“You mean to say, the place where it stood?”
“Yes.”
“Come along, then; we will breakfast at the first restaurant we find, and then, hey! for the Place de la Bastille.”
M. Drouet knew Paris very well, having been there about twenty times.
We were not long before we arrived at a wall, on which was written, in large letters:—
“Here was the Bastille.”
Why did the germs of the Revolution suffocate themselves under those dismal arches? Why, in 1300, did they discourse the holy gospel? Why, during the captivity of King John, did the Provost of Paris, Etienne Marcel, making himself a dictator, establish a popular club there, equal to that of the eighteenth century? Why were the Cordeliers, especially, of all the minor orders of St. Francis, republican in their tendencies—so much so, that, three centuries before Barbeuf and Prudhomme, they had dreamt the abolition of the rights of property?
The 13th of July was Vesuvius, with its fire-ejecting crater, threatening to destroy Naples, and overturn the world.
To-day, all has ended in smoke—with, perhaps, a few cinders as a memorial.