Thus, then, has ended the First Act of the Insurrection of Women.  How it will turn on the morrow?  The morrow, as always, is with the Fates!  But his Majesty, one may hope, will consent to come honourably to Paris; at all events, he can visit Paris.  Anti-national Bodyguards, here and elsewhere, must take the National Oath; make reparation to the Tricolor; Flandre will swear.  There may be much swearing; much public speaking there will infallibly be:  and so, with harangues and vows, may the matter in some handsome way, wind itself up.

Or, alas, may it not be all otherwise, unhandsome:  the consent not honourable, but extorted, ignominious?  Boundless Chaos of Insurrection presses slumbering round the Palace, like Ocean round a Diving-bell; and may penetrate at any crevice.  Let but that accumulated insurrectionary mass find entrance!  Like the infinite inburst of water; or say rather, of inflammable, self-igniting fluid; for example, ’turpentine-and-phosphorus oil,’—­fluid known to Spinola Santerre!

Chapter 1.7.X.

The Grand Entries.

The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, had but broken over Versailles, when it pleased Destiny that a Bodyguard should look out of window, on the right wing of the Chateau, to see what prospect there was in Heaven and in Earth.  Rascality male and female is prowling in view of him.  His fasting stomach is, with good cause, sour; he perhaps cannot forbear a passing malison on them; least of all can he forbear answering such.

Ill words breed worse:  till the worst word came; and then the ill deed.  Did the maledicent Bodyguard, getting (as was too inevitable) better malediction than he gave, load his musketoon, and threaten to fire; and actually fire?  Were wise who wist!  It stands asserted; to us not credibly.  Be this as it may, menaced Rascality, in whinnying scorn, is shaking at all Grates:  the fastening of one (some write, it was a chain merely) gives way; Rascality is in the Grand Court, whinnying louder still.

The maledicent Bodyguard, more Bodyguards than he do now give fire; a man’s arm is shattered.  Lecointre will depose (Deposition de Lecointre in Hist.  Parl. iii. 111-115.) that ’the Sieur Cardaine, a National Guard without arms, was stabbed.’  But see, sure enough, poor Jerome l’Heritier, an unarmed National Guard he too, ’cabinet-maker, a saddler’s son, of Paris,’ with the down of youthhood still on his chin,—­he reels death-stricken; rushes to the pavement, scattering it with his blood and brains!—­Allelew!  Wilder than Irish wakes, rises the howl:  of pity; of infinite revenge.  In few moments, the Grate of the inner and inmost Court, which they name Court of Marble, this too is forced, or surprised, and burst open:  the Court of Marble too is overflowed:  up the Grand Staircase, up all stairs and entrances rushes the living Deluge!  Deshuttes and Varigny, the two sentry Bodyguards, are trodden down, are massacred with a hundred pikes.  Women snatch their cutlasses, or any weapon, and storm-in Menadic:—­other women lift the corpse of shot Jerome; lay it down on the Marble steps; there shall the livid face and smashed head, dumb for ever, speak.