The French Revolution eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,095 pages of information about The French Revolution.

The French Revolution eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,095 pages of information about The French Revolution.
Committee’ shall have place at the Federation; on condition of telling their respective Peoples what they see there.  In the mean time, we invite them to the ’honours of the sitting, honneur de la seance.’  A long-flowing Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and utters articulate sounds:  but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the French dialect, (Moniteur, &c. (in Hist.  Parl. xii. 283).) his words are like spilt water; the thought he had in him remains conjectural to this day.

Anacharsis and Mankind accept the honours of the sitting; and have forthwith, as the old Newspapers still testify, the satisfaction to see several things.  First and chief, on the motion of Lameth, Lafayette, Saint-Fargeau and other Patriot Nobles, let the others repugn as they will:  all Titles of Nobility, from Duke to Esquire, or lower, are henceforth abolished.  Then, in like manner, Livery Servants, or rather the Livery of Servants.  Neither, for the future, shall any man or woman, self-styled noble, be ’incensed,’—­foolishly fumigated with incense, in Church; as the wont has been.  In a word, Feudalism being dead these ten months, why should her empty trappings and scutcheons survive?  The very Coats-of-arms will require to be obliterated;—­and yet Cassandra Marat on this and the other coach-panel notices that they ’are but painted-over,’ and threaten to peer through again.

So that henceforth de Lafayette is but the Sieur Motier, and Saint-Fargeau is plain Michel Lepelletier; and Mirabeau soon after has to say huffingly, “With your Riquetti you have set Europe at cross-purposes for three days.”  For his Counthood is not indifferent to this man; which indeed the admiring People treat him with to the last.  But let extreme Patriotism rejoice, and chiefly Anacharsis and Mankind; for now it seems to be taken for granted that one Adam is Father of us all!—­

Such was, in historical accuracy, the famed feat of Anacharsis.  Thus did the most extensive of Public Bodies find a sort of spokesman.  Whereby at least we may judge of one thing:  what a humour the once sniffing mocking City of Paris and Baron Clootz had got into; when such exhibition could appear a propriety, next door to a sublimity.  It is true, Envy did in after times, pervert this success of Anacharsis; making him, from incidental ‘Speaker of the Foreign-Nations Committee,’ claim to be official permanent ‘Speaker, Orateur, of the Human Species,’ which he only deserved to be; and alleging, calumniously, that his astrological Chaldeans, and the rest, were a mere French tag-rag-and-bobtail disguised for the nonce; and, in short, sneering 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.

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The French Revolution from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.