patriotism;" after which, a young lady of fourteen, raising her voice
and pointing to the flag, harangues in turn the crowd, the deputies, the
National Guard, the mayor, and the commander of the troops, the scene
ending with a ball. This is the universal finale--men and women,
children and adults, common people and men of the world, chiefs and
subordinates, all, everywhere, frisk about as in the last act of a
pastoral drama. At Paris,--writes an eye-witness, "I saw chevaliers of
Saint-Louis and chaplains dancing in the street with people belonging
to their department."[3109] At the Champ de Mars, on the day of the
Federation, notwithstanding that rain was falling in torrents, "the
first arrivals began to dance, and those who came after them, joining
in, formed a circle which soon spread over a portion of the Champ
de Mars. . . .Three hundred thousand spectators kept time with their
hands." On the following days dancing is kept up on the Champ de Mars
and in the streets, and there is drinking and carousing; "there was
a ball with refreshments at the Corn-Exchange, and on the site of the
Bastille."--At Tours, where fifty-two detachments from the neighboring
provinces are collected, about four o'clock in the afternoon,[3110]
through an irresistible outburst of insane gaiety, "the officers,
inferior officers, and soldiers, pell-mell, race through the streets,
some with saber in hand and others dancing and shouting 'Vive le Roi!'
'Vive la Nation!' flinging up their hats and compelling every one
they met to join in the dance. One of the canons of the cathedral, who
happens to be passing quietly along, has a grenadier's cap put on his
head," and is dragged into the circle, and after him two monks; "they
are often embraced," and then allowed to depart. The carriages of the
mayor and the Marquise de Montausier arrive; people mount up behind,
get inside, and seat themselves in front, as many as can find room,
and force the coachmen to parade through the principal streets in this
fashion. There is no malice in it, nothing but sport and the overflow of
spirits. "Nobody was maltreated or insulted, although almost every one
was drunk."--Nevertheless, there is one bad symptom: the soldiers of
the Anjou regiment leave their barracks the following day and "pass
the whole night abroad, no one being able to hinder them." And there is
another of still graver aspect; at Orleans, after the companies of
the National Militia had danced on the square in the evening, "a large
number of volunteers marched in procession through the town with
drums, shouting out with all their might that the aristocracy must be
destroyed, and that priests and aristocrats should be strung up to the
lamp post. They enter a suspected coffee-house, drive out the inmates
with insults, lay hands on a gentleman who is supposed not to have cried
out as correctly and as lustily as themselves, and come near to hanging
him.[3111]--Such is the fruit of the philosophy and the attitudes of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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