sh undebauched Regiments come up; let
Royal-Allemand, Salais-Samade, Swiss Chateau-Vieux come up,--which can
fight, but can hardly speak except in German gutturals; let soldiers
march, and highways thunder with artillery-waggons: Majesty has a
new Royal Session to hold,--and miracles to work there! The whiff of
grapeshot can, if needful, become a blast and tempest.

In which circumstances, before the redhot balls begin raining, may not
the Hundred-and-twenty Paris Electors, though their Cahier is long since
finished, see good to meet again daily, as an 'Electoral Club'? They
meet first 'in a Tavern;'--where 'the largest wedding-party' cheerfully
give place to them. (Dusaulx, Prise de la Bastille (Collection des
Memoires, par Berville et Barriere, Paris, 1821), p. 269.) But latterly
they meet in the Hotel-de-Ville, in the Townhall itself. Flesselles,
Provost of Merchants, with his Four Echevins (Scabins, Assessors),
could not prevent it; such was the force of public opinion. He, with his
Echevins, and the Six-and-Twenty Town-Councillors, all appointed from
Above, may well sit silent there, in their long gowns; and consider,
with awed eye, what prelude this is of convulsion coming from Below, and
how themselves shall fare in that!

Chapter 1.5.IV.

To Arms!

So hangs it, dubious, fateful, in the sultry days of July. It is the
passionate printed advice of M. Marat, to abstain, of all things, from
violence. (Avis au Peuple, ou les Ministres devoiles, 1st July, 1789
in Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 37.) Nevertheless the hungry poor are
already burning Town Barriers, where Tribute on eatables is levied;
getting clamorous for food.

The twelfth July morning is Sunday; the streets are all placarded with
an enormous-sized De par le Roi, 'inviting peaceable citizens to remain
within doors,' to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd. Why so? What
mean these 'placards of enormous size'? Above all, what means this
clatter of military; dragoons, hussars, rattling in from all points
of the compass towards the Place Louis Quinze; with a staid gravity of
face, though saluted with mere nicknames, hootings and even missiles?
(Besenval, iii. 411.) Besenval is with them. Swiss Guards of his are
already in the Champs Elysees, with four pieces of artillery.

Have the destroyers descended on us, then? From the Bridge of Sevres to
utmost Vincennes, from Saint-Denis to the Champ-de-Mars, we are begirt!
Alarm, of the vague unknown, is in e