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ction of the king had a public banquet in the saloon of the opera. All the rank and elegance which had ventured yet to linger around the court graced the feast with their presence in the surrounding boxes. In the midst of their festivities, their chivalrous enthusiasm was excited in behalf of the king and queen. They drank their health--they vowed to defend them even unto death. Wine had given fervor to their loyalty. The ladies showered upon them bouquets, waved their handkerchiefs, and tossed to them white cockades, the emblem of Bourbon power. And now the cry arose, loud, and long, and enthusiastic, for the king and queen to come and show themselves to their defenders. The door suddenly opened, and the king and queen appeared. Enthusiasm immediately rose almost to phrensy. The hall resounded with acclamations, and the king, entirely unmanned by these expressions of attachment, burst into tears. The band struck up the pathetic air, "O Richard! O my king! the world abandons you." There was no longer any bounds to the transport. The officers and the ladies mingled together in a scene of indescribable enthusiasm. The tidings of this banquet spread like wildfire through Paris, magnified by the grossest exaggerations. It was universally believed that the officers had contemptuously trampled the tri-colored cockade, the adopted emblem of popular power, under their feet; that they had sharpened their sabers, and sworn to exterminate the National Assembly and the people of Paris. All business was at a stand. No laborer was employed. The provisions in the city were nearly all consumed. No baker dared to appear with his cart, or farmer to send in his corn, for pillage was the order of the day. The exasperated and starving people hung a few bakers before their own ovens, but that did not make bread any more plenty. The populace of Paris were now starving, literally and truly starving. A gaunt and haggard woman seized a drum and strode through the streets, beating it violently, and mingling with its din her shrieks of "Bread! bread!" A few boys follow her--then a score of female furies--and then thousands of desperate men. The swelling inundation rolls from street to street; the alarm bells are rung; all Paris composes one mighty, resistless mob, motiveless, aimless, but ripe for any deed of desperation. The cry goes from mouth to mouth "To Versailles! to Versailles!" Why, no one knows, only that the king and queen are there. Im
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