.

On Monday the huge City has awoke, not to its week-day industry: to what
a different one! The working man has become a fighting man; has one want
only: that of arms. The industry of all crafts has paused;--except it
be the smith's, fiercely hammering pikes; and, in a faint degree, the
kitchener's, cooking off-hand victuals; for bouche va toujours. Women
too are sewing cockades;--not now of green, which being D'Artois colour,
the Hotel-de-Ville has had to interfere in it; but of red and blue,
our old Paris colours: these, once based on a ground of constitutional
white, are the famed TRICOLOR,--which (if Prophecy err not) 'will go
round the world.'

All shops, unless it be the Bakers' and Vintners', are shut: Paris is
in the streets;--rushing, foaming like some Venice wine-glass into which
you had dropped poison. The tocsin, by order, is pealing madly from
all steeples. Arms, ye Elector Municipals; thou Flesselles with thy
Echevins, give us arms! Flesselles gives what he can: fallacious,
perhaps insidious promises of arms from Charleville; order to seek arms
here, order to seek them there. The new Municipals give what they can;
some three hundred and sixty indifferent firelocks, the equipment of the
City-Watch: 'a man in wooden shoes, and without coat, directly clutches
one of them, and mounts guard.' Also as hinted, an order to all Smiths
to make pikes with their whole soul.

Heads of Districts are in fervent consultation; subordinate Patriotism
roams distracted, ravenous for arms. Hitherto at the Hotel-de-Ville
was only such modicum of indifferent firelocks as we have seen. At
the so-called Arsenal, there lies nothing but rust, rubbish and
saltpetre,--overlooked too by the guns of the Bastille. His Majesty's
Repository, what they call Garde-Meuble, is forced and ransacked:
tapestries enough, and gauderies; but of serviceable fighting-gear small
stock! Two silver-mounted cannons there are; an ancient gift from his
Majesty of Siam to Louis Fourteenth: gilt sword of the Good Henri;
antique Chivalry arms and armour. These, and such as these, a
necessitous Patriotism snatches greedily, for want of better. The
Siamese cannons go trundling, on an errand they were not meant for.
Among the indifferent firelocks are seen tourney-lances; the princely
helm and hauberk glittering amid ill-hatted heads,--as in a time when
all times and their possessions are suddenly sent jumbling!

At the Maison de Saint-Lazare, Lazar-House on