“On the white charger, La Fayette, in the slowest possible manner, going and coming, and eloquently haranguing among the ranks, rolls onward with his thirty thousand. Saint Antoine, with pike and cannon, has preceded him; a mixed multitude of all and of no arms hovers on his flanks and skirts; the country once more pauses agape: _Paris marche sur nous_. “Towards midnight lights flare on the hill; La Fayette’s lights! The roll of his drums come up the Avenue de Versailles. With peace or with war? Patience, friends! With neither. La Fayette is come, but not yet the catastrophe. “He has halted and harangued so often on the march; spent nine hours on four leagues of road. At Montreuil, close on Versailles, the whole host had to pause, and, with uplifted right hand in the murk of night, to these pouring skies, swear solemnly to respect the king’s dwelling, to be faithful to king and National Assembly. Rage is driven down out of sight by the laggard march; the thirst of vengeance slaked in weariness and soaking clothes. Flandre is again drawn out under arms; but Flandre grown so patriotic, now needs no ‘exterminating.’ The wayworn battalions halt in the Avenue; they have, for the present, no wish so pressing as that of shelter and rest. “Anxious sits President Mounier; anxious the Château. There is a message coming from the Château, that M. Mounier would please to return thither with a fresh deputation swiftly, and so at least _unite_ our two anxieties. Anxious Mounier does of himself send, meanwhile, to appraise the general that his Majesty has been so gracious as to grant us the acceptance pure and simple. The general, with a small advance column, makes answer in passing, speaks vaguely some smooth words to the National President, glances only with the eye at that so mixtiform National Assembly, then fares forward towards the Château. There are with him two Paris Municipals; they were chosen from the three hundred for that errand. He gets admittance through the locked and padlocked gates, through sentries and ushers, to the royal halls.