Eighteen months later, these very same words, "The law must be enforced!" were pronounced over another coffin, but, in that instance, the law was not enforced until after two days of frightful butchery.
At the edge of Benjamin Constant's grave, La Fayette nearly fainted from grief and fatigue, and was obliged to be held up and pulled backward or he would have lain beside the dead before his time.
We shall relate how the same thing nearly happened to him at the grave of Lamarque, but, that time, he did not get up again.
Every one returned home at seven that evening, imbued with some of the stormy electricity with which the air during the whole of that day had been charged.
Next day, the Chamber enacted a law, which, in its turn, led to serious disturbances. It was the law relative to national pensions.
On 7 October, M. Guizot had ascended the tribune and said—
"GENTLEMEN,—The king was as anxious as you were to sanction by a legislative act the great debt of national gratitude, which our country owes to the victims of the Revolution.
"I have the honour to put before you a bill to that effect. Our three great days cost more than five hundred orphans the loss of fathers, five hundred widows their husbands, and over three hundred old people have lost the affection and support of children. Three hundred and eleven citizens have been mutilated and made incapable of carrying on their livelihood, and three thousand five hundred and sixty-four wounded people have had to endure temporary disablement."
A Commission had been appointed to draw up this bill and, on 13 December, the bill called the Act of National Recompense was carried. It fixed the amounts to be granted to the widows, fathers, mothers and sisters of the victims; and decreed that France should adopt the orphans made during the Three Days fighting; among other dispositions it contained the following—
"ARTICLE 8.—Resolved that those who particularly distinguished themselves during the July Days shall be made non-commissioned officers and sub-lieutenants in the army, if they are thought deserving of this honour after the report of the Commission, provided that in each regiment the number of sub-lieutenants does not exceed the number of two and that of non-commissioned officers, four.
"ARTICLE 10.—A special decoration shall be granted to every citizen who distinguished himself during the July Days; the list of those who are permitted to wear it shall be drawn up by the Commission, and submitted to the King's approval; this decoration will rank in the same degree as the Légion d'honneur."