And now, ask in return, why Messeigneurs and Broglie the great god of war, on seeing these things, did not pause, and take some other course, any other course? Unhappily, as we said, they could see nothing. Pride, which goes before a fall; wrath, if not reasonable, yet pardonable, most natural, had hardened their hearts and heated their heads; so, with imbecility and violence (ill-matched pair), they rush to seek their hour. All Regiments are not Gardes Françaises, or debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean: let fresh undebauched Regiments come up; let Royal-Allemand, Salais-Samade, Swiss Château-Vieux come up,—which can fight, but can hardly speak except in German gutturals; let soldiers march, and highways thunder with artillery-waggons: Majesty has a new Royal Session to hold,—and miracles to work there! The whiff of grapeshot can, if needful, become a blast and tempest. In which circumstances, before the redhot balls begin raining, may not the Hundred-and-twenty Paris Electors, though their _Cahier_ is long since finished, see good to meet again daily, as an “Electoral Club”? They meet first “in a Tavern;”—where “the largest wedding-party” cheerfully give place to them.[167] But latterly they meet in the _Hôtel-de-Ville_, in the Townhall itself. Flesselles, Provost of Merchants, with his Four Echevins (_Scabins_, Assessors), could not prevent it; such was the force of public opinion. He, with his Echevins, and the Six-and-Twenty Town-Councillors, all appointed from Above, may well sit silent there, in their long gowns; and consider, with awed eye, what prelude this is of convulsion coming from Below, and how themselves shall fare in that! Chapter 1.5.IV. To Arms! So hangs it, dubious, fateful, in the sultry days of July. It is the passionate printed _advice_ of M. Marat, to abstain, of all things, from violence.[168] Nevertheless the hungry poor are already burning Town Barriers, where Tribute on eatables is levied; getting clamorous for food. The twelfth July morning is Sunday; the streets are all placarded with an enormous-sized _De par le Roi_, “inviting peaceable citizens to remain within doors,” to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd. Why so? What mean these “placards of enormous size”? Above all, what means this clatter of military; dragoons, hussars, rattling in from all points of the compass towards the Place Louis Quinze; with a staid gravity of face, though saluted with mere nicknames, hootings and even missiles?[169] Besenval is with them. Swiss Guards of his are already in the Champs Elysées, with four pieces of artillery.