-cooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their trivial quotidian
cries, the world wags on, as if this were a common day. In the
coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme, Patriot shook hands with
Patriot in a more cordial manner than usual. Not till some days after,
according to Mercier, did public men see what a grave thing it was.

A grave thing it indisputably is; and will have consequences. On the
morrow morning, Roland, so long steeped to the lips in disgust and
chagrin, sends in his demission. His accounts lie all ready, correct
in black-on-white to the utmost farthing: these he wants but to have
audited, that he might retire to remote obscurity, to the country and
his books. They will never be audited, those accounts: he will never
get retired thither.

It was on Tuesday that Roland demitted. On Thursday comes Lepelletier
St.-Fargeau's Funeral, and passage to the Pantheon of Great Men.
Notable as the wild pageant of a winter day. The Body is borne aloft,
half-bare; the winding-sheet disclosing the death-wound; sabre and
bloody clothes parade themselves; a "lugubrious music" wailing harsh
naeniae. Oak-crowns shower down from windows; President Vergniaud walks
there, with Convention, with Jacobin Society, and all Patriots of
every color, all mourning brother-like.

Notable also for another thing this Burial of Lepelletier; it was the
last act these men ever did with concert! All parties and figures of
Opinion, that agitate this distracted France and its Convention, now
stand, as it were, face to face, and dagger to dagger; the King's
Life, round which they all struck and battled, being hurled down.
Dumouriez, conquering Holland, growls ominous discontent, at the head
of Armies. Men say Dumouriez will have a King; that young D'Orleans
Egalite shall be his King. Deputy Fauchet, in the Journal des Amis,
curses his day more bitterly than Job did; invokes the poniards of
Regicides, of "Arras Vipers" or Robespierres, of Pluto Dantons, of
horrid Butchers Legendre and Simulacra d'Herbois, to send him swiftly
to another world than _theirs_. This is Te-Deum Fauchet, of the
Bastille Victory, of the Cercle Social. Sharp was the death-hail
rattling round one's Flag-of-truce, on that Bastille day: but it was
soft to such wreckage of high Hope as this; one's New Golden Era going
down in leaden dross, and sulphurous black of the Everlasting
Darkness!

BLISS CARMAN

(1861-)

BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

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