sit pensive, apprehensive, and pass rather a sleepless night. (Deux
Amis, iii. 165.) On the white charger, Lafayette, in the slowest
possible manner, going and coming, and eloquently haranguing among the
ranks, rolls onward with his thirty thousand. Saint-Antoine, with pike
and cannon, has preceded him; a mixed multitude, of all and of no arms,
hovers on his flanks and skirts; the country once more pauses agape:
Paris marche sur nous.

Chapter 1.7.VI.

To Versailles.

For, indeed, about this same moment, Maillard has halted his draggled
Menads on the last hill-top; and now Versailles, and the Chateau of
Versailles, and far and wide the inheritance of Royalty opens to
the wondering eye. From far on the right, over Marly and
Saint-Germains-en-Laye; round towards Rambouillet, on the left:
beautiful all; softly embosomed; as if in sadness, in the dim moist
weather! And near before us is Versailles, New and Old; with that broad
frondent Avenue de Versailles between,--stately-frondent, broad, three
hundred feet as men reckon, with four Rows of Elms; and then the Chateau
de Versailles, ending in royal Parks and Pleasances, gleaming lakelets,
arbours, Labyrinths, the Menagerie, and Great and Little Trianon.
High-towered dwellings, leafy pleasant places; where the gods of this
lower world abide: whence, nevertheless, black Care cannot be excluded;
whither Menadic Hunger is even now advancing, armed with pike-thyrsi!

Yes, yonder, Mesdames, where our straight frondent Avenue, joined, as
you note, by Two frondent brother Avenues from this hand and from that,
spreads out into Place Royale and Palace Forecourt; yonder is the
Salle des Menus. Yonder an august Assembly sits regenerating France.
Forecourt, Grand Court, Court of Marble, Court narrowing into Court
you may discern next, or fancy: on the extreme verge of which
that glass-dome, visibly glittering like a star of hope, is
the--Oeil-de-Boeuf! Yonder, or nowhere in the world, is bread baked for
us. But, O Mesdames, were not one thing good: That our cannons, with
Demoiselle Theroigne and all show of war, be put to the rear? Submission
beseems petitioners of a National Assembly; we are strangers in
Versailles,--whence, too audibly, there comes even now sound as
of tocsin and generale! Also to put on, if possible, a cheerful
countenance, hiding our sorrows; and even to sing? Sorrow, pitied of
the Heavens, is hateful, suspicious to the Earth.--So counsels shifty
Maillard