Swiss
Chateau-Vieux, dear to Patriotism ever since it refused fighting, or
was thought to refuse, in the Bastille days. Here unhappily all evil
influences seem to meet concentered; here, of all places, may jealousy
and heat evolve itself. These many months, accordingly, man has been set
against man, Washed against Unwashed; Patriot Soldier against Aristocrat
Captain, ever the more bitterly; and a long score of grudges has been
running up.

Nameable grudges, and likewise unnameable: for there is a punctual
nature in Wrath; and daily, were there but glances of the eye, tones
of the voice, and minutest commissions or omissions, it will jot down
somewhat, to account, under the head of sundries, which always swells
the sum-total. For example, in April last, in those times of preliminary
Federation, when National Guards and Soldiers were every where swearing
brotherhood, and all France was locally federating, preparing for the
grand National Feast of Pikes, it was observed that these Nanci Officers
threw cold water on the whole brotherly business; that they first hung
back from appearing at the Nanci Federation; then did appear, but in
mere redingote and undress, with scarcely a clean shirt on; nay that one
of them, as the National Colours flaunted by in that solemn moment, did,
without visible necessity, take occasion to spit. (Deux Amis, v. 217.)

Small 'sundries as per journal,' but then incessant ones! The Aristocrat
Municipality, pretending to be Constitutional, keeps mostly quiet; not
so the Daughter Society, the five thousand adult male Patriots of the
place, still less the five thousand female: not so the young, whiskered
or whiskerless, four-generation Noblesse in epaulettes; the grim Patriot
Swiss of Chateau-Vieux, effervescent infantry of Regiment du Roi, hot
troopers of Mestre-de-Camp! Walled Nanci, which stands so bright and
trim, with its straight streets, spacious squares, and Stanislaus'
Architecture, on the fruitful alluvium of the Meurthe; so bright, amid
the yellow cornfields in these Reaper-Months,--is inwardly but a den of
discord, anxiety, inflammability, not far from exploding. Let Bouille
look to it. If that universal military heat, which we liken to a vast
continent of smoking flax, do any where take fire, his beard, here in
Lorraine and Nanci, may the most readily of all get singed by it.

Bouille, for his part, is busy enough, but only with the general
superintendence; getting his pacified Salm,