composure, "let us go to the Palais-Royal." So saying, he descended the
steps, passed through the crowd, which opened to make way for him, and
which followed without offering him any violence. But at the corner of the
Quay Pelletier a stranger rushed forward, and killed him with a pistol-
shot.

After these scenes of war, tumult, dispute, and vengeance, the Parisians,
fearing, from some intercepted letters, that an attack would be made
during the night, prepared to receive the enemy. The whole population
joined in the labour of fortifying the town; they formed barricades,
opened intrenchments, unpaved streets, forged pikes, and cast bullets.
Women carried stones to the tops of the houses to crush the soldiers as
they passed. The national guard were distributed in posts; Paris seemed
changed into an immense foundry and a vast camp, and the whole night was
spent under arms, expecting the conflict.

While the insurrection assumed this violent, permanent, and serious
character at Paris, what was doing at Versailles? The court was preparing
to realize its designs against the capital and assembly. The night of the
14th was fixed upon for their execution. The baron de Breteuil, who was at
the head of the ministry, had promised to restore the royal authority in
three days. Marshal de Broglie, commander of the army collected around
Paris, had received unlimited powers of all kinds. On the 15th the
declaration of the 23rd of June was to be renewed, and the king, after
forcing the assembly to adopt it, was to dissolve it. Forty thousand
copies of this declaration were in readiness to be circulated throughout
the kingdom; and to meet the pressing necessities of the treasury more
than a hundred millions of paper money was created. The movement in Paris,
so far from thwarting the court, favoured its views. To the last moment it
looked upon it as a passing tumult that might easily be suppressed; it