The factory doors were shut and barred; the windows were the same. The rioters hurled themselves against the great gates, which were studded with iron, but they could not burst them open. Some shouted for fire, others for a beam which might be driven against them, and so force them open. But the banner-bearer in the green coat stitched with black and brown thread laid his pole against the side of the house, swarmed up it, axe in hand, and smote lustily at the shutters of one of the windows. The splinters flew before his strokes, and soon one of the valves broke from its hinges, and slid down the wall. Next minute, the green man was inside, waving his hat to the people, who cheered in response. They fell back from the door. Another man crept in at the broken window, and joined the fellow who had cut his way through the shutter. The two together unfastened the door, and the mob poured into Réveillon’s factory. Adjoining was the house of Réveillon. Its doors were forced open at the same time as the paper-making establishment. The private entrance to an upper storey of the workshops from the house was burst by those in the factory, and the mob crowding in from the street met that breaking in from above. The besiegers having now taken complete possession, and meeting with no resistance (for Réveillon had taken refuge in the Bastille, and his servants had fled,) they spread themselves over the premises from attic to cellar. The workmen lately employed to make and dye the paper were foremost in breaking the machinery, and in tapping the large vats in which the white pulp lay, thus flooding the floors with what looked like curdled milk. Some descended to the cellars and drank the wine stored for Réveillon’s table, others drank the dyes, mistaking them for wine, and rolled in agony in the whey-like fluid on the ground, spluttering out the crimson and green liquors they had imbibed. Those who had axes, and those who had armed themselves with fragments of the machinery, smashed mirrors, tables, pictures, broke open drawers and destroyed all the movables within reach, and then flung them through the windows among the crowd below. Among other objects discovered was a portrait in oils of Réveillon; this was literally minced up by the rioters, who waxed more furious as they found material on which to expend their rage. Two men, armed with a great saw, began to cut through the main rafters of the great room of the factory. When those who thronged this appartement saw what was taking place, they were filled with panic, and rushed to the door, or flung themselves out of the windows, to escape being trampled down by those behind. Some, entering the rag-store, rent open the bales, and strewed the tatters about in all directions. One man--it was he with the leeches--holding his bottle, still unemptied and unbroken, in one hand, applied a torch to the rag-heaps, and set the store in a blaze; others fired the warehouse of paper. Flames issued from the cellars