The Club of the Jacobins on an autumn night, and a fever of thought, crescent thought and senescent thought; concepts, rulers to come, hardly out of swaddling bands, and concepts tottering, failing, old men fiercely loth to come to the grave. Thought in a fever, and emotion a boiling deep....
The circles, red-capped, glowed like poppy beds. But the poppies stood not for sleep, nor for languorous “let the world go daffing by!” Noise ran and leaped through all the circles, fierce outbursts of “Yes!” and “No!”—fierce, exultant laughter, fierce muttering and growling of dissent. At times the myriad-brained produced from the heights of itself clearness, intelligence, and nobility. These were halcyon times, clear intelligence in the tribune, clear intelligence in the circles! The next hour, intelligence might weaken and doze away, and all the past rise in murk and storm.
From the tribune many and many had spoken, tongues eloquent and tongues stumbling, heavy-laden, minds of varying scope. Darkness and cold had spoken, and darkness and heat. Glowing heat had often spoken. Now and then light spoke. Hunger spoke, hunger of the body, hunger of the mind, hunger of the spirit, hunger and longing and all in varying degrees.
The night was September. Above Paris the cauldron hung a tranquil sky, a great full moon. The cauldron boiled and bubbled, it sent forth restless particles, rising steam-mist, colours, blue and green and wine-red, scintillating. Where rose the ancient Church of the Jacobins, where debated the Revolutionary Society, called of the Jacobins, the cauldron boiled intensest.
The circles swept crowded from pavement to roof with patriots, citoyens, citoyennes, Parisians, provincials, citizens of elsewhere in the world, dreamers, hopers, and builders, sometimes with clouds, dwellers in Idea-land. Back of the platform, of the gleaming busts of Patriots, flags were draped. There were old Ideas made visible! Why should not other and greater Ideas get their incarnation?
Upon the president’s platform, beside the president and lesser officers of the Jacobins’ Society, sat, tricolor-cockaded, three or four who might speak this night, mounting the tribune high-raised between pavement and dome. One speaker was there now, a bulky Patriot, dark-visaged, black-headed, with a great voice that boomed and reverberated in the nave of the Jacobins. And he was a favourite, and the circles applauded. Passionate he waxed, sublime upon the Rights of Man!
At last he made an end, though still he spoke, coming down the stair, and while he made his way across the crowded pavement. The Jacobins applauded like a roaring wind, up and down the poppies shook!
The president rang his bell. He was speaking of the next speaker—a Patriot from the South. The Patriot from the South, nimble and dark, climbed the tribune stair and from the space atop saluted every quarter of the Jacobins, then fell to speaking, fierily and well. He had for subject kings in their palaces, aristocrats entrenched, and National Assemblies too fondly dandling the past. The Jacobins roared assent, by acclamation gave him more than his set time. When he was done the circles were like a red sea in storm.
The president rang his bell thrice.... Here in the tribune stood an Englishman, slow but weighty, member of the London Corresponding Society, friend of Revolutions. He spoke of Independence, of the Power of the Mind, of the decaying foundations of Oppressions, of fair play and equal way, of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, lastly of the call to action very fully provided by this moment in the World-Epic.... The Jacobins applauded because they felt friendly toward English friends of Liberty, and because, indeed, many sat there who could listen absorbed to speech of abstractions. The Englishman ended, went with his cool deliberateness back to the platform. The president’s bell rang....
In the circles were very many women; in all Paris and France women were afoot while men rode. Women as spectators, as consolers, encouragers, applauders, inciters, women as mænad participants, priestesses of the marching god, furies when there was need for furies—France and Paris understood these! In the circles sat citoyennes enough. Often enough, passionate and fluent enough, citoyennes sprang to their feet and harangued, urging bread for their young, freedom du peuple, bread—bread! Women, to-night, had place in all the circles, the higher, the midmost and the lower,—attendants’ place, sympathizers’, encouragers’ place, under due orders, participants’ place....