Page:Rolland - Two Plays of the French Revolution.djvu/28

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22
THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY

some of whom play about between the legs of the others.]


News-criers.Great plot discovered! Famine, famine is at hand! The murderers have come!

The Crowd [calling to the news-criers].Here! Sst!

A Man of the People [anxiously, to a bourgeois, who is reading].Well?

The Bourgeois.My good fellow, they are coming! They're coming! The Germans, the Swiss Guards! Paris is surrounded! They'll be here any minute!

The Man of the People.The King won't let them.

A Vagabond.The King? He's with them at the camp of Sablons, surrounded by Germans.

The Man of the People.The King is a Frenchman.

The Bourgeois.The King, yes, but not the Queen. The Austrian woman hates us. Her brigand Marshal de Broglie has sworn to raze Paris to the ground. We are caught between the cannon of the Bastille and the troops of the Champ de Mars.

A Student.They won't make a move. Monsieur Necker is at Versailles; he will take care of us.

The Bourgeois.Yes, so long as he remains Minister, we must not lose our faith in him.

The Vagabond.But who says he still is? They've dismissed him.

All [protesting].No, no, he's still Minister.—