For him are vivats: few for the rest, though all wave in plumed "hats of a feudal cut," and have sword on thigh; though among them is D'Antraigues, the young Languedocian gentleman, — and indeed many a Peer more or less noteworthy.

There are Liancourt, and La Rochefoucault; the liberal Anglomaniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal Lameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette; 1 whose name shall be Cromwell-Grandison,2 and fill the world. Many a "formula" has this Lafayette too made away with; yet not all formulas. He sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick; - and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water, is found still hanging. Happy for him; be it glorious or not! Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one idea. . .

King Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits; still more Necker his Minister. Not so the Queen; on whom hope shines not steadily any more. Ill-fated Queen! Her hair is already grey with many cares and crosses; her firstborn son is dying in these weeks: black falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name; ineffaceably while this generation lasts. Instead of Vive la Reine, voices insult her with Vive d'Orléans. Of her queenly beauty little remains except its

1 Marie Joseph Lafayette (1757-1834) was the most distinguished of the younger French noblesse who sympathized with the cause of liberty in the New World and actively assisted the American revolutionaries. He occupied a position of importance during the early days of the French Revolution, but was forced into exile by the triumph of the extremists. He returned to France after the fall of Napoleon and was an important factor in the liberal Revolution of 1830.

2 Cromwell-Grandison: Oliver Cromwell and Sir Charles Grandison in one. Sir Charles Grandison, a novel by Samuel Richardson written in 1753; the hero is a combination of all the virtues and graces.

3 Because of the bitter enmity between the Queen and Orleans, a cheer for the latter would be an insult to Marie Antoinette.

stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen. Poor Marie Antionette; with thy quick noble instincts; vehement glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store for thee; bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut they eyes on the future!

(And so, in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France. Some towards honour and quick fire-consummation; most towards dishonour; not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all towards Eternity! So many heterogeneities cast together into the fermentingvat; there, with incalculable action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive developments, to work out healing for a sick moribund System of Society! Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thousandfold complex a Society, ready to burst up from its infinite depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without life-rule for themselves, - other life-rule than a Gospel according to Jean Jacques!1 To the wisest of them, what we must call the wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without Duty round him; except it be "to make the Constitution." He is without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in the world.)

1 Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), by his exposition and advocacy of popular sovereignty, supplied the constructive criticism which was lacking in the writings of Voltaire, and was largely accountable for the spread of revolutionary opinion. He is often called the Evangelist or Apostle of Democracy.

[The universal optimism which attended the opening of the StatesGeneral was speedily dampened by a quarrel between the deputies of the Third Estate and those of the upper orders. The former desired that all the deputies should meet and vote together; the latter that each order should assemble by itself. After much delay the king decided to support

the nobility, and commanded the Estates to meet separately. He also informed them that their sole duty was to find a solution of the financial problem; they were not to attempt a general reform of the abuses of government.

But the Third Estate, led by Mirabeau, refused to cede, declared themselves the National Assembly, — representative of all France, — and invited the other two orders to join them. They also swore not to disperse until they had given a constitution to the nation. Their determination was met with complete surrender on the part of Louis XVI, and they were soon joined by the other orders.

The queen and the court party, however, were resolved that if the moral authority of royalty was insufficient, physical force should be employed to subdue the ambitions of the popular deputies. Marie Antoinette planned to dismiss Necker, the liberal minister, gather an armed force, and disband the Assembly. She brought troops into Versailles and Paris, and for the moment the destruction of the National Assembly seemed imminent. But the people of Paris saved the Revolution. Inflamed by the news of Necker's dismissal, which they regarded as the signal for the execution of the royal plot, and terrified by the sight of the foreign troops, they rose to defend themselves and the Assembly.]

BOOK V

THE THIRD ESTATE

CHAPTER 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 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.1 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 Hôtel des Invalides.2 Thither will we: King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of authority a Permanent Committee can lend, shall

1 The provost had promised that the gun manufactory at Charleville would send 30,000 guns, and pointed to boxes marked with the word Artillerie which had just come in. But when opened they were found to contain only rags.

2 Hôtel des Invalides was built by Louis XIV as a retreat for his vetHere was located the most important arsenal in Paris.

erans.

go with us.

Besenval's Camp1 is there; perhaps he will not fire on us; if he kill us, we shall but die.

Alas, poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that manner, has not the smallest humour to fire! At five o'clock this morning, as he lay dreaming, oblivious in the École Militaire, a "figure" stood suddenly at his bedside; "with face rather handsome; eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, air audacious:" such a figure drew Priam's curtains! The message and monition of the figure was, that resistance would be hopeless; that if blood flowed, woe to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure: and vanished. "Withal there was a kind of eloquence that struck one." Besenval admits that he should have arrested him, but did not. Who this figure with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid and curt, might be? Besenval knows, but mentions not. Camille Desmoulins? Pythagorean Marquis Valadi, inflamed with "violent motions all night at the Palais Royal?" Fame names him, "Young M. Meillar;" then shuts her lips about him for ever.

In any case, behold about nine in the morning, our National Volunteers rolling in long wide flood, southwestward to the Hôtel des Invalides; in search of the one thing needful. King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny and officials are there; the Curé of Saint-Étienne du Mont marches unpacific, at the head of his militant Parish; the Clerks of the Basoche 2 in red coats we see marching, now Volunteers of the Basoche; the Volunteers of the Palais Royal: 3- National Volunteers, numerable by tens of thousands; of one heart and mind. The King's muskets are the Nation's; think, old M. de Sombreuil, how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them!

4

1 The royal party had concentrated a large number of foreign troops with which to overawe Paris and break up the National Assembly. Besenval was in command of the camp outside of Paris, with his headquarters at the Invalides.

2 The Basoche was the association of students and clerks in the Paris law-courts.

3 The Palais Royal was the property of the Duke of Orleans, and with its gardens, cafés, and galleries formed the rendezvous of all the elements of resistance. 4 Sombreuil was the governor of the Invalides.