purgatory to
be nearly over, and indulged himself in a few
ejaculations of thankfulness on the occasion.
He was overheard, seized, dragged to the light,
his coat torn open, and his hat pushed back.
The queue looked suspicious; the manner of
speech, mixed up, as even these people could
perceive, of high breeding and imbecility, gave
assurance that he was a court adherent; to
which there was to be opposed only his own
and Charles's assurance that he was a compan-
ion and friend of Orleans. The knot of drink-
ers hesitated whether to cut off his head or let
him go, and the marquis stood panting with open
lips and closed teeth, when an amiable crea-
ture, partly masculine in her attire, and wholly
so in her address, proposed a half measure.
150 MOB SOVEREIGNTY.
“If he is one of them,” she observed, “we
shall find him again in the palace presently; so
let us mark him.”
With the word, she seized the poor man's
nose with the left hand, a burning stick with the
right, and branded his forehead with a cross;
then pushed him away, and turned to Charles,
offering to drink to him in his own liquor, the
choicest in Paris, if Orleans said true. She
pointed at the same time to a wagon near, on
which, to his amazement, Charles saw piled.
wine-casks with his own mark, and brandy-
bottles sealed with his own seal.
Perceiving at a glance that his cellars must
have been forced since he left home, and that
all further resistance would be useless, he deter-
mined to yield to his wife's desire to quit Paris;
and he hastened to discharge his duty of rousing
and warning the general, before turning his back
on this scene of disorder.
Lafayette was up in a moment, and, though
still trusting in the peaceable disposition of the
people, dressed himself hastily, that he might
be among them by daybreak. Before hercould
leave his hotel, however, warning sounds came
from the direction of the palace, and messengers
MOB SOWEREIGNTY. 151
succeeded one another rapidly, stating that an
attack was being made on the great iron gates,
that blood had already been shed, and that the
lives of the whole royal family seemed to be at
the people's mercy. The general threw him-
self upon a horse which happened to be standing
saddled below, and galloped off, before Charles
could recommend the marquis de Thou to his
protection, should he happen to find him in the
hands of the populace. His own anxiety to get
home was such as ill to brºok any delay, and
to admit little other interest of any kind; but
chance threw him once more in the path of the
old man. * º
As he was making the best of his way towards
the Paris road, stemming the tide of people that
was rushing towards the palace, he was suddenly
jostled and thrown down by an impulse in the
contrary direction. Nor was he the only one.
Many were bruised, some trampled, while a fu-
gitive burst through the throng, followed by a
knot of pursuers, who overthrew all that came in
their way, while their mingled curses and laugh-
ter contrasted strangely with the panting cry of
the pursued. Some cried out that it was the
king; others uttered imprecations against him
152 MOB SOWEREIGNTY.
as one of the hated guards; while Charles saw,
amidst his tattered, scared, and helpless condi-
tion, that it was no other than the poor marquis.
His desperation gave the hunted man strength
to clear the mob, and to fly some way beyond,
till he reached the trees of the avenue, where
there was an end of his safety unless some better
aid was brought him than his own failingstrength.
His enemiès dogged him, surrounded him;-
Some brandishing pitchforks, others large knives,
and not a few firing off their muskets to give a
new impulse to his terror. This sight was in-
tolerable to Charles, who saw in such cruelty
none of the palliations which he had admitted in ,
the case of some former acts of violence, For-
getting all but what was before his eyes, he
snatched a pike, threw himself in front of the
pursuit, reached the victim just as he fell ex-
hausted at the foot of a tree, and stood astride
over him, with one hand in an attitude of de-
fence, while the other beckoned to the people
to listen. He shouted amid the din, and the
few words which were heard by those nearest
to him served his purpose of diverting their
thoughts from immediate murder. He told them
that, in the name of the marquis's tenantry, he
MOB SOWEREIGNTY. 153
demanded that the marquis should be placed in
the custody of the Assembly of deputies, to
answer for an infringement of the new laws by
which the property of the peasantry was protect-
ed. He told them that the general was gone
to the palace, to mediate between the queen and
the poissardes, and as it would be a pity that
those who heard him should be absent from so
interesting a spectacle, he and one or two more
would take charge of the criminal, and convey
him before the sitting deputies. A well-timed
roll-of the drums and discharge of musketry
confirmed his appeal, and drew away his audi-
tors, so that in a few moments, when the last
lingerers had gratified themselves with pricking
their victim a little with the points of their various
weapons, Charles found himself alone with the
almost lifeless old man.
On hearing that his further existence probably
depended on his reaching the assembly while the
mob was engaged elsewhere, the marquis made
an effort to rise and walk, and found himself
so much less hurt than frightened that he accorn-
plished the transit with small difficulty. Such a
*deplorable object was never before presented to
the Assembly, at least under the title of a mar-
*
154 MOB 5 OW E REIGNTY.
quis. He had scarcely a shred of clothing
under the soldier's cloak which Charles had bor-
rowed from a sentinel at the door. His pow-
dered hair was dripping with rain, and his face
smeared with blood. He wept bitterly; mur-
muring, in the tones of a woman, his wonder as
to what he could have ever done to offend the
people, and how the world could have grown so
cruel and ungrateful. The Assembly had little
Heisure at this time, and were glad to accept
Charles's offer of conveying the prisoner away,
and his guarantee that the marquis should set
out for his estate in the provinces without delay,
and not return till the troubles of the capital
were at an end. The marquis was little dispos-
ed to make opposition. -
‘Take me away,’ he said, ‘though I only fly
from one doom to another. You say my tenants
are enraged against me; and I say that they will
drink my blood. The vile are sovereigns in
these days, and the noble have the knife at their
throats from day to day. O, if they had kill-
ad me under the tree, it would have been over;
but new it is still to come. O save me! Do not
leave me! Make me your servant. Employ mes
as you will; but do not let them kill me!’
MOB SOVEREIGNTY. 155
Charles recommended that the old man
should in fact travel into Guienne as his ser-
vant, and take possession of his chateau or not,
according to the apparent disposition of the
peasantry when they should arrive.—Not a mo-
ment was to be lost in proceeding to Paris, if the
departure of the family was to take place while
the populace and the troops were engaged at
Versailles, and the whole attention of the magis-
tracy was directed upon what was passing there.
An empty cart was found in which to stow
the marquis, while his protector walked by its
side. They left behind them the most fearful
spectacles of that day,+the murder of some of
the guards, the narrow escape of the queen, the
brutal joy of the mob at the enforced consent of
the royal family to be conveyed to Paris, and the
beginning of that dreadful march itself, as anom-
alous, as disgusting, as any spectacle that was
ever presented as a pageant. But, one circum-
stance which signalized that march, they were
also witnesses to. Half-way between Versailles
and Paris, on a mound planted with trees, a fig-
ure was seen, moving behind the stems, and
peeping forth at every sound of wheels or foot-
steps. It was Orleans, who had stationed
156 MOB SOWEREIGNTY,
himself here to watch the issue of his plot, -
the return of the expedition, with the bodies of
his royal cousins, dead or alive.
With some difficulty, he was persuaded to
come down and speak to his humble servant the
marquis; and when he did greet him, it was
with something very like a smile at his crest-
fallen appearance, and querulous complainings,
“My good friend, these are strange times,”
he observed. “I should think your valet has
hardly had time to attend to you this morning.
However, you will find plenty unoccupied at
Paris to renew your powder-s—O, you wish to
go at once, and shoot on your own territory.
Well; perhaps you are wise, since our kind of
shooting here is not exactly to your taste. You
must take care, however; for I hear that more
bullets fly from behind the hedges there than in
the open fields. Farewell, my dear sir, for I
see your companion is impatient. He wants to
be keeping guard over his wine-cellars. I wish
him an ample fortune out of the wines therein
contained at this moment.”
Chares's impatience was not only on account
of his own affairs. He distrusted Orleans so
far as to be vexed that the marquis whispered
MOB SOWEREIGNTY. 15?
to him their plan of escape. There was no
particular sign of interest in the duke's coun-
tenance at the relation; and it only remained to
be hoped that no harm would come of this un-
necessary confidence. The marquis was far
from thinking it unnecessary, as a word from
the duke would procure passports for the whole
family. This word Orleans was prevailed upon
to write, and furnished with it, the marquis
poured out his gratitude more vehemently than,
but a few months before, he would have suppos-
ed possible; and then bade his vehicle proceed,
watching from a distance how the duke once
more passed the enclosure, and took his station
among the trees as before.
The cellars were found to be indeed more
than half emptied; and of the casks that re-
mained, one or two were staved, to drown the
gunpowder and other combustibles. No attack
had been made upon the house, and Marguerite
had sufficiently got the better of her terrors, to
be ready for immediate departure. No obstacle
arose, and Steele, with Pierre under him, con-
sented to remain in charge of the property till
Charles could return, after having deposited his
family in security
158 MoB sover EIGNTY.
The marquis made a rather singular-looking
valet, with a manner alternating between super-
ciliousness and awkward deference,—a strutting
gait when he forgot what he was about, and a
cringing one when he happened to cast a glance
upon his dress. He passed muster very well,
however, as a battered old soldier turned valet;
his strut passing for regimental paces, and his
cringe being ascribed to the honorable wounds
he was supposed to bear. M. Raucourt took off
the attention of all. who might be disposed to
make remarks, by telling everybody that he was
going to see his olive groves. The party tra-
velled with more speed than the dismal pro-
cession from Versailles; so that before the royal
family was mournfully ushered into the Hotel
de Ville at dusk, Charles and his household
were some leagues on their journey southwards.
UY SHOT OF FEU DALISM. 155)
CHAPTER VIII.
U P S HOT OF FEU DALISM.
THE hopeful disposition of both Charles and
Antoine was remarkable at all times, and in
whatever society they were, When they were
together, it became well nigh excessive, and oc-
casioned no little amusement to their friends in
happy times, and much sighing from the appre-
hensive Marguerite in such evil days as they
were now fallen upon. Each excited the other
to perceive bright specks on the dark horizon,
and neither would lag behind the other in dis-
cerning cause for encouragement, and in point-
ing out that, as good had issued from apparent
evil in some former analogous instance, it would
be a sin to doubt that the same thing might hap-
pen again. Marguerite was almost offended
that, while she looked tremblingly around as the
dancing waters of the Garonne first flashed upon
their sight under the gleam of an October sun,
her husband encouraged the joyous gestures of
the children standing on his knee, and burst put
singing one of the popular provincial airs to
which the banks of that river so often echo.
160 UPSHOT OF FEUDALISM –
But when Antoine came forth to meet them
as they alighted, in high spirits, though he had
actually nothing good to tell them, however
disposed to hope for every thing blissful, Mar-
guerite turned from him to her father, as the
most reasonable personage of the two.
Antoine was beginning a laugh at his brother's
first choice of the luxury of a valet, but checked
himself instantly on hearing who it was, and
wherefore.
*Do you suppose he may safely dress himself,
and appear to arrive at his chateau to-morrow?”
“Why, scarcely yet, perhaps, replied An-
toine, gravely. “The peasantry are in an un-
comfortable, irascible state, and the poor man
would hardly have fair play among them; but
it cannot last long, and then we shall have him
trampling our crops again as solemnly as ever;
perched, like a wax figure, on horseback, and
utterly unable to comprehend such a thing as a
curse against himself; or to bestow a thought as
to whose ground he is trespassing upon.”
* Let us hope he has ſearned more considera-
tion by his misfortunes,” said Charles. At any
rate, he may yet learn it by using his eyes and
ears in the interval between this hour and his
**~.
UPSHOT OF FEU DALISM. 161
restoration to his honors and privileges,—which
I suppose will happen by the time he has learn-
ed to tie his own queue according to his own
fancy. Meanwhile, how is Favorite ”
‘O, our beauty! She has rather languished
this season ; but she will be all the more brilliant
next year; for two bad seasons give a pretty fair
security that the third will be good. It is as if
the stream of blood had come from your city,
Charles, like a blight, and shrivelled her swell-
ing fruit. The crisis is come, you say. There
will soon be no more blood, and wine will gush
instead. Yes, yes, next season all will be well.’
“But our peasant neighbors, Antoine. Has
their condition improved as you were confident
it would?”
‘How should it yet P The time is not come.
They have not yet got over the scarcity of last
year. But the woodcocks will soon be here;
and the lady Alice's doves multiply all the faster
now they are left to themselves; and in the
spring, there will be a greater resource of cattle,
and of their milk; and the bad seasons have not
destroyed our fish. We are planning to get
larger and larger supplies from Bordeaux, as
well as to send out more boats upon the river.’
L
162 UPSHOT OF FEUDAL18M.
“Corn is too dear, at present, I suppose, for
the poor, if indeed you have enough for the
rich P’
‘We are all somewhat better off in that respect
than we were; but a great part of the discon-
tent arises from the incessant changes in the
value of whatever we get to eat, as long as the
supply is turned out of its usual course. When
we can no longer depend on an article whose
supply is usually pretty regular, and its price
not very variable, we are subject to a perpetual
rise and fall which we cannot calculate, and
which brings disappointments to the people
which they are ill able to bear.”
‘How do you mean? I thought our poor
helped out their subsistence by nettle broth and
frog stew; and for these, I suppose, they pay
neither labor nor money?’ $
* No ; but they must have something in ad-
dition. Presently it will be woodcocks—the
most uncertain article of food that can be. If
there should be a fine flight of them to be had
for the kikling, labor will become cheaper to us
capitalists, while the laborers will be better re-
warded: that is, it will cost us less to feed our
laborers, while they will get more food for an
UP8HOT OF FEUDALISM. 163
**--
equal quantity of labor. This, while it lasts,
lessens the cost of production, and if it went on
a whole year, would cheapen our corn consid-
erably next harvest. But the resqurce lasts a
very short time, and the reduction of the price
of corn, therefore, is only of that temporary kind
which proceeds from a relaxation of demand.
Before the people well understand how this is,
the cattle begin to come in from the woods,-
more numerous than ever, from so mucn arable
land having, since the storm, yielded a kind of
rude pasture. This is a somewhat less uncer-
tain resource than the woodcocks, and lowers
the value of corn for a longer period. What I
want, to fill up the intervals of these uncertain
supplies, is a permanent provision of fish.’
*How strangely the values of things are turn-
ed topsyturvy l’ exclaimed Charles. “Time
was when our peasantry would no more have
thought of dining off woodcocks than I of giv-
ing my servants a daily dessert of pine-apples.
Dainty game of that sort is commonly thought
to rise in value with the progress of improve-
ment.” $
“And so it does; and that it now exchanges
for less either of money or bread, than the
164 UPSHOT OF FEUDALISM,
commonest sorts of meat did three years ago,
is a proof that our condition has gone back in-
stead of improving. It is a proof that the
produce of our toil is scantier than it was; that
the produce which we cannot command—that
which comes and goes without our will and
pleasure—exchanges for less when there are
more to demand it.”
‘We may say the same of cattle.”
“Just at present; because our cattle is for
the most part wild, having got abroad into the
woods at the time of the hurricane. But when
we have collected our flocks and herds again,
and can attend to their breeding, so as to pro-
portion the supply to the demand, we shall find
their value permanently depend, like that of
the crops with which they will then be fed, on
the cost of production.’
“Of course, if they feed on crops grown for
their use. At present, when they pasture them-
selves on land which would otherwise lie waste,
they are cheap when there happens to be a
sufficient supply of fish and woodcocks, be-
cause there is little cost of production;–no rent,
little capital, and less labor. Any sudden rise
of value proceeds from a temporary increase of
$
UPSHOT OF FEU DALISM. 165
demands. It is to equalize the demand for
butcher's meat, that I and some of my neighbors
want to procure a regular supply of fish.’
*Yet fish is an article whose value rises with
the progress of improvement. It must do so in
proportion as more labor is required to procure
an equal supply for an extended market. As
years pass on, Antoine, we shall have to fit out
more boats for the river, and to build them larg-
er, and man them better, as we have to send
them out farther. But then there will be more
of other things to give in exchange for fish.’
“True; but at present we cannot give our
fishermen what they think a fair premium upon
their cost of production, because our cost of pro-
duction, the cost of the labor we give in ex-
change, is extraordinarily high.”
“Do they complain of the price you give?”
“Very much, but that cannot be helped. We
complained of their social price in old days,
of having to pay, not only the profits and wages
necessary to procure the article, but the market
dues, which were very oppressive. They an-
swered that they did not pocket the dues, and
could not help the high price. Now they com-
plain that (the dues being lately remitted) they
166 UPSHOT OP FEUDALISM.
cannot even secure their natural price,—that is,
a reasonable profit in addition to the cost of the
labor.”
“If they cannot do this, why do they supply
you? They will not surely go on furnishing the
market with fish at prime cost.”
* Certainly not, for any length of time; but, till
the woodcocks come, they must submit to wear
out their boats a little, without an equivalent,
looking forward to the time when we may again
afford them a fair market price,—which will, by
that time, be a money price; for then we shall
be able to get out of our present inconvenient
state of barter, and the coin which has disap-
peared will have found its way back.’
“Meanwhile, the people, you say, are discon-
tented as much at the fluctuations in their affairs
as at their absolute want of many comforts.”
‘Yes; we hear perpetual complaints that no
man can now calculate how much his labor is
worth. So many hours’ work will one week
bring him two good meals, and at another, not
malf an one. If they go into the woods for
game, so many head may to-day exchange for a
coat-to-morrow for a house.’
“Much of this hap-hazard must also be ow
y
UPSHOT OF FEU DALISM, 167
ing to the uncertainty of public affairs. If we
could but foresee whether we really have arrived
at the crisis, whether trade will probably flow
into its natural channels again after a certain fixed
period, our condition would immediately improve.
There is no other such effectual regulator of
price as clear anticipation, because it enables us
to calculate the ultimate cost of production, on
which exchangeable value finally depends.”
Antoine observed, in a low voice, that the
most suffering of his poor neighbors had lately
begun to indulge in a new sort of anticipation.
They had been told,—and nobody was aware
whence the report arose, that there was a room
full of coin in the chateau of the marquis de
Thou. Their own coin had somehow gone
away from them, and they fancied that, if they
could but get any instead of it, all their woes
would immediately cease. Antoine had reason
to believe that the chateau would soon be at-
tacked, unless some means of undeceiving the
poor creatures could be discovered.
The brothers comforted themselves, accord-
ing to their wont, that such means could not fail
soon to present themselves. It was impossible
that so gross an error could long subsist. Their
168 UPS HOT OF FEU DALISM,
j
confidence did not make them the less watchful
to aid the enlightenment of the people around
them; for their hopefulness was of that kind
which stimulates instead of superseding exertion.
La Favorite experienced this; for, amidst all
their hopes of what her beauty would be next
year, they toiled to repair her losses and reno-
vate her vegetative forces. Charles could not
have brought himself to return to Paris till this
was done, even if he had been satisfied to leave
Marguerite in charge of the marquis.
This gentleman chose soon to free the family
from his presence, against their advice; even
in the face of their strong remonstrances. Like
many who are deficient in physical courage and
mental strength, he was rash and obstinate. As
soon as he had recovered from his astonishment
at not being killed on the day of his arrival, he
began to be certain that there was no further
danger, and, blind to the manifold tokens of his
extreme unpopularity, which might have greeted
his senses and understanding at any hour of any
day, he determined on secretly quitting his dis-
guise, without troubling his kind friends to reason
any further with him. One morning, accord-
ingly, his valet's dress was found on the floor
A 2-
UPSHOT OF FEU DALISM. 169
of his chamber, and on his table, a note of
ample, though haughty thanks to his preservers;
and by noon, the marquis's old steed, bearing
a rider whose skirts, blue eyes, and entire
deportment could not be mistaken, was seen to
trample new ploughed fields, and give promise
of riding over heedless children, as before.
The last thing that entered the old man's
head was altering his modes of procedure in any
one respect. He could not escort lady Alice,
because she was not there; but he paced the
terrace, in an afternooon, with his head half
turned, as if he saw her ghost beside him. He
could not lead a long traim of hunters, because
some of them were in Austria, some in England,
and one or two already laid headless in a bloody
grave; but he galloped forth on the same
routes, making the most of the two or three
servants who followed him still, and returning
in state to sit solitary at the head of a long table,
and toast his own loyal sentiments. What was
worse, he trampled his poor neighbors when
they came in his way, and overlooked them
when they did not, as if he had never been
branded by a poissarde, or hunted in the avenue
at Versailles.
170 UPSHOT OF FEUDALISM.
All this, it may be supposed, soon came to
an end-and by means which proved the error
of the popular belief about the chamber full of
gold at the chateau. Out of pure humanity,
Charles repeatedly vanquished his resentment at
the marquis's supercilious treatment of him, and
offered warnings of the blackening gloom which
settled in the faces of the peasantry when the
little great man came in sight; but the marquis
had got it into his head that Charles had an in-
terest in frightening him. He thought he had
been more frightened than most men already,
and wisely determined to be so no more. He
bowed, laid his hand on his heart, disengaged
his rein from the friendly grasp, and passed on.
‘My hopefulness is nothing to his, Marguerite,
after all,” observed Charles. “You say I hope
against hope. He hopes against reason. The
difference is that the one hope will vanish
when most wanted, and the other, I trust, never
wear out.”
One night, when there was no moon, one
of the longest winter nights, no moon was
wanted for a space of some miles on the banks
of the Garonne. Instead of the boats sailing
black in the silver beam, they passed crimson
K. -º
UP8 HOT OF FEUDALISM. 171
in the fiery glare. The sheeted snow glittered
and sparkled as if it had been noon instead of
midnight: the groves dropped their melted bur-
den, and stood stiff and stark in wintry bareness,
stripped of the feathery lightness in which they
had risen against the evening sky. Cries which
ill beseem the hour of sleep roused the night-
birds, and volumes of red smoke spread them-
selves abroad to eclipse the stars. Charles's
steps were directed towards the chateau before
he had received any notice, but from his own
apprehensions, whence the fire proceeded which
had scared his children from their beds. He
arrived in the court-yard, not in time to save
the marquis, but to speak with him once more.
The old man was bound to the balustrade of
his own terrace; and an executioner stood beside
him with an upraised and gleaming sword. His
appearance was much what it had been on a
nearly similar occasion before. He attempted
to spring forward, and a gleam of hope shot
across his countenance when the brothers ap-
peared: but there was a something in their faces
which checked the emotion, and his jaw drop-
ped once more.
All efforts, all stratagems were vain. The
172 UPSHOT OF FE UDALISM.
2.2.2
people declared themselves unpitying to tyrants,
and resolved to do away with despotism in their
quarter of the land, in like manner with their
brethren in Paris. Five minutes for preparation
was all they would allow, and even Charles
at length despaired of further favor. He ap-
proached the victim with a calm and serious
countenance. The old man looked up.
‘Is there no hope?’
‘There is always hope. Let us hope that in
another state we shall better know how to love
and forgive one another. Here, we have a poor
understanding of this; but even here we can
forgive. They will not now forgive you; but
you will leave them that which will make them
do so hereafter. Leave them your pardon.’
‘O, Alice,—my daughter! Not if they mur-
der Alice.”
“They shall not. I promise you 9
“But I did not expect this,’ uttered the
shivering prisoner. ‘I went to bed 5
“Then collect yourself now. A few minutes'
resolution.—One effort at calmness }
“But is there no hope?’
*None whatever. Settle your mind to your
fate. There is only misery in struggling againstit.”
^,
j
* * *
UPS “HOT OF FEU DALISM. i 3
"I will. I will. Only stay by me.’
*What a confidence for such a moment!’
thought Charles, as he saw the tractable expres-
sion which the countenance assumed. It was
some comfort, however, that there was any
confidence which could give decency to his
dying deportment.
The people around grew impatient. The
executioner lifted his sword. The victim look-
ed up at it, half fearfully, half meekly, like a
penitent child at the impending rod. He fell,
without a sign or a cry; and at the moment,
the flames burst forth from the lower windows,
as if to lick up, in as summary a vengeance as
they had been guilty of, the perpetrators of this
murder. All rushed from the terrace, with a
yell of consternation, leaving the body alone,
its unclosed eyes shining in the glare, as if
gazing unmoved on that violence which could
no longer reach it in the shape of injury.—
When the gust fell, and the flames retired some
space, the ruffian who held the sword returned
to the place of execution, severed the head,
tossed the body into the flames, and returned
with his trophy to the cheering mob.
There was nothing for Charles and Antoine
174 UPSHOT OF FEUT, ALISM.
3. * *
to stay for. They could neither save property,
nor prevent crime. There was no purpose to
be answered by an attempt to do the first; for
the lady Alice could never return hither, or
probably find any corner of her native land in
which to dwell in peace. Any endeavor to
check the people's rage would only have brought
on more murders. It was better that they should
occupy themselves with destroying inanimate
things than have their wrath directed upon
human objects. The brothers therefore left
them endeavoring to discover the treasure-
chamber, and paced silently homewards, trying
whether, after such a spectacle as this, their
hopefulness could get the better of their heart-
sickness.
§
§
* *
AD.JU STMIENT. 175
CHAPTER IX.
A D J U S T M. E. NT
MARGUERITE began to think that she and
her family had better have staid in Paris, since
violence as foul as any there, with less chance
of redress, took place in the country. But as
there were fewer marked for destruction in a
thinly peopled than in a crowded district, the
work of horror was sooner over ; and within a few
weekse all was quiet around her dwelling. No
judicial inquiry whatever was made into the fate
of the marquis; and night after night, ominous
gleams were seen from afar, marking where life
and property were being offered up in expiation
of former tyranny. When every neighboring
chateau that was empty had been sealed up and
guarded by the people from being entered by its
owners; and when every inhabited one had been
dismantled or converted into a pile of blackened
ruins, there was a truce. The gentry sighed
over the abolition of feudalism; the peasantry
gloried in the destruction of the aristocracy; and
both, looking no farther than their own borders,
176 © A DJ U STM ENT.
A cº
supposed that all was over, and the state of the
country,<-miserable as it was, settled.
Charles and his brother knew too well what
was passing in Paris to acquiesce in this belief;
but they were glad of the good effects it seemed
to produce in quieting the minds, and therefore
fixing the outward circumstances of their neigh-
bors. People went about their regular business
once more, prices grew steady in the markets,
and the mysterious, dishonest sort of bargaining
which had gone on immediately after the de-
struction of the chateaux, was seen no more.
No golden timepieces now passed fromfhand to
hand, in exchange for the coarsest articles of
clothing or furniture; and if polished tables, or
morsels of curious old china were seen here and
there in the hovels of half-starved peasants, they
were not put up for sale, and did not answer
the purpose of further perplexing the values of
things. Seeing that Marguerite began to feel
pretty much at her ease once more, going to
rest without presentiments of being roused by
fire, and venturing, with only the children, to
transact her necessary purchases among the
peasantry, Charles began to try whether he
could make any thing of his business at Paris;
ADJUSTMENT, 177
{ * ~"
and set out, in order that he might be on the
spot to take advantage of the first symptoms of
tranquillity to meet the demand which would
then certainly arise.
He went to Paris before winter was quite
over; and found more promise of a settlement
of public affairs than at any time since the com-
mencement of the revolution. Yet he would
not hear of his family joining him, till it should
be known whether or not king, parliament, and
people would cordially agree in the new con-
stitution which was then in preparation. When
there was not only a promise of this, but all arts
and artificers were actually put in requisition to
render the spectacle of taking the oath as mag-
nificent as the occasion required, there was no
further pretence for Charles's prudence to in-
terfere with the hopefulness which now seemed
rational enough. He sent a summons to Mar-
guerite to return and witness the festival from
which her loyalty and his patriotism might de-
rive equal gratification. But Marguerite was
detained in the country by her father's illness,
—his last; and the children were deprived of
the power of saying afterwards that they had
witnessed in Paris the transactions of that day
M
178 ADJUSTMENT.
which was regarded at the time as the most re-
markable in the annals of France.
That day, the 14th of July, 1790, was ap-
pointed to be a high festival throughout the
kingdom: Charles passed it in the Champ de
Mars; Marguerite by the dying bed of her fa-
ther; the children, under the guardianship of
their uncle Antoine, among the rejoicing peasant-
ry; and Steele, who had returned to Bordeaux
when Charles settled himself again in Paris,
took the opportunity of visiting La Haute Favo-
rite for the first time after so many vicissitudes.
It seemed to them all a strange, to the su-
perstitious among them, an ominous circumstance
that they should be thus separated on the occa-
sion when all were called upon to recognise
the social agreement under which they and their
successors were to live. Q’
A gleam of the aſternoon sun shone in upon
the face of Marguerite’s father as he dozed, and
made him turn restlessly on his couch. His
daughter hastened to shut it out, and the move-
ment awoke him. * *
‘One is fit only for the grave,’ he said, ‘when
the light which shines on all above it becomes
painful.”
ADJUSTMENT, 179
“Father you are better,’ said Marguerite,
turning round astonished.
‘No,” said he, ſaintly, “not better. I can-
not bear this light, or this heat, or—but no
matter; it will presently be over. But where
is Charles?”
‘He will be here very soon; but it is only
two days since y& became worse; and there
has been no time for him to come yet. To-
day he is waiting upon the king, and next he
will wait on you.’
‘On the king!’ and the old man was roused
at once. “And all the people I fancied they
had left off their duty. Who waits upon the
king?”
‘The whole nation, Marguerite replied, sigh-
ing to herself, however, over her own view of
the matter—that the king was, in fact, waiting
upon the nation. She proceeded to tell what
was doing in Paris, and remarked that she hop-
ed they had finer weather there than here, where
it had been a day of continued rain, till the gleam
came which had wakened her father.
M. Raucourt was too ignorant of the events
of the last two years to be able to comprehend
the present proceeding. He could not see what
180 A DJ U G F# E A T.
the people had to do with the constitution; but
laid the blame on his own weak brain, when
assured that the loyal men of France were all
consenting to the measure. Other tokens of
ignorance were much more affecting to his
daughter. He wished to be raised in bed, so
that he might see his olive woods in the evening
glow. They were no longer there, and his
attention must be diverted to something else.
He wished to behold the marquis de Thou
passing the house for his daily ride.—The bones
of him he asked for were mouldering under the
ruins of his own abode - – ‘At least,” said M.
Raucourt, ‘let me pe carried to the window,
that I may see the chateau. It looks so finely
on the terrace; and it is so long since I saw it!”
—Grass was growing on its hearths, and the
peasants’ children were playing hide and seek
among its roofless halls.
‘You have not asked for the children,” said
Marguerite. “If you are so strong this after-
noon, perhaps you can bear to speak to them.”
And they were sent for, and presently made
their appearance from the river-side, full of what
they had been seeing and doing. They told
how one cannon was fired when the hour struck
A DJ USTMENT, 181
at which the royal procession was to set out,
and another when the whole array was to be
formed in the Champ de Mars, and others to
represent the taking of the oath by the king, by
the representatives of the parliament, and by
Lafayette in the name of the people.
“And what is all this for 2' asked the old
man. “It is a beautiful spectacle, no doubt;
but there were no such things in my time as
the king and the people swearing at the same
altar.”
‘The people make the king swear, and some
of them do not think he likes it,”—observed
Julien, unmindful of his mother's signs. Pau-
line went on,
“No more than he liked being brought pris-
oner from Versailles, and having his guards'
heads cut off.”
The little girl was terrified at the effect of her
words. She in vain attempted to make up for
them by saying that the king and queen were
very well now; and that the people did not
expect to be starved any more, and that every-
body was to be very happy after this day. The
loyal old man said he should never be happy
any more; and groaned and wept himself into
182 ADJUSTMENT,
a state of exhaustion from which he did not
revive, though he lived two or three days longer.
*I wish,_I wish— sobbed poor Pauline,
‘that the people had never meddled with the
king 2
“Or the king with the people,’ said Julien,
“for that was the beginning of it all.”
‘I am sure so do I,’ said Marguerite, sighing.
“It is little comfort to say, as Antoine does,
that the world cannot roll on without crushing
somebody.”
“If that somebody puts himself in the way,
uncle said,” observed Julien.
“Every body has been in the way, I think,
my dear. All France is crushed.”
“Not quite, mamma. Uncle Antoine and Mr.
Steele are sitting between the two big vines,
and they say that every body will be buying
wine now that buying and selling are going to
begin again.”
It was very true that the young men were
enjoying their favorite retreat to the utmost;
gilding it with the sunshine of their expectations,
and making it as musical with the voice of hope
as with the gay songs which were waſted from
the revellers below.
º
ADJUSTMENT. 183
They were not a little pleased when their
anticipations were countenanced by a letter from
Charles which reached his wife on the day of
her father’s death, and was not the less in ac-
cordance with her feelings for having been
written before tidings of the old man's illness
had reached Paris, and being, as usual, hopeful
and happy.
‘I have written to Antoine,’ he said, ‘to urge
all care in the approaching vintage, and all des-
patch in the management of our immediate
business. Good days are coming at last, unless
despotism should bring on itself a new punish-
ment, and rouse once more the spirit of faction,
which has been laid to rest this day by that
powerful spell, the voice of a united nation. It
would astonish you to see how commercial con-
fidence has already revived; and, as a conse-
quence, how the values of all things are becom-
ing fixed; and, again, as a consequence of this,
how the intercourses of society are facilitated,
and its peace promoted. It was the perception
and anticipation of this which to me constituted
the chief pleasure of the magnificent solemnity
of this day. It was a grand thing to behold the
national altar in the midst of an amphitheatre
a sº-
184 ADJUSTMENT.
filled with countless thousands; but it was a
grander to remember that these thousands were
only the representatives of multitudes more who
were on tiptoe on all our hills, in all our valleys,
watching and listening for the token that they
may trust one another once more, and exchange,
for their mutual good, the fruits of their toil. It
was touching to see the battalion of children,
‘the hope of the nation,'—coming forward to
remind the state that it sways the fate of a future
age ; but it was more touching to think of our
own little ones, and to believe that, by the pres-
ent act, the reward of the social virtues we try
to teach them is secured to them.—It was im-
posing to see one golden flood of light gush from
a parting cloud, giving an aspect of blessing to
what had before been stormy; but it was as an
analogy that it struck us all, and impelled us to
send up a shout like the homage of worshippers
of the sun. Has mot a light broken through the
dreariness of our political tempests? There may
be, let us hope there will be, from this day,
order in the elements of our social state. Let
but all preserve the faith they have sworn, and
there will be no more sporting with life and
property, no absurd playing with baubles while
e---
ADJUSTM ENT, 185
there is a craving for bread, no ruin to the in-
dustrious, and sudden wealth to such as specu-
late on national disfless. We may once more
estimate the labor of our peasantry, and the value
of our own resources, and fix and receive the
due reward of each. We may reach that high
point of national prosperity in which the ascer-
tainment and due recompense of industry in-
volve each other; when the values of things
become calculable, and mutual confidence has a
solid basis.--I do not say that this prosperity
will come, but I hope it will; and if all others
have the same hope, it certainly will. It may
be that the sovereign will lose his confidence,
and go back. It may be that the parliament or
the people will do the same; and then may fol-
low worse miseries than we have yet known.
But if they see how much social confidence has
to do with social prosperity, they will refuse to
disturb the tranquillity which has been this day
established.
‘And now, however you may sigh or smile
at the spirit of hope which is in me and Antoine,
what say you to it in the case of a nation ? Are
not its commercial exchanges a most important
branch of its intercourses? Must not those ex-
186 A DJ U S T ºf rº, N. T.
changes be regulated by some principle of value,
instead of being the sport of caprice? Is not that
principle the due and equablé recompense of la-
bor, or (in business-like terms) the cost of pro-
duction? Is not this recompense secured by the
natural workings of interests—and can these in-
terests work naturally without an anticipation
of recompense—that is, without hope, inspiring
confidence? Depend upon it, hope is not only
the indispensable stimulus of individual action,
but the elastic pressure by which society is sur-
rounded and held together. Great is the crime
of those who injure it ; and especially heinous
will be the first trespass on public confidence of
any who have been in the Champ de Mars this
day. As that which is national springs from that
which is individual, I will add that Antoine and
Steele are patriotic if they exult in the ripening
beauties of Favorite; and if you would be patri-
otic too, gladden yourself with the promise of
our children, and tell me, when we meet, that
you trust with me that all will be well both witn
our wines and our politics.”
$UMMARY. 187
SUMMARY OF PRINCIPLES ILLUSTRATED IN THIS
VOLUME.
There are two kinds of Value: value in use,
and value in exchange.
Articles of the greatest value in use may have
none in exchange; as they may be enjoyed with-
out labor; and it is labor which confers Ex-
changeable Value.
This is not the less true for capital as well as
labor being employed in production; for capital
is hoarded labor.
When equal quantities of any two articles
require an equal amount of labor to produce
them, they exchange exactly against one anoth-
er. If one requires more labor than the other,
a smaller quantity of the one exchanges against
a larger quantity of the other.
If it were otherwise, no one would bestow a
larger quantity of labor for a less return; and
the article requiring the most labor would cease
to be produced.
Exchangeable value, therefore, naturally de-
pends on cost of production.
Naturally, but not universally; for there are
j88 SUMMARY.
influences which cause temporary variations in
exchangeable value. §
These are, whatever circumstances affect
demand and supply.
But these can act only temporarily; because
the demand of any procurable article creates
supply ; and the factitious value conferred by
scarcity soon has an end.
When this end has arrived, cost of production
again determines exchangeable value. ..f
Its doing so may, therefore, stand as a general
rule. *
Though labor, immediate and hoarded, is the
regulator, it is not the measure of exchangeable
value: for the sufficient reason, that labor itself
is perpetually varying in quality and quantity,
from there being no fixed proportion between
immediate and hoarded labor.
Since labor, the primary regulator, cannot
serve as a measure of exchangeable value, none
of the products of labor can serve as such a
In eaSUl’e.
There is, therefore, no measure of exchange-
able value.
Such a measure is not needed; as a due regu-
lation of the supply of labor, and the allowance
s\JMMARY. 189
of free scope to the principle of competition
ensure sufficient stability of exchangeable value
for all practical purposes.
In these requisites are included security of
property, and freedom of exchange, to which
political tranquillity and legislative impartiality
are essential.
Price is the exponent of exchangeable value.
Natural or necessary price,—regulated by
cost of production,-includes the wages of the
laborer, and the profits of the capitalist.
Market price varies from natural price with
variations of demand and supply, and in propor-
tion to the oppressiveness of public burdens and
commercial restrictions.
The more nearly and permanently market
prices approach natural prices, the more pros-
perous is the state of commerce; and the two
most 93sential requisites to this prosperity are
social anquillity and legislative impartiality
THE END.
ENOCH INTORGANIS SONS'
º
sº - -º-
cºrt A NTD, sºu. A RE, A NID UFRIGHEIT IPTA Tros-
The demands now made by an educated musical public are so
exacting, that very few piano-forte manufacturers can produce instru-
ments that will stand the test which merit requires.
SoHMER & Co., as manufacturers, rank among this chosen few,
-who are acknowledged to be makers of standard instruments.
these days when many manufacturers urge the low price of their
wares, rather than their superior quality, as an inducement to pur-
chase, it may not be amiss to suggest that, in a piano, quality and
price are too inseparably joined, to expect the one without the other.
Every piano ought to be judged as to the quality of its tone, its
touch, and its workmanship; if any one of these is wanting in excel-
1ence, however good the others may be, the instrument will be imper-
fect. It is the combination of all these qualities in the highest degree
that constitutes the perfect piano, and it is such a combination, as has
given the SOHMERits honorable position with the trade and public;
º º
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MANUFACTURER3,
§ 149t) 155 East 14th St., N.Y.
THE BEST
WASHING COMPOUND
EVER INVENTED-
No Lady, Married or
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Housekeeping or Board-
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worthless imitations.





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