resist? scornfully cry Messeigneurs.  As a meal-mob may!  They have sat quiet, these five generations, submitting to all.  Their Mercier declared, in these very years, that a Parisian revolt was henceforth ‘impossible.’ (Mercier, Tableau de Paris, vi. 22.) Stand by the royal Declaration, of the Twenty-third of June.  The Nobles of France, valorous, chivalrous as of old, will rally round us with one heart;—­and as for this which you call Third Estate, and which we call canaille of unwashed Sansculottes, of Patelins, Scribblers, factious Spouters,—­brave Broglie, ’with a whiff of grapeshot (salve de canons), if need be, will give quick account of it.  Thus reason they:  on their cloudy Ida; hidden from men,—­men also hidden from them.

Good is grapeshot, Messeigneurs, on one condition:  that the shooter also were made of metal!  But unfortunately he is made of flesh; under his buffs and bandoleers your hired shooter has instincts, feelings, even a kind of thought.  It is his kindred, bone of his bone, this same canaille that shall be whiffed; he has brothers in it, a father and mother,—­living on meal-husks and boiled grass.  His very doxy, not yet ‘dead i’ the spital,’ drives him into military heterodoxy; declares that if he shed Patriot blood, he shall be accursed among men.  The soldier, who has seen his pay stolen by rapacious Foulons, his blood wasted by Soubises, Pompadours, and the gates of promotion shut inexorably on him if he were not born noble,—­is himself not without griefs against you.  Your cause is not the soldier’s cause; but, as would seem, your own only, and no other god’s nor man’s.

For example, the world may have heard how, at Bethune lately, when there rose some ‘riot about grains,’ of which sort there are so many, and the soldiers stood drawn out, and the word ’Fire! was given,—­not a trigger stirred; only the butts of all muskets rattled angrily against the ground; and the soldiers stood glooming, with a mixed expression of countenance;—­till clutched ’each under the arm of a patriot householder,’ they were all hurried off, in this manner, to be treated and caressed, and have their pay increased by subscription! (Histoire Parlementaire.)

Neither have the Gardes Francaises, the best regiment of the line, shown any promptitude for street-firing lately.  They returned grumbling from Reveillon’s; and have not burnt a single cartridge since; nay, as we saw, not even when bid.  A dangerous humour dwells in these Gardes.  Notable men too, in their way!  Valadi the Pythagorean was, at one time, an officer of theirs.  Nay, in the ranks, under the three-cornered felt and cockade, what hard heads may there not be, and reflections going on,—­unknown to the public!  One head of the hardest we do now discern there:  on the shoulders of a certain Sergeant Hoche.  Lazare Hoche, that is the name of him; he used to be about the Versailles Royal Stables, nephew of a poor herbwoman; a handy lad; exceedingly addicted to reading.  He is now Sergeant Hoche, and can rise no farther:  he lays out his pay in rushlights, and cheap editions of books. (Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans, Londres (Paris), 1800, ii. 198.)