"Let us fall upon those ragamuffins, sword in hand!"
He pointed in the direction of the majority. The ladies of the markets, who sat knitting in the galleries, heard him, rose from their seats, and all cried at once, their stockings in their hands, and foaming at the mouth:
"To the lantern with them!"
The Vicomte de Mirabeau, Lautrec[372], and some younger nobles proposed to take the galleries by assault.
Soon this tumult was drowned by another: petitioners, armed with pikes, appeared at the bar:
"The people are starving," they said: "it is time to take measures against the aristocrats and to rise 'to the level of the situation.'"
The president assured these citizens of his respect:
"We have our eye upon the traitors," he replied, "and the Assembly will see justice done."
The National Assembly.
Thereupon a fresh din; the deputies of the Right cried that they were making for anarchy; the deputies of the Left replied that the people was free to express its will, that it had the right to complain of the abettors of despotism, seated in the very midst of the national representatives: they spoke thus of their colleagues to that sovereign people which was waiting for them under the street lamps.