le is
taken." The joy was indescribable, and strangers shook his hand,
saying, "We too are free men, and there will never more be war between
our countries." Then came another procession, also shouting and
rejoicing; but the bystanders looked on with horror, for the trophies
carried by were the heads of murdered men. For the nation had become
sovereign, and the soldiers who fired upon it were reckoned rebels and
traitors. The foreign envoys were all impressed with the idea that the
vengeance wrought was out of all proportion with the immensity of the
thing achieved. At nightfall the marshal gave orders to evacuate
Paris. Besenval was already in full retreat, and the capital was no
longer in the possession of the king of France.

Meanwhile the National Assembly, aware of the strength of popular
feeling around them, were calm in the midst of danger. Theirs was a
diminished part, while, almost within sight and hearing, history was
being unmade and made by a power superior to their own. On the morning
of the 14th they elected the Committee of Eight who were to draw up
the Constitution. Mounier and the friends of the English model still
prevailed. By evening their chance had vanished, for the English model
includes a king.

Late in the day Noailles brought authentic news of what he had
witnessed; and the Assembly learned, in agitated silence, that the
head of the governor of the impregnable Bastille had been displayed on
a pike about the streets of Paris. Lafayette took the chair, while the
President hurried with Noailles to the palace. They made no impression
there. Lewis informed them that he had recalled his troops, and then
he went to bed, tranquil, and persistently ignoring what it was that
had been done, and what it was that had passed away.

But in the morning, when the Assembly met in disorder, and were about
to send one more deputation, it was found that a change had taken
place in the brief hours of that memorable night. At two o'clock the
king was roused from sleep by one of the great officers of the
household. The intruder, La Rochefoucauld, Duke de Liancourt, was not
a man of talent, but he was universally known as the most benevolent
and the most beneficent of the titled nobles of the realm. He made his
master understand the truth and its significance, and how, in the
capital that day, in every province on the morrow, the authority of
government was at an end. And when Lewis, gradually awaking,
exclaimed, "