Truly, in the Chateau of Versailles all seems mystery:  in the Town of Versailles, were we there, all is rumour, alarm and indignation.  An august National Assembly sits, to appearance, menaced with death; endeavouring to defy death.  It has resolved ’that Necker carries with him the regrets of the Nation.’  It has sent solemn Deputation over to the Chateau, with entreaty to have these troops withdrawn.  In vain:  his Majesty, with a singular composure, invites us to be busy rather with our own duty, making the Constitution!  Foreign Pandours, and suchlike, go pricking and prancing, with a swashbuckler air; with an eye too probably to the Salle des Menus,—­were it not for the ’grim-looking countenances’ that crowd all avenues there. (See Lameth; Ferrieres, &c.) Be firm, ye National Senators; the cynosure of a firm, grim-looking people!

The august National Senators determine that there shall, at least, be Permanent Session till this thing end.  Wherein, however, consider that worthy Lafranc de Pompignan, our new President, whom we have named Bailly’s successor, is an old man, wearied with many things.  He is the Brother of that Pompignan who meditated lamentably on the Book of Lamentations: 

     Saves-voux pourquoi Jeremie
     Se lamentait toute sa vie? 
     C’est qu’il prevoyait
     Que Pompignan le traduirait!

Poor Bishop Pompignan withdraws; having got Lafayette for helper or substitute:  this latter, as nocturnal Vice-President, with a thin house in disconsolate humour, sits sleepless, with lights unsnuffed;—­waiting what the hours will bring.

So at Versailles.  But at Paris, agitated Besenval, before retiring for the night, has stept over to old M. de Sombreuil, of the Hotel des Invalides hard by.  M. de Sombreuil has, what is a great secret, some eight-and-twenty thousand stand of muskets deposited in his cellars there; but no trust in the temper of his Invalides.  This day, for example, he sent twenty of the fellows down to unscrew those muskets; lest Sedition might snatch at them; but scarcely, in six hours, had the twenty unscrewed twenty gun-locks, or dogsheads (chiens) of locks,—­each Invalide his dogshead!  If ordered to fire, they would, he imagines, turn their cannon against himself.

Unfortunate old military gentlemen, it is your hour, not of glory!  Old Marquis de Launay too, of the Bastille, has pulled up his drawbridges long since, ‘and retired into his interior;’ with sentries walking on his battlements, under the midnight sky, aloft over the glare of illuminated Paris;—­whom a National Patrol, passing that way, takes the liberty of firing at; ‘seven shots towards twelve at night,’ which do not take effect. (Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 312.) This was the 13th day of July, 1789; a worse day, many said, than the last 13th was, when only hail fell out of Heaven, not madness rose out of Tophet, ruining worse than crops!