Some call for Barras to be made commandant; he conquered in Thermidor. Some, what is more to the purpose, bethink them of the Citizen BONAPARTE, unemployed artillery officer who took Toulon. A man of head, a man of action: Barras is named Commandant's Cloak; this young artillery officer is named Commandant. He was in the gallery at the moment, and heard it; he withdrew some half hour to consider with himself: after a half-hour of grim compressed considering, to be or not to be, he answers _yea_. And now, a man of head being at the head of it, the whole matter gets vital. Swift to camp of Sablon, to secure the artillery; there are not twenty men guarding it! A swift adjutant, Murat is the name of him, gallops, gets thither some minutes within time, for Lepelletier was also on march that way: the cannon are ours. And now beset this post and beset that; rapid and firm; at Wicket of the Louvre, in Cul-de-sac Dauphin, in Rue St. Honore, from Pont Neuf all along the North Quays, southward to the Pont _ci-devant_ Royal, rank round the sanctuary of the Tuilleries, a ring of steel discipline; let every gunner have his match burning, and all men stand to their arms. Lepelletier has seized the Church of Saint Roche; has seized the Pont Neuf, our piquet there retreating thence without fire. Stray shots fall from Lepelletier, rattle down on the very Tuilleries' stair-case. On the other hand, women advance dishevelled, shrieking peace; Lepelletier behind them waving his hat in sign that we shall fraternize. Steady! The artillery officer is steady as bronze; can, if need were, be quick as lightning. Lepelletier making nothing by messengers by fraternity or hat-waving, bursts out, along the southern Quai Voltaire, along streets and passages, treble-quick in huge veritable onslaught! Whereupon thou bronze artillery officer--? 'Fire'! say the bronze lips. And roar and thunder, roar and again roar, continual, volcano-like, goes his great gun, in the Cul-de-sac Dauphin against the Church of Saint Roch; go his great guns on the Pont Royal; go all his great guns--blow to air some two hundred men, mainly about the Church of Saint Roch! Lepelletier cannot stand such harsh play; no sectioner can stand it; the forty thousand yield on all sides scour toward covert. The ship is over the bar; free she bounds shoreward--amid shouting and vivats! Citizen Bonaparte is 'named General of the Interior by acclamation;' quelled sections have to disarm in such humor as they may; sacred right of insurrection is gone forever! 'It is false,' says Napoleon, 'that we fired first with blank charge; it had been a waste of life to do that.' Most false; the firing was with sharp and sharpest shot: to all men it was plain that here was no sport; the rabbits and plinths of Saint Roch Church show splintered by it to this hour. Singular: in old Broglie's time, six years ago, this whiff of grape shot was promised; but it could not be given then; could not have profited then.