But how wise, in all cases, to ‘husband your fire;’ to keep it deep down, rather, as genial radical-heat!  Explosions, the forciblest, and never so well directed, are questionable; far oftenest futile, always frightfully wasteful:  but think of a man, of a Nation of men, spending its whole stock of fire in one artificial Firework!  So have we seen fond weddings (for individuals, like Nations, have their Hightides) celebrated with an outburst of triumph and deray, at which the elderly shook their heads.  Better had a serious cheerfulness been; for the enterprise was great.  Fond pair! the more triumphant ye feel, and victorious over terrestrial evil, which seems all abolished, the wider-eyed will your disappointment be to find terrestrial evil still extant.  “And why extant?” will each of you cry:  “Because my false mate has played the traitor:  evil was abolished; I meant faithfully, and did, or would have done.”  Whereby the oversweet moon of honey changes itself into long years of vinegar; perhaps divulsive vinegar, like Hannibal’s.

Shall we say then, the French Nation has led Royalty, or wooed and teased poor Royalty to lead her, to the hymeneal Fatherland’s Altar, in such oversweet manner; and has, most thoughtlessly, to celebrate the nuptials with due shine and demonstration,—­burnt her bed?

BOOK 2.II.

NANCI

Chapter 2.2.I.

Bouille.

Dimly visible, at Metz on the North-Eastern frontier, a certain brave Bouille, last refuge of Royalty in all straits and meditations of flight, has for many months hovered occasionally in our eye; some name or shadow of a brave Bouille:  let us now, for a little, look fixedly at him, till he become a substance and person for us.  The man himself is worth a glance; his position and procedure there, in these days, will throw light on many things.

For it is with Bouille as with all French Commanding Officers; only in a more emphatic degree.  The grand National Federation, we already guess, was but empty sound, or worse:  a last loudest universal Hep-hep-hurrah, with full bumpers, in that National Lapithae-feast of Constitution-making; as in loud denial of the palpably existing; as if, with hurrahings, you would shut out notice of the inevitable already knocking at the gates!  Which new National bumper, one may say, can but deepen the drunkenness; and so, the louder it swears Brotherhood, will the sooner and the more surely lead to Cannibalism.  Ah, under that fraternal shine and clangour, what a deep world of irreconcileable discords lie momentarily assuaged, damped down for one moment!  Respectable military Federates have barely got home to their quarters; and the inflammablest, ‘dying, burnt up with liquors, and kindness,’ has not yet got extinct; the shine is hardly out of men’s eyes, and still blazes filling all men’s memories,—­when your discords burst forth again very considerably darker than ever.  Let us look at Bouille, and see how.