Chapter 2.1.XII.

Sound and Smoke.

And so now, in spite of plotting Aristocrats, lazy hired spademen, and almost of Destiny itself (for there has been much rain), the Champ-de-Mars, on the 13th of the month is fairly ready; trimmed, rammed, buttressed with firm masonry; and Patriotism can stroll over it admiring; and as it were rehearsing, for in every head is some unutterable image of the morrow.  Pray Heaven there be not clouds.  Nay what far worse cloud is this, of a misguided Municipality that talks of admitting Patriotism, to the solemnity, by tickets!  Was it by tickets we were admitted to the work; and to what brought the work?  Did we take the Bastille by tickets?  A misguided Municipality sees the error; at late midnight, rolling drums announce to Patriotism starting half out of its bed-clothes, that it is to be ticketless.  Pull down thy night-cap therefore; and, with demi-articulate grumble, significant of several things, go pacified to sleep again.  Tomorrow is Wednesday morning; unforgetable among the fasti of the world.

The morning comes, cold for a July one; but such a festivity would make Greenland smile.  Through every inlet of that National Amphitheatre (for it is a league in circuit, cut with openings at due intervals), floods-in the living throng; covers without tumult space after space.  The Ecole Militaire has galleries and overvaulting canopies, where Carpentry and Painting have vied, for the upper Authorities; triumphal arches, at the Gate by the River, bear inscriptions, if weak, yet well-meant, and orthodox.  Far aloft, over the Altar of the Fatherland, on their tall crane standards of iron, swing pensile our antique Cassolettes or pans of incense; dispensing sweet incense-fumes,—­unless for the Heathen Mythology, one sees not for whom.  Two hundred thousand Patriotic Men; and, twice as good, one hundred thousand Patriotic Women, all decked and glorified as one can fancy, sit waiting in this Champ-de-Mars.

What a picture:  that circle of bright-eyed Life, spread up there, on its thirty-seated Slope; leaning, one would say, on the thick umbrage of those Avenue-Trees, for the stems of them are hidden by the height; and all beyond it mere greenness of Summer Earth, with the gleams of waters, or white sparklings of stone-edifices:  little circular enamel-picture in the centre of such a vase—­of emerald!  A vase not empty:  the Invalides Cupolas want not their population, nor the distant Windmills of Montmartre; on remotest steeple and invisible village belfry, stand men with spy-glasses.  On the heights of Chaillot are many-coloured undulating groups; round and far on, over all the circling heights that embosom Paris, it is as one more or less peopled Amphitheatre; which the eye grows dim with measuring.  Nay heights, as was before hinted, have cannon; and a floating-battery of cannon is on the Seine.  When eye fails, ear shall serve; and all France properly