47. The Fates will not have it so. No word of song is possible, in that century, to mortal lips. Only polished versification, sententious pentameter and hexameter, until, having turned out its toes long enough without dancing, and pattered with its lips long enough without piping, suddenly Astræa returns to the earth, and a Day of Judgment of a sort, and there bursts out a song at last again, a most curtly melodious triplet of Amphisbænic ryme, "_Ça ira_."
Amphisbænic, fanged in each ryme with fire, and obeying Ercildoune's precept, "Tong is chefe of mynstrelsye," to the syllable.--Don Giovanni's hitherto fondly chanted "Andiam, andiam," become suddenly impersonal and prophetic: IT shall go, and you also. A cry--before it is a song, then song and accompaniment together--perfectly done; and the march "towards the field of Mars. The two hundred and fifty thousand--they to the sound of stringed music--preceded by young girls with tricolor streamers, they have shouldered soldierwise their shovels and picks, and with one throat are singing _Ça ira_."[69]
Through all the springtime of 1790, from Brittany to Burgundy, on most plains of France, under most city walls, there march and constitutionally wheel to the Ça-iraing mood of fife and drum--our clear glancing phalanxes;--the song of the two hundred and fifty thousand, virgin-led, is in the long light of July. Nevertheless, another song is yet needed, for phalanx, and for maid. For, two springs and summers having gone--amphisbænic,--on the 28th of August, 1792, "Dumouriez rode from the camp of Maulde, eastwards to _Sedan_."[70]
48. "And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prussian king will beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Austrians press deeper in over the northern marches, Cimmerian Europe behind. And on that same night Dumouriez assembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan. Prussians here, Austrians there, triumphant both. With broad highway to Paris and little hindrance--_we_ scattered, helpless here and there--what to advise?" The generals advise retreating, and retreating till Paris be sacked at the latest day possible. Dumouriez, silent, dismisses _them_,--keeps only, with a sign, Thouvenot. Silent thus, when needful, yet having voice, it appears, of what musicians call tenor quality, of a rare kind. Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to the fastidious ears at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows--the cannonade of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris _this_ time, the autumnal hours of fate pass on--_ça ira_--and on the 6th of November, Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. "Dumouriez wide-winged, they wide-winged--at and around Jemappes, its green heights fringed and maned with red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing and swept back on that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when he rushes up in person, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with clear tenor-pipe, uplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten thousand tenor or bass pipes joining, or say some forty thousand in all, for every heart leaps up at the sound; and so, with rhythmic march melody, they rally, they advance, they rush death-defying, and like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner of Austrians from the scene of action." Thus, through the lips of Dumouriez, sings Tyrtæus, Rouget de Lisle.[71] "Aux armes--marchons." Iambic measure with a witness! in what wide strophe here beginning--in what unthought-of antistrophe returning to that council chamber in Sedan!