and oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing pumps:’  O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready?  Every man his own engineer!  And still the fire-deluge abates not; even women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. (Deux Amis (i. 319); Dusaulx, &c.) Gardes Francaises have come:  real cannon, real cannoneers.  Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin rage in the midst of thousands.

How the great Bastille Clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing!  It tolled One when the firing began; and is now pointing towards Five, and still the firing slakes not.—­Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely.

Wo to thee, de Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides!  Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy:  Besenval hears, but can send no help.  One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitring, cautiously along the Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf.  “We are come to join you,” said the Captain; for the crowd seems shoreless.  A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in him; and croaks:  “Alight then, and give up your arms!” the Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the Barriers, and dismissed on parole.  Who the squat individual was?  Men answer, it is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au Peuple!  Great truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and new birth:  and yet this same day come four years—!—­But let the curtains of the future hang.

What shall de Launay do?  One thing only de Launay could have done:  what he said he would do.  Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm’s length of the Powder-Magazine; motionless, like old Roman Senator, or bronze Lamp-holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was:—­Harmless he sat there, while unharmed; but the King’s Fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should, in nowise, be surrendered, save to the King’s Messenger:  one old man’s life worthless, so it be lost with honour; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward!—­In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies de Launay might have left Thuriot, the red Clerks of the Bazoche, Cure of Saint-Stephen and all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the world, to work their will.

And yet, withal, he could not do it.  Hast thou considered how each man’s heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men; hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men?  How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul; their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs?  The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas,