FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173  
174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   >>   >|  
an; a true Clerus (or Inheritance of God on Earth): but now?--They pass silently, with such _Cahiers_ as they have been able to redact; and none cries, God bless them. King Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits: still more Necker his Minister. Not so the Queen, on whom hope shines not steadily any more. Ill-fated Queen! Her hair is already gray with many cares and crosses; her first-born son is dying in these weeks: black falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name--ineffaceably while this generation lasts. Instead of _Vive la reine_, voices insult her with _Vive d'Orleans_. Of her queenly beauty little remains except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette; with thy quick, noble instincts, vehement glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store for thee, bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the future! And so in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France. Some toward honor and quick fire-consummation; most toward dishonor; not a few toward massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all toward Eternity!--So many heterogeneities cast together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments, to work out healing for a sick, Moribund System of Society! Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thousandfold complex a Society, ready to burst up from its infinite depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without life-rule for themselves,--other life-rule than a Gospel according to Jean Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without Duty round him; except it be "to make the Constitution." He is without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in the world. What further or better belief can be said to exist in these Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in heraldic scutcheons; in the divine right of Kings, in the divine right of Game-Destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173  
174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
divine
 

ineffaceably

 

Society

 
wisest
 
Belief
 
silently
 

Cahiers

 

Planet

 

depths

 

infinite


rulers
 
healers
 

errand

 

thousandfold

 

complex

 

System

 

Eternity

 

heterogeneities

 

desperation

 

emigration


dishonor
 

consummation

 

massacre

 
confusion
 

fermenting

 
healing
 
Moribund
 

Probably

 

developments

 

explosive


action

 

incalculable

 
counteraction
 
elective
 

affinities

 
strangest
 

Gospel

 

Twelve

 

Hundred

 

Inheritance


belief

 

beneath

 
plumed
 

Destroyers

 
canting
 
Clerus
 

feudal

 

heraldic

 
scutcheons
 

Jacques