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NOTES ON ISSUE 10: GLOSSARY
PART 4 OF 4
The shining Bull’s Eye of the
Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a hurricane of
national bullets.
The French courtiers of Versailles, called the “Oeil de Boeuf”
in Carlyle’s French Revolution and the “Bull’s Eye” in
Dickens’ facetious translation, have by this point in the Revolution
(1792) mostly
emigrated. The bullets for which the Bull’s Eye would otherwise be a
target are “national” in that they are those of the National Guard,
which replaced the Royal Guard early in the Revolution.
Royalty was gone; had been besieged in its Palace
and “suspended,” when the last tidings came over.
On August 10, 1792, the royal family were besieged in the Palais des
Tuileries, to which they had been confined after their unsuccessful
attempt to flee Paris (in the “Flight to Varennes” of June 20-25,
1791). They were afterwards (August 13, 1792) taken as prisoners to the
Temple Prison, and royalty was “suspended” in that the King was
suspended from office.
The
story of the
siege of the Tuileries is told in two chapters in Carlyle’s French
Revolution (II.vi.7-8). Taken to the Temple, Louis emerged
only to be beheaded, on January 21, 1793. Marie-Antoinette
survived longer, but was eventually guillotined on
October 16, 1793 (Carlyle 671).
…Tellson’s was at that time, as to French
intelligence, a kind of High Exchange…
A “High Exchange” is a gathering and transaction place for bankers and
merchants. In London, Tellson’s functions metaphorically as an Exchange
for news of France during the Revolution, since many of its patrons
(given that Tellson’s has a Paris branch, and does business on both
sides of the Channel) are emigrants. The actual “Exchange” in London
would have been the Royal Exchange, and in Paris, the Paris Bourse
(Sanders 129).
“…who can say that Paris is not set afire to-day,
or sacked to-morrow!”
Mr. Lorry’s concern that Paris may soon be set alight
or sacked is well-founded, as France had been facing the threat
of foreign invasion since August of the previous year (French
Revolution xxxviii-ix), and had declared itself in danger
on July 22, 1792. Prussia, the first to declare war, did so
on July 24, 1792. Fighting – the French against Prussian
and Austrian troops – concluded with the repulsion of
the foreign invaders in early October 1792. The success of the
French defenses was unexpected, but the defeat of Prussian and
Austrian invasion did not put an end to the wars between France
and its European neighbors. In 1793, while the Reign of Terror
raged on the domestic front, France became the aggressor against
those countries that had formerly invaded it, successfully seizing
the Austrian Netherlands, declaring war against England and
Holland, and threatening Spain. Prussia and Spain made peace
treaties with France early in 1795 (French Revolution
xlii-xliii), but French aggression was not at an end: After
the Revolution came, of course, Napoleon and the Napoleonic
wars.
…and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in
their natures to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the
tails of the race.
The saying, “It is a foolish bird that stayeth the laying salt upon her
tail” (Benham 794a), is here extended by Dickens to an eagle (a bird
highly unlikely to get near a human being or a salt shaker, much less
to tarry there). “Monseigneur’s” plans for abolishing the French
revolutionary peoples, likened to the project of killing eagles
according to the proverb, are extremely implausible.
“Prison of the Abbaye, Paris. June 21, 1792”
The “Prison of the Abbaye,” in Paris, was destroyed in the mid-1850s to
make way for changes in the layout of the city’s streets (Sanders 131).
However, recent guidebooks still direct tourists to the former site of
the prison – between numbers 135 and 137 on the present Boulevard
Saint Germain (Saint-Agnès and Delabarre 37). Dickens may have
seen or visited the prison during visits to Paris before its
demolition, and mid-19th-century guidebooks to Paris describe it. Galignani’s
New Paris Guide (1842) makes the following remarks:
[The
Prison of the Abbaye] was formerly a house of detention within the
jurisdiction of the Abbaye of St. Germain des Prés, in the
immediate neighborhood of which it stands. It contains several dungeons
below the ground, and is the most gloomy of all the places of
confinement in Paris. The horrors which took place here during the
Revolution [the September massacres] are … well known. The prison now
serves as a house of arrest for military offences…. For permission to
visit this prison special application must be made to the Minister of
War, but on account of the strictness of military discipline the
greatest difficulty may be expected in obtaining it. (qtd. in Sanders
131)
The prison, as it stood when Monsieur
Gabelle was confined there (in 1792), is visible on this portion
(below) of the Plan de la
Ville de Paris, Période Révolutionnaire, 1790-1794.
Though some of the lettering is difficult to make out, the complex
which included the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the
Prison of the Abbaye is visible under the red “Tribunal du 6e
Arrondissement” (at the left side of the map, under the Rue du
Colombier). (The red lettering indicates a name imposed during the
revolutionary period.) The Abbey is the large dark building visible
under the “Tribunal” label; the Prison of the Abbaye is represented by
the dark square at the bottom right corner of the complex (if you look
carefully, you can make out the name – “Prison de l’Abbaye”).
Click
on map for larger view
It is in vain I represent that, before the
sequestration of emigrant property, I had remitted the imposts they had
ceased to pay; that I collected no rent; that I had had recourse to no
process.
Emigrant property was not actually confiscated by the revolutionary
French government until the autumn of 1792, for Louis XVI had used his
veto (which was suspended after he was incarcerated in the Temple in
August, 1792) to prevent the passage of the proposed law that would
allow it (Sanders 131-2).
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