a former
school-fellow at Brienne, in equal straits, waiting like himself for
something to turn up. Over their meals in a cheap restaurant on the
Rue St. Honore they discussed various means of gaining a livelihood,
and seriously contemplated a partnership in subletting furnished
rooms. But Bourrienne very quickly obtained the post of secretary in
the embassy at Stuttgart, so that his comrade was left to make his
struggle alone by pawning what few articles of value he possessed.

The days and weeks were full of incidents terrible and suggestive in
their nature. The Assembly dismissed the King's body-guard on May
twenty-ninth; on June thirteenth, the Girondists were removed from the
ministry; within a few days it was known at court that Prussia had
taken the field as an ally of Austria, and on the seventeenth a
conservative, Feuillant cabinet was formed. Three days later the
popular insurrection began, on the twenty-sixth the news of the
coalition was announced, and on the twenty-eighth Lafayette endeavored
to stay the tide of furious discontent which was now rising in the
Assembly. But it was as ruthless as that of the ocean, and on July
eleventh the country was declared in danger. There was, however, a
temporary check to the rush, a moment of repose in which the King, on
the fourteenth, celebrated among his people the fall of the Bastille.
But an address from the local assembly at Marseilles had arrived,
demanding the dethronement of Louis and the abolition of the monarchy.
Such was the impatience of the great southern city that, without
waiting for the logical effect of their declaration, its inhabitants
determined to make a demonstration in Paris. On the thirtieth a
deputation five hundred strong arrived before the capital. On August
third, they entered the city singing the immortal song which bears
their name, but which was written at Strasburg by an officer of
engineers, Rouget de Lisle. The southern fire of the newcomers kindled
again the flame of Parisian sedition, and the radicals fanned it. At
last, on August tenth, the conflagration burst forth in an uprising
such as had not yet been seen of all that was outcast and lawless in
the great town; with them consorted the discontented and the envious,
the giddy and the frivolous, the curious and the fickle, all the
unstable elements of society. This time the King was unnerved; in
despair he fled for asylum to the chamber of the Assembly. That body,
unsympathetic fo