tches
it, and returns. Terms of surrender: Pardon, immunity to all! Are they
accepted?--"Foi d'officier, On the word of an officer," answers half-pay
Hulin,--or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, "they are!" Sinks
the drawbridge,--Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes-in the
living deluge: the Bastille is fallen! Victoire! La Bastille est prise!
(Histoire de la Revolution, par Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 267-306;
Besenval, iii. 410-434; Dusaulx, Prise de la Bastille, 291-301. Bailly,
Memoires (Collection de Berville et Barriere), i. 322 et seqq.)

Chapter 1.5.VII.

Not a Revolt.

Why dwell on what follows? Hulin's foi d'officer should have been kept,
but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up; disguised in white canvas
smocks; the Invalides without disguise; their arms all piled against
the wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstacy that the death-peril is
passed, 'leaps joyfully on their necks;' but new victors rush, and ever
new, also in ecstacy not wholly of joy. As we said, it was a living
deluge, plunging headlong; had not the Gardes Francaises, in their cool
military way, 'wheeled round with arms levelled,' it would have plunged
suicidally, by the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.

And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing
uncontrollable, firing from windows--on itself: in hot frenzy of
triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides will
fare ill; one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven back,
with a death-thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to the Townhall, to be
judged!--Alas, already one poor Invalide has his right hand slashed off
him; his maimed body dragged to the Place de Greve, and hanged there.
This same right hand, it is said, turned back de Launay from the
Powder-Magazine, and saved Paris.

De Launay, 'discovered in gray frock with poppy-coloured riband,' is
for killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shall to the
Hotel-de-Ville; Hulin Maillard and others escorting him; Elie marching
foremost 'with the capitulation-paper on his sword's point.' Through
roarings and cursings; through hustlings, clutchings, and at last
through strokes! Your escort is hustled aside, felled down; Hulin sinks
exhausted on a heap of stones. Miserable de Launay! He shall never enter
the Hotel de Ville: only his 'bloody hair-queue, held up in a bloody
hand;' that shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on the
steps there; th