SECTION IV.

“The dismissal of M. Necker irritated the people beyond description.  They looked upon themselves as insulted in their favourite.  Mob succeeded mob, each more mischievous and daring than the former.  The Duc d’Orleans continued busy in his work of secret destruction.  In one of the popular risings, a sabre struck his bust, and its head fell, severed from its body.  Many of the rioters (for the ignorant are always superstitious) shrunk back at this omen of evil to their idol.  His real friends endeavoured to deduce a salutary warning to him from the circumstance.  I was by when the Duc de Penthievre told him, in the presence of his daughter, that he might look upon this accident as prophetic of the fate of his own head, as well as the ruin of his family, if he persisted.  He made no answer, but left the room.

“On the 14th of July, and two or three days preceding, the commotions took a definite object.  The destruction of the Bastille was the point proposed, and it was achieved.  Arms were obtained from the old pensioners at the Hotel des Invalides.  Fifty thousand livres were distributed among the chiefs of those who influenced the Invalides to give up the arms.

“The massacre of the Marquis de Launay, commandant of the place, and of M. de Flesselles, and the fall of the citadel itself, were the consequence.

“Her Majesty was greatly affected when she heard of the murder of these officers and the taking of the Bastille.  She frequently told me that the horrid circumstance originated in a diabolical Court intrigue, but never explained the particulars of the intrigue.  She declared that both the officers and the citadel might have been saved had not the King’s orders for the march of the troops from Versailles, and the environs of Paris, been disobeyed.  She blamed the precipitation of De Launay in ordering up the drawbridge and directing the few troops on it to fire upon the people.  ‘There,’ she added, ’the Marquis committed himself; as, in case of not succeeding, he could have no retreat, which every commander should take care to secure, before he allows the commencement of a general attack.

[Certainly, the French Revolution may date its epoch as far back as the taking of the Bastille; from that moment the troubles progressively continued, till the final extirpation of its illustrious victims.  I was just returning from a mission to England when the storms began to threaten not only the most violent effects to France itself, but to all the land which was not divided from it by the watery element.  The spirit of liberty, as the vine, which produces the most luxurious fruit, when abused becomes the most pernicious poison, was stalking abroad and revelling in blood and massacre.  I myself was a witness to the enthusiastic national ball given on the ruins of the Bastille, while it was still stained and reeking with the hot blood of its late keeper, whose head