So at Versailles. But at Paris, agitated Besenval, before retiring for the night, has stept over to old M. de Sombreuil, of the _Hôtel des Invalides_ hard by. M. de Sombreuil has, what is a great secret, some eight-and-twenty thousand stand of muskets deposited in his cellars there; but no trust in the temper of his Invalides. This day, for example, he sent twenty of the fellows down to unscrew those muskets; lest Sedition might snatch at them; but scarcely, in six hours, had the twenty unscrewed twenty gun-locks, or dogsheads (_chiens_) of locks,—each Invalide his dogshead! If ordered to fire, they would, he imagines, turn their cannon against himself. Unfortunate old military gentlemen, it is your hour, not of glory! Old Marquis de Launay too, of the Bastille, has pulled up his drawbridges long since, “and retired into his interior;” with sentries walking on his battlements, under the midnight sky, aloft over the glare of illuminated Paris;—whom a National Patrol, passing that way, takes the liberty of firing at; “seven shots towards twelve at night,” which do not take effect.[178] This was the 13th day of July, 1789; a worse day, many said, than the last 13th was, when only hail fell out of Heaven, not madness rose out of Tophet, ruining worse than crops! In these same days, as Chronology will teach us, hot old Marquis Mirabeau lies stricken down, at Argenteuil,—_not_ within sound of these alarm-guns; for _he_ properly is not there, and only the body of him now lies, deaf and cold forever. It was on Saturday night that he, drawing his last life-breaths, gave up the ghost there;—leaving a world, which would never go to his mind, now broken out, seemingly, into deliration and the _culbute générale_. What is it to him, departing elsewhither, on his long journey? The old Château Mirabeau stands silent, far off, on its scarped rock, in that “gorge of two windy valleys;” the pale-fading spectre now of a Château: this huge World-riot, and France, and the World itself, fades also, like a shadow on the great still mirror-sea; and all shall be as God wills. Young Mirabeau, sad of heart, for he loved this crabbed brave old Father, sad of heart, and occupied with sad cares,—is withdrawn from Public History. The great crisis transacts itself without him.[179] Chapter 1.5.VI. Storm and Victory.