On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in their bodies!  Roar with all your throats, of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body or spirit; for it is the hour!  Smite, thou Louis Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment Dauphine; smite at that Outer Drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee!  Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke.  Down with it, man; down with it to Orcus:  let the whole accursed Edifice sink thither, and Tyranny be swallowed up for ever!  Mounted, some say on the roof of the guard-room, some ‘on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall,’ Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (also an old soldier) seconding him:  the chain yields, breaks; the huge Drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas).  Glorious:  and yet, alas, it is still but the outworks.  The Eight grim Towers, with their Invalides’ musketry, their paving stones and cannon-mouths, still soar aloft intact;—­Ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner Drawbridge with its back towards us:  the Bastille is still to take!

To describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of the most important in history) perhaps transcends the talent of mortals.  Could one but, after infinite reading, get to understand so much as the plan of the building!  But there is open Esplanade, at the end of the Rue Saint-Antoine; there are such Forecourts, Cour Avance, Cour de l’Orme, arched Gateway (where Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers:  a labyrinthic Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and twenty;—­beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere Chaos come again!  Ordnance of all calibres; throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own engineer:  seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing.  Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals; no one would heed him in coloured clothes:  half-pay Hulin is haranguing Gardes Francaises in the Place de Greve.  Frantic Patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot (or seemingly so), to the Hotel-de-Ville:—­Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt!  Flesselles is ‘pale to the very lips’ for the roar of the multitude grows deep.  Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness.  At every street-barricade, there whirls simmering, a minor whirlpool,—­strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-Mahlstrom which is lashing round the Bastille.