neering and fleering at him
in her cold barren way; all which, however, he, the man he was, could
receive on thick enough panoply, or even rebound therefrom, and also go
his way.

Most extensive of Public Bodies, we may call it; and also the most
unexpected: for who could have thought to see All Nations in the
Tuileries Riding-Hall? But so it is; and truly as strange things may
happen when a whole People goes mumming and miming. Hast not thou
thyself perchance seen diademed Cleopatra, daughter of the Ptolemies,
pleading, almost with bended knee, in unheroic tea-parlour, or dimlit
retail-shop, to inflexible gross Burghal Dignitary, for leave to
reign and die; being dressed for it, and moneyless, with small
children;--while suddenly Constables have shut the Thespian barn, and
her Antony pleaded in vain? Such visual spectra flit across this Earth,
if the Thespian Stage be rudely interfered with: but much more, when,
as was said, Pit jumps on Stage, then is it verily, as in Herr Tieck's
Drama, a Verkehrte Welt, of World Topsyturvied!

Having seen the Human Species itself, to have seen the 'Dean of the
Human Species,' ceased now to be a miracle. Such 'Doyen du Genre Humain,
Eldest of Men,' had shewn himself there, in these weeks: Jean Claude
Jacob, a born Serf, deputed from his native Jura Mountains to thank the
National Assembly for enfranchising them. On his bleached worn face are
ploughed the furrowings of one hundred and twenty years. He has heard
dim patois-talk, of immortal Grand-Monarch victories; of a burnt
Palatinate, as he toiled and moiled to make a little speck of this Earth
greener; of Cevennes Dragoonings; of Marlborough going to the war. Four
generations have bloomed out, and loved and hated, and rustled off:
he was forty-six when Louis Fourteenth died. The Assembly, as one man,
spontaneously rose, and did reverence to the Eldest of the World; old
Jean is to take seance among them, honourably, with covered head.
He gazes feebly there, with his old eyes, on that new wonder-scene;
dreamlike to him, and uncertain, wavering amid fragments of old memories
and dreams. For Time is all growing unsubstantial, dreamlike; Jean's
eyes and mind are weary, and about to close,--and open on a far other
wonder-scene, which shall be real. Patriot Subscription, Royal Pension
was got for him, and he returned home glad; but in two months more he
left it all, and went on his unknown way. (Deux Amis, iv. iii.)

Chapter 2.1.XI