ontroller-General of the Finances; once Clerk in Thelusson's
Bank!

Chapter 1.2.VI.

Windbags.

So marches the world, in this its Paper Age, or Era of Hope. Not without
obstructions, war-explosions; which, however, heard from such distance,
are little other than a cheerful marching-music. If indeed that dark
living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger, five-and-twenty million strong,
under your feet,--were to begin playing!

For the present, however, consider Longchamp; now when Lent is ending,
and the glory of Paris and France has gone forth, as in annual wont.
Not to assist at Tenebris Masses, but to sun itself and show itself,
and salute the Young Spring. (Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ii. 51. Louvet,
Roman de Faublas, &c.) Manifold, bright-tinted, glittering with gold;
all through the Bois de Boulogne, in longdrawn variegated rows;--like
longdrawn living flower-borders, tulips, dahlias, lilies of the valley;
all in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages): pleasure of the
eye, and pride of life! So rolls and dances the Procession: steady, of
firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the foundations of the
world; not on mere heraldic parchment,--under which smoulders a lake of
fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have
ye found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the
whirlwind. Was it not, from of old, written: The wages of sin is death?

But at Longchamp, as elsewhere, we remark for one thing, that dame and
cavalier are waited on each by a kind of human familiar, named jokei.
Little elf, or imp; though young, already withered; with its withered
air of premature vice, of knowingness, of completed elf-hood: useful in
various emergencies. The name jokei (jockey) comes from the English; as
the thing also fancies that it does. Our Anglomania, in fact , is grown
considerable; prophetic of much. If France is to be free, why shall she
not, now when mad war is hushed, love neighbouring Freedom? Cultivated
men, your Dukes de Liancourt, de la Rochefoucault admire the English
Constitution, the English National Character; would import what of it
they can.

Of what is lighter, especially if it be light as wind, how much easier
the freightage! Non-Admiral Duke de Chartres (not yet d'Orleans or
Egalite) flies to and fro across the Strait; importing English Fashions;
this he, as hand-and-glove with an English Prince of Wales, is surely
qualified to do. Carriages and saddle