400 ALL NATURE PARTAKES OF THE BANQUET OF LIBERTY. brotherly embrace the great family of France, it is already contained in our hearts.. Ye sacred rivers, ye holy islands, where our altar was erected, may your waters, murmuring beneath the current of the spirit, go and proclaim to every sea and every nation, that, to-day, at the solemn banquet of liberty, we would not have broken bread, without having invited them, and that on this day of happiness, all humanity was present in the soul and wishes of France! "Thus ended the happiest day of our life." This sentence, which the members of a village confederation wrote, at the end of their memorial, on the evening of their festival, I was very near writing myself in concluding this chapter. It is ended, and nothing like it is in store for me. I leave here an irreparable moment of my life, a part of myself, which, I plainly feel, will remain here and accompany me no more: I seem to depart poor and needy. How many things that I wished to add, I have been obliged to sacrifice! I have not indulged in a single note; the least would have caused an interruption, and have been perhaps discordant, at this sacred moment. And yet it would have been necessary to give several; a number of interesting particulars presented themselves, and ought to have been inserted. Several of those memorials deserved to be printed entire (those of the Romans, Maubec, Teste-de-Buche, Saint-Jean-du-Gard, &c.). The speeches are less valuable than the memorials; yet many of these are affecting; the text that recurs the most frequently, is that of the patriarch Simeon : "Now I may die." See among others the procès-verbal of Regnianwez (Renwez?) near Rocroi. Each document taken singly is weak; but the whole possesses an extraordinary charm: the greatest diversity (provincial, local, urban, rural, &c.) in the most perfect unity. Each country performs this great act of unity with its special originality. The fédérés of Quimper crown themselves with the oakleaves of Brittany; the inhabitants of Romans (in Dauphiné), on the confines of the South, place a palm in the hand of the handsome maiden who leads the procession. A courageous DIVERS PARTICULARS. 401 serenity, order, common sense, and a good heart, are very conspicuous in these confederations of Dauphiné. In those of Brittany, there is a character of strength, of impassioned gravity, a seriousness allied to the tragic; they feel that this is not child's play, and that they are in presence of the enemy. In the mountains of Jura, in the country of the last of the serfs, the character is that of amazement, the delight of deliverance, on beholding themselves exalted from slavery to liberty, more than free, citizens! Frenchmen! superior to all Europe." They founded an anniversary of the sacred night of the 4th of August. 66 What is extremely affecting is the prodigious effort of good will made by this people, so little prepared, to express the deep feeling that entirely filled their hearts. The inhabitants of Navarreins, in the Pyrenees, poor people, as they themselves say, lost in their mountains, devoid of every resource, not having even a community of language, lisp the French of the north, and offer to their country their hearts, their very impotency. One of the most clownish memorials (who would believe it?) is that of a commune near Versailles and SaintGermain. The rough common paper betokens extreme poverty, and the writing an utterly barbarous ignorance: most of these memorialists can make only a cross for their signatures; but yet they all sign one way or other; no one seems willing to be dispensed from signing; after the mother's name, you see the child's, the grand-daughter's, &c. Their chief study, in general, in which they do not always happily succeed, is to find out visible signs,-symbols,-to express their new faith. At Dôle, the sacred fire, with which the priest was to burn incense on the altar of the country, was, by means of a burning-glass, extracted from the sun by the hand of a young maiden. At Saint-Pierre (near Crépy), at Mello (Oise), and at Saint Maurice (Charente), they placed the law itself and the decrees of the Assembly upon the altar; at Mello, it was carried thither in an arch of alliance. At Saint Maurice, it was laid upon a map of the world which served to carpet the altar, and placed with the sword, the plough, and the scales, between two cannon-balls of the Bastile. In other places, a happier inspiration leads them to choose 402 DIVERS PARTICULARS. entirely human symbols of union; marriages celebrated at the altar of the country, baptisms, or the adoption of children by communes or clubs. Often also, the women go to perform a funeral service for those who had been killed at the taking of the Bastille. Add to this immense sums given in charity, and distributions of provisions; or, far better than charity, provisions placed in common, and tables laid for everybody. The most touching proof of goodness of heart that I have met with, is a subscription (at Pleyssade, near Bergerac) raised by a few soldiers among themselves, amounting to the enormous sum (relatively to the means of these poor people) of one hundred and twenty francs! for a widow of a man killed at the Bastille ! At Saint-Jean-du-Gard, the ceremony ends "with a solemn reconciliation of those who had quarrelled." At Lous-leSaulnier, they drank to "All men, even our enemies, whom we swear to love and defend ! CHAPTER XII. THE NEW RELIGION.-GENERAL CONFEDERATION, The Amazement and Emotion of all Nations at the Spectacle afforded by France. Great Confederation of Lyons (May 30th, 1790). France demands a General Confederation (June).-The Song of the Confederates. Paris prepares for them the Champ-de-Mars.-The Assembly abolishes Hereditary Nobility (June 19th).—It had already abolished the Christian Principle of the Inheritance of Crime.-It receives the Deputies of the Human Race.-Confederation of Kings against that of the People.-General Confederation of France at Paris (July 14th, 1790). The impulse of France, at once pacific and warlike. THIS faith, this candour, this immense impulse of concord, after a whole century of dispute, was a subject of great astonishment for every nation; it was like a wonderful dream; and they all remained dumb and affected. Several of our confederations had imagined a touching symbol of union, that of celebrating marriages at the altar of the native land. Confederation itself, a union of France with THE SYMPATHY OF NATIONS. 403 France, seemed a prophetic symbol of the future alliance of nations, of the general marriage of the world. Another symbol, no less affecting, appeared at these festivals. Occasionally they placed upon the altar a little child whom everybody adopted, and who, endowed with the gifts, the prayers, the tears of the whole assembly, became the relation of everybody. That child upon the altar is France, with all the world surrounding her. In her, the common child of nations, they all feel themselves united, and all participating heartily in her future destiny, are anxiously praying around her, full of fear and hope. Not one of them beholds her without weeping. How Italy wept! and Poland! and Ireland! (Ah! sister sufferers, remember that day for ever!)... Every oppressed nation, unmindful of its slavery at the sight of infant liberty, exclaimed: "In thee I am free! * In presence of that miracle, Germany remained lost in thought,-in an ecstatic revery. Klopstock was at prayers; and the author of "Faust," unable any longer to maintain the part of sceptical irony, found himself on the point of being converted to faith. In a remote region of the northern seas, there then existed an extraordinary, powerful creature, a man, or rather a system, a living monument of scholastic science, callous and impenetrable,—a rock formed by adamant in the granite of the Baltic; on which every religion, every system of philosophy had struck and been shipwrecked. He alone remained immutable, and invulnerable to the outward world. His name was Emmanuel Kant; but he called himself Critic. For sixty years, this perfectly abstract being, devoid of all human connection, had gone out at precisely the same hour, and, without speaking to anybody, had taken precisely the same walk for a stated number of minutes; just as we see in the old townclocks, a man of iron come forth, strike the hour and then withdraw. Wonderful to relate, the inhabitants of Konigsberg (who considered this as an omen of the most extraordinary *These sentiments are to be found in a number of truly pathetic addresses, from men of every nation, especially in the ever-memorable address from the Belfast volunteers. 404 THE UNION OF FRANCE. events) saw this planet swerve and depart from its long habitual course.... They followed him and saw him hastening towards the west, to the road by which they expected the courier from France! O humanity! ... To behold Kant moved and anxious, going forth on the road, like a woman, to inquire the news, was not that a surprising and wonderful change? Why, no; no change at all. That expansive intellect was following its course. What he had, till then, in vain sought for in science, Spiritual Unity, he now beheld forming itself by the heart and instinct. 66 Without any other guidance, the world seemed to be drawing towards that unity, its true goal, towards which it is ever aspiring. "Ah! if I were one, says the world; "if I could at length unite my scattered members, and bring my nations together! Ah! If I were one," says man; "if I could cease to be the complex man that I am, rally my divided powers, and establish concord within me! This ever impotent desire both of the world and the human soul, a nation seemed to be realising at that fugitive hour, playing that divine comedy of union and concord which we never behold but in our dreams. Imagine, therefore, every nation watching attentively, and irresistibly attracted towards France, in heart and soul. And in France, also, behold every road thronged with men, travelling from every corner of the country towards the centre: union is gravitating towards unity. We have already seen the unions forming, the groups rallying together, and, united, seeking a common centralisation. Each, a little France in itself, has tended towards its own Paris, and sought for it first in its own bosom. A considerable part of France believed, for a moment, it had found it at Lyons (May 30th). There, there was so prodigious a concourse of men, that it required no less than the wide plains of the Rhone to receive them. The whole of the east and the south had sent hither their representatives; the deputies of the national guard alone amounted to fifty thousand men. Some of them had travelled a hundred leagues, others two hundred, in order to be present. Deputies from Sarre-Louis there shook hands with those of Marseilles. Even a deputation from Corsica |