“Reproachful astonishment paints itself on the face of La Fayette, speaks itself from his eloquent chivalrous lips in vain. ‘My General, we would shed the last drop of our blood for you, but the root of the mischief is at Versailles; we must go and bring the king to Paris; all the people wish it’ (_tout le peuple le veut_). “My General descends to the outer staircase, and harangues once more in vain. ‘To Versailles! To Versailles!’ Mayor Bailly, sent for through floods of Sansculottism, attempts academic oratory from his gilt state-coach, realizes nothing but infinite hoarse cries of, ‘Bread! To Versailles!’ and gladly shrinks within doors. La Fayette mounts the white charger; and again harangues and reharangues, with eloquence, with firmness, indignant demonstration, with all things but persuasion. “‘_To Versailles! To Versailles!_’ so lasts it hour after hour, for the space of half a day. “The great Scipio-Americanus can do nothing; not so much as escape. ‘_Morbleu, mon Général!_’ cry the Grenadiers, serrying their ranks as the white charger makes a motion that way; ‘you will not leave us, you will abide with us!’ A perilous juncture; Mayor Bailly and the Municipals sit quaking within doors; My General is prisoner without; the Place de Grève, with its thirty thousand regulars, its whole irregular, Saint Antoine and Saint Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel; all hearts set, with a moody fixedness, on one object. Moody, fixed are all hearts: tranquil is no heart, if it be not that of the white charger, who paws there with arched neck, composedly champing his bit, as if no world, with its Dynasties and Eras, were now rushing down. The drizzly day bends westward; the cry is still, ‘To Versailles!’ “Nay, now, borne from afar, come quite sinister cries; hoarse, reverberating in long-drawn hollow murmurs, with syllables too like those of ‘_Lanterne!_’ Or else, irregular Sansculottism may be marching off, of itself, with pikes; nay, with cannon. The inflexible Scipio does at length, by aide-de-camp, ask of the Municipals whether or not he may go. A letter is handed out to him, over armed heads; sixty thousand faces flash fixedly on his; there is stillness, and no bosom breathes till he has read. By Heaven, he grows suddenly pale! Do the Municipals permit? ‘Permit, and even order,’ since he can no other. Clangor of approval rends the welkin. To your ranks, then; let us march! “It is, as we compute, towards three in the afternoon. Indignant National Guards may dine for once from their haversacks; dined or undined, they march with one heart. Paris flings up her windows, ‘claps hands,’ as the Avengers with their shrilling drums and shalms tramp by; she will then sit pensive, apprehensive, and pass rather a sleepless night.