128-141); Campan (ii.
70-85), &c. &c.)

Chapter 1.7.III.

Black Cockades.

But fancy what effect this Thyestes Repast and trampling on the National
Cockade, must have had in the Salle des Menus; in the famishing
Bakers'-queues at Paris! Nay such Thyestes Repasts, it would seem,
continue. Flandre has given its Counter-Dinner to the Swiss and Hundred
Swiss; then on Saturday there has been another.

Yes, here with us is famine; but yonder at Versailles is food; enough
and to spare! Patriotism stands in queue, shivering hungerstruck,
insulted by Patrollotism; while bloodyminded Aristocrats, heated with
excess of high living, trample on the National Cockade. Can the atrocity
be true? Nay, look: green uniforms faced with red; black cockades,--the
colour of Night! Are we to have military onfall; and death also by
starvation? For behold the Corbeil Cornboat, which used to come twice
a-day, with its Plaster-of-Paris meal, now comes only once. And the
Townhall is deaf; and the men are laggard and dastard!--At the Cafe de
Foy, this Saturday evening, a new thing is seen, not the last of its
kind: a woman engaged in public speaking. Her poor man, she says, was
put to silence by his District; their Presidents and Officials would
not let him speak. Wherefore she here with her shrill tongue will
speak; denouncing, while her breath endures, the Corbeil-Boat, the
Plaster-of-Paris bread, sacrilegious Opera-dinners, green uniforms,
Pirate Aristocrats, and those black cockades of theirs!--

Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least, to vanish. Them
Patrollotism itself will not protect. Nay, sharp-tempered 'M. Tassin,'
at the Tuileries parade on Sunday morning, forgets all National military
rule; starts from the ranks, wrenches down one black cockade which
is swashing ominous there; and tramples it fiercely into the soil of
France. Patrollotism itself is not without suppressed fury. Also the
Districts begin to stir; the voice of President Danton reverberates in
the Cordeliers: People's-Friend Marat has flown to Versailles and back
again;--swart bird, not of the halcyon kind! (Camille's Newspaper,
Revolutions de Paris et de Brabant in Histoire Parlementaire, iii.
108.)

And so Patriot meets promenading Patriot, this Sunday; and sees his
own grim care reflected on the face of another. Groups, in spite of
Patrollotism, which is not so alert as usual, fluctuate deliberative:
groups on the Bridges, on the Quais, at the patrio