adi the Pythagorean; debauched by money and women! cry Besenval
and innumerable others. Debauched by what you will, or in need of no
debauching, behold them, long files of them, their consignment broken,
arrive, headed by their Sergeants, on the 26th day of June, at the
Palais Royal! Welcomed with vivats, with presents, and a pledge of
patriot liquor; embracing and embraced; declaring in words that the
cause of France is their cause! Next day and the following days the
like. What is singular too, except this patriot humour, and breaking
of their consignment, they behave otherwise with 'the most rigorous
accuracy.' (Besenval, iii. 394-6.)

They are growing questionable, these Gardes! Eleven ring-leaders of them
are put in the Abbaye Prison. It boots not in the least. The imprisoned
Eleven have only, 'by the hand of an individual,' to drop, towards
nightfall, a line in the Cafe de Foy; where Patriotism harangues loudest
on its table. 'Two hundred young persons, soon waxing to four thousand,'
with fit crowbars, roll towards the Abbaye; smite asunder the needful
doors; and bear out their Eleven, with other military victims:--to
supper in the Palais Royal Garden; to board, and lodging 'in campbeds,
in the Theatre des Varietes;' other national Prytaneum as yet not being
in readiness. Most deliberate! Nay so punctual were these young persons,
that finding one military victim to have been imprisoned for real civil
crime, they returned him to his cell, with protest.

Why new military force was not called out? New military force was called
out. New military force did arrive, full gallop, with drawn sabre: but
the people gently 'laid hold of their bridles;' the dragoons sheathed
their swords; lifted their caps by way of salute, and sat like mere
statues of dragoons,--except indeed that a drop of liquor being brought
them, they 'drank to the King and Nation with the greatest cordiality.'
(Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 32.)

And now, ask in return, why Messeigneurs and Broglie the great god of
war, on seeing these things, did not pause, and take some other course,
any other course? Unhappily, as we said, they could see nothing. Pride,
which goes before a fall; wrath, if not reasonable, yet pardonable,
most natural, had hardened their hearts and heated their heads; so,
with imbecility and violence (ill-matched pair), they rush to seek their
hour. All Regiments are not Gardes Francaises, or debauched by
Valadi the Pythagorean: let fre