Chapter 1: 5.vii

Not a Revolt.

Why dwell on what follows? Hulin’s _foi d’officier_ 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 Françaises, 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 Grève, 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 Hôtel-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; the head is off through the streets; ghastly, aloft on a
pike.

Rigorous de Launay has died; crying out, ‘O friends, kill me
fast!’ Merciful de Losme must die; though Gratitude embraces him,
in this fearful hour, and will die for him; it avails not.
Brothers, your wrath is cruel! Your Place de Grève is become a
Throat of the Tiger; full of mere fierce bellowings, and thirst
of blood. One other officer is massacred; one other Invalide is
hanged on the Lamp-iron: with difficulty, with generous
perseverance, the Gardes Françaises will save the rest. Provost
Flesselles stricken long since with the paleness of death, must
descend from his seat, “to be judged at the Palais Royal:”—alas,
to be shot dead, by an unknown hand, at the turning of the first
street!—

O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on
reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in
cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the
Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace
are even now dancing with double-jacketted Hussar-Officers;—and
also on this roaring Hell porch of a Hôtel-de-Ville! Babel Tower,
with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the
conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of
distracted steel bristles, endless, in front of an Electoral
Committee; points itself, in horrid radii, against this and the
other accused breast. It was the Titans warring with Olympus; and
they scarcely crediting it, have _conquered:_ prodigy of
prodigies; delirious,—as it could not but be. Denunciation,
vengeance; blaze of triumph on a dark ground of terror: all
outward, all inward things fallen into one general wreck of
madness!

Electoral Committee? Had it a thousand throats of brass, it would
not suffice. Abbé Lefevre, in the Vaults down below, is black as
Vulcan, distributing that “five thousand weight of Powder;” with
what perils, these eight-and-forty hours! Last night, a Patriot,
in liquor, insisted on sitting to smoke on the edge of one of the
Powder-barrels; there smoked he, independent of the world,—till
the Abbé “purchased his pipe for three francs,” and pitched it
far.

Elie, in the grand Hall, Electoral Committee looking on, sits
“with drawn sword bent in three places;” with battered helm, for
he was of the Queen’s Regiment, Cavalry; with torn regimentals,
face singed and soiled; comparable, some think, to “an antique
warrior;”—judging the people; forming a list of Bastille Heroes.
O Friends, stain not with blood the greenest laurels ever gained
in this world: such is the burden of Elie’s song; could it but be
listened to. Courage, Elie! Courage, ye Municipal Electors! A
declining sun; the need of victuals, and of telling news, will
bring assuagement, dispersion: all earthly things must end.

Along the streets of Paris circulate Seven Bastille Prisoners,
borne shoulder-high: seven Heads on pikes; the Keys of the
Bastille; and much else. See also the Garde Françaises, in their
steadfast military way, marching home to their barracks, with the
Invalides and Swiss kindly enclosed in hollow square. It is one
year and two months since these same men stood unparticipating,
with Brennus d’Agoust at the Palais de Justice, when Fate
overtook d’Espréménil; and now they have participated; and will
participate. Not Gardes Françaises henceforth, but _Centre
Grenadiers of the National Guard:_ men of iron discipline and
humour,—not without a kind of thought in them!

Likewise ashlar stones of the Bastille continue thundering
through the dusk; its paper-archives shall fly white. Old secrets
come to view; and long-buried Despair finds voice. Read this
portion of an old Letter:[187] “If for my consolation Monseigneur
would grant me for the sake of God and the Most Blessed Trinity,
that I could have news of my dear wife; were it only her name on
card to shew that she is alive! It were the greatest consolation
I could receive; and I should for ever bless the greatness of
Monseigneur.” Poor Prisoner, who namest thyself _Quéret Démery_,
and hast no other history,—she is _dead_, that dear wife of
thine, and thou art dead! ’Tis fifty years since thy breaking
heart put this question; to be heard now first, and long heard,
in the hearts of men.

But so does the July twilight thicken; so must Paris, as sick
children, and all distracted creatures do, brawl itself finally
into a kind of sleep. Municipal Electors, astonished to find
their heads still uppermost, are home: only Moreau de Saint-Méry
of tropical birth and heart, of coolest judgment; he, with two
others, shall sit permanent at the Townhall. Paris sleeps; gleams
upward the illuminated City: patrols go clashing, without common
watchword; there go rumours; alarms of war, to the extent of
“fifteen thousand men marching through the Suburb
Saint-Antoine,”—who never got it marched through. Of the day’s
distraction judge by this of the night: Moreau de Saint-Méry,
“before rising from his seat, gave upwards of three thousand
orders.”[188] What a head; comparable to Friar Bacon’s Brass
Head! Within it lies all Paris. Prompt must the answer be, right
or wrong; in Paris is no other Authority extant. Seriously, a
most cool clear head;—for which also thou O brave Saint-Méry, in
many capacities, from august Senator to Merchant’s-Clerk,
Book-dealer, Vice-King; in many places, from Virginia to
Sardinia, shalt, ever as a brave man, find employment.[189]

Besenval has decamped, under cloud of dusk, “amid a great
affluence of people,” who did not harm him; he marches, with
faint-growing tread, down the left bank of the Seine, all
night,—towards infinite space. Resummoned shall Besenval himself
be; for trial, for difficult acquittal. His King’s-troops, his
Royal Allemand, are gone hence for ever.

The Versailles Ball and lemonade is done; the Orangery is silent
except for nightbirds. Over in the Salle des Menus,
Vice-president Lafayette, with unsnuffed lights, “with some
hundred of members, stretched on tables round him,” sits erect;
outwatching the Bear. This day, a second solemn Deputation went
to his Majesty; a second, and then a third: with no effect. What
will the end of these things be?

In the Court, all is mystery, not without whisperings of terror;
though ye dream of lemonade and epaulettes, ye foolish women! His
Majesty, kept in happy ignorance, perhaps dreams of
double-barrels and the Woods of Meudon. Late at night, the Duke
de Liancourt, having official right of entrance, gains access to
the Royal Apartments; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in his
constitutional way, the Job’s-news. ‘_Mais_,’ said poor Louis,
‘_c’est une révolte_, Why, that is a revolt!’—‘Sire,’ answered
Liancourt, ‘It is not a revolt, it is a revolution.’