the
liberty of firing at; 'seven shots towards twelve at night,' which do
not take effect. (Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 312.) This was the 13th
day of July, 1789; a worse day, many said, than the last 13th was, when
only hail fell out of Heaven, not madness rose out of Tophet, ruining
worse than crops!

In these same days, as Chronology will teach us, hot old Marquis
Mirabeau lies stricken down, at Argenteuil,--not within sound of these
alarm-guns; for he properly is not there, and only the body of him now
lies, deaf and cold forever. It was on Saturday night that he, drawing
his last life-breaths, gave up the ghost there;--leaving a world, which
would never go to his mind, now broken out, seemingly, into deliration
and the culbute generale. What is it to him, departing elsewhither, on
his long journey? The old Chateau Mirabeau stands silent, far off, on
its scarped rock, in that 'gorge of two windy valleys;' the pale-fading
spectre now of a Chateau: this huge World-riot, and France, and the
World itself, fades also, like a shadow on the great still mirror-sea;
and all shall be as God wills.

Young Mirabeau, sad of heart, for he loved this crabbed brave old
Father, sad of heart, and occupied with sad cares,--is withdrawn from
Public History. The great crisis transacts itself without him. (Fils
Adoptif, Mirabeau, vi. l. 1.)

Chapter 1.5.VI.

Storm and Victory.

But, to the living and the struggling, a new, Fourteenth morning dawns.
Under all roofs of this distracted City, is the nodus of a drama, not
untragical, crowding towards solution. The bustlings and preparings,
the tremors and menaces; the tears that fell from old eyes! This day, my
sons, ye shall quit you like men. By the memory of your fathers' wrongs,
by the hope of your children's rights! Tyranny impends in red wrath:
help for you is none if not in your own right hands. This day ye must do
or die.

From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has heard the
old cry, now waxing almost frantic, mutinous: Arms! Arms! Provost
Flesselles, or what traitors there are among you, may think of those
Charleville Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty thousand of us; and but the third
man furnished with so much as a pike! Arms are the one thing needful:
with arms we are an unconquerable man-defying National Guard; without
arms, a rabble to be whiffed with grapeshot.

Happily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept,--that there lie
muskets at the Hotel des