A feeling akin to that of intoxication is growing epidemic, but Talleyrand coolly watches the strange scenes with the keen, blue-grey eyes under the bushy eye-brows. He sees these prim lawyers crowding like schoolboys about the King as he returns to the chateau, covered with sweat and dust, and the royal family again on the balcony and the great crowds wild with rejoicing. Then he returns to the hall, and is deputed to set out at once with ninety-nine other members to inform Paris and allay its panic. Through long lines of drawn and excited faces—Paris has not been to bed for three days and nights—they drive up the Rue Saint Honoré to the sound of trumpets. At the Hotel de Ville they tell their news, and heaven and earth seem to melt in confusion. Lally-Tollendal is crowned with a wreath, but he passes it on to the archbishop, and the sedate prelate is dragged to the window where thousands of Bastille stormers cheer him. Then they march to Notre Dame to sing a Te Deum. Talleyrand sees the archbishop arm-in-arm with the black, ragged Abbé Lefèvre, who has been chief powder-distributor; and the placid, learned Bailly arm-in-arm with Hullin, the chief Bastille stormer, with four fusiliers as guard of honour. On they go through lanes of patriots—many of them monks and priests—with bloody pikes and axes and scythes, and faces unwashed for a week, and scraps of valuable old armour from the museums over tattered costumes. What a Paris compared with that he had left only three months before. The following morning the deputies gave an account to the Assembly, and crowned the confusion by proposing to erect a statue of the King on the site of the Bastille. That night M. d’Artois and the Court nobles fled from France. It is probable enough that Talleyrand saw him, though the account in the memoirs is very inaccurate; he states explicitly that he was invited to fly with the Prince, but refused. In the morning the King went to Paris—driving between 200,000 silent men with pikes, sabres, scythes, axes, and lances—and renewed his promises. But as the news of the fall of the Bastille spread through the provinces it lit up the same conflagration over the country. About sixty monasteries and nunneries were burned in Talleyrand’s diocese. His uncle’s chateau was burned down during the night of July 29th. The Assembly appointed a committee to enquire into the disorders whilst it discussed the advisability of prefixing a declaration of the Rights of Man to the new Constitution. Fifty deputies demanded speech on the subject, and the flow of oratory began on August 1st. Meantime addresses and deputations poured in on the Assembly from all parts: thirty-one on July 24th, thirty-eight on the 28th, and so on.