NO PUBLIC AUTHORITY.

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Vast crowds of perukemakers, tailors, and shoemakers, used to assemble at the Louvre and in the Champs Elysées. The National Guard would go and disperse them, sometimes roughly and unceremoniously. They used to address complaints and demands to the town impossible to be granted,—to maintain the old regulations, or else make new ones, to fix the price of daily wages, &c. The servants, left out of place by the departure of their masters, wanted to have all the Savoyards sent back to their country.

What will always astonish those who are acquainted with the history of other revolutions is, that in this miserable and famished state of Paris, denuded of all authority, there were on the whole but very few serious acts of violence. One word, one reasonable observation, occasionally a jest, was sufficient to check them. On the first days only, subsequent to the 14th of July, there were instances of violence committed. The people, full of the idea that they were betrayed, sought for their enemies haphazard, and were near making some cruel mistakes. M. de Lafayette interposed several times at the critical moment, and was attended to: he saved several persons.*

When I think of the times that followed, of our own time, so listless and interested, I cannot help wondering that extreme misery did not in the least dispirit this people, nor drew from them one regret for their ancient slavery. They could suffer and fast. The grand deed achieved in so short a time, the oath at the Jeu-de-Paume, the taking of the Bastille, the night of the 4th of August, had exalted their courage, and inspired everybody with a new idea of human dignity. Necker, who had departed on the 11th of July, and returned three weeks after, no longer recognised the same people. Dussaulx, who had passed sixty years under the ancien régime, can find old France nowhere. Everything is changed, says he, deportment, cost

* On those occasions, M. de Lafayette was truly admirable. He found in his heart, in his love for order and justice, words and happy sayings above his nature, which was, we must say, rather ordinary. Just as he was endeavouring to save Abbé Cordier, whom the people mistook for another, a friend was conducting Lafayette's young son to the Hôtel-de-Ville. He seized the opportunity, and turning towards the crowd: "Gentlemen," said he, "I have the honour to present you my son." The crowd, lost in surprise and emotion, stopped short. Lafayette's friends led the abbé into the Hôtel and he was saved. See his Mémoires, ii., p. 264.

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tume, the appearance of the streets, and the signs. The conyents are full of soldiers; and stalls are turned into guardhouses. Everywhere are young men performing military exercises; the children try to imitate them, and follow them, stepping to time. Men of fourscore are mounting guard with their great-grandchildren: "Who would have believed," say they "that we should be so happy as to die free men?"

to me,

A thing little noticed is, that in spite of certain acts of violence of the people, their sensibility had increased; they no longer beheld with sang froid those atrocious punishments which under the old government had been a spectacle for them. At Versailles, a man was going to be broken on the wheel as a parricide; he had raised a knife against a woman, and his father throwing himself between them, had been killed by the blow. The people thought the punishment still more barbarous than the act, prevented the execution, and overthrew the scaffold.

The

The heart of man had expanded by the youthful warmth of our Revolution. It beat quicker, was more impassioned than ever, more violent, and more generous. Every meeting of the Assembly presented the touching, interesting spectacle of patriotic donations which people brought in crowds. National Assembly was obliged to become banker and receiver; there they came for everything, and sent everything, petitions, donations, and complaints. Its narrow enclosure was, as it were, the mansion of France. The poor especially would give. Now, it was a young man who sent his savings, six hundred francs, painfully amassed. Then, again, poor artisans' wives, who brought whatever they had,—their jewels and ornaments that they had received at their marriage. A husbandman came to declare that he gave a certain quantity of corn. schoolboy offered a purse collected and sent to him by his parents, his New-year's gift perhaps, his little reward. Donations of children and women, generosity of the poor, the widow's mite, so small, and yet so great before their native land!— before God!

A

Amid the commotion of ambition and dissension, and the moral sufferings under which it laboured, the Assembly was affected and transported beyond itself by this magnanimity of the people. When M. Necker came to expose the misery and

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destitution of France, and to solicit, in order to live at least two months longer, a loan of thirty millions, several deputies proposed that he should be guaranteed by their estates,-by those of the members of the Assembly. M. de Foucault, like a true nobleman, made the first proposition, and offered to pledge six hundred thousand francs, which constituted his whole fortune.

A sacrifice far greater than any sacrifice of money, is that which all, both rich and poor, made for the public welfare,that of their time, their constant thoughts, and all their activity. The municipalities then forming, the departmental administrations which were soon organized, absorbed the citizen entirely, and without exception. Several of them had their beds carried into the offices, and worked day and night.*

To the fatigue add also the danger. The suffering crowds were ever distrustful; they blamed and threatened. The treachery of the old administration caused the new one to be treated with suspicion. It was at the peril of their lives that those new magistrates worked for the salvation of France.

But the poor! Who can tell the sacrifices of the poor? At night, the poor man mounted guard; in the morning, at four or five o'clock, he took his turn (à la queue) at the baker's door; and late, very late, he got his bread. The day was partly lost, and the workshop shut. Why do I say workshop? They were almost all closed. Why do I say the baker? Bread was wanting, and still more often the money to buy bread. Sorrowful and fasting, the unfortunate being wandered about, crawled along the streets, preferring to be abroad to hearing at home the complaints and sobs of his children. Thus the man who had but his time and his hands wherewith to gain his living and feed his family, devoted them in preference to the grand business of public welfare. It caused him to forget his own.

O noble, generous nation! Why must we be so imperfectly acquainted with that heroic period? The terrible, violent, heart-rending deeds which followed, have caused a world of sacrifices which characterised the outset of the Revolution to

As did the administrators of Finistère. See, for what relates to this truly admirable activity, Duchatellier's Révolution en Bretagne, passim.

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DEVOTION AND SACRIFICE.

be forgotten. A phenomenon more grand than any political event then appeared in the world; that power of man, by which man is God-the power of sacrifice had augmented.

CHAPTER VI.

THE VETO.

Difficulty of procuring Provisions.-The urgent State of Things.-Can the King check everything ?-Long Discussion on the Velo-Secret Projects of the Court.-Is there to be one Chamber or two?-The English School. The Assembly required to be dissolved and renewed.—It was heterogeneous, discordant, and powerless.-Discordant Principles of Mirabeau. His Impotency. (August-September, 1789).

THE situation was growing worse and worse. France, between two systems, the old and the new, tossed about without advancing; and she was starving.

Paris, we must say, was living at the mercy of chance. Its subsistence, ever uncertain, depended on some arrival or other, on a convoy from Beauce or a boat from Corbeil. The city, at immense sacrifices, was lowering the price of bread; the consequence was, that the population of the whole environs, for more than ten leagues round, came to procure provisions at Paris. The question was therefore to feed a vast country. The bakers found it advantageous to sell at once to the peacant, and afterwards, when the Parisians found their shops empty, they laid the blame on the administration for not provisioning Paris. The uncertainty of the morrow, and vain alarms, further augmented the number of difficulties; everybody reserved, stored up, and concealed provisions.

The administration, put to its last resources, sent in every direction, and bought up by fair means or by force. Occasionally, loads of flour on the road were seized and detained on their passage by the neighbouring localities whose wants were pressing. Versailles and Paris shared together; but Versailles kept, so it was said, the finest part, and made a superior bread. This was a great cause of jealousy. One day, when the people of Versailles had been so imprudent as to turn aside for themselves a supply intended for the Parisians, Bailly, the honest

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and respectful Bailly, wrote to M. Necker, that if the flour was not restored, thirty thousand men would go and fetch it on the morrow. Fear made him bold. His head was in danger if provisions failed. It often happened that at midnight he had but the half of the flour necessary for the morning market.*

The spe

The provisioning of Paris was a kind of war. The national guard was sent to protect such an arrival, or to secure certain purchases; purchases were made by force of arms. Being incommoded in their trade, the farmers would not thrash any longer, neither would the millers grind any more. culators were afraid. A pamphlet by Camille Desmoulins designated and threatened the brothers Leleu, who had the monopoly of the royal mills at Corbeil. Another, who passed for the principal agent of a company of monopolists, killed himself, or was killed, in a forest near Paris. His death brought about his immense frightful bankruptcy, of more than fifty millions of francs. It is not unlikely, that the court, who had large sums lodged in his hands, suddenly drew them to pay a multitude of officers who were invited to Versailles, and perhaps to be carried off to Metz: without money they could not begin the civil war. This was already war against Paris, and the very worst perhaps, from their keeping the town in such a state of peace. No work, and famine!

"I used to see," says Bailly, "good tradespeople, mercers and goldsmiths, who prayed to be admitted among the beggars employed at Montmartre in digging the ground. Judge what I suffered." He did not suffer enough. We see him, even in his Mémoires, too much taken up with petty vanities-questions of precedence, to know by what honorary forms the speech for the consecration of the flags should begin, &c.

Neither did the National Assembly suffer enough from the sufferings of the people. Otherwise it would not have prolonged the eternal debate of its political scolastique. It would have understood that it ought to hasten on the movement of reforms, remove every obstacle, and abridge that mortal transition where France remained between the old order and the new. Everybody saw the question, yet the Assembly saw it not. Though endowed with generally good intentions and vast

*Mémoires de Bailly, passim.