er sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Francaises have come; real
cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie,
half-pay Hulin, rage in the midst of thousands.

How the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court,
there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or
the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing began, and is
now pointing toward Five, and still the firing slakes not.--Far down,
in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of
earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely.

Woe to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides! Broglie is
distant, and his ears heavy; Besenval hears, but can send no help. One
poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitring, cautiously along the
Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. "We are come to join you," said the
Captain; for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish
individual, of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his
blue lips, for there is sense in him; and croaks, "Alight then, and
give up your arms!" The Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to
the barriers and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was?
Men answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific 'Avis au
Peuple'! Great, truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of
emergence and new-birth; and yet this same day come four years!--But
let the curtains of the Future hang.

What shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay could have done:
what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with
lighted taper, within arm's-length of the Powder-Magazine; motionless,
like old Roman Senator, or Bronze Lamp-holder; coldly apprising
Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his
resolution was:--Harmless he sat there, while unharmed; but the King's
Fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should in nowise be
surrendered save to the King's Messenger; one old man's life is
worthless, so it be lost with honor: but think, ye brawling
_canaille_, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward? In
such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might
have left Thuriot, the red clerks of the Basoche, Cure of
Saint-Stephen, and all the tagrag and bobtail of the world, to work
their will.

And, yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each
man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men?
Hast thou noted how omnipotent is the v