VI.

July 13th and 14th 1789.

The fatal moment has arrived; it is no longer a government which
falls that it may give way to another; it is all government which
ceases to exist in order to make way for an intermittent despotism,
for factions blindly impelled on by enthusiasm, credulity, misery,
and fear.[33] Like a tame elephant suddenly become wild again, the
mob throws off it ordinary driver, and the new guides who it
tolerates perched on its neck are there simply for show. In future
it will move along as it pleases, freed from control, and abandoned
to its own feelings, instincts, and appetites. -- Apparently, there
was no desire to do more than anticipate its aberrations. The King
has forbidden all violence; the commanders order the troops not to
fire;[34] but the excited and wild animal takes all precautions for
insults; in future, it intends to be its own conductor, and, to
begin, it treads its guides under foot. -- On the 12th of July,
near noon,[35] on the news of the dismissal of Necker, a cry of rage
arises in the Palais-Royal; Camille Desmoulins, mounted on a table,
announces that the Court meditates "a St. Bartholomew of patriots."
The crowd embrace him, adopt the green cockade which he has
proposed, and oblige the dancing-saloons and theaters to close in
sign of mourning: they hurry off to the residence of Curtius, and
take the busts of the Duke of Orleans and of Necker and carry them
about in triumph. -- Meanwhile, the dragoons of the Prince de
Lambesc, drawn up on the Place Louis-Quinze, find a barricade of
chairs at the entrance of the Tuileries, and are greeted with a
shower of stones and bottles.[36] Elsewhere, on the Boulevard,