pregnant women were injured in the forests, and others lost their
wits." Fear lends them wings. Two years after this, Madame Campan
was shown a rocky peak on which a woman had taken refuge, and from
which she was obliged to be let down with ropes. -- The people at
last return to their homes, and resume their usual routines. But
such large masses are not unsettled with impunity; a tumult like
this is, in itself, a lively source of alarm. As the country did
rise, it must have been on account of threatened danger and if the
peril was not due to brigands, it must have come from some other
quarter. Arthur Young, at Dijon and in Alsace,[12] hears at the
public dinner tables that the Queen had formed a plot to undermine
the National Assembly and to massacre all Paris. Later on he is
arrested in a village near Clermont, and examined because he is
evidently conspiring with the Queen and the Comte d'Entraigues to
blow up the town and send the survivors to the galleys.

No argument, no experience has any effect against the multiplying
phantoms of an over-excited imagination. Henceforth every commune,
and every man, provide themselves with arms and keep them ready for
use. The peasant searches his hoard, and "finds from ten to twelve
francs for the purchase of a gun." "A national militia is found in
the poorest village." Burgess guards and companies of volunteers
patrol all the towns. Military commanders deliver arms, ammunition,
and equipment, on the requisition of municipal bodies, while, in
case of refusal, the arsenals are pillaged, and, voluntarily or by
force, four hundred thousand guns thus pass into the hands of the
people in six months.[13] Not content with this they must have
cannon. Brest having demanded two, every town in Brittany does the
same thing; their self-esteem is at stake as well as a need of
feeling themselves strong. - They lack nothing now to render