rude Jacobin Bailiffs made him
drink with them from his own wine-cellars, feast with them from his own
larder; and on the morrow morning, the miserable old man lies dead. This
is the end of Prime Minister, Cardinal Archbishop Lomenie de Brienne.
Flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as weighty a mischief; to have
a life as despicable-envied, an exit as frightful. Fired, as the phrase
is, with ambition: blown, like a kindled rag, the sport of winds,
not this way, not that way, but of all ways, straight towards such a
powder-mine,--which he kindled! Let us pity the hapless Lomenie; and
forgive him; and, as soon as possible, forget him.

Chapter 1.3.IX.

Burial with Bonfire.

Besenval, during these extraordinary operations, of Payment two-fifths
in Paper, and change of Prime Minister, had been out on a tour through
his District of Command; and indeed, for the last months, peacefully
drinking the waters of Contrexeville. Returning now, in the end of
August, towards Moulins, and 'knowing nothing,' he arrives one evening
at Langres; finds the whole Town in a state of uproar (grande rumeur).
Doubtless some sedition; a thing too common in these days! He alights
nevertheless; inquires of a 'man tolerably dressed,' what the matter
is?--"How?" answers the man, "you have not heard the news? The
Archbishop is thrown out, and M. Necker is recalled; and all is going to
go well!" (Besenval, iii. 366.)

Such rumeur and vociferous acclaim has risen round M. Necker, ever
from 'that day when he issued from the Queen's Apartments,' a nominated
Minister. It was on the 24th of August: 'the galleries of the Chateau,
the courts, the streets of Versailles; in few hours, the Capital; and,
as the news flew, all France, resounded with the cry of Vive le Roi!
Vive M. Necker! (Weber, i. 342.) In Paris indeed it unfortunately
got the length of turbulence.' Petards, rockets go off, in the Place
Dauphine, more than enough. A 'wicker Figure (Mannequin d'osier),'
in Archbishop's stole, made emblematically, three-fifths of it satin,
two-fifths of it paper, is promenaded, not in silence, to the popular
judgment-bar; is doomed; shriven by a mock Abbe de Vermond; then
solemnly consumed by fire, at the foot of Henri's Statue on the Pont
Neuf;--with such petarding and huzzaing that Chevalier Dubois and his
City-watch see good finally to make a charge (more or less ineffectual);
and there wanted not burning of sentry-boxes, forcing of guard-houses,
an