the armory thirty thousand muskets and six pieces of cannon; and now, as by common instinct, resounds the cry, “_La Bastile! La Bastile!_” The crowds across the Seine take up the shout, while from the Champs Élysées, the Tuileries Gardens, and the Palais Royal, comes back, as it were, the echo, indistinct at first, but in ever-increasing volume, “_La Bastile! La Bastile!_” as one hundred thousand men, shouting, swearing, and brandishing their pikes and guns, rush forward, a living torrent, to assail with these feeble means, that fortress _par excellence_ of France,—a fortress which the army of Monsieur le Prince, le grand Condé, had besieged in vain for three and twenty days. Enormous, massive, blackened with age, the gloomy emblem of royal prerogative, exciting by its mysterious power and menace the terror and execration of every one who passed beneath its shadow; its eight great towers darkening the air in gloomy grandeur, the world-renowned prison of the Bastile, the fortress _par excellence_, loomed lofty at the entrance of Paris, in the very heart of the Faubourg St. Antoine. De Launey, the governor, from the summit of his towers had, for many hours, heard the roar of the insurgent city; and now, as he saw the black mass of countless thousands approaching, he turned pale and trembled. M. Thuriot was sent by the electors of the Hotel de Ville to summon the Bastile to surrender. The drawbridge was lowered and he was admitted. De Launey received him at the head of his staff. “I summon you,” said Thuriot, “in the name of the people.” But De Launey, who was every moment expecting the arrival of troops from Versailles, refused to surrender the fortress, but added that he would not fire upon the people if they did not fire upon him. Thuriot, perceiving the cannon, and knowing that the governor had received an order from the Hotel de Ville to dismount them, exclaimed:— “You have not had the cannon dismounted.” “I have had them drawn in; that is all.” “You will not have them dismounted, then?” “No! the king’s cannon are here by the king’s order, sir; they can only be dismounted by an order from the king.” “Monsieur De Launey,” said Thuriot, “the real king, whom I counsel you to obey, is yonder”; and he showed to the governor the vast crowd filling the square before the fortress, and whose weapons glittered in the sunshine.