"From America's Congress!" repeated Danton fervently as he eyed the inscription on the scabbard. "Why, that's the kind of Government we want over here!" Tears came into the Frenchman's eyes, to think of the Liberty that Lafayette had helped to win. The Palais Royal gardens were the property of the King's cousin, Louis Phillipe. Disgusted with not being in the councils of the monarch and leaning to democracy, he permitted the place to be used for public promenades, lovers' meetings--and popular harangues. Friends of the People, Friends of Phillipe, and Friends of the King freely rubbed elbows. The popular tide set so strongly that none dared openly oppose the demagogic orators. A bread famine had descended upon Paris. The scarcity of wheat and flour was an ever-present theme; the oppression of autocracy and seigniorage, another. The cry for direct action always woke echo in the popular breast, sick over the delays of the Versailles lawgivers, and nourishing the hope of seizing pelf and power, rescuing their kinsfolk from the prisons, and beating down the Kingship and aristocracy to relinquish privileges and abate the hardships of the Common Man! Plain, embittered envy stalked abroad, too--envy of the aristocrats' grand homes and unparalleled luxury, their fine equipages and clothing, costly foods and wines, their trains of lackeys and menials, the beauty and joie-de-vivre of their sons and daughters! The mechanic, the storekeeper, the unskilled laborer, the ranks of unemployed, and the submerged tenth obliged to live by their wits or starve, were as fuel to the spark of the orators' lightning. 'Twas unlike a well-ordered land wherein each one receives the well-merited reward of toil. Justice was not in the body politic. Tyranny, extravagance and bankruptcy on the part of the ruling class had wiped out the margin of plenty. Black ruin seemed to impend for all. It was a case of starve--or unite against the rulers and oppressors of society. Danton, the thunderer of mighty speech, dominated these gatherings, aided and abetted by the eagle-like Desmoulins and the crafty Robespierre. "With the People's government," his swelling periods resounded, "there shall be no common man, no aristocrat--no rich nor poor--but all brothers--brothers--brothers!" Imagine if you can the fire-drama of his recital of generations of cruelties and wrongs--his picture of their miserable lot and of the envied aristocrats' pleasures--and then consider the pitch of frenzied republicanism to which this wonderful fraternal climax uplifted them! With crash of thunder and wrack of the elements the Storm must break, directly the popular feeling found immediate object of its ire. CHAPTER X THE ATTACK ON DANTON But the royalists were not idle. Their spies attended the meetings. Their swordsmen provoked street encounters with popular leaders.