omed in that other far-seen
craft, to be a maker only of world-follies, unrealities; things self
destructive, which no mortal hammering could rivet into coherence!

Poor Louis is not without insight, nor even without the elements of
will; some sharpness of temper, spurting at times from a stagnating
character. If harmless inertness could save him, it were well; but he
will slumber and painfully dream, and to do aught is not given him.
Royalist Antiquarians still shew the rooms where Majesty and suite,
in these extraordinary circumstances, had their lodging. Here sat the
Queen; reading,--for she had her library brought hither, though the
King refused his; taking vehement counsel of the vehement uncounselled;
sorrowing over altered times; yet with sure hope of better: in her young
rosy Boy, has she not the living emblem of hope! It is a murky, working
sky; yet with golden gleams--of dawn, or of deeper meteoric night? Here
again this chamber, on the other side of the main entrance, was the
King's: here his Majesty breakfasted, and did official work; here
daily after breakfast he received the Queen; sometimes in pathetic
friendliness; sometimes in human sulkiness, for flesh is weak; and, when
questioned about business would answer: "Madame, your business is with
the children." Nay, Sire, were it not better you, your Majesty's self,
took the children? So asks impartial History; scornful that the thicker
vessel was not also the stronger; pity-struck for the porcelain-clay of
humanity rather than for the tile-clay,--though indeed both were broken!

So, however, in this Medicean Tuileries, shall the French King and Queen
now sit, for one-and-forty months; and see a wild-fermenting France
work out its own destiny, and theirs. Months bleak, ungenial, of rapid
vicissitude; yet with a mild pale splendour, here and there: as of an
April that were leading to leafiest Summer; as of an October that led
only to everlasting Frost. Medicean Tuileries, how changed since it was
a peaceful Tile field! Or is the ground itself fate-stricken, accursed:
an Atreus' Palace; for that Louvre window is still nigh, out of which a
Capet, whipt of the Furies, fired his signal of the Saint Bartholomew!
Dark is the way of the Eternal as mirrored in this world of Time: God's
way is in the sea, and His path in the great deep.

Chapter 2.1.II.

In the Salle de Manege.

To believing Patriots, however, it is now clear, that the Constitution
will march