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All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere,— To the Bastille ! Repeated "deputations of citizens" have been here, passionate for arms; whom De Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon Elector Thuriot de la Rosière gains admittance; finds De Launay indisposed for surrender; nay, disposed for tlowing up the place rather. . . . .

Woe to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve; hard grapeshot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The outer drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the outer court: soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge. A slight sputter ;-which has kindled the too combustible chaos-made it a roaring fire-chaos! Bursts forth insurrection, at sight of its own blood (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire), into endless rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, execration ;-and over head, from the fortress, let one great gun, with its grapeshot, go booming, to show what we could do. The Bastille is besieged!

On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in your bodies! Roar with all your threats, of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite, thou Louis Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old soldier of the Regiment Dauphiné; smite at that outer drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man! down with it to Orcus! let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and tyranny be swallowed up for ever! Mounted, some say on the roof of the guard-room, some

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on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall," Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemère (also an old soldier) seconding him; the chain yields, breaks; the huge drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glorious! and yet,

alas, it is still but the outworks! The eight grim towers, with their Invalide musketry, their paving-stones and cannon mouths, still soar aloft intact ;-ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner drawbridge with its back towards us; the Bastille is still to take!.....

Frantic Patriots pick up the grapeshots; bear them, still hot (or seemingly so), to the Hôtel-de-Ville :-Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt! Flesselles is "pale to the very lips," for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled all ways, by panic madness. At every street barricade there whirls simmering a minor whirlpool, strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-Mahlstrom which is lashing round the Bastille......

Blood flows, the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hôtel-de-Ville; Abbé Fauchet (who was of one) can say with what almost superhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their town flag in the arched gateway; and stand, rolling their drum ; but to no purpose. In such crack of doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them: they return with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears. ....

How the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its inner court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled one when the firing began; and is now pointing towards five, and still the firing slacks not. Far down, in their vaults, the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their turnkeys answer vaguely. . . . . .

.....

What shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay could have done-what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm's length of the powder magazine; motionless, like old Roman senator, or bronze lamp-holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was:-harmless he sat there, while unharmed; but the king's

fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should, in no wise be surrendered, save to the king's messenger; one old man's life is worthless, so it be lost with honour; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward! In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, the red clerks of the Basoche, Curé of Saint-Stephen, and all the tag-rag-andbobtail of the world, to work their will. . . . .

For four hours now has the world bedlam roared-call it the world chimæra, blowing fire. The poor invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets—they have made a white flag of napkins-go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire deluge: a port-hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone ditch-plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of patriots,-he hovers perilous-such a dove towards such an ark! Deftly, thou shifty usher: one man already fell, and lies smashed far down there, against the masonry. Usher Maillard falls not-deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his porthole; the shifty usher snatches it, and returns. Terms of surrender : pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted? -" Foi d'officier, on the word of an officer," answers halfpay Hulin, or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it,"they are!" Sinks the drawbridge,-Usher Maillard bolting it when down-rushes in the living deluge-the Bastille is fallen! Victoire! La Bastille est prise!

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V.-DEATH OF MARIE-ANTOINETTE.

(CARLYLE.)

Marie-Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of France, was condemned by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the French Republicans, and was executed on the 16th October, 1793. Her husband, Louis XVI., had been guillotined on the 21st January preceding.

ON Monday, the 14th of October 1793, a cause is pending in the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court,

such as these old stone walls never witnessed,—the trial of Marie-Antoinette. The once brightest of queens, now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier-Tinville's judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her last night. To such changes of human fortune what words are adequate? Silence alone is adequate.....

Marie-Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment and hour of extreme need, is not wanting to herself, the imperial woman. Her look, they say, as that hideous indictment was reading, continued calm; " she was sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when one plays on the piano." You discern, not without interest, across that dim revolutionary bulletin itself, how she bears herself queen-like. Her answers are prompt, clear, often of laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. "You persist then in denial?"—"My plan is not denial: it is the truth I have said, and I persist in that."

66

......

At four o'clock on Wednesday morning, after two days and two nights of interrogating, jury-charging, and other darkening of counsel, the result comes out,-sentence of death! Have you anything to say?" The accused shook her head, without speech. Night's candles are burning out; and with her too time is finishing, and it will be eternity and day. This hall of Tinville's is dark, ill-lighted except where she stands. Silently she withdraws from it, to die.

Two processions, or royal progresses, three-and-twenty years apart, have often struck us with a strange feeling of contrast. The first is of a beautiful archduchess and dauphiness, quitting her mother's city, at the age of fifteen, towards hopes such as no other daughter of Eve then had : "On the morrow," says Weber, an eye-witness, "the dauphiness left Vienna. The whole city crowded out; at first with a sorrow which was silent. She appeared: you saw her sunk back into her carriage; her face bathed in tears; hiding her eyes now with her handkerchief, now with her hands; several times putting out her head to see yet again this palace of her fathers, whither she was to return no more. She motioned her regret, her gratitude to the good nation, which was crowding here to bid her farewell. Then arose

not only tears, but piercing cries, on all sides. Men and women alike abandoned themselves to such expression of their sorrow. It was an audible sound of wail, in the streets and avenues of Vienna. The last courier that followed her disappeared, and the crowd melted away.”

The young imperial maiden of fifteen has now become a worn, discrowned widow of thirty-eight; grey before her time: this is the last procession: "Few minutes after the trial ended, the drums were beating to arms in all sections; at sunrise the armed force was on foot, cannons getting placed at the extremities of the bridges, in the squares, crossways, all along from the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Révolution. By ten o'clock, numerous patrols were circulating in the streets; thirty thousand foot and horse drawn up under arms. At eleven, Marie-Antoinette was brought out. She had on an undress of piqué blanc; she was led to the place of execution in the same manner as an ordinary criminal; bound, on a cart; accompanied by a constitutional priest in lay dress; escorted by numerous detachments of infantry and cavalry. These, and the double row of troops all along her road, she appeared to regard with indifference. On her countenance there was visible neither abashment nor pride. To the cries of Vive la République and Down with Tyranny, which attended her all the way, she seemed to pay no heed. She spoke little to her confessor. The tricolor streamers on the house-tops occupied her attention, in the Streets du Roule and Saint-Honoré; she also noticed the inscriptions on the house-fronts. On reaching the Place de la Révolution her looks turned towards the Jardin National, whilom Tuileries; her face at that moment gave signs of lively emotion. She mounted the scaffold with courage enough; at a quarter past twelve, her head fell; the executioner showed it to the people, amid universal long-continued cries of Vive la République."

THE SAME SUBJECT.

Is there a man's heart that thinks without pity of those long months and years of slow, wasting ignominy; of thy birth, soft cradled in imperial Schönbrunn, the winds of

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