A thought, or dim raw-material of a thought, was fermenting all night, universally in the female head, and might explode.  In squalid garret, on Monday morning, Maternity awakes, to hear children weeping for bread.  Maternity must forth to the streets, to the herb-markets and Bakers’—­queues; meets there with hunger-stricken Maternity, sympathetic, exasperative.  O we unhappy women!  But, instead of Bakers’-queues, why not to Aristocrats’ palaces, the root of the matter?  Allons!  Let us assemble.  To the Hotel-de-Ville; to Versailles; to the Lanterne!

In one of the Guardhouses of the Quartier Saint-Eustache, ’a young woman’ seizes a drum,—­for how shall National Guards give fire on women, on a young woman?  The young woman seizes the drum; sets forth, beating it, ‘uttering cries relative to the dearth of grains.’  Descend, O mothers; descend, ye Judiths, to food and revenge!—­All women gather and go; crowds storm all stairs, force out all women:  the female Insurrectionary Force, according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal ‘Press of women.’  Robust Dames of the Halle, slim Mantua-makers, assiduous, risen with the dawn; ancient Virginity tripping to matins; the Housemaid, with early broom; all must go.  Rouse ye, O women; the laggard men will not act; they say, we ourselves may act!

And so, like snowbreak from the mountains, for every staircase is a melted brook, it storms; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards the Hotel-de-Ville.  Tumultuous, with or without drum-music:  for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine also has tucked up its gown; and, with besom-staves, fire-irons, and even rusty pistols (void of ammunition), is flowing on.  Sound of it flies, with a velocity of sound, to the outmost Barriers.  By seven o’clock, on this raw October morning, fifth of the month, the Townhall will see wonders.  Nay, as chance would have it, a male party are already there; clustering tumultuously round some National Patrol, and a Baker who has been seized with short weights.  They are there; and have even lowered the rope of the Lanterne.  So that the official persons have to smuggle forth the short-weighing Baker by back doors, and even send ‘to all the Districts’ for more force.

Grand it was, says Camille, to see so many Judiths, from eight to ten thousand of them in all, rushing out to search into the root of the matter!  Not unfrightful it must have been; ludicro-terrific, and most unmanageable.  At such hour the overwatched Three Hundred are not yet stirring:  none but some Clerks, a company of National Guards; and M. de Gouvion, the Major-general.  Gouvion has fought in America for the cause of civil Liberty; a man of no inconsiderable heart, but deficient in head.  He is, for the moment, in his back apartment; assuaging Usher Maillard, the Bastille-serjeant, who has come, as too many do, with ‘representations.’  The assuagement is still incomplete when our Judiths arrive.