The diplomacy, who were a sort of strangers, were quite awe-struck with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of this majestic senate; whilst the sans-culotte gallery instantly recognized their old insurrectionary acquaintance, burst out into a horse-laugh at their absurd finery, and held them in infinitely greater contempt than whilst they prowled about the streets in the pantaloons of the last year's Constitution, when their legislators appeared honestly, with their daggers in their belts, and their pistols peeping out of their side-pocket-holes, like a bold, brave banditti, as they are. The Parisians (and I am much of their mind) think that a thief with a crape on his visage is much worse than a barefaced knave, and that such robbers richly deserve all the penalties of all the black acts. In this their thin disguise, their comrades of the late abdicated sovereign canaille hooted and hissed them, and from that day have no other name for them than what is not quite so easy to render into English, impossible to make it very civil English: it belongs, indeed, to the language of the halles: but, without being instructed in that dialect, it was the opinion of the polite Lord Chesterfield that no man could be a complete master of French. Their Parisian brethren called them gueux plumés, which, though not elegant, is expressive and characteristic: feathered scoundrels, I think, comes the nearest to it in that kind of English. But we are now to understand that these gueux, for no other reason, that I can divine, except their red and white clothes, form at last a state with which we may cultivate amity, and have a prospect of the blessings of a secure and permanent peace. In effect, then, it was not with the men, or their principles, or their polities, that we quarrelled: our sole dislike was to the cut of their clothes.
But to pass over their dresses,—good God! in what habits did the representatives of the crowned heads of Europe appear, when they came to swell the pomp of their humiliation, and attended in solemn function this inauguration of Regicide? That would be the curiosity. Under what robes did they cover the disgrace and degradation of the whole college of kings? What warehouses of masks and dominoes furnished a cover to the nakedness of their shame? The shop ought to be known; it willsoon have a good trade. Were the dresses of the ministers of those lately called potentates, who attended on that occasion, taken from the wardrobe of that property-man at the opera, from whence my old acquaintance, Anacharsis Clootz, some years ago equipped a body of ambassadors, whom he conducted, as from all the nations of the world, to the bar of what was called the Constituent Assembly? Among those mock ministers, one of the most conspicuous figures was the representative of the British nation, who unluckily was wanting at the late ceremony. In the face of all the real ambassadors of the sovereigns of Europe was this ludicrous representation of their several subjects, under the name of oppressed sovereigns,10 exhibited to the Assembly. That Assembly received an harangue, in the name of those sovereigns, against their kings, delivered by this Clootz, actually a subject of Prussia, under the name of Ambassador of the Human Race. At that time there was only a feeble reclamation from one of the ambassadors of these tyrants and oppressors. A most gracious answer was given to the ministers of the oppressed sovereigns; and they went so far on that occasion as to assign them, in that assumed character, a box at one of their festivals.
I was willing to indulge myself in an hope that this second appearance of ambassadors was only an insolent mummery of the same kind; but, alas! Anacharsis himself, all fanatic as he was, could not have imagined that his opera procession should have been the prototype of the real appearance of the representatives of all the sovereigns of Europe themselves, to make the same prostration that was made by those who dared to represent their people in a complaint against them. But in this the French Republic has followed, as they always affect to do, and have hitherto done with success, the example of the ancient Romans, who shook all governments by listening to the complaints of their subjects, and soon after brought the kings themselves to answer at their bar. At this last ceremony the ambassadors had not Clootz for their Cotterel. Pity that Clootz had not had a reprieve from the guillotine till he had completed his work! But that engine fell before the curtain had fallen upon all the dignity of the earth.
On this their gaudy day the new Regicide Directory sent for that diplomatic rabble, as bad as themselves in principle, but infinitely worse in degradation. They called them out by a sort of roll of their nations, one after another, much in the manner in which they called wretches out of their prison to the guillotine. When these ambassadors of infamy appeared before them, the chief Director, in the name of the rest, treated each of them with a short, affected, pedantic, insolent, theatric laconium,—a sort of epigram of contempt. When they had thus insulted them in a style and language which never before was heard, and which no sovereign would for a moment endure from another, supposing any of them frantic enough to use it, to finish their outrage, they drummed and trumpeted the wretches out of their hall of audience.
Among the objects of this insolent buffoonery was a person supposed to represent the King of Prussia. To this worthy representative they did not so much as condescend to mention his master; they did not seem to know that he had one; they addressed themselves solely to Prussia in the abstract, notwithstanding the infinite obligation they owed to their early protector for their first recognition and alliance, and for the part of his territory he gave into their hands for the first-fruits of his homage. None but dead monarchs are so much as mentioned by them, and those only to insult the living by an invidious comparison. They told the Prussians they ought to learn, after the example of Frederick the Great, a love for France. What a pity it is, that he, who loved France so well as to chastise it, was not now alive, by an unsparing use of the rod (which, indeed, he would have spared little) to give them another instance of his paternal affection! But the Directory were mistaken. These are not days in which monarchs value themselves upon the title of great: they are grown philosophic: they are satisfied to be good.
Your Lordship will pardon me for this no very long reflection on the short, but excellent speech of the plumed Director to the ambassador of Cappadocia. The Imperial ambassador was not in waiting, but they found for Austria a good Judean representation. With great judgment, his Highness, the Grand Duke, had sent the most atheistic coxcomb to be found in Florence, to represent at the bar of impiety the House of Apostolic Majesty, and the descendants of the pious, though high-minded, Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before those grim assassins, reeking with the blood of the daughter of Maria Theresa, whom they sent half dead, in a dung-cart, to a cruel execution; and this true-born son of apostasy and infidelity, this renegado from the faith and from all honor and all humanity, drove an Austrian coach over the stones which were yet wet with her blood,—with that blood which dropped every step through her tumbrel, all the way she was drawn from the horrid prison, in which they had finished all the cruelty and horrors not executed in the face of the sun. The Hungarian subjects of Maria Theresa, when they drew their swords to defend her rights against France, called her, with correctness of truth, though not with the same correctness, perhaps, of grammar, a king: "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa." SHE lived and died a king; and others will have subjects ready to make the same vow, when, in either sex, they show themselves real kings.
When the Directory came to this miserable fop, they bestowed a compliment on his matriculation into their philosophy; but as to his master, they made to him, as was reasonable, a reprimand, not without a pardon, and an oblique hint at the whole family. What indignities have been offered through this wretch to his master, and how well borne, it is not necessary that I should dwell on at present. I hope that those who yet wear royal, imperial, and ducal crowns will learn to feel as men and as kings: if not, I predict to them, they will not long exist as kings or as men.
Great Britain was not there. Almost in despair, I hope she will never, in any rags and coversluts of infamy, be seen at such an exhibition. The hour of her final degradation is not yet come; she did not herself appear in the Regicide presence, to be the sport and mockery of those bloody buffoons, who, in the merriment of their pride, were insulting with every species of contumely the fallen dignity of the rest of Europe. But Britain, though not personally appearing to bear her part in this monstrous tragi-comedy, was very far from being forgotten. The new-robed regicides found a representative for her. And who was this representative? Without a previous knowledge, any one would have given a thousand guesses before he could arrive
