"They do differ," said St. Hilaire. "My first allegiance is to the nation. Count d'Arlincourt, I respect you and your opinions, but I also have a regard for my oath. I have chosen my path and I shall follow it." "Good-day, Marquis de St. Hilaire," said the count, in his usual cold manner. "Farewell, Count d'Arlincourt," was the polite rejoinder, and raising his hat St. Hilaire passed onward in the direction of the palace. Forty thousand men and women were marching from Paris to Versailles. They had forced a king to recall a banished minister. They had sacked a prison fortress,--razing to the ground walls that had frowned on them for ages, wiping out in one day a landmark of tyranny that had been standing there for centuries. Now they were coming to see their king at his palace. They had heard of the banquet at Versailles, given in honor of the royal Flanders regiment, where wine had flowed like water and where food was in abundance. At such a banquet, they argued, there must be bread enough for the whole world; and they were coming to get their share of it. Although it was in the month of October, the sun was hot and the road dusty. In the front rank, amid all the dust and sweat and noise, walked Robert Tournay. He carried no weapon, nor did he seek to lead; but animated by curiosity and by sympathy, he felt himself drawn into this great heaving mass of people who had decided to correct these abuses themselves, even if to do it they had to take the laws into their own hands. Hearing a shout and rumble of wheels behind him, Tournay looked over his shoulder to see a cannon coming through the crowd, which parted on each side to let it pass, and then closed up behind it. This cannon was drawn along the road by a score of men, whose bare feet, beating the dust, sent up a pulverous cloud that blew back into the faces of those behind like smoke. Seated upon the gun carriage, her hair streaming in the wind, was a young woman wearing the red cap of liberty, and waving in her hand a blood-red flag. The cannon stopped under the shade of some poplar trees, and men stood around it wiping the perspiration from their foreheads. "A cheer for the Goddess of Liberty," cried a voice in the crowd. A shout went up that made the poplars tremble. "Citizens," cried the girl, in response, standing erect and flinging her flag to the breeze, "you want bread!" "Bread! Bread!" was the answering shout. "The women of Paris will lead you to it. Then you shall help yourselves." "Show us where it is and we'll take it fast enough," was the answering cry. "Where should it be but in the king's palace? There they are feasting while the people in Paris are starving. They shall give the people of their bread!" "What if they have eaten it all?" asked another voice.