With approving words, everybody tore off the leaves and trampled them underfoot, while they called for ribbons. As if by enchantment all windows opened, and there was a rain of red and blue ribbons. But this was scant supply for a thousand only. Aprons, silk dresses, tapes, scarves, all sorts of tissues were torn into strips and twisted up into rosettes, streamers, favors and ties, with which decorations the improvised army of Billet went its road.
It had recruits on the line: all the side streets of the St. Antoine or working quarter sent the warmest blooded and strongest of its sons. They reached in good order Lesdigures Street, where a number of folk were staring at the Bastile towers, their red brick ruddy in the setting sunshine. Some were calm, some saucy.
In the instant the arrivals of reinforcements changed the multitude in aspect and mood: they were the drumcorps, a hundred French Guards who came down the main avenue, and Billet's rough fellows upwards of twelve thousand strong. The timid grew bold, the calm were excited, and the pert were menacing.
"Down with the cannon," howled twenty thousand throats as twice as many fists were shaken at the brazen pieces stretching their necks over the crenelations.
At that very time, as though the fortress governor obeyed the injunction, the gunners came out to the pieces and retired them until they were no longer visible from below. The throngs clapped hands, thinking they were a power because they had apparently been obeyed.
The sentries continued to pace up and down the ramparts, with alternations of the Swiss and the Veterans.
After the shout of "Down with the cannons!" that of "Draw back the Swiss!" arose, in continuation of "Down with the Germans!" of the evening before.
But the Swiss continued all the same to march up and down to meet the French Invalides.
One of the shouters was impatient, and having a gun, he fired on a sentinel: the bullet struck the grey stone wall a foot above the cornice of the tower, above the soldier's head: it left a white mark, but the man did not halt—did not do much as turn his head.
A great hubbub rose around the firer of the first shot at the Bastile: it was the signal for a mad and unheard-of attack; the tumult had more dread in it than rage; many did not understand that to fire on a royal prison was incurring the death penalty.