Like fated Eteocles-Polynices Brothers, embracing, though in vain; weeping that they must not love, that they must hate only, and die by each other’s hands!  Or say, like doomed Familiar Spirits; ordered, by Art Magic under penalties, to do a harder than twist ropes of sand:  ’to make the Constitution march.’  If the Constitution would but march!  Alas, the Constitution will not stir.  It falls on its face; they tremblingly lift it on end again:  march, thou gold Constitution!  The Constitution will not march.—­“He shall march, by—!” said kind Uncle Toby, and even swore.  The Corporal answered mournfully:  “He will never march in this world.”

A constitution, as we often say, will march when it images, if not the old Habits and Beliefs of the Constituted; then accurately their Rights, or better indeed, their Mights;—­for these two, well-understood, are they not one and the same?  The old Habits of France are gone:  her new Rights and Mights are not yet ascertained, except in Paper-theorem; nor can be, in any sort, till she have tried.  Till she have measured herself, in fell death-grip, and were it in utmost preternatural spasm of madness, with Principalities and Powers, with the upper and the under, internal and external; with the Earth and Tophet and the very Heaven!  Then will she know.—­Three things bode ill for the marching of this French Constitution:  the French People; the French King; thirdly the French Noblesse and an assembled European World.

Chapter 2.5.III.

Avignon.

But quitting generalities, what strange Fact is this, in the far South-West, towards which the eyes of all men do now, in the end of October, bend themselves?  A tragical combustion, long smoking and smouldering unluminous, has now burst into flame there.

Hot is that Southern Provencal blood:  alas, collisions, as was once said, must occur in a career of Freedom; different directions will produce such; nay different velocities in the same direction will!  To much that went on there History, busied elsewhere, would not specially give heed:  to troubles of Uzez, troubles of Nismes, Protestant and Catholic, Patriot and Aristocrat; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpelier, Arles; to Aristocrat Camp of Jales, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity, now fading pale-dim, then always again glowing forth deep-hued (in the Imagination mainly);—­ominous magical, ’an Aristocrat picture of war done naturally!’ All this was a tragical deadly combustion, with plot and riot, tumult by night and by day; but a dark combustion, not luminous, not noticed; which now, however, one cannot help noticing.

Above all places, the unluminous combustion in Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin was fierce.  Papal Avignon, with its Castle rising sheer over the Rhone-stream; beautifullest Town, with its purple vines and gold-orange groves:  why must foolish old rhyming Rene, the last Sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and Gold Tiara, not rather to Louis Eleventh with the Leaden Virgin in his hatband?  For good and for evil!  Popes, Anti-popes, with their pomp, have dwelt in that Castle of Avignon rising sheer over the Rhone-stream:  there Laura de Sade went to hear mass; her Petrarch twanging and singing by the Fountain of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner.  This was in the old days.