Such was the general tone of the press, such the exhaustless laughter which this young man diffused, like the Aristophanes of an irritated people. He accustomed it to revile men, majesty, misfortune, and worth. The day came when he required for himself and for the young and lovely woman whom he adored, that pity which he had destroyed in the people. He found, in his turn, only the brutal derision of the multitude, and he himself then became sad and sorry for the first and last time.

The people, all whose political idea is from the senses, could not at all comprehend why the statesmen of the Assembly should impose upon them a fugitive king, out of respect for abstract royalty. The moderation of Barnave and Lameth seemed to them full of suspicion; and cries of treason were uttered at all their meetings. The decree of the Assembly was the signal for increased ferment, which developed from and after the 13th of July, in zealous meetings, imprecations, and threats. Large bodies of workmen, leaving their work, congregated in the public places, and demanded bread of the municipal authorities. The commune, in order to appease them, voted for distributions and supplies. Bailly, the mayor of Paris, harangued them, and gave them extraordinary work. They went to it for a moment, and then quitted it, being speedily attracted by the mob becoming dense and uttering cries of hunger.

The crowd betook itself from the Hôtel-de-Ville to the Jacobins, from the Jacobins to the National Assembly, clamorous for the forfeiture of the crown and the republic. This popular gathering had no other leader than the uneasiness that excited it. A spontaneous and unanimous instinct assured it that the Assembly would be found wanting at the hour of great resolutions. This mob desired to compel it again to seize the opportunity. Its will was the more potent as it was wholly impossible to trace it to its source—no chief gave it any visible impetus. It advanced of itself, spake of itself, and wrote with its own hand in the streets—on the corner stone—its threatening petitions.

The first that the people presented to the Assembly, on the 14th, and which was escorted by 4000 petitioners, was signed "The People." The 14th of July and the 6th of October had taught it its name. The Assembly, firm and unmoved, passed to the order of the day.

On quitting the Assembly, the crowd went to the Champ-de-Mars, where it signed, in greater numbers, a second petition in still more imperative terms. "Entrusted with the representation of a free people, will you destroy the work we have perfected? Will you replace liberty by a reign of tyranny? If, indeed, it were so, learn that the French people, which has acquired its rights, will not again lose them."

On quitting the Champ-de-Mars, the people thronged round the Tuileries, the Assembly, and the Palais Royal. Of their own accord they shut up the theatres, and proclaimed the suspension of all public entertainments, until justice should be done to them. That evening 4000 persons went to the Jacobins, as though to identify in the agitators who met there the real assembly of the people. The chiefs in whom they reposed confidence were there: the tribune was occupied by a member who was denouncing to the meeting a citizen for having made a remark injurious to Robespierre; the accused was justifying himself, and they drove him tumultuously from the chamber. At this moment Robespierre appeared, and begged them to pardon the citizen who had insulted him. His generous intercession was hailed with applause, and enthusiasm for Robespierre was at its height. "Sacred vaults of the Jacobins," were the words of an address from the departments; "you guarantee to us Robespierre and Danton, these two oracles of patriotism." Laclos proposed a petition to be sent into the departments, and covered with ten millions of signatures. A member opposes this proposition, from love of order and peace. Danton rises,—"And I, too, love peace, but not the peace of slavery. If we have energy, let us show it. Let those who do not feel courage to rise and beard tyranny refrain from signing our petition: we want no better proof by which to understand each other. Here it is to our hand."

Robespierre next spoke, and demonstrated to the people that Barnave and the Lameths were playing the same game as Mirabeau. "They concert with our enemies, and then they call us factious!" More timid than Laclos and Danton, he did not give any opinion as to the petition. A man of calculation rather than of passion, he foresaw that the disorderly movement would split against the organised resistance of the bourgeoisie. He reserved to himself the power of falling back upon the legality of the question, and kept on terms with the Assembly. Laclos pressed his motion, and the people carried it. At midnight they separated, after having agreed to meet the next day in the Champ-de-Mars, there to sign the petition.

The day following was lost to sedition, by disputes between the clubs as to the terms of the petition. The Republicans negotiated with La Fayette, to whom they offered the presidency of an American government. Robespierre and Danton, who detested La Fayette—Laclos, who urged on the Duc d'Orleans, concerted together, and impeded the impulse given by the Cordeliers subservient to Danton. The Assembly watchful, Bailly on his guard, La Fayette resolute, watched in unison for the repression of all outbreak. On the 16th the Assembly summoned to its bar the municipality and its officers, to make it responsible for the public peace. It drew up an address to the French people, in order to rally them around the constitution. Bailly, the same evening, issued a proclamation against the agitators. The fluctuating Jacobins themselves declared their submission to the decrees of the Assembly. At the moment when the struggle was expected, the leaders of the projected movement were invisible. The night was spent in military preparations against the meeting on the morrow.

XI.

On the 17th, very early in the morning, the people, without leaders, began to collect in the Champ-de-Mars, and surround the altar of the country, raised in the centre of the large square of the confederation. A strange and melancholy chance opened the scenes of murder on this day. When the multitude is excited, every thing becomes the occasion of crime. A young painter, who, before the hour of meeting, was copying the patriotic inscriptions engraved in front of the altar, heard a slight noise at his feet; astonished, he looked around him and saw the point of a gimlet, with which some men, concealed under the steps of the altar, were piercing the planks of the pedestal. He hastened to the nearest guard-house, and returned with some soldiers. They lifted up one of the steps and found beneath two invalids, who had got under the altar in the night, with no other design, as they declared, than a childish and obscene curiosity. The report instantly spread that the altar of the country was undermined, in order to blow up the people; that a barrel of gunpowder had been discovered beside the conspirators; that the invalids, surprised in the preliminaries to their criminal design, were well known satellites of the aristocracy; that they had confessed their deadly design, and the amount of reward promised on the success of their wickedness. The mob mustered, and raging with fury, surrounded the guard-house of the Gros-Caillou. The two invalids underwent an interrogatory. The moment when they left the guard-house, to be conveyed to the Hôtel-de-Ville, the populace rushed upon them, tore them from the soldiers who were escorting them, rent them in pieces, and their heads, placed on the tops of pikes, were carried by a band of ferocious children to the environs of the Palais Royal.