t.
Parl. xii. 131, 141; xiii. 114, 417.) Add Hunger too: for Bread, always
dear, is getting dearer: not so much as Sugar can be had; for good
reasons. Poor Simoneau, Mayor of Etampes, in this Northern region,
hanging out his Red Flag in some riot of grains, is trampled to death by
a hungry exasperated People. What a trade this of Mayor, in these times!
Mayor of Saint-Denis hung at the Lanterne, by Suspicion and Dyspepsia,
as we saw long since; Mayor of Vaison, as we saw lately, buried before
dead; and now this poor Simoneau, the Tanner, of Etampes,--whom legal
Constitutionalism will not forget.

With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily what
they call dechire, torn asunder this poor country: France and all that
is French. For, over seas too come bad news. In black Saint-Domingo,
before that variegated Glitter in the Champs Elysees was lit for an
Accepted Constitution, there had risen, and was burning contemporary
with it, quite another variegated Glitter and nocturnal Fulgor, had
we known it: of molasses and ardent-spirits; of sugar-boileries,
plantations, furniture, cattle and men: skyhigh; the Plain of Cap
Francais one huge whirl of smoke and flame!

What a change here, in these two years; since that first 'Box of
Tricolor Cockades' got through the Custom-house, and atrabiliar Creoles
too rejoiced that there was a levelling of Bastilles! Levelling is
comfortable, as we often say: levelling, yet only down to oneself. Your
pale-white Creoles, have their grievances:--and your yellow Quarteroons?
And your dark-yellow Mulattoes? And your Slaves soot-black? Quarteroon
Oge, Friend of our Parisian Brissotin Friends of the Blacks, felt, for
his share too, that Insurrection was the most sacred of duties. So the
tricolor Cockades had fluttered and swashed only some three months on
the Creole hat, when Oge's signal-conflagrations went aloft; with the
voice of rage and terror. Repressed, doomed to die, he took black powder
or seedgrains in the hollow of his hand, this Oge; sprinkled a film
of white ones on the top, and said to his Judges, "Behold they are
white;"--then shook his hand, and said "Where are the Whites, Ou sont
les Blancs?"

So now, in the Autumn of 1791, looking from the sky-windows of Cap
Francais, thick clouds of smoke girdle our horizon, smoke in the day,
in the night fire; preceded by fugitive shrieking white women, by Terror
and Rumour. Black demonised squadrons are massacring and harry