Under the protection of the law, the standard of liberty shall never become the rallying point of license and disorder. Gentlemen, we swear to you to respect the law which it is our duty to defend, swear by our honor as free men, and Frenchmen do not promise in vain.” To King Louis, La Fayette then addressed these loyal words: “Sire, in the course of those memorable events which have restored to the nation its imprescriptible rights, and during which the energy of the people and the virtues of their king have produced such illustrious examples for the contemplation of the world, we love to hail, in the person of your Majesty, the most illustrious of all titles,—chief of the French, and king of a free people. Enjoy, Sire, the recompense of your virtues, and let that pure homage which despotism could not command be the glory and reward of a citizen-king. The National Guards of France swear to your Majesty an obedience which shall know no other limits than those of the law, and a love which shall only terminate with their existence.” Let Carlyle again describe the scene on that memorable 14th of July. “In spite of plotting aristocrats, lazy, hired spademen, and almost of destiny itself, for there had been much rain, the Champ de Mars is fairly ready. The morning comes, cold for a July one; but such a festival would make Greenland smile. Through every inlet of that national amphitheatre—for it is a league in circuit, cut with openings at due intervals—floods in the living throng, covering without tumult, space after space. Two hundred thousand patriotic men, and, twice as good, one hundred thousand patriotic women, all decked and glorified, as one can fancy, sit waiting in the Champ de Mars. “What a picture, that circle of bright-dyed life, spread up there on its thirty-seated slope, leaning, one would say, on the thick umbrage of those avenue trees, for the stems of them are hidden by the height; and all beyond it mere greenness of the summer earth, with the gleam of waters, or white sparklings of stone edifices. On remotest steeple and invisible village belfry stand men with spy-glasses. On the heights of Chaillot are many-colored, undulating groups. Round, and far on, over all the circling heights that embosom Paris it is as one more or less peopled amphitheatre, which the eye grows dim with measuring. Nay; heights have cannon, and a floating battery of cannon is on the Seine. When eye fails, ear shall serve. And all France, properly, is but one amphitheatre; for in paved town and unpaved hamlet men walk, listening, till the muffled thunder sounds audibly on their horizon, that they, too, may begin swearing and firing.