The French Revolution: a History, Volume 1

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Charles C. Little and James Brown., 1838
 

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Page 158 - Go, Monsieur, tell those who sent you that we are here by the will of the People, and that nothing but the force of bayonets...
Page 183 - pale to the very lips," for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness. At every street-barricade, there whirls simmering a minor whirlpool, — strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-Mahlstrom which is lashing round the Bastille. And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of...
Page 186 - The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets : they have made a white flag of napkins ; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary of firing ; disheartened in the firedeluge : a porthole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man ! On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that...
Page 188 - O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields ; on old women spinning in cottages ; on ships far out in the silent main...
Page 65 - Controller: to all men he listens with an air of interest, nay of anticipation; makes their own wish clear to themselves, and grants it ; or at least, grants conditional promise of it. "I fear this is a matter of difficulty," said her Majesty. — " Madame," answered the Controller, "if it is but difficult, it is done; if it is impossible, it shall be done (sefera).
Page 183 - I'Orme, arched Gateway (where Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and twenty; — beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere Chaos come again ! Ordnance of all calibres; throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own engineer: seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay...
Page 175 - Great meanwhile is the moment, when tidings of Freedom reach us ; when the long-enthralled soul, from amid its chains and squalid stagnancy, arises, were it still only in blindness and bewilderment, and swears by Him that made it, that it will be free ! Free ? Understand that well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be free. Freedom is the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles, toilings and sufferings, in this Earth. Yes, supreme is such...
Page 130 - Then that other, his slight-built comrade, and craft-brother ; he with the long curling locks ; with the face of dingy blackguardism, wondrously irradiated with genius, as if a naphtha-lamp burnt within it : that Figure is Camille Desmoulins. A fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit, nay humour ; one of the sprightliest, clearest souls in all these millions.
Page 182 - Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guard-room, some 'on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall', Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (also an old soldier) seconding him: the chain yields, breaks; the huge Drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas).
Page 179 - A hundred and fifty thousand of us ; and but the third man furnished with so much as a pike ! Arms are the one thing needful : with arms we are an unconquerable man-defying National Guard ; without arms, a rabble to be whiffed with grape-shot.

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