This is their _pacific_ language. It flows from
their unalterable principle, in whatever language they speak or whatever
steps they take, whether of real war or of pretended pacification. They
have never, to do them justice, been at much trouble in concealing their
intentions. We were as obstinately resolved to think them not in
earnest: but I confess, jests of this sort, whatever their urbanity may
be, are not much to my taste.
To this conciliatory and amicable public communication our sole answer,
in effect, is this:--"Citizen Regicides! whenever _you_ find yourselves
in the humor, you may have a peace with _us_. That is a point you may
always command. We are constantly in attendance, and nothing you can do
shall hinder us from the renewal of our supplications. You may turn us
out at the door, but we will jump in at the window."
To those who do not love to contemplate the fall of human greatness, I
do not know a more mortifying spectacle than to see the assembled
majesty of the crowned heads of Europe waiting as patient suitors in the
antechamber of Regicide. They wait, it seems, until the sanguinary
tyrant Carnot shall have snorted away the fumes of the indigested blood
of his sovereign. Then, when, sunk on the down of usurped pomp, he shall
have sufficiently indulged his meditations with what monarch he shall
next glut his ravening maw, he may condescend to signify that it is his
pleasure to be awake, and that he is at leisure to receive the proposals
of his high and mighty clients for the terms on which he may respite the
execution of the sentence he has passed upon them.
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