h hand-bells: "Oyez, oyez. All men to their Districts
to be enrolled!" The Districts have met in gardens, open squares; are
getting marshalled into volunteer troops. No redhot ball has yet fallen
from Besenval's Camp; on the contrary, Deserters with their arms are
continually dropping in: nay now, joy of joys, at two in the afternoon,
the Gardes Francaises, being ordered to Saint-Denis, and flatly
declining, have come over in a body! It is a fact worth many.
Three thousand six hundred of the best fighting men, with complete
accoutrement; with cannoneers even, and cannon! Their officers are left
standing alone; could not so much as succeed in 'spiking the guns.' The
very Swiss, it may now be hoped, Chateau-Vieux and the others, will have
doubts about fighting.

Our Parisian Militia,--which some think it were better to name National
Guard,--is prospering as heart could wish. It promised to be forty-eight
thousand; but will in few hours double and quadruple that number:
invincible, if we had only arms!

But see, the promised Charleville Boxes, marked Artillerie! Here, then,
are arms enough?--Conceive the blank face of Patriotism, when it found
them filled with rags, foul linen, candle-ends, and bits of wood!
Provost of the Merchants, how is this? Neither at the Chartreux Convent,
whither we were sent with signed order, is there or ever was there any
weapon of war. Nay here, in this Seine Boat, safe under tarpaulings
(had not the nose of Patriotism been of the finest), are 'five
thousand-weight of gunpowder;' not coming in, but surreptitiously
going out! What meanest thou, Flesselles? 'Tis a ticklish game, that of
'amusing' us. Cat plays with captive mouse: but mouse with enraged cat,
with enraged National Tiger?

Meanwhile, the faster, O ye black-aproned Smiths, smite; with strong
arm and willing heart. This man and that, all stroke from head to heel,
shall thunder alternating, and ply the great forge-hammer, till
stithy reel and ring again; while ever and anon, overhead, booms the
alarm-cannon,--for the City has now got gunpowder. Pikes are fabricated;
fifty thousand of them, in six-and-thirty hours: judge whether the
Black-aproned have been idle. Dig trenches, unpave the streets, ye
others, assiduous, man and maid; cram the earth in barrel-barricades, at
each of them a volunteer sentry; pile the whinstones in window-sills and
upper rooms. Have scalding pitch, at least boiling water ready, ye
weak old women, to pour it