Long live the child whose very name would have been forgotten in the funeral inscription of his family, if I had not recalled it to the memory of the House of Peers[329]! Had Louis XVI. abdicated, Louis XVII. been placed upon the throne, M. le Duc d'Orléans declared Regent, what would have happened? On the Place Louis XV., the Prince de Lambesc[330], at the head of the "Royal German" regiment, drove back the crowd into the gardens of the Tuileries and wounded an old man: suddenly the tocsin sounded. The cutlers' shops were broken into, and thirty thousand muskets taken from the Invalides. The people armed themselves with pikes, cudgels, pitchforks, sabres, pistols; they sacked Saint-Lazare, burnt down the barriers. The electors of Paris took in hand the government of the Capital, and in a night sixty thousand citizens were organized, armed, equipped into National Guards. On the 14th of July came the fall of the Bastille. I was present, as a spectator, at this assault against a few pensioners and a timid governor: if the gates had been kept closed, the mob could never have entered the fortress. I saw two or three guns fired, not by the pensioners, but by French Guards who had climbed to the towers. De Launey[331] was torn from his hiding-place, and after undergoing a thousand outrages, was struck down on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville; Flesselles[332], the provost of the merchants, had his brains blown out by a pistol-shot: this was the spectacle which heartless enthusiasts thought so fine. In the midst of these murders, the people gave themselves up to orgies, as in the troubles in Rome under Otho and Vitellius. "The victors of the Bastille," happy drunkards, declared conquerors by pot-house votes, were driven about in hackney-coaches; prostitutes and sans-culottes commenced to reign and escorted them. The passers-by uncovered, with the respect born of fear, before those heroes, some of whom died of fatigue amidst their triumph. The keys of the Bastille multiplied; they were sent to all the important simpletons in the four quarters of the world. How often have I missed my fortune! If I, a spectator, had inscribed my name on the list of the victors, I should be in receipt of a pension today.