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The Convention were indeed, at first, greatly elated by the dispatches from Amsterdam, and imagined they were on the eve of dictating to all Europe: the churches were ordered to toll their only bell, and the gasconades of the bulletin were uncommonly pompous but the novelty of the event has now subsided, and the conquest of Holland excites less interest than the thaw.
This Warburton did, in his pompous edition of Shakspeare. In the preface he informed the public, that his notes "were among his younger amusements, when he turned over these sort of writers." His prefaces are remarkable for their gasconades.
Had he been less mean, something might have been said in extenuation of his cruelty. Had he been less cruel, something might have been said in extenuation of his meanness. But for him, regicide and court spy, for him who patronized Lebon and betrayed Demerville, for him who wantoned alternately in gasconades of Jacobinism and gasconades of servility, what excuse has the largest charity to offer.
But I crave your pardon," added he, displaying his white teeth with a merry laugh; "the state of my own land has taught me to look on every castle with eyes for attack and defence, and your brother tells me I am not behind my countrymen in what you English call gasconades."
He then runs into a whimsical and extravagant tirade about his future prospects. The wonderful career of fame and fortune that awaits him, and after indulging in all kinds of humorous gasconades, concludes: "Let me, then, stop my fancy to take a view of my future self and, as the boys say, light down to see myself on horseback.
As soon as he began to speak of slaughter his heart seemed to be enlarged, and his fancy to become unusually fertile of conceits and gasconades. Robespierre, Saint Just, and Billaud, whose barbarity was the effect of earnest and gloomy hatred, were, in his view, men who made a toil of a pleasure.
The Convention were indeed, at first, greatly elated by the dispatches from Amsterdam, and imagined they were on the eve of dictating to all Europe: the churches were ordered to toll their only bell, and the gasconades of the bulletin were uncommonly pompous but the novelty of the event has now subsided, and the conquest of Holland excites less interest than the thaw.
"Ha! ha!" cried Porthos, who was not completely taken in by D'Artagnan's Gasconades. "Come my brother, go with me," added D'Artagnan, "and I will see that you are made a duke!" "No," answered Porthos, "Mouston has no desire to fight; besides, they have erected a triumphal arch for me to enter my barony, which will kill my neighbors with envy."
He lets them enter the tete-de-pont. * They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on.
But we find that he has not yet reconciled himself to that. Intimations come out at intervals that the judges will never dare to pass any but a nominal sentence upon him. We conclude that all these endless conflicts with the legal necessities of his case are the mere gasconades of Irish newspapers, addressing themselves to provincial readers.
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