"I am not saying that the people will demolish the Bastile to master it but that, having mastered it, they will demolish it," said the leader of the revolutionists.
"Let us go upstairs," said the governor, leading up thirty steps, where he paused to say: "This embrasure opens on the passage by which you would be bound to come. It is defended by one rampart gun, but it enjoys a fair reputation. You know the song:
"'Oh, my sweet-voiced Sackbut, I love your dear song?'"
"Certainly, I have heard it, but I do not think this a time to sing it, or anything else."
"Stay; Marshal Saxe called this gun his Sackbut, because it sang the only music he cared anything for. This is a historical fact. But let us go on."
"Oh," said Billet when upon the tower top, "you have not dismounted the cannon, but merely drawn them in. I shall have to tell the people so."
"The cannon were mounted here by the King's command and by that alone can they be dismounted."
"Governor Launay," returned Billet, feeling himself rise to the level of the emergency, "the true sovereign is yonder and I counsel you to obey it."
He pointed to the grey-looking masses, spotted with blood from the night's battling, and reflecting the dying sunlight on their weapons up to the very moats.
"Friend, a man cannot know two masters," replied theroyalist, holding his head up haughtily: "I, the Governor of the Bastile, know but one: the Sixteenth Louis, who put his sign-manual at the foot of the patent which made me the commander over men and material here."