A mind tinctured with superstition, even though it were not of the darkest hue, might be tempted to believe that a fatality pursued the men by whom the Bastile was raised. It has been seen that the original founder was the famous Stephen Marcel, Provost of the Merchants. Marcel, though his character has uniformly been blackened by writers devoted to absolute monarchy, seems to have been influenced, at least in the greatest portion of his career, by truly patriotic motives. It is not the object which he laboured to obtain, but some of the means which he employed for its attainment, that merits censure. To confine the royal authority within reasonable bounds, and to give the national representatives their proper weight in the scale of government, were the purposes which he sought to accomplish. The dangerous circumstances in which the country was placed, and the heavy oppression under which the people groaned, pointed out such a reform as being no less wise than just. The time for attempting it was favourable; inasmuch as the captivity of the king, and the presence of a victorious foreign army, would, it was supposed, compel the dauphin, Charles, to look to the States-General for the means of saving France from still greater calamities. Yet, so strong was princely dislike to receiving aid from the legitimate guardians of the public purse, that Charles preferred raising supplies by the fraudulent and ruinous expedient of debasing the coin. In that scheme he was fortunately defeated by the stubborn opposition of the Provost. The alliance formed by Marcel with Charles, surnamed the Bad, king of Navarre, was, perhaps, an impolitic act; not so much because the Navarrese monarch deserved the epithet given to him by French historians—for we may doubt whether he was, in reality, much more blame-worthy than his namesake, the dauphin, on whom the same historians have lavished their praise—but because a junction with a man who was exceedingly obnoxious to a large party in France was likely to give rise to suspicions with respect to his principles and motives. It is probable, however, that he was led to it, by a wish to have some stronger prop to lean on than the fluctuating favour of the populace. The “varium et mutabile semper,” by which Virgil, somewhat harshly, characterizes the female sex, may, with less appearance of satire, be applied to the multitude. This truth Marcel was doomed to learn by experience. For nearly two years, the Provost, with more or less steadiness, kept his footing on the tottering eminence to which he had risen. During that time he was actively engaged in securing the French capital from external and internal foes. He fortified and enlarged its circuit, supplied it with arms and provisions, established a guard of citizens, which was night and day on the watch, and barricaded the entrances of the streets by ponderous chains, which were fastened to the houses: these chains were the first barricades which were formed in Paris.