In the garden, surrounded by book and coffee shops, which was attached to the Palais Royal, a palace belonging to the Duke of Orleans--who, although distantly related to the King, had taken the popular side--agitators, mounted on chairs and tables, discoursed to excited throngs on the sovereignty of the people, and denounced the opponents of a single chamber to popular wrath. Here neither police officers nor supporters of the claims of nobles and clergy could enter except at peril of violent and brutal usage. This licence was the more dangerous because the hard times made the people more ready for the commission of criminal actions. Nevertheless, the tradesmen, merchants, and other persons in the middle class of life, who under ordinary circumstances are the first to feel the effects of mob violence, regarded the designs of the court as far more dangerous than the oratory of the Palais Royal. For while the court demanded the maintenance of class distinctions, the demagogues of the Palais Royal demanded their abolition, guaranteed by the establishment of a free and democratic constitution. [Illustration: REVOLUTIONARY PARIS _Longmans, Green & Co. London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta & Madras_.] ♦The fall of the Bastille, July 14.♦ The government, on the pretext of maintaining order, quartered round and in Paris and Versailles regiments of Swiss and German troops in the service of France. The Queen and the Court desired, if not immediately to dissolve the Assembly, to compel its removal to some provincial town, where the deputies might more readily be forced to accept the terms offered by the King on June 23. Necker, supported by a minority of his fellow-councillors, was opposed to any plans for the intimidation of the Assembly; but he had no influence with the King, and was detested by the Queen and the King’s brothers, the Counts of Provence and Artois, of whose projects he was left in ignorance. Louis relied on the troops to overawe the capital, but was averse to resort to military force unless in self-defence. Meanwhile, their neighbourhood increased excitement in Paris, and the middle classes found themselves between two fires. On the one side they feared an armed occupation of the town, and the proclamation of martial law; on the other a rising of the populace, which might end in the dissolution of all authority. The elections of deputies of the Third Estate had been by two degrees. Paris had been divided into sixty districts, returning 120 electors, who had elected twenty deputies to sit in the States-General. These electors, wishing to induce the Government to remove the troops, proposed the establishment of a civic guard for the maintenance of order. It was not, however, an easy matter to obtain the sanction of the Government to a measure that would put an armed force at the disposition of the capital. The National Assembly, agitated by fear lest violence should be exercised against itself,