Well, if in this way
the smoky heat be cooled down; if it be not, as we say, ventilated
over-much, or, by sparks and collision somewhere, sent up!

Chapter 2.2.IV.

Arrears at Nanci.

We are to remark, however, that of all districts, this of Bouille's
seems the inflammablest. It was always to Bouille and Metz that
Royalty would fly: Austria lies near; here more than elsewhere must
the disunited People look over the borders, into a dim sea of Foreign
Politics and Diplomacies, with hope or apprehension, with mutual
exasperation.

It was but in these days that certain Austrian troops, marching
peaceably across an angle of this region, seemed an Invasion realised;
and there rushed towards Stenai, with musket on shoulder, from all the
winds, some thirty thousand National Guards, to inquire what the matter
was. (Moniteur, Seance du 9 Aout 1790.) A matter of mere diplomacy it
proved; the Austrian Kaiser, in haste to get to Belgium, had bargained
for this short cut. The infinite dim movement of European Politics waved
a skirt over these spaces, passing on its way; like the passing shadow
of a condor; and such a winged flight of thirty thousand, with mixed
cackling and crowing, rose in consequence! For, in addition to all, this
people, as we said, is much divided: Aristocrats abound; Patriotism has
both Aristocrats and Austrians to watch. It is Lorraine, this region;
not so illuminated as old France: it remembers ancient Feudalisms; nay,
within man's memory, it had a Court and King of its own, or indeed the
splendour of a Court and King, without the burden. Then, contrariwise,
the Mother Society, which sits in the Jacobins Church at Paris, has
Daughters in the Towns here; shrill-tongued, driven acrid: consider how
the memory of good King Stanislaus, and ages of Imperial Feudalism, may
comport with this New acrid Evangel, and what a virulence of discord
there may be! In all which, the Soldiery, officers on one side, private
men on the other, takes part, and now indeed principal part; a Soldiery,
moreover, all the hotter here as it lies the denser, the frontier
Province requiring more of it.

So stands Lorraine: but the capital City, more especially so. The
pleasant City of Nanci, which faded Feudalism loves, where King
Stanislaus personally dwelt and shone, has an Aristocrat Municipality,
and then also a Daughter Society: it has some forty thousand divided
souls of population; and three large Regiments, one of which is