Act III. The Bastille, Tuesday the 14th July, from four to seven P.M. ACT I [_The Garden of the Palais-Royal, seen from the Cafe de Foy. It is Sunday the 12th of July, 1789. At the back is the "Cirque"; at the right, a fountain, playing. Between the "Cirque" and the promenades running round the Palais-Royal is a row of trees. The shopkeepers stand before their shops, which are hung with patriotic emblems: "At the Sign of the Great Necker," "At the Sign of the National Assembly," etc. Women, with breasts, shoulders, and arms bare, and wearing immense bouquets, walk about among the crowd displaying their charms. Newsdealers cry out the news; gambling-house keepers appear here and there in dressing-gowns, escorted by men armed with clubs; swindlers brazenly slip between groups of people with their folding tabourets, stop for an instant, display a trick, bring out sacks of silver, then quickly disappear into the surging mass. The crowds are nervously shifting about, sitting at the cafes, jumping up and around, and ready to start at the least disturbance. The crowds gradually increase up to the end of the act, until there is so little room left that the more venturesome climb into the trees. People of all classes are present: starving vagabonds, workingmen, bourgeois, aristocrats, soldiers? priests, women, and children, some of whom play about between the legs of the others_.] NEWS-CRIERS. Great plot discovered! Famine, famine is at hand! The murderers have come! THE CROWD [_calling to the news-criers_]. Here! Sst! A MAN OF THE PEOPLE [_anxiously, to a bourgeois, who is reading_]. Well? THE BOURGEOIS. My good fellow, they are coming! They're coming! The Germans, the Swiss Guards! Paris is surrounded! They'll be here any minute! THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. The King won't let them. A VAGABOND. The King? He's with them at the camp of Sablons, surrounded by Germans. THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE. The King is a Frenchman. THE BOURGEOIS. The King, yes, but not the Queen. The Austrian woman hates us. Her brigand Marshal de Broglie has sworn to raze Paris to the ground. We are caught between the cannon of the Bastille and the troops of the Champ de Mars. A STUDENT, They won't make a move. Monsieur Necker is at Versailles; he will take care of us. THE BOURGEOIS. Yes, so long as he remains Minister, we must not lose our faith in him. THE VAGABOND. But who says he still is? They've dismissed him. ALL [_protesting_]. No, no, he's still Minister,--The newspaper says he will remain Minister.--Good! If Monsieur Necker weren't there, everything would be lost. WOMEN [_promenading about_]. No business today! They are all quite mad. They think of nothing but Versailles.--The little fellow who was with me just now spoke of nothing but Necker.--Say, is it true that that damned Austrian threw our deputies into prison?