In exitu Israel

'But, mamma!'

'No "buts" and no "mammas" to me!' cried the lady; 'down, Coco, down.'

Immediately the white man vanished into the abyss.

'And how is that angel your mother?' asked Madame Louison. 'Some one said she had suffered greatly from headache, and I have been overwhelmed with distress. I am sure I quite soaked my pillow with tears. Ah! what it is to have a sympathising heart, to feel more for others than for one's self. I have not slept for three nights, thinking of that angel Josephine, and her racked head. Well! what now, Coco?' she twirled round again, as a vision of a white cap and shoulders appeared behind her. 'Ah! you need not come slinking up without shoes, thinking I should not hear you. Down, Coco, down to your duties.' And the white cap and jacket dived once more into the depths. 'And the corporal,' continued the lady; 'that magnificent man, that warrior, that hero, the father of this young man, need I say more?'

'Aunt, his head and heart are in Switzerland still; need I say more?'

'Ah, in Switzerland, that magnificent, that superb country, that land of resources, of wealth, of commerce. Mon Dieu! it is a country!' She said this bowing to Nicholas.

'Aunt,' said Madeleine, 'I must introduce to you a friend, Mademoiselle André.'

'Ah! André,' repeated Madame Louison; 'a name, historical and illustrious; I have known Andrés,—three, four, five, many an André, but all were excellent people. And whence does Mademoiselle André come?'

'From Normandy,' answered Madeleine.

'Don't tell me she comes from Normandy,' said madame; 'of all the provinces of France, the finest, the most superb, the most unfailing in resources, the most wealthy, the most commercial, the most affluent in men of money and talent, and in women,' she curtsied to Gabrielle, 'in women of beauty.' Then sharply, 'Well, Coco!'

'I thought you called me, mamma!'

'No, Coco, you did not think so; down into your hole again, instantly, Coco!' Then turning again to her visitors she proceeded, 'and what may have brought Mademoiselle André to Paris? to Paris of all cities after the charming Norman towns Rouen, and Caen, and Évreux! Ah! I blush for the capital when I think of what the Norman cities must be, abodes of industry and of virtue. Ah! I blush for the capital when I contrast the morals of its citizens with those of Normandy, where all are good, all are virtuous, all,' she curtsied to Gabrielle, 'all are angels.' Then, glancing at Nicholas, she continued, 'and the Swiss, I should say that none of our countrymen were their equals except the Normans, that race of hardy, daring, enterprising incomparables! What will it please you to order, Monsieur Nicholas?'

The young man gave his orders, and madame shouted down the chasm to Coco, who, however, did not appear.

'Ah!' said the lady; 'that is the way with my good man. When he is wanted, he is not within call; when not wanted, he is here.' She caught up a broom and plunged down the stair or ladder or whatever it was which descended to the kitchen, and presently, with a bound, up the white man rose to the surface, followed more slowly and in more dignified manner by his portly spouse.

'Mamma! no mamma! in pity!' he exclaimed, dancing to the other side of the counter in white stockings and slippers down at the heel.

'Will you attend to business?' asked Madame Louison; 'will you at once produce a little breakfast for these customers, will you conduct yourself with propriety?'

'Oh, mamma! I assure you, I was only——'

'No excuse; down, down, Coco, and bring potage à la vermicelle—quick, Coco, quick!'

'Oh stay! in pity!' he pleaded; 'let me look out of the doors for one minute. Oh, what have we here! oh, mamma, you must come and see; there is such excitement, such running to and fro. Come, come, come!'

'This instant, Coco; down, sir, down to your hole!'

But the scene without, in the gardens, was of sufficient attraction to hold Coco immovable at the door, and make him deaf to the orders of his spouse.

'What is the matter?' asked Madeleine.

'Mademoiselle, everything is the matter!' replied M. Louison; 'there is a firework of excitement without. Oh! Camille the good, the facetious Camille is on the table. Mamma, it is too much, I must go.'

And the white cap, white jacket, white apron, and white stockings flitted like a pigeon past the window.

There was so much noise, such a rush of people, that it became apparent to Madeleine, Nicholas, and Gabrielle, that some unusual cause of excitement had occurred; they therefore ran outside, followed by Madame Louison, whose interest, however, was entirely concentrated on her run-away husband.

'Ah! there he is!' she exclaimed, pointing to a white speck in the crowd, 'sapristi! but he shall catch it. Ah, ha! Coco!' she said in a low tone, with a chuckle to herself; 'ah, ha! my Coco! will you do it again, will you, will you?'

At the farther end of the gardens the crowd was densest. Thither Madeleine hurried, drawing Gabrielle after her; Nicholas looked hesitatingly about him and then followed. On a table, at which shortly before some pleasure-takers had been sipping sugar and water, indeed, standing among the tumblers, some of which were half empty, was a tall slender young man, with long flowing hair reaching to his shoulders, very abundant, glossy, and curled. His face was smooth and clear-complexioned, his nose was straight and well shaped, his mouth small and curled with a smile, and at every smile a dimple formed in his girlish cheek. His large clear eye beamed with light. His brow white and polished, without a furrow, was marked with prominent bumps where phrenologists assert lie the organs of satire. He had falling collars over a thick crimson handkerchief folded twice round his neck, tied in a loose bow, and falling to his waist. His coat of sere-green cloth was adorned with huge lappets which folded to his shoulders; his waistcoat was white, and had also lappets.

'It is Camille, the brave Camille Desmoulins!' said Madeleine; 'what is the matter with him?'

The young man was violently agitated. He spoke with vehemence, and the tears flowed from his brilliant eyes. 'My friends! my friends!' he cried, in a clear, bell-like voice; 'Necker is dismissed; Necker, the friend of the people, Necker, the friend of justice and liberty, has been driven away, his ministry dissolved, and who do you think have been appointed in their place? De Breteuil, De Broglie, Foulon, De la Vauguyon, Berthier—men who hate you, men who detest liberty, men of war; De Breteuil the great Blunderer, De Broglie the old Mars; Foulon, who would make men eat hay because his horses eat it; Berthier, who has sold his heart to the devil, who weeps blood. The dismissal of Necker is the tocsin of a S. Bartholomew of patriots. The Swiss and German battalions are ready to fall on us, and to massacre us. For your wives, for your children! To arms, to arms!'

Every sentence had elicited cries and groans.

'To arms!' yelled Monsieur Louison. Immediately behind him was his spouse, broom in hand. 'To arms!' he cried, snatching the weapon from her grasp and brandishing it above his head,—you may see him immortalised in Duplessi-Bertaux' sketch published a few days after.

'My friends!' cried Camille; 'I see there—and there, facing me, with their eyes watching me, the tame tigers of the court, the spies and satellites of the police. Never will I fall alive into their hands;' he suddenly drew a pair of pistols from his pocket and cocked them; 'let all the friends of liberty follow my example and protect themselves, or the prisons will be gorged with the best patriots.'

He was interrupted by cries of enthusiasm; 'we will protect you, we will kill the tigers.' Some men sprang upon the table and embraced him, the tumblers were thrown down and broken, and the sugar and water was poured over the gravel.

'What is to be done?' was shouted; 'how shall we know the friends of liberty?'

'Let us adopt a cockade,' cried Camille; 'then we shall know those who are on our side from our foes.'

'A cockade, a cockade!' was shouted.

'Ah! Camille, dear, brave Camille!' shrieked Monsieur Louison; 'I will protect you. They shall pass over my body before they touch you.' And he beat his way with the broom-handle through the crowd towards the table.

'Coco!' screamed his wife; 'you fool, you ape! The potage à la vermicelle will be burnt.'

'Damn the vermicelle!' exclaimed the white man, stationing himself like a sentinel before the table; 'I tell you, woman, I will shed the last drop of my potage—I mean my blood.'

'Never mind what you mean,' called his incensed wife; 'I will have you down into your hole again.' She struggled after him, but found it impossible to force her way through the crowd, being unprovided with a weapon, and being corpulent, whilst Coco was lean.

'What colour will you have for your cockade?' asked Desmoulins, his clear voice pealing above the hoarse mutterings of the excited people. 'Will you have green, the colour of hope, or the blue of Cincinnatus, the colour of American liberty and of democracy?'

Some shouted, 'Do you choose, Camille!' Others cried 'blue,' but the call of the majority was for green; 'green, green, the hue of Hope!'

The young man waited, the cries for blue ceased, and presently as with one voice the whole heaving mass of people roared 'Green!'

'Very well, my friends, let green be the colour. Who will provide me with ribbon?'

A few moments after a number of rolls of silk ribbon of various shades of green were handed to him. A mercer's shop in the Palais Royal had yielded up its stock, and, when money had been offered in payment, the mercer had refused it.

Camille adorned his own cap with a rosette, placed it on his head, and then proceeded to attach scraps of green ribbon to the hats which were passed to him, and which M. Louison presented to him in order at the end of his broom.

'The ribbon is expended, my friends,' called Camille; 'fetch me some more.'

'There is no more to be got,' shouted some one in the crowd.

'No more ribbon!' exclaimed Camille; 'well, let us take leaves from the trees and pin them to our caps.'

Instantly lads and men began to climb the young trees and tear down the branches. Each bough was seized upon before it touched the ground, and the foliage was torn off by eager hands. Some of the leaves were trampled under foot, and more were clamoured for. The crowd had been gathering thicker every moment, pouring in from the streets, and the whole garden was densely packed with men and women. The words of the orator were flung along the mob, from voice to voice; the mob swayed and roared, and cheered, like one living body, not as an assemblage of individuals each with a will and thoughts of his own.

In half an hour the trees of the Palais Royal were stripped of their leaves and looked bare and wintry.

From a modeller's shop opening on the gardens, a wax bust of the popular ex-minister was produced, and was passed along above the heads of the crowd. Some one flung a black crape veil over it.

'Forth into the streets,' was called. And the multitude rolled out into the Rue de Richelieu. Suddenly, with a cry of exultation, Madame Louison pounced upon her spouse, and carried him off to her shop. Nicholas caught a glimpse of him ineffectually struggling, like a white moth in a spider's clutches, as the lady drew him down into the hole he usually inhabited. Nicholas drew Gabrielle's arm through his, and she clung to him, otherwise she would have been swept away.

'We must escape as soon as possible,' said the young man; 'do not let go your hold, Gabrielle—I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle André. You must excuse me if I squeeze your arm, but I am so afraid of losing you.'

'Where is Madeleine?'

'Madeleine can take care of herself.'

'But where is she?'

'There—a little ahead of us; she has been drifted forward, we must try to reach her and link her on to us; it will not do to separate.'

'Can we not escape yet?'

'No. Impossible; I wish we could, but the crowd is too dense. We must rejoin Madeleine first, or she will not know what has become of us.'

The sun glared down on the moving torrent of angry life. It was like a viscous stream of lava poured from a volcano; the sun flashed on bayonets, axes, large knives which had been attached to poles and made into rude pikes.

The flashes from the weapons, as the sun lit them, resembled leaping flames above the lava flood. The heat began to dissolve the wax bust, the black crape attracted the heat unnecessarily, and it slowly dissolved into a shapeless mass. Nevertheless it was borne along, its bearers being unconscious of the transformation that was being effected in their idol.

The stream pursued its course along the streets of S. Martin, S. Denis, and S. Honoré, and spread out into a tossing lake in the Place Vendôme, where lived several of the revenue-farmers, but not Foulon, whose house was in the Rue du Temple.

Here was drawn up a detachment of dragoons, which charged the people, and drove them back into the streets that opened on the square. A French guardsman was trampled under the feet of the horses and killed.

Nicholas took the opportunity of the dissolution of the compact mass to disengage himself and Gabrielle from the mob, and to escape with her down the street before the Convent of the Feuillants.

'Where is Madeleine?' asked Gabrielle.

'Madeleine!' exclaimed Nicholas, standing still and looking round; 'I really do not know where she is. But it does not matter; let us go into the gardens of the Tuileries. It was her wish, you may remember, that we should go there after our visit to the Palais Royal, and doubtless she will make the best of her way there in the expectation of meeting with us.'

They entered the beautiful gardens before the palace, and Gabrielle would have admired the flowers at any other time, but her nerves had been somewhat shaken by the excitement she had gone through, and she asked Nicholas to let her sit down on the first seat they came to.

'I am so frightened, Monsieur Nicholas,' said she; 'I fear something must have happened to Madeleine; I heard the people crying out that some one was killed.'

'That was a man,' said the young man. 'I saw the horses tread him down, it made me turn sick and giddy. The hoof of one horse cut open his head just behind the ear, and the skull must have been crushed, for the brain burst out as the horse trod his head down. Did you see nothing of that?'

'No, no; I am thankful I did not.'

'I am rather taller than most of these French fellows; and as the man fell there was a lane formed between the heads, and I saw it all.'

'When do you think Madeleine will be here?'

'I really cannot guess, but I hope before long.'

'And you are certain no harm has befallen her?'

'Harm befall Madeleine!' exclaimed Nicholas; 'that is an impossibility. You never saw such a girl as that is for keeping out of danger herself, though she will go into the midst of what is perilous to other people.'

'Oh,' sighed Gabrielle, 'how I wish that I were out of Paris, and back in peaceful Bernay. And yet that cannot be.'

'I cannot say that I wish it,' said Nicholas, simply.

'But why not?' asked Gabrielle with equal simplicity.

Nicholas looked at her, with his great blue eyes wide open, and nodded.

'There!' said he, pointing to one of the flowers in a garden-bed before them, 'that plant grows wild in my country.'

'Is your country very quiet; or have you such troubles as we have here?'

'Oh no! Switzerland is perfectly peaceful; ever since the great Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, and Walter Fürst, formed their league against the tyrants who held the people in chains, we have been free, and happy, and tranquil.'

'Then you had great troubles once?'

'Yes, there was the terrible struggle for freedom.'

'Perhaps the troubles here are part of our struggle.'

'No doubt; and then, when the bonds are burst, and despotism is at an end, you will have peace.'

'Oh, Monsieur Nicholas! how I wish that time had come!'

'No doubt.'

'And is your country more beautiful than my Normandy?'

'Oh, ten thousand times more beautiful.'

'But you have not seen Normandy.'

'No, but I know enough,' he nodded towards her, 'to be well assured that if you were given the choice between Switzerland and Normandy you would say, Switzerland for ever! You have no lakes.'

'But there are ponds.'

'Ponds!' exclaimed Nicholas, 'what are ponds?'

'And we have forests.'

'Ah! plantations.'

'And we have beautiful hills. Above Bernay there is Mont Bouffey—'

'Mole-hills,' said Nicholas.

'No, indeed,' urged Gabrielle; 'there is a windmill on top of it.'

'A windmill!' echoed Nicholas; 'and you call that a hill, a "mont." Heaven bless you, my dear Gabrielle, a "mont" with a windmill on the top of it! Lord enlighten you! a "mont," indeed! a windmill on top of it. Just heavens! how unequal are men's lots! here am I, who have seen real mountains, and there is Gabrielle, who has never seen anything but a little lump of earth with a windmill on the top of it. I dare say that Mont Bouffey has no rocks.'

'N-n-o,' answered Gabrielle, her childish opinion of Mont Bouffey greatly dashed by the contempt poured over it by the young Swiss.

'A "mont" without rocks, an earthy pimple! To think that you and ten thousands, thousands of other living persons, and persons with souls, too, should never have seen real mountains soaring into the clouds and glittering with eternal snows. It is a thought to make me serious,' said Nicholas, shaking his head. 'It is something to make one feel very grateful to Heaven, that out of millions of poor benighted French, only perhaps the corporal and I have seen snowy mountains.'

He was silent; and Gabrielle, looking furtively into his face, saw that he was making an act of thanksgiving to the Almighty for having given him a privilege which had been denied to so many.

'Wonderful,' mused Nicholas; 'wonderful indeed!'

Then he asked, 'And can you reconcile yourself to die without having seen anything more like a mountain than that pimple with a windmill on the top?'

'Please, kind Monsieur Nicholas, do not tease me about the Mont Bouffey, or I shall joke you about the Bruder——'

'No, no, no,' he interrupted with earnestness, catching her hand, and staring into her eyes with an appealing expression of distress. 'Whatever you do, my dearest Gabrielle, do not joke about Bruder Klaus. That man lived a miraculous life; for years he ate no food, and lived in incessant prayer——'

'Tell me about the beauties of Switzerland,' said the girl, smiling; for she had heard all about the hermit's marvellous life several times already.

'Ah, Gabrielle!' exclaimed Nicholas, enthusiastically, 'you really must see Switzerland, you must indeed. I should be miserable to think that your beautiful eyes should never rest on its glories.'

'But how can I ever see it, M. Nicholas?'

'Oh, you can go there.'

'Indeed I cannot.'

'But you must. Look here,' and the lad turned round, and, still holding the hand he had seized at the alarm about Bruder Klaus, he began to explain a scheme, and indicate it with the finger of his disengaged hand on the back of Gabrielle's. 'You see my father's time of service is over in August; and then we are going to return to Switzerland.'

'Ah, but Madeleine declares that Madame Deschwanden is quite resolved not to go there. And Madeleine is of the same mind.'

'Then,' said Nicholas, 'my father and I shall return.'

'And then I could not go with you two men,' said the girl, laughing gaily.

'Oh!' exclaimed the young man, opening his great eyes very wide, 'that is awkward, I never thought of that.'

'And do you not think it a little awkward sitting here waiting for Madeleine?' asked Gabrielle.

'No,' answered Nicholas, promptly; 'certainly not, why should it be so?'

'The gardens are very full,' said Gabrielle; 'had we not better walk about now, and look for Madeleine, instead of sitting here any longer hand in hand?'

'Very well,' answered Nicholas, rising, but not relinquishing the hand. Gabrielle, however, snatched it from him, and then rested it on his arm.

'Look,' said Nicholas, 'the soldiers are yonder, drawn up at the entrance of the Champs Elysées.'

'I have heard the discharge of fire-arms,' said Gabrielle, 'but not in that direction.'

'Alphonse!' exclaimed Nicholas to a friend who was passing, 'can you tell me what is going on? I was with the mob that marched from the Palais Royal to the Place Vendôme, and was there dispersed, which gave me the opportunity of escaping; it was no fault of mine that I was in the riot.'

'Nicholas, my brave!' said the young man accosted, 'you want zeal. But, to be sure, you are a foreigner. In your own country you would be a patriot.'

'To be sure,' answered Nicholas; 'mine is the land of patriots; have we not Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, Walter Fürst, and the great and glorious Tell?'

'I have heard,' said Alphonse, 'that Tell is a myth—a fable.'

'A myth—a fable!' exclaimed Nicholas, dropping Gabrielle's arm in the extremity of his dismay. 'Wilhelm Tell!' he raised his cap at the name. 'I have seen the place where he shot the arrow; I have seen the spot where his son stood with the apple on his head; I have worshipped before the chapel where he leaped ashore from Gessler's boat.'

'Never mind him now,' said Alphonse, laughing; 'come along with me to the Place Louis XV[1].'

'And tell me what has been going on. Hush! there is the rattle of guns again.'

'Nicholas!' whispered Gabrielle. 'There! look there!'

She pointed to a shutter which was being carried on men's shoulders through the gardens; over it was cast a sheet spotted with blood; the sheet by its folds indicated the outline of a corpse beneath it.

Immediately after, the Royal German dragoons, who had been employed in dispersing the mob, arrived in the Place Louis XV. As they passed the barrack of the French guard, a volley of musketry was discharged upon them from the windows, and several of the soldiers were unhorsed and wounded. At the same moment, a crowd which had filled the Champs Elysées, and some of the promenaders in the Tuileries gardens, rushed upon the dragoons with bottles and stones, which they flung at them with cries of anger and hatred.

'Nicholas, do let us escape,' said Gabrielle.

'Let us work our way back,' he answered. But this was not so easily effected; the firing in the Place Louis XV had attracted towards the end of the garden opening on it all who had been strolling among the flower-beds, and fresh arrivals every moment made the barrier behind them more and more impassable.

'We must wait our opportunity,' said Nicholas; 'hold tight to me. Do not let go, on any consideration.'

'Where can Madeleine be?' asked the girl.

'Madeleine is there!' suddenly exclaimed the lad, pointing towards the statue of Louis XV, which occupied the centre of the great octagonal place. This open piece of ground had been adorned in the centre with an equestrian statue of the king in bronze in 1763, by the provost of Paris. At the angles of the pedestal were four figures of the cardinal virtues, Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude, and Justice, 'over whose heads,' said the wags, 'the king is trampling.' Among other sarcastic epigrams the group had given rise to was this:—

'O la belle statue, O le beau piédestal!
Les Vertues sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval!'

Standing on this pedestal, with one arm around the leg of the bronze horse, was Madeleine Chabry, her black hair flowing wildly over her shoulders from beneath a peasant's scarlet cap, which had been handed to her when in the scuffle in the Place Vendôme she had lost her head-dress. Her gown was torn; one of the sleeves, that on the right arm, had been ripped off, how and when Madeleine knew not. She held a staff in her hand, headed with a knife and a bunch of green leaves.

Nicholas and Gabrielle could not hear her words, but they saw her gesticulate violently and point to the gates of the Tuileries, and then towards the soldiers. Those near her, however, caught up her cry, and shouted to the crowd to back into the gardens, for the soldiers were coming that way.

'Barricade them out!' was called from one to another; 'shut the gates!' Then the answer came, 'We cannot; they will not stand back.'

'Ho, there! chairs, stalls, anything!'

'Chairs, benches, there,' was repeated; and instantly garden-seats, benches, and tables, were passed over the heads of the crowd towards the front.

'The soldiers are coming!' was cried again.

Madeleine disappeared from her perch. Next moment she reappeared at the gates, assisting in barricading them with chairs and benches.

The people began rapidly to thin out and disperse in the gardens, as the cry of the approach of the soldiers reached them.

'Now,' said Nicholas, 'back, Gabrielle, we must escape at once.' He forced his way through the mob, dived under seats which were being carried forward to form a barrier, and drew the girl out of the grounds into the streets.

He was not a moment too soon. The sharp rattle of musketry and the shrieks of the wounded reached them as they escaped.

By order of Besenval, the Prince de Lambesc, colonel of the dragoons, had charged the people and driven them behind their barrier. This was speedily demolished; over the broken fragments the German mercenaries advanced with sabres drawn, and the people rolled back before them, falling beneath the horses' feet, discharging stones, stocks, anything that was ready at hand at the advancing line, cursing the prince and the soldiers, but retreating rapidly before them. The line broke into a trot and cleared the garden, leaving behind them trampled flower-beds, fragments of benches, and prostrate men, women, and children, with limbs broken and bleeding wounds.

As Nicholas and Gabrielle fled along the street towards the Rue S. Antoine, they saw that the whole city was in commotion. All shops were being shut except those of the armourers, where a busy trade was carried on. Men and women went about bearing weapons and adorned with the green cockade. Flying past them, not noticing them, with her hair streaming behind her, and the red bonnet on one side, darted Madeleine, crying to all,—'The Hôtel de Ville! To arms, to arms!' A few moments later the great alarm-bell of the Hôtel de Ville pealed over the city its sonorous threatening cry from brazen mouth and brazen tongue:—'To arms, to arms!'

CHAPTER XXXI.

That night few persons in Paris closed their eyes. The sky was red with fires made at all the barriers. In 1784 the octroi wall had been built round Paris, with gates called barrières, at which taxes were levied on eatables and wines brought into the capital. The people, who regarded this tax as an imposition, unjust and intolerable, attacked the gates during the day and again during the night, and destroyed them. The armourers' shops were pillaged, and the streets were paraded by bands of men armed with such weapons as they could get. The Baron de Besenval, finding that resistance was impossible, withdrew his troops from the town, and sent to Versailles for orders.

On Monday morning the electors assembled at the Hôtel de Ville, and thinking it necessary to give their authority a more legal form, they appointed M. de Flesselles administrator of the city. He refused to act without a formal requisition. This was given him, and a number of electors were associated with him to form a municipality invested with full powers. This municipality summoned before it the lieutenant of police, and in a few hours drew up a plan for the formation of a militia corps, to be composed of forty-eight thousand men, who were to wear instead of the green cockade another composed of blue and red, the Parisian colours. Every one with this cockade bearing arms, who was not enrolled in the corps of his district, was to be disarmed and punished.

The provost Flesselles by no means sympathised with this movement, and used every opportunity that presented itself of retarding the enrolment, and the subsequent armament of the body of militia so rapidly formed. He had been that day summoned by the king to Versailles, yet he dared not go there.

The people clamoured for guns. The Garde-Meuble had been broken open in the morning, and its rusty swords and antique armour had been distributed among the mob. But that was nothing. Flesselles promised twelve thousand guns the same day; before the night fell, surely the Marshal de Broglie would pour his troops upon Paris—so thought the provost. Berthier, it was well known, had caused thirty thousand muskets to be imported, and had commanded two hundred thousand cartridges to be made. The people grew impatient. Valuable time was being lost; the mercenaries might be upon them at any moment. The provost then declared that the guns he had promised were on their way to the Hôtel de Ville from the manufactory at Charleville, and waggons were shortly after seen to traverse La Grève, inscribed with the word Artillerie. These waggons drew up at the entrance of the Hôtel, and the cases were borne into the magazines.

The provost then refused to unpack the weapons, without French guardsmen to attend to their orderly distribution. The officers declined to send soldiers for the purpose; consequently, the people insisted on the electors opening the cases. They did so, and found them to contain old linen.

At this sight the people became furious, and threatened the provost, so that to appease them he was obliged to give orders for the immediate manufacture of fifty thousand pikes. As the people could see the fires roar, the bellows go, and hear the clink of the hammer, and see the flash of the sparks, they were satisfied, at least for a while.

In the meantime, the arsenal was besieged by a crowd, desiring gunpowder. They were solemnly assured that it was empty. An invalid and a wig-maker were stationed near it to keep watch. Presently they saw a number of barrels brought out and rolled on board some boats in the Seine. They gave the alarm; the boats were seized, and the gunpowder transported to the Hôtel de Ville, and distributed among the people by the Abbé Lefebvre.

The report spread that five regiments at S. Denis were on the move with forty pieces of artillery; that at Gonesse there were fifty cannons, and at Bourget sixty, and that the troops were advancing.

The terror of the people became excessive. Drums rattled in every street, the bells of all the churches pealed the alarm. Two cannons, one ornamented with silver, which had been found in the Garde-Meuble, were drawn in front of the Hôtel de Ville and loaded. The prison of La Force was burst into, and all the debtors were released. The soldiers of the French guard refused to obey their officers, and deserted their barrack to fling themselves into the arms of the people. Old men, women, and children carried paving-stones up into the attics of the houses, to hurl down on the troops that were momentarily expected to enter Paris; and those able-bodied men who were without arms threw up barricades at the ends of the streets. Others tore the lead off the roofs of their houses and melted it up into bullets.

As the darkness descended over the city, the fear of the people redoubled. All at once it was reported that there was a store of guns at the Invalides. The deputies of one district went immediately to Besenval, the commandant, and Sombreuil, the governor of the Hôtel.

Besenval answered that he must write for orders from Versailles before he could deliver them up. He accordingly wrote to Marshal de Broglie to hasten down upon Paris. The deputies returned with his answer, and it was decided that if, on the morrow, the arms were not given up, they should be seized by force.

M. de Sombreuil had taken precautions some days previously. He had caused to be transported into the vaults beneath the dome of the Invalides all the stands of arms, and these to be covered with straw. As soon as the demand for them was made, he gave orders that the guns should be dismounted, and the locks unscrewed and removed. But the invalids, who sympathised with the popular movement, did their work so slowly, that during the night they had only pulled twenty guns to pieces.

Early in the morning of the 15th, before the day began to dawn, shots were fired against the walls of the Bastille, and De Launay, the governor, mounted to the summit of the towers and listened. He heard the distant murmuring of the city, and the rumble of vehicles in the streets; he saw the red glow of the burning barriers, and the countless lines of light in the black city. There was no mob around the gates into the Rue S. Antoine, so he returned below. He had taken precautions. His cannons were loaded with grape-shot. Six cart-loads of paving-stones, old iron and cannon-balls, had been carried to the top of the towers to crush his assailants. In the bottom loop-holes he had placed twelve large rampart-guns, each of which carried a pound and a half of bullets. His trustiest soldiers, the Swiss, thirty-two in number, he kept below, and distributed his eighty-two invalids about the towers.

From dawn the committee of electors or extemporised municipality had been sitting in the town-hall.

Messengers came from the Faubourg S. Antoine to announce that the guns of the Bastille had been run out and threatened the town.

The committee resolved on sending a deputation to request the withdrawal of the cannons, and that the governor would promise to refrain from hostilities, assuring him on their side that the people of Paris would respect the fortress if he would accede to their request. The three deputies were courteously received by the governor; he conducted them into his house, and regaled them with a sumptuous breakfast. He undertook to remove the cannons turned against the town, and gave orders in their hearing to that effect. Shortly after it was announced that his orders had been executed. The deputation then took their leave, and were crossing the drawbridge lowered to give them passage, when three other deputies, MM. Thuriot de la Rozière, Bourlier, and Toulouse, despatched by the district of La Culture, demanded admittance. It was refused. Nevertheless, Thuriot forced his way into the Bastille, and summoned the garrison to surrender in the name of the country. The French soldiers hung their heads, but the Swiss remained unmoved. De Launay saw by the action and expression of the invalids that his garrison was divided.

When M. Thuriot returned to the people, and they learned from his lips that the governor refused to admit the city militia, shouts of rage arose, and some, thinking the delegate was to blame, attacked him with blows. Forcing his way through the mob, he made for the Hôtel de Ville. The Place la Grève then presented a strange spectacle. It had become the central point to which everything converged. Waggons, carts, cattle, corn, money, weapons,—everything, in short, was brought there. The pikes ordered by Flesselles had all been manufactured in the night, and were being distributed to the new militia. The place was inundated with people rolling in waves from side to side, and running up the stairs of the Hôtel de Ville, and pouring even into the hall of the committee.

M. Thuriot had to beat his way with his fists to the stairs, and then, when he had reached the ante-chamber, he stuck there unable to advance or retire, wedged immovably into the compact mass of human beings who filled it. With his loud, husky voice he bellowed out his mission, and continued roaring till some of the citizen guard forced a way for him through the throng. Thus he arrived, thrust on by those who closed in behind him, in the saloon where sat the municipality then engaged in hearing the case of a lad of fourteen, who was accused of having sold for a crown apiece several national cockades worth a few sous. The excitement of the populace was at its height, so clearly did it perceive the meanness of this speculation. The committee ordered the seizure of the cockades, and the money to be distributed among the poor.

'That is not sufficient,' shouted one of the audience; 'we are not brigands, like those who sacked the house of Réveillon,—we don't choose to be taken for brigands, or thieves, or pickpockets. The cockade is an honourable badge. He who uses it for fraudulent purposes outrages the national honour. Let him be tried and sentenced for treason.'

The motion was applauded, and the young man was ordered to prison.

M. Thuriot then reported what had occurred in the Bastille; but the people listened with mistrust, and continued to cry out for arms.

Flesselles, the president of the committee, tried in vain to silence the multitude; he rang his bell and gesticulated vehemently, but they redoubled their demands.

At that moment, the deputation previously sent by the committee arrived and gave an account of their mission. This second report calmed the tumult, and Flesselles, profiting by the occasion, drew up a proclamation to the people informing them of the good intentions of the governor of the Bastille. MM. Boucher and Thuriot were passed out upon the balcony to read it to the mob, preceded by the trumpets of the town-hall. The trumpets pealed forth the summons, and the noise in the Place de Grève ceased instantly, dying into a breathless calm.

M. Thuriot de la Rozière began to read the proclamation, but he had hardly uttered the opening sentences, before the boom of cannon made the wall vibrate behind him. He stopped and lowered the paper.

A rattling explosion of artillery followed; then a cry rose from a band of people who poured up from the narrow streets to the east,—'Treason! it is the cannon of the Bastille!'

The ranks opened before a messenger, wounded in the arm and bleeding, who fled to the gates of the Hôtel de Ville with the news that the Governor de Launay was massacring the people.

Thuriot tore the paper in his hand into shreds and cast it into the air.

Cries of rage rose from the vast multitude surging in the Place around the statue of Louis XIV. Then from those far in the rear burst a roar like that of a wild beast lashed into fury by its keeper, and a compact body rushed through the general crowd laden with arms, which they distributed to all who wore the patriotic cockade. The arms of the Invalids had fallen into the hands of the people.

Then from all quarters rose the cry,—'To the Bastille!'

CHAPTER XXXII.

When M. Thuriot de la Rozière left the Bastille with the refusal of the governor to receive into it a detachment of city guards, the people drew off from the gate to consult. The answer of De Launay was not of a nature to satisfy them. But what step it was advisable to take was by no means clear. During this moment of hesitation a blacksmith, Tournay by name, leaped from the roof of a perfumer's shop upon the battlement of the wall surrounding the gardens, and which enclosed the whole area of the fortress. Thence he descended to the guard-house, and thence into the first court. He entered the lodge in quest of the keys of the gate, but they were not there; then he demanded a hatchet.

Aubin Bonnemère, an old soldier, flung him one, and Tournay cut, hacked, and broke through the chains, and let fall the first drawbridge. The crowd rushed in and filled the court. The firing began at once from the towers and the loop-holes below.

Bonnemère heading the people ran to the second drawbridge, hoping to succeed with it as they had with the first; but a discharge of musketry drove them back. Some sheltered themselves under the grating, some in the elm-court, leaving several writhing in the agonies of death on the pavement.

At the same time, the fire-brigade arrived with their engines, and began to jerk a stream of water against the towers of the Bastille with the intention of deluging the cannons and spoiling their priming. But the jets would not reach so far, and the garrison laughed at the attempt. The sound of fire-arms had attracted an immense crowd with incredible rapidity, and along with the people arrived numbers of the city militia, wearing their old uniform of the French guard. The mob instantly placed themselves under their orders, elected their officers, and swore obedience to their commands.

It was at this moment that Élie, an officer belonging to the Queen's regiment, knowing the importance of an uniform, quickly changed his private dress for the brilliant livery of his corps, and was at once elected commander of the French guards. Hullin, a gamekeeper of the Marquis de Conflans, mistaken for a soldier, because he wore his master's livery, was elected captain of the workmen.

Several times did the people fling themselves upon the second gate, but each time the discharge of a rampart-gun loaded with bullets drove them back with terrible slaughter.

This was the moment when a deputation from the Hôtel de Ville arrived and sought admission to the fortress. They approached slowly, waving their white handkerchiefs, but in the fire and smoke they were not seen, and the defenders of the Bastille continued to pour from the towers a shower of lead.

The deputies determined to traverse the first court and knock at the gate; but as they prepared to pass under the vault of the portal from the Rue S. Antoine, the people beneath it, armed and firing upon the garrison, signed to them not to approach. The deputies then turned into the Rue de la Cerisaye, hoping to find admission by that entrance to the castle. But there the fight was raging with even greater fury. The besiegers were commanded by La Reynie. The embassy advanced, explained their mission, and implored the people to suspend hostilities. Immediately, at La Reynie's command, the firing ceased, and the deputies renewed their signals and slowly neared the citadel, followed by the people with their arms reversed.

But scarcely had they approached near the gate, when a volley of musketry struck down half a dozen men around the messengers, and the people enraged at this action, which they regarded as perfidy, whereas in all probability it arose from a mistake, recommenced their firing. Finding it impossible to execute their mission, the delegates returned to the town-hall.

In the meantime, reinforcements had arrived. Peillon and the architect, Palloy, marched to the attack at the head of a company of citizens. They were followed by the brothers Kabers, chemists, conducting the corps of their trade; then came Turpin, fusilier of the company of Brache, and Maillard alone, but huge, with a solemn face and black dress,—a gloomy giant. From the direction of the arsenal came up another troop, headed by Geudin, a lad of seventeen. His father was a workman engaged in the citadel; he wished to save his life at the risk of his own.

Shortly after, a second deputation from the Hôtel de Ville arrived, headed by the flag with the city arms, and a drummer. The drum rattled a recall, and the crowd, believing that the signal announced the arrival of the troops, fell back. But when they found that it announced another embassy, they testified their impatience, and assured the deputies that it was impossible for them to cross the court. The deputies persisted, and entered the open space strewn with corpses. The insurgents ceased firing, and the signal of the embassy was acknowledged from the towers by the hoisting of a white flag. But, unfortunately, the towers were manned by French soldiers, and the gates by Swiss; and the latter, unaware of what the invalids had done, discharged the rampart-gun upon the deputies.

At that moment the rumble of the cannon was heard advancing along the Port au Blé.

'The cannon, my friends, the cannon!' bellowed Élie, and the silver-mounted gun from the Garde-Meuble was run into the court and pointed at the gate.

A man named Cholat had brought the guns to the assistance of the besiegers. He had previously visited the powder magazine, and had provided himself by force with sufficient ammunition. These guns were followed soon after by the cannon from the Invalides. Georget, a marine, whose thigh was broken by a ball, seated himself on a heap of stones and directed some novices in the use of cannon how to load and to discharge the piece under his charge.

Three cart-loads of straw had been pushed forward against the imperishable second gate and set on fire. Immediately the rampart-gun, which had already done such havoc, blew a storm of grape among those who crept up under cover of the straw, and dispersed them. The flame and smoke rose high into the air, and concealed the movements of the garrison; the cannon of the insurgents thundered incessantly, and volleys of bullets pattered innocuously against the hard walls of the fortress. One ball from a gun pointed by Élie carried away the cap of one of the pepper-boxes on the nearest tower, and struck down an invalid named Fortuné, the first of the garrison who perished in the action. The crash of the falling roof alarmed the invalids, who fought without heart and with reluctance.

In the meantime, the guard-houses opening on the court had caught fire, and were in a blaze. In one of them was a young and beautiful girl, who had secreted herself in her chamber at the beginning of the fight. The flames drove her from her shelter, and she fled across the yard with dishevelled hair and with face pale with fear.

The people, supposing her to be the governor's daughter, uttered loud cries of 'Seize her! and threaten De Launay with her death, unless he surrender.'

At these words, a score of men fell upon her. In vain did she assure them that she was no relation of the governor; the madmen, drunk with excitement, would have massacred her, had not Aubin Bonnemère forced his way through them and protected her against their blows, exclaiming, 'Cowards! by striking a woman, you disgrace a sacred cause!'

But he was unable to allay the general intoxication of rage. Another discharge of grape strewed the ground with corpses.

'We will not kill her,' shouted a demoniac; 'the fire shall devour the girl. If De Launay will not surrender, he shall see his child expire in the flames;' and laying hold on the young lady, he flung her on a straw bed, and set fire to it. The terrified girl uttered a piercing scream and fainted.

That cry drew M. de Monsigny, commandant of the gunners in the citadel, to the parapet. He looked through an embrasure, and recognised his daughter. The assailants saw him lift his hands in the agony of his fear, and at the same moment a bullet entered his breast, and he fell back into the arms of the invalids.

But Bonnemère had not abandoned the unfortunate girl; regardless of the blows showered upon him, and the opposition he met with, the brave man plunged through the ferocious band that surrounded her, he trod out the flames, and raising her insensible form in his nervous arms, bore her away to a house in the Rue S. Antoine, where she could be in safety, and then returned to his place at the head of the besiegers. Maillard, Élie, and Hullin, finding that the burning straw obscured the view of the drawbridge, and prevented them from taking accurate aim, displaced the carts, and by means of poles strewed the flaming straw about the yard, where it was stamped out by the militia, who now filled it.

They then advanced to the edge of the moat and shouted to the governor to lower the bridge. M. de Flue, the officer commanding the Swiss, replied through the battlements that the garrison would yield if they were allowed to march forth with all the honours of war.

'No,' was the answer; 'no more arms for those who have butchered the people.'

To account for this readiness to entertain the idea of capitulation, we must visit the interior of the citadel.

Upon the death of Monsigny, the invalids had refused to continue the defence. They could not forget that they were Frenchmen, and that those whose blood they were shedding were their countrymen.

De Launay, finding it impossible to hold out, when the majority of his garrison were mutinous, in the insanity of rage and fear, rushed to the powder magazine with a lighted match to blow up the castle and destroy with it the assailants and the besieged. A soldier, Ferrand by name, was sentinel at the door. Divining the purpose of the governor, he refused to give him admission to the magazine, snatched the match from his hand, and extinguished it with his foot.

When the terms of surrender proposed by M. de Flue had been refused, the officer consented to lay down his arms on condition that no harm should be offered to the garrison. A tumult of contradictory answers arose. Some promised what was demanded, others required unconditional surrender. At last, after several minutes of uproar, a scrap of paper was passed though an embrasure in the wall. A plank was run across the moat, but, as there was no resting-place for the end on the farther side, a number of men jumped upon that portion which rested on the pavement of the yard and sustained the plank in its horizontal position, whilst one of the crowd ran along it and reached his hand towards the paper. But whether his situation rendered him giddy, or whether the counterpoise was not effectually maintained, is uncertain; he reeled and fell over into the fosse and perished. The huge Maillard sprang upon the plank in his place, and succeeded in possessing himself of the note which he remitted to Élie. It contained these words:—

'We have twenty thousand charges of gunpowder. Unless you accept our terms of capitulation, we will blow up the garrison and the whole quarter of the town.'

'I accept, on the word of honour of an officer,' called Élie; 'lower the drawbridge.'

But the crowd protested against this capitulation, being exasperated against the garrison for having thinned their numbers with their bullets; and running the cannon forward to the brink of the fosse, they pointed it, and prepared to fire, when a young and beautiful girl, wearing a peasant's scarlet cap, to which was pinned the national rosette, and holding a musket in one hand, and a blue cloak over her other arm, suddenly cast her bonnet upon the touch-hole, and held it resolutely there.

At the same moment the lesser drawbridge was lowered, and Élie, Hullin, Maillard, and Cholat leaped upon it and prevented others from crossing till they had attached it to the ground with cramps and nails; then, flying to the other side, they let the great bridge fall with a crash.

Immediately the French guard marched across, and with great forethought ranged themselves on either side of the bridge, to prevent the crowd, which prepared to rush over it, from forcing one another over the edge into the moat.

The tunnel that opened before them through the massive walls of the fortress was illumined by the ruddy glare of the governor's house and guard-houses, which were in flames, and a streak of fire shone even into the well-like quadrangle in the centre.

A light dusty rain had been falling, so light as not to wet any one, but to draw a silvery haze over the scene. As the insurgents rushed through the portal, the sun pierced this veil and painted upon it a portion of a rainbow above the huge black towers.

One of the first to enter the court of the Bastille was the girl who had prevented the gun from being discharged. It was Madeleine.

In the quadrangle were drawn up the garrison, on the right the invalids, on the left the Swiss.

Some of the people, in their fury, rushed upon them. Élie drew his sword, and stood before the French veterans.

'I have given my word of honour that they shall be untouched,' he cried; 'they are our brothers. Respect your victory.'

But the authority which had been acknowledged in battle was little regarded in the moment of triumph, and the insurgents fell upon the Swiss, against whom they were especially exasperated.

Hullin and Élie continued to cry, 'Spare them. Respect your victory; let no blood be shed by us within these accursed walls!' but the rage of the assailants rendered them deaf to the appeals of their officers.

'Turn their coats!' cried Madeleine.

'Turn their coats; yes, let them be turned,' repeated the brave Élie; and in an instant the uniform of the Swiss was torn off by ready hands and reversed.

'Nicholas, help!' called Madeleine, as she rushed upon the corporal, and rent his uniform from his back.

In the scuffle, one of the guard fled,—the man who stood next to Deschwanden.

A shout of rage burst from the victors, and they turned in pursuit. The man ran towards the great entrance, but it was blocked by an advancing crowd of people; he turned and fled round the quadrangle, with a score of pursuers at his heels. He tried the chapel door, but it was locked, then he doubled and fled towards the new buildings. As he ran up the steps, a dozen hands seized him. With a scream, so piercing that the walls of the great square echoed it again and again, he went down, and was literally hacked to pieces. This man was Beckhard, the gunner, who had produced the greatest havoc among the people by the discharges of the rampart gun near the gate.

The excitement of the chase and the murder had arrested the attention of the mob.

Madeleine and Nicholas had taken advantage of the incident to equip the corporal in the blue cloak and red cap of the girl, and to arm him with her rifle.

'Join us, quick!' she whispered; then aloud in her shrill tones: 'My friends! our brothers are languishing in these dungeons. Let our first act be their release!'

'To the dungeons!' was answered by the people.

'Lead off the prisoners,' ordered Élie; and the Swiss guard, minus their corporal and their gunner, were marched out of the citadel, which they had defended with so much gallantry. As they appeared in the streets, their turned coats saved them from being massacred by the people, for they were mistaken for prisoners who had just been liberated.

Floods of excited besiegers continued to pour into the great court, and the invalids were exposed to imminent danger. Those who had brothers and fathers killed in the siege demanded their blood. They fell upon one of them,—the man Ferrand, who had prevented the governor from blowing up the citadel,—and killed him; then cut off his hands and carried them about on the end of pikes. The butchery of the rest would inevitably have followed, had not the Sieur Marqué, sergeant of the French guard, forced his way, followed by his company, through the mob into the quadrangle, and surrounded the invalids, shouting: 'Pardon, pardon for your comrades, your brothers!'

These words met with an instant response, so versatile is a mob, and a lane was opened through the crowd to allow the twenty-two invalids, and eleven little Swiss children belonging to the foreign detachment, to leave the castle, escorted by the French guard, who continued to cry out as they advanced, 'The people have pardoned; open your ranks.'

In the meantime, Cholat had hunted out De Launay, who stoutly denied that he was the governor. But Cholat knew him, and dragging him along, he called to Hullin and a couple of grenadiers to assist him in conveying him to the tribunal of the electors, to be by them judged.

As De Launay was brought into the quadrangle, a thousand voices cried for his blood. He quaked with fear, and drawing a dagger, attempted to stab himself, but Cholat knocked the weapon from his grasp, not, however, before De Launay had wounded himself in the hand.

Hullin and Cholat attempted to force their way through the crowd with their prisoner between them. Hullin, an immense man, covered him with his person. One of the crowd struck at the governor with a sabre, but only cut his clothes. His captors, redoubling their efforts, succeeded in forcing their way through the gates and reaching the street. In the outer court they were joined by some others, animated by the same desire of saving the governor from the rabble, and bringing him to justice.

But the rush of the tide was against them; they were breasting waves of life rolled towards the Bastille from every quarter of Paris, to which the news spread like lightning that the citadel had fallen. Cholat was torn from the side of De Launay. The great Hullin held his prisoner as long as he could; finding that he could no longer protect him, he put his own hat on the governor's head, and then the blows aimed at the latter fell on his shoulders. But he wriggled his way through the crowd, grasping the prisoner, till he had reached the arcade S. Jean. There the mass of people swayed like a sea in a storm. Twice Hullin fell, and twice he regained his feet. Cholat had fallen. He had eaten nothing all day, and this last desperate effort to save a life had been too much for him. He fainted, and was well-nigh trodden to death beneath the feet of the crowd. Arné, who had taken his place beside the governor, was swallowed up in a whirlpool of people.

In another moment, the head of De Launay was cut off and held up on a pike, amidst the cheers of a brutal mob.

Madeleine, the corporal, thoroughly disguised, and by all supposed to be a leader of the insurgents, Nicholas, and Gabrielle, whom Madeleine had drawn with her, rushed to the steps of the new buildings. They were splashed with blood, where the gunner had fallen. A man had run a ladder against the clock-face, adorned with the chained automata, and was up at it, hacking them and their fetters to pieces.

A tumultuous rabble besieged the door of the new chapel, supposing it to be an entrance to the prisons, and would have burst it open, when it was unlocked from within, and the old chaplain appeared, saying, 'The spot is sacred.' The mob fell back out of reverence; but presently they observed the painting over the altar, which, by a refinement of cruelty, represented S. Peter in chains between his keepers.

'Look,' roared one of the crowd; 'in the house of God, despotism preaches to the captives that nothing but a miracle can deliver them from their bonds.'

'Follow me,' cried another, armed with a hatchet, leaping in. Directly the sanctuary was invaded, and the objectionable painting was removed; but no other injury was done.

In the meantime, the corporal, Nicholas, and the two women, followed by a number of men, armed with guns, hatchets, and pikes, rushed along the passage in the new buildings. Gabrielle conducted them. They reached the corridor in the well-court, between the towers Du Pont and De la Liberté.

'Thirty-five,' said Gabrielle, arresting them at the door where Madame Berthier was confined.

Hatchets, bars, and hammers were at once applied, and the door was forced in.

Before them stood the lady, with the yellow cat on her shoulder, hissing with fright, with erect back and tail.

Gabrielle fell into her arms, without speaking.

'I thought so,' said Madame Plomb; 'we have been expecting the towers to fall every minute. Now come away from here; they have been tottering for days—for years, I believe; come quickly away, or they will bury you under the ruins. I am going, and Gabriel is going, so none of you remain behind.'

Then striding over the shattered door with her cat still perched beside her head, holding Gabrielle's arm, she led the way into the corridor.

'Where is the Beast?' she asked suddenly, turning round on her deliverers. 'Ah! he is hidden. Wait a bit, I must go after him myself.'

CHAPTER XXXIII.

The day of the 14th had been spent at Versailles by the Assembly, in sending deputations to the king which were answered evasively, and by the queen and Madame de Polignac in encouraging the officers, to whom was committed the task of restoring the ancient régime. The queen had walked in the orange-garden within sight of the soldiers, had spoken to and flattered their officers, and had ordered the distribution of wine among the troops.

In the meantime, messages were being transmitted to the Assembly from the Committee of Electors at the Hôtel de Ville of Paris, informing them of the state of the capital, and of the siege of the Bastille. The news of the progress of the insurrection spread through Versailles, and excited various emotions. That which predominated in the Hall of the States-General was vexation, because the work of the Assembly was interrupted by the popular agitation. The courtiers swaggered and laughed over it. That the people should be able to dint the walls of a fortress which had repulsed the Great Condé, was a supposition too absurd to be entertained with gravity.

The king retired early to bed. About midnight, the Duke de Liancourt entered his chamber to announce the capture of the Bastille, and, at his instance, he resolved to visit the Assembly next morning.

The Assembly had reassembled, ignorant of the dispositions of the king, and it resolved to send him another deputation; but when he arrived, without guards, and advancing into the hall spoke frankly and naturally, he was interrupted by bursts of applause.

But the Court had no intention of capitulating to the Assembly. Berthier and Foulon were at Versailles with De Broglie, Breteuil, and the rest of the new ministry. They saw that the crisis had arrived. Force must be employed, or all was lost.

A cabinet council was summoned; Monsieur and the Count d'Artois formed part of it. Every member composing it was anxious, those who least expressed it in their countenances were the old Marshal and Foulon. The Count d'Artois was in a condition of nervous trepidation; he had heard that his name had been denounced at the Palais Royal, along with those of Flesselles and De Launay. The Marshal de Broglie was indifferent, at least in appearance; if the king gave the command, he was ready to blow Paris into the Seine; he was a soldier, and his chief virtue lay in obedience to his superior. Foulon, calm and imperturbable, took snuff, and then dusted his face with his handkerchief; he extended his box to Berthier, who took a pinch with shaking fingers. His father-in-law raised his eyebrows, and a slight curl appeared on his lip.

Berthier wiped his eyes repeatedly, and dropped his handkerchief, picked it up and dropped it again.

The stout, amiable king had a weary, worried expression; his lock-making and hunting had been sadly interfered with by the business of state.

The ministers were singularly agreed. Their plans had been concerted to the smallest detail at De Broglie's lodgings. When each spoke, it was to address the king, and to urge him to adopt decisive measures.

'Sire,' said De Broglie, 'I have the troops massed about Paris. Two fresh regiments have to-day arrived. In my opinion, the people have been allowed to make head against authority too long. They must be restrained. If I may march my battalions upon Paris, I promise your majesty, in twelve hours the rebellion will be at an end.'

'But blood will be shed,' said the king, thoughtfully.

'A little, no doubt, will be spilt,' answered the marshal; 'but what of that?'