ld, or should, in nowise, be surrendered, save to the King's
Messenger: one old man's life worthless, so it be lost with honour;
but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille
springs skyward!--In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one
fancies de Launay might have left Thuriot, the red Clerks of the
Bazoche, Cure of Saint-Stephen and all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the
world, to work their will.

And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each man's
heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men; hast thou
noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek
of indignation palsies the strong soul; their howl of contumely withers
with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of
the noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the
Populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser: Bread! Bread!
Great is the combined voice of men; the utterance of their instincts,
which are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man
encounters, among the sounds and shadows, which make up this World of
Time. He who can resist that, has his footing some where beyond Time. De
Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers between the two; hopes
in the middle of despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that
he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it.
Unhappy old de Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee!
Jail, Jailoring and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must
finish.

For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared: call it the
World-Chimaera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their
battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets: they have made a white
flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one
can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary of firing;
disheartened in the fire-deluge: a porthole at the drawbridge is opened,
as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On
his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone-Ditch; plank resting
on parapet, balanced by weight of Patriots,--he hovers perilous: such
a Dove towards such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher: one man already
fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry! Usher
Maillard falls not: deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The
Swiss holds a paper through his porthole; the shifty Usher sna