nd the Tuileries Gardens,
considered with eyes of alarm that warlike preparation. Some insults
were cast upon those foreign mercenaries and some stones were flung.
Besenval, losing his head, or acting under orders, sent for his dragoons
and ordered them to disperse the crowd, But that crowd was too dense to
be dispersed in this fashion; so dense that it was impossible for the
horsemen to move without crushing some one. There were several crushed,
and as a consequence when the dragoons, led by the Prince de Lambesc,
advanced into the Tuileries Gardens, the outraged crowd met them with a
fusillade of stones and bottles. Lambesc gave the order to fire. There
was a stampede. Pouring forth from the Tuileries through the city went
those indignant people with their story of German cavalry trampling upon
women and children, and uttering now in grimmest earnest the call to
arms, raised at noon by Desmoulins in the Palais Royal.

The victims were taken up and borne thence, and amongst them was
Bertrand des Amis, himself--like all who lived by the sword--an ardent
upholder of the noblesse, trampled to death under hooves of foreign
horsemen launched by the noblesse and led by a nobleman.

To Andre-Louis, waiting that evening on the second floor of No. 13
Rue du Hasard for the return of his friend and master, four men of the
people brought that broken body of one of the earliest victims of the
Revolution that was now launched in earnest.

CHAPTER III. PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIER

The ferment of Paris which, during the two following days, resembled an
armed camp rather than a city, delayed the burial of Bertrand des Amis
until the Wednesday of that eventful week. Amid events that were shaking
a nation to its foundations the death of a fencing-master passed almost
unnoticed even among his pupils, most of whom did not come to the
academy during the two days that his body lay there. Some few, however,
did come, and these conveyed the news to others, with the result that
the master was followed to Pere Lachaise by a score of young men at the
head of whom as chief mourner walked Andre-Louis.

There were no relatives to be advised so far as Andre-Louis was aware,
although within a week of M. des Amis' death a sister turned up from
Passy to claim his heritage. This was considerable, for the master had
prospered and saved money, most of which was invested in the Compagnie
des Eaux and the National Debt. Andre-Louis consigned her to th