All shops, unless it be the Bakers’ and Vintners’, are shut:  Paris is in the streets;—­rushing, foaming like some Venice wine-glass into which you had dropped poison.  The tocsin, by order, is pealing madly from all steeples.  Arms, ye Elector Municipals; thou Flesselles with thy Echevins, give us arms!  Flesselles gives what he can:  fallacious, perhaps insidious promises of arms from Charleville; order to seek arms here, order to seek them there.  The new Municipals give what they can; some three hundred and sixty indifferent firelocks, the equipment of the City-Watch:  ’a man in wooden shoes, and without coat, directly clutches one of them, and mounts guard.’  Also as hinted, an order to all Smiths to make pikes with their whole soul.

Heads of Districts are in fervent consultation; subordinate Patriotism roams distracted, ravenous for arms.  Hitherto at the Hotel-de-Ville was only such modicum of indifferent firelocks as we have seen.  At the so-called Arsenal, there lies nothing but rust, rubbish and saltpetre,—­overlooked too by the guns of the Bastille.  His Majesty’s Repository, what they call Garde-Meuble, is forced and ransacked:  tapestries enough, and gauderies; but of serviceable fighting-gear small stock!  Two silver-mounted cannons there are; an ancient gift from his Majesty of Siam to Louis Fourteenth:  gilt sword of the Good Henri; antique Chivalry arms and armour.  These, and such as these, a necessitous Patriotism snatches greedily, for want of better.  The Siamese cannons go trundling, on an errand they were not meant for.  Among the indifferent firelocks are seen tourney-lances; the princely helm and hauberk glittering amid ill-hatted heads,—­as in a time when all times and their possessions are suddenly sent jumbling!

At the Maison de Saint-Lazare, Lazar-House once, now a Correction-House with Priests, there was no trace of arms; but, on the other hand, corn, plainly to a culpable extent.  Out with it, to market; in this scarcity of grains!—­Heavens, will ‘fifty-two carts,’ in long row, hardly carry it to the Halle aux Bleds?  Well, truly, ye reverend Fathers, was your pantry filled; fat are your larders; over-generous your wine-bins, ye plotting exasperators of the Poor; traitorous forestallers of bread!

Vain is protesting, entreaty on bare knees:  the House of Saint-Lazarus has that in it which comes not out by protesting.  Behold, how, from every window, it vomits:  mere torrents of furniture, of bellowing and hurlyburly;—­the cellars also leaking wine.  Till, as was natural, smoke rose,—­kindled, some say, by the desperate Saint-Lazaristes themselves, desperate of other riddance; and the Establishment vanished from this world in flame.  Remark nevertheless that ‘a thief’ (set on or not by Aristocrats), being detected there, is ‘instantly hanged.’