This army defiled during three hours along the Rue Saint Honore.  Sometimes a terrible silence, only broken by the sound of thousands of feet on the pavement, oppressed the imagination, as the sign of concentrated rage of this multitude; then solitary voices, insulting speeches, and atrocious sarcasms, were mingled with the laughter of the crowd; then sudden and confused murmurs burst from this human sea, and rising to the roofs of the houses, left only the last syllables of their prolonged acclamations audible:  Long live the nation!  Long live the sans culottes!  Down with the veto! This tumult reached the salle du Manege, where the Legislative Assembly was then sitting.  The head of the cortege stopped at the doors, the columns inundated the court of the Feuillants, the court of the Manege, and all the openings of the salle.  These courts, these avenues, these passages, which then masked the terrace of the garden, occupied the space which now extends between the garden of the Tuileries and the Rue Saint Honore—­that central artery of Paris.  It was mid-day.

XIII.

Roederer, the procureur syndic of the directory of the department, a post which in ’92 corresponded with that of prefect de Paris, was at this moment at the bar of the Assembly.  Roederer, a partisan of the constitution, of the school of Mirabeau and Talleyrand, was a courageous enemy of anarchy.  He found in the constitution the point of reconciliation between his fidelity to the people and his loyalty to the king; and he sought to defend this constitution with every weapon of the law which sedition had not broken in his grasp.  “Armed mobs threaten to violate the constitution, the Chamber of Representatives, and the dwelling of the king,” said Roederer at the bar; “the reports of the night are alarming; the minister of the interior calls on us to march troops immediately to defend the chateau.  The law forbids armed assemblies, and yet they advance—­they demand admittance; but if you yourselves set an example by suffering them to enter, what will become of the force of the law in our hands? your indulgence will destroy all public force in the hands of the magistrates.  We demand to be charged with the fulfilment of all our duties:  let the responsibility also be ours, and let nothing diminish the obligation we are under of dying to preserve and defend public tranquillity.”  These words, worthy the chancellor L’Hopital, or Mathieu Mole, were coldly listened to by the Assembly, and saluted by ironical laughter from the tribunes.  Vergniaud affected to bow to them, and weakened their effect.  “Yes, doubtless,” said this orator, destined to be torn from the tribune, a year later, by an armed mob,—­“Doubtless, we should have done better never to have received armed men, for if to-day patriotism brings good citizens hither, aristocracy may to-morrow bring its janissaries.  But the error we have committed authorises that of