French Revolution Volume 1 the Bastille — 1.7.III. Black Cockades.
Chapter 1.
7. III.
Black Cockades.
But fancy what effect this Thyestes Repast and trampling on the National Cockade, must have had in the _Salle des Menus;_ in the famishing Bakers’-queues at Paris!
Nay such Thyestes Repasts, it would seem, continue.
Flandre has given its Counter-Dinner to the Swiss and Hundred Swiss; then on Saturday there has been another.
Yes, here with us is famine; but yonder at Versailles is food;
enough and to spare!
Patriotism stands in queue, shivering hungerstruck, insulted by Patrollotism; while bloodyminded Aristocrats, heated with excess of high living, trample on the National Cockade.
Can the atrocity be true?
Nay, look: green uniforms faced with red; black cockades,—the colour of Night!
Are we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation?
For behold the Corbeil Cornboat, which used to come twice a-day, with its Plaster-of-Paris meal, now comes only once.
And the Townhall is deaf; and the men are laggard and dastard!
—At the Café de Foy, this Saturday evening, a new thing is seen, not the last of its kind: a woman engaged in public speaking.
Her poor man, she says, was put to silence by his District; their Presidents and Officials would not let him speak.
Wherefore she here with her shrill tongue will speak; denouncing, while her breath endures, the Corbeil-Boat, the Plaster-of-Paris bread, sacrilegious Opera-dinners, green uniforms, Pirate Aristocrats, and those black cockades of theirs!
— Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least, to vanish.
Them Patrollotism itself will not protect.
Nay, sharp-tempered “M. Tassin,” at the Tuileries parade on Sunday morning, forgets all National military rule; starts from the ranks, wrenches down one black cockade which is swashing ominous there; and tramples it fiercely into the soil of France.
Patrollotism itself is not without suppressed fury.
Also the Districts begin to stir; the voice of President Danton reverberates in the Cordeliers: People’s-Friend Marat has flown to Versailles and back again;—swart bird, not of the halcyon kind!
[232] And so Patriot meets promenading Patriot, this Sunday; and sees his own grim care reflected on the face of another.
Groups, in spite of Patrollotism, which is not so alert as usual, fluctuate deliberative: groups on the Bridges, on the Quais, at the patriotic Cafés. And ever as any black cockade may emerge, rises the many-voiced growl and bark: _À bas_, Down!
All black cockades are ruthlessly plucked off: one individual picks his up again;
kisses it, attempts to refix it; but a “hundred canes start into the air,” and he desists.
Still worse went it with another individual; doomed, by extempore _Plebiscitum_, to the Lanterne;
saved, with difficulty, by some active _Corps-de-Garde_.
—Lafayette sees signs of an effervescence; which he doubles his Patrols, doubles his diligence, to prevent.
So passes Sunday, the 4th of October 1789. Sullen is the male heart, repressed by Patrollotism; vehement is the female, irrepressible.
The public-speaking woman at the Palais Royal was not the only speaking one:—Men know not what the pantry is, when it grows empty, only house-mothers know.
O women, wives of men that will only calculate and not act!
Patrollotism is strong; but Death, by starvation and military onfall, is stronger.
Patrollotism represses male Patriotism: but female Patriotism?
Will Guards named National thrust their bayonets into the bosoms of women?
Such thought, or rather such dim unshaped raw-material of a thought, ferments universally under the female night-cap; and, by earliest daybreak, on slight hint, will explode.
