TO ARMS!
So hangs it, dubious, fateful, in the sultry days of July. It is the passionate printed advice of M. Marat, to abstain, of all things, from violence.[1] Nevertheless the hungry poor are already burning Town Barriers, where Tribute on eatables is levied; getting clamorous for food.
The twelfth July morning is Sunday: the streets are all placarded with an enormous-sized De par le Roi, 'inviting peaceable citizens to remain within doors,' to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd. Why so? What mean these 'placards of enormous size'? Above all, what means this clatter of military; dragoons, hussars, rattling in from all points of the compass towards the Place Louis Quinze; with a staid gravity of face, though saluted with mere nicknames, hootings and even missiles?[2] Besenval is with them. Swiss Guards of his are already in the Champs Elysées, with four pieces of artillery.
Have the destroyers descended on us, then? From the Bridge of Sèvres to utmost Vincennes, from Saint-Denis to the Champ-de-Mars, we are begirt! Alarm, of the vague unknown, is in every heart. The Palais Royal has become a place of awestruck interjections, silent shakings of the head: one can fancy with what dolorous stound the noon-tide cannon (which the Sun fires at crossing of his meridian) went off there; bodeful, like an inarticulate voice of doom.[3] Are these troops verily come out 'against Brigands'? Where are the Brigands? What mystery is in the wind?—Hark! a human
