"A flash of fire, lost in a cloud of smoke, crowned the summit of a tower; a detonation resounded; cries of pain were heard issuing from the closely pressed crowd; the first cannon-shot had been fired from the Bastille; the first blood had been spilled. The battle had commenced.... "On hearing the detonation we have spoken of, the two soldiers who were still watching M. de Launay threw themselves upon him; a third snatched up the match, and then extinguished it by placing his heel upon it. "De Launay drew the sword which was concealed in his cane, and would have turned it against his own breast, but the soldiers seized it and snapped it in two. "He then felt that all he could do was to resign himself to the result; he therefore tranquilly awaited it. [Illustration: THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE] "The people rush forward; the garrison open their arms to them; and the Bastille is taken by assault--by main force, without a capitulation. "The reason for this was that, for more than a hundred years, the royal fortress had not merely imprisoned inert matter within its walls--it had imprisoned thought also. Thought had thrown down the walls of the Bastille, and the people entered by the breach." The life-history of the Bastille was more extended than was commonly recalled. Still the great incident in its life covered but fifteen short days,--from the 30th June to the 14th July, 1789,--when it fell before the attack of the Revolutionists. There is rather vague markings in the pavement on the Boulevard Henri Quatre and the Rue St. Antoine, which suggest the former limits of this gruesome building. It were not possible to catalogue all the scenes of action celebrated or perpetuated by Alexandre Dumas. In his "Crimes Célèbres" he--with great definiteness--pictures dark scenes which are known to all readers of history; from that terrible affair of the Cenci, which took place on the terrace of the Château de Rocca Petrella, in 1598, to the assassination of Kotzebue by Karl Ludwig Sand in 1819. Not all of these crimes deal with Paris, nor with France. The most notable was the poisoning affair of the Marquise de Brinvilliers (1676), who was forced to make the "_amende honorable_" after the usual manner, on the Parvis du Nôtre Dame, that little tree-covered place just before the west façade of the cathedral. The Chevalier Gaudin de Ste. Croix, captain of the Regiment de Tracy, had been arrested in the name of the king, by process of the "_lettre de cachet_" and forthwith incarcerated in the Bastille, which is once more made use of by Dumas, though in this case, as in many others, it is historic fact as well. The story, which is more or less one of conjugal and filial immorality, as well as political intrigue, shifts its scene once and again to the Cul-de-sac des Marchands des Chevaux, in the Place Maubert, to the Forêt de l'Aigue--within four leagues of Compiègne, the Place du Châtelet, the Conciergerie, and the Bastille.