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These rural adventures are most remarkable at Paris. When the fine weather comes, clerks, shop keepers, and workingmen look forward impatiently for the Sunday as the day for trying a few hours of this pastoral life; they walk through six miles of grocers' shops and public-houses in the faubourgs, in the sole hope of finding a real turnip-field.
"Gentlemen," replied he, "you may say what you please, but in the situation in which I stand my only nobility is the rabble of the faubourgs, and I know of no rabble but the nobility whom I have created." This was a strange compliment to all ranks, for it was only saying that they were all rabble together.
Oh! the poor ones, oh! the lowly ones, whom for two years past I have seen in our faubourgs of Paris, so wretched and so full of pain; the poor little children that I have picked out of the snow, the poor little angels who had eaten nothing for two days; the women too, consumed by consumption, without bread or fire, shivering in filthy hovels; and the men thrown on the street by slackness of trade, weary of begging for work as one begs for alms, sinking back into night, drunken with rage and harbouring the sole avenging thought of setting the whole city afire!
Bordeaux was the focus of the insurrection; the people, passionately devoted to "the dukes," as the saying was, were forcing the hand of the Parliament; riots were frequent in the town; the little king, with the queen and the cardinal, marched in person upon Bordeaux; one of the faubourgs was attacked, the dukes negotiated and obtained a general amnesty, but no mention was made of the princes' release.
The secret motive was to intimidate the Parisian national guard, to revive the energy of the faubourgs, and to be the vanguard of that camp of 20,000 men which the Girondists had made the Assembly vote, in order at the same time to control the Feuillants, the Jacobins, the king, and the Assembly itself, with an army from the departments wholly composed of their creatures.
Even far over the plain, from a ruddy ember-like glow suffusing the destroyed faubourgs, occasional flashes of flame shot up as from some fire struggling again into life. Ere long a furnace seemed raging, all Paris burned, the heavens became yet more empurpled, and the clouds hung like so much blood over the vast city, colored red and gold.
Michel de Bourges, on entering, exclaimed, "We have come to seek out the people of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Here we are. Here we must remain." These words were applauded. They set forth the situation the torpor of the Faubourgs, no one at the Society of Cabinet Makers, the doors closed nearly everywhere.
So long as the Government sticks to its policy of no surrender, it will be supported by the faubourgs; if, however, it attempts to capitulate upon humiliating terms, it will be ejected from the Hôtel de Ville. A sharp bombardment may, perhaps, make a change in public opinion, but I can only speak of the opinion of to-day.
He was an ex-commercial traveller, and now a purse-maker a good fellow, a patriot, a ladies' man, and one who affected the language of the faubourgs. Pécuchet did not care for him, and he brought Bouvard to the residence of Dumouchel. He bored Bouvard. Neither of the two friends concealed his opinion from the other. Each recognised the correctness of the other's view.
In truth, hordes of Cossacks were already in sight of the faubourgs, which they threatened to attack; and their appearance had compelled the inhabitants of these faubourgs to take refuge in the interior of the city. "As I left," said Colonel Gourgaud, "I saw a village in flames half a league from the great gardens, and Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr was preparing to evacuate that position."
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