the hands of our assailants, we could scarcely have conjectured by whom
we were attacked. This continued until daylight; when we at last got
sight of our enemy. Never was there a more tremendous view. Every avenue
to the Place de Grève seemed pouring in its thousands and tens of
thousands. Pikes, bayonets on poles, and rusty muskets, filled the eye
as far as it could reach. Flags, with all kinds of atrocious
inscriptions against the king and queen, were waving in the blast;
drums, horns, and every uncouth noise of the raging million filled the
air. And in front of this innumerable mass pressed on a column of
desperadoes, headed by a woman, or a man disguised as a woman, beating a
drum, and crying out, in the intervals of every roar, 'Bread, bread!'

"To resist was evidently hopeless, or only to provoke massacre; but I
had already dispatched an express to the officer in command at the
Tuileries, to come and save the arms and ammunition deposited at the
Hotel de Ville; and we expected the reinforcement from minute to minute.
While my eyes turned, in this fever of life and death, towards the
quarter from which the troops were to come, a sudden shout from the
multitude made me look round; a fellow, perhaps one of the _funambules_
of the Fauxbourg theatres, was climbing up to the belfry by a rope, with
the agility of a monkey. His purpose was seen by us at once, and seen
with fresh alarm; for, if he had been able to reach the great bell, the
terrible 'tocsin' would have aroused the country for ten leagues round,
and have poured a hundred thousand armed peasantry into Paris. I pointed
him out to the guard, and they fired a volley at him as he swung above
their heads. They missed him, the populace shouted, and the fellow,
taking off his cap and waving it in triumph, still climbed on. I next
fired both my pistols at him; which was the luckier of the two I cannot
tell, but I saw him stagger just as he planted his foot on the
battlement; he was evidently hit, and a general yell from the multitude