"But, mon Dieu!" the President cried aghast. "This is a revolt!"
"Precisely, Monsieur," St. Alais answered.
"And what does the King?"
"He is so good--that he has done nothing," was the bitter answer.
"And the States General?--the National Assembly at Versailles?"
"Oh, they? They too have done nothing."
"It is Paris, then?" the President said.
"Yes, Monsieur, it is Paris," the Marquis answered. "But Paris?" the President exclaimed helplessly. "Paris has been quiet so many years."
To this, however, the thought in every one's mind, there seemed to be no answer. St. Alais sat down again, and, for a moment, the Assembly remained stunned by astonishment, prostrate under these new, these marvellous facts. No better comment on the discussions in which it had been engaged a few minutes before could have been found. Its Members had been dreaming of their rights, their privileges, their exemptions; they awoke to find Paris in flames, the army in revolt, order and law in the utmost peril.
But St. Alais was not the man to be long wanting to his part, nor one to abdicate of his free will a leadership which vigour and audacity had secured for him. He sprang to his feet again, and in an impassioned harangue called upon the Assembly to remember the Fronde.