they are let in. If they get into the Invalides it is owing to the
connivance of the soldiers. -- At the Bastille, firearms are
discharged from ten in the morning to five in the evening against
walls forty feet high and thirty feet thick, and it is by chance
that one of their shots reaches an invalid on the towers. They are
treated the same as children whom one wishes to hurt as little as
possible. The governor, on the first summons to surrender, orders
the cannon to be withdrawn from the embrasures; he makes the
garrison swear not to fire if it is not attacked; he invites the
first of the deputations to lunch; he allows the messenger
dispatched from the Hôtel-de-Ville to inspect the fortress; he
receives several discharges without returning them, and lets the
first bridge be carried without firing a shot.[42] When, at length,
he does fire, it is at the last extremity, to defend the second
bridge, and after having notified the assailants that he is going to
do so. In short, his forbearance and patience are excessive, in
conformity with the humanity of the times. The people, in turn, are
infatuated with the novel sensations of attack and resistance, with
the smell of gunpowder, with the excitement of the contest; all they
can think of doing is to rush against the mass of stone, their
expedients being on a level with their tactics. A brewer fancies
that he can set fire to this block of masonry by pumping over it
spikenard and poppy-seed oil mixed with phosphorus. A young
carpenter, who has some archaeological notions, proposes to
construct a catapult. Some of them think that they have seized the
governor's daughter, and want to burn her in order to make the
father surrender. Others set fire to a projecting mass of buildings
filled with straw, and thus close up the passage. "The Bastille was
not taken by main force," says the brave Elie, one of the
combatants; "it surrendered before even it was attacked,"[43] by