"I do not know what the King was doing," he said, in mocking accents, "at Versailles; but I can tell you how the army was employed in Paris. The Garde Française were foremost in the attack. Besenval, with such troops as have not deserted, has withdrawn. The city is in the hands of the mob. They have shot Flesselles, the Provost, and elected Bailly, Mayor. They have raised a Militia and armed it. They have appointed Lafayette, General. They have adopted a badge. They have----" "But, _mon Dieu!_" the President cried aghast. "This is a revolt!" "Precisely, Monsieur," St. Alais answered. "And what does the King?" "He is so good--that he has done nothing," was the bitter answer. "And the States General?--the National Assembly at Versailles?" "Oh, they? They too have done nothing." "It is Paris, then?" the President said. "Yes, Monsieur, it is Paris," the Marquis answered. "But Paris?" the President exclaimed helplessly. "Paris has been quiet so many years." To this, however, the thought in every one's mind, there seemed to be no answer. St. Alais sat down again, and, for a moment, the Assembly remained stunned by astonishment, prostrate under these new, these marvellous facts. No better comment on the discussions in which it had been engaged a few minutes before could have been found. Its Members had been dreaming of their rights, their privileges, their exemptions; they awoke to find Paris in flames, the army in revolt, order and law in the utmost peril. But St. Alais was not the man to be long wanting to his part, nor one to abdicate of his free will a leadership which vigour and audacity had secured for him. He sprang to his feet again, and in an impassioned harangue called upon the Assembly to remember the Fronde. "As Paris was then, Paris is now!" he cried. "Fickle and seditious, to be won by no gifts, but always to be overcome by famine. Best assured that the fat bourgeois will not long do without the white bread of Gonesse, nor the tippler without the white wine of Arbois! Cut these off, the mad will grow sane, and the traitor loyal. Their National Guards, and their Badges, and their Mayors, and their General? Do you think that these will long avail against the forces of order, of loyalty, against the King, the nobility, the clergy, against France? No, gentlemen, it is impossible," he continued, looking round him with warmth. "Paris would have deposed the great Henry and exiled Mazarin; but in the result it licked their shoes. It will be so again, only we must stand together, we must be firm. We must see that these disorders spread no farther. It is the King's to govern, and the people's to obey. It has been so, and it will be so to the end!"