ops. They were answered next day that the
troops served the purpose of defending the liberties of the Assembly!
And on the next day to that, which was a Sunday, the philanthropist Dr.
Guillotin--whose philanthropic engine of painless death was before very
long to find a deal of work--came from the Assembly, of which he was a
member, to assure the electors of Paris that all was well, appearances
notwithstanding, since Necker was more firmly in the saddle than ever.
He did not know that at the very moment in which he was speaking so
confidently, the oft-dismissed and oft-recalled M. Necker had just been
dismissed yet again by the hostile cabal about the Queen. Privilege
wanted conclusive measures, and conclusive measures it would
have--conclusive to itself.
And at the same time yet another philanthropist, also a doctor, one
Jean-Paul Mara, of Italian extraction--better known as Marat, the
gallicized form of name he adopted--a man of letters, too, who had spent
some years in England, and there published several works on sociology,
was writing:
"Have a care! Consider what would be the fatal effect of a seditious
movement. If you should have the misfortune to give way to that, you
will be treated as people in revolt, and blood will flow."
Andre-Louis was in the gardens of the Palais Royal, that place of shops
and puppet-shows, of circus and cafes, of gaming houses and brothels,
that universal rendezvous, on that Sunday morning when the news of
Necker's dismissal spread, carrying with it dismay and fury. Into
Necker's dismissal the people read the triumph of the party hostile to
themselves. It sounded the knell of all hope of redress of their wrongs.
He beheld a slight young man with a pock-marked face, redeemed from
utter ugliness by a pair of magnificent eyes, leap to a table outside
the Cafe de Foy, a drawn sword in his hand, crying, "To arms!" And then
upon the silence of astonishment that cry imposed, this young man
poured a flood of inflammatory eloquence, delivered in a voice marred at
moments by a stutter. He told the people that the Germans on the Champ
de Mars would enter Paris that night to butcher the inhabitants. "Let
us mount a cockade!" he cried, and tore a leaf from a tree to serve his
purpose--the green cockade of hope.
Enthusiasm swept the crowd, a motley crowd made up of men and women of
every class, from vagabond to nobleman, from harlot to lady of fashion.
Trees were despoiled of their leaves, a
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