ante Jours: Recit de Petion.
Townhall Records, &c. in Hist. Parl. xvi. 399-466.) Indeed, his
Majesty's reception of him was of the roughest; as it well might be. And
now there is no outgate; Mandat's blue Squadrons turn you back at every
Grate; nay the Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers give themselves liberties
of tongue, How a virtuous Mayor 'shall pay for it, if there be
mischief,' and the like; though others again are full of civility.
Surely if any man in France is in straights this night, it is Mayor
Petion: bound, under pain of death, one may say, to smile dexterously
with the one side of his face, and weep with the other;--death if he do
it not dexterously enough! Not till four in the morning does a National
Assembly, hearing of his plight, summon him over 'to give account of
Paris;' of which he knows nothing: whereby however he shall get home to
bed, and only his gilt coach be left. Scarcely less delicate is Syndic
Roederer's task; who must wait whether he will lament or not, till he
see the issue. Janus Bifrons, or Mr. Facing-both-ways, as vernacular
Bunyan has it! They walk there, in the meanwhile, these two Januses,
with others of the like double conformation; and 'talk of indifferent
matters.'

Roederer, from time to time, steps in; to listen, to speak; to send for
the Department-Directory itself, he their Procureur Syndic not seeing
how to act. The Apartments are all crowded; some seven hundred gentlemen
in black elbowing, bustling; red Swiss standing like rocks; ghost, or
partial-ghost of a Ministry, with Roederer and advisers, hovering round
their Majesties; old Marshall Maille kneeling at the King's feet, to
say, He and these gallant gentlemen are come to die for him. List!
through the placid midnight; clang of the distant stormbell! So, in very
sooth; steeple after steeple takes up the wondrous tale. Black Courtiers
listen at the windows, opened for air; discriminate the steeple-bells:
(Roederer, ubi supra.) this is the tocsin of Saint-Roch; that again,
is it not Saint-Jacques, named de la Boucherie? Yes, Messieurs! Or even
Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, hear ye it not? The same metal that rang
storm, two hundred and twenty years ago; but by a Majesty's order
then; on Saint-Bartholomew's Eve (24th August, 1572.)--So go the
steeple-bells; which Courtiers can discriminate. Nay, meseems, there is
the Townhall itself; we know it by its sound! Yes, Friends, that is
the Townhall; discoursing so, to the Night. Miracu