ms all piled
against the wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstasy that the death
peril is passed, "leaps joyfully on their necks"; but new victors
rush, and ever new, also in ecstasy not wholly of joy. As we said, it
was a living deluge, plunging headlong; had not the Gardes
Francaises, in their cool military way, "wheeled round with arms
leveled," it would have plunged suicidally, by the hundred or the
thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.

And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing
uncontrollable, firing from windows--on itself; in hot frenzy of
triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides will
fare ill; one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven back,
with a death-thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to the Town-hall to
be judged! Alas, already one poor Invalide has his right hand slashed
off him; his maimed body dragged to the Place de Greve, and hanged
there. This same right hand, it is said, turned back De Launay from
the Powder-Magazine, and saved Paris.

De Launay, "discovered in gray frock with poppy-colored riband," is
for killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shall to the
Hotel-de-Ville; Hulin, Maillard, and others escorting him, Elie
marching foremost, "with the capitulation-paper on his sword's point."
Through roarings and cursings; through hustlings, clutchings, and at
last through strokes! Your escort is hustled aside, fell down; Hulin
sinks exhausted on a heap of stones. Miserable De Launay! He shall
never enter the Hotel-de-Ville; only his "bloody hair-queue, held up
in a bloody hand"; that shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk
lies on the steps there; the head is off through the streets, ghastly,
aloft on a pike.

Rigorous De Launay has died; crying out, "O friends, kill me fast!"
Merciful De Losme must die; though Gratitude embraces him, in this
fearful hour, and will die for him, it avails not. Brothers, your
wrath is cruel! Your Place de Greve is become a Throat of the Tiger,
full of mere fierce bellowings, and thirst of blood. One other officer
is massacred; one other Invalide is hanged on the Lamp-iron; with
difficulty, with generous perseverance, the Gardes Francaises will
save the rest. Provost Flesselles, stricken long since with the
paleness of death, must descend from his seat, "to be judged at the
Palais Royal"; alas, to be shot dead by an unknown hand at the turning
of the first street!

O evening sun of July, how, at th