in perpetual memento of revenge.  Mutineer Deserters roam the woods; have to demand charity at the musket’s end.  All is dissolution, mutual rancour, gloom and despair:—­till National-Assembly Commissioners arrive, with a steady gentle flame of Constitutionalism in their hearts; who gently lift up the down-trodden, gently pull down the too uplifted; reinstate the Daughter Society, recall the Mutineer Deserter; gradually levelling, strive in all wise ways to smooth and soothe.  With such gradual mild levelling on the one side; as with solemn funeral-service, Cassolettes, Courts-Martial, National thanks,—­all that Officiality can do is done.  The buttonhole will drop its flat ball; the black ashes, so far as may be, get green again.

This is the ‘Affair of Nanci;’ by some called the ’Massacre of Nanci;’—­properly speaking, the unsightly wrong-side of that thrice glorious Feast of Pikes, the right-side of which formed a spectacle for the very gods.  Right-side and wrong lie always so near:  the one was in July, in August the other!  Theatres, the theatres over in London, are bright with their pasteboard simulacrum of that ’Federation of the French People,’ brought out as Drama:  this of Nanci, we may say, though not played in any pasteboard Theatre, did for many months enact itself, and even walk spectrally—­in all French heads.  For the news of it fly pealing through all France; awakening, in town and village, in clubroom, messroom, to the utmost borders, some mimic reflex or imaginative repetition of the business; always with the angry questionable assertion:  It was right; It was wrong.  Whereby come controversies, duels, embitterment, vain jargon; the hastening forward, the augmenting and intensifying of whatever new explosions lie in store for us.

Meanwhile, at this cost or at that, the mutiny, as we say, is stilled.  The French Army has neither burst up in universal simultaneous delirium; nor been at once disbanded, put an end to, and made new again.  It must die in the chronic manner, through years, by inches; with partial revolts, as of Brest Sailors or the like, which dare not spread; with men unhappy, insubordinate; officers unhappier, in Royalist moustachioes, taking horse, singly or in bodies, across the Rhine:  (See Dampmartin, i. 249, &c. &c.) sick dissatisfaction, sick disgust on both sides; the Army moribund, fit for no duty:—­till it do, in that unexpected manner, Phoenix-like, with long throes, get both dead and newborn; then start forth strong, nay stronger and even strongest.

Thus much was the brave Bouille hitherto fated to do.  Wherewith let him again fade into dimness; and at Metz or the rural Cantonments, assiduously drilling, mysteriously diplomatising, in scheme within scheme, hover as formerly a faint shadow, the hope of Royalty.

BOOK 2.III.

THE TUILERIES

Chapter 2.3.I.