owns, have ducked
under (into the raging chaos);--shall never emerge more. Besenval is
painfully wriggling himself out, to the Champ-de-Mars; he must sit there
'in the cruelest uncertainty:' courier after courier may dash off for
Versailles; but will bring back no answer, can hardly bring himself
back. For the roads are all blocked with batteries and pickets, with
floods of carriages arrested for examination: such was Broglie's one
sole order; the Oeil-de-Boeuf, hearing in the distance such mad din,
which sounded almost like invasion, will before all things keep its
own head whole. A new Ministry, with, as it were, but one foot in the
stirrup, cannot take leaps. Mad Paris is abandoned altogether to itself.

What a Paris, when the darkness fell! A European metropolitan City
hurled suddenly forth from its old combinations and arrangements; to
crash tumultuously together, seeking new. Use and wont will now no
longer direct any man; each man, with what of originality he has, must
begin thinking; or following those that think. Seven hundred thousand
individuals, on the sudden, find all their old paths, old ways of acting
and deciding, vanish from under their feet. And so there go they, with
clangour and terror, they know not as yet whether running, swimming
or flying,--headlong into the New Era. With clangour and terror: from
above, Broglie the war-god impends, preternatural, with his redhot
cannon-balls; and from below, a preternatural Brigand-world menaces with
dirk and firebrand: madness rules the hour.

Happily, in place of the submerged Twenty-six, the Electoral Club is
gathering; has declared itself a 'Provisional Municipality.' On the
morrow it will get Provost Flesselles, with an Echevin or two, to give
help in many things. For the present it decrees one most essential
thing: that forthwith a 'Parisian Militia' shall be enrolled. Depart,
ye heads of Districts, to labour in this great work; while we here, in
Permanent Committee, sit alert. Let fencible men, each party in its
own range of streets, keep watch and ward, all night. Let Paris court a
little fever-sleep; confused by such fever-dreams, of 'violent motions
at the Palais Royal;'--or from time to time start awake, and look
out, palpitating, in its nightcap, at the clash of discordant
mutually-unintelligible Patrols; on the gleam of distant Barriers, going
up all-too ruddy towards the vault of Night. (Deux Amis, i. 267-306.)

Chapter 1.5.V.

Give us Arms