onorous Santerre, parades officially behind her
Majesty's chair. Our high dignitaries, all fled over the Rhine: nothing
now to be gained at Court; but hopes, for which life itself must be
risked! Obscure busy men frequent the back stairs; with hearsays, wind
projects, un fruitful fanfaronades. Young Royalists, at the Theatre
de Vaudeville, 'sing couplets;' if that could do any thing. Royalists
enough, Captains on furlough, burnt-out Seigneurs, may likewise be met
with, 'in the Cafe de Valois, and at Meot the Restaurateur's.' There
they fan one another into high loyal glow; drink, in such wine as can
be procured, confusion to Sansculottism; shew purchased dirks, of
an improved structure, made to order; and, greatly daring, dine.
(Dampmartin, ii. 129.) It is in these places, in these months, that the
epithet Sansculotte first gets applied to indigent Patriotism; in
the last age we had Gilbert Sansculotte, the indigent Poet. (Mercier,
Nouveau Paris, iii. 204.) Destitute-of-Breeches: a mournful Destitution;
which however, if Twenty millions share it, may become more effective
than most Possessions!

Meanwhile, amid this vague dim whirl of fanfaronades, wind-projects,
poniards made to order, there does disclose itself one punctum-saliens
of life and feasibility: the finger of Mirabeau! Mirabeau and the Queen
of France have met; have parted with mutual trust! It is strange;
secret as the Mysteries; but it is indubitable. Mirabeau took horse, one
evening; and rode westward, unattended,--to see Friend Claviere in that
country house of his? Before getting to Claviere's, the much-musing
horseman struck aside to a back gate of the Garden of Saint-Cloud: some
Duke d'Aremberg, or the like, was there to introduce him; the Queen was
not far: on a 'round knoll, rond point, the highest of the Garden of
Saint-Cloud,' he beheld the Queen's face; spake with her, alone, under
the void canopy of Night. What an interview; fateful secret for us,
after all searching; like the colloquies of the gods! (Campan, ii.
c. 17.) She called him 'a Mirabeau:' elsewhere we read that she 'was
charmed with him,' the wild submitted Titan; as indeed it is among
the honourable tokens of this high ill-fated heart that no mind of any
endowment, no Mirabeau, nay no Barnave, no Dumouriez, ever came face
to face with her but, in spite of all prepossessions, she was forced to
recognise it, to draw nigh to it, with trust. High imperial heart; with
the instinctive attr