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The moment when they left the guard-house, to be conveyed to the Hôtel-de-Ville, the populace rushed upon them, tore them from the soldiers who were escorting them, rent them in pieces, and their heads, placed on the tops of pikes, were carried by a band of ferocious children to the environs of the Palais Royal.
"And," added Fréron, "there are men to be found, who venture to justify these cowardly murders these informations these lettres de cachet these seizures of papers these confiscations of presses. The red flag floats for a week from the balcony of the Hôtel-de-Ville, like as in times of old, the banners torn from the grasp of the dying foeman floated from the arched roof of our temples."
Revolt armed against the laws, for instance, mutinous soldiers as conquerors; a colossal galley, an instrument of punishment and shame, crowned with flowers as an emblem; abandoned women and girls, collected from the lowest haunts of infamy, carrying and kissing the broken fetters of these galley-slaves; forty trophies, bearing the forty names of these Swiss; civic crowns on the names of these murderers of citizens; busts of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Sidney, the greatest philosophers and most virtuous patriots, mingled with the ignoble busts of these malefactors, and sullied by the contact; these soldiers themselves, astonished if not ashamed of their glory, advancing in the midst of a group of rebellious French-guard, in all the glorification of the forsaking of flags and want of discipline; the march closed by a car imitating in its form the prow of a galley, in this car the statue of Liberty armed in anticipation with the bludgeon of September, and wearing the bonnet rouge, an emblem borrowed from Phrygia by some, from the galleys by others; the book of the constitution carried processionally in this fête, as if to be present at the homage decreed to those who were armed against the laws; bands of male and female citizens, the pikes of the faubourg, the absence of the civic bayonets, fierce threats, theatrical music, demagogic hymns, derisive halts at the Bastille, the Hôtel-de-Ville, the Champ-de-Mars; at the altar of the country the vast and tumultuous rounds danced several times by chains of men and women round the triumphal galley, amidst the foul chorus of the air of the Carmagnole; embraces, more obscene than patriotic, between these women and the soldiers, who threw themselves into each others' arms; and in order to put the cope-stone on this debasement of the laws, Pétion the Maire of Paris, the magistrates of the people assisting personally at this fête, and sanctioning this insolent triumph over the laws by their weakness or their complicity.
They glided over the Pont Saint-Michel between the houses that lined both sides, and, turning to the right, entered one of the narrow streets of the Cite, and after many turnings, during which they met no one, they stopped at the door of a house situated behind the Hotel-de-Ville. "Many thanks, monsieur," said de Jars, "many thanks; we need no further help."
The streets, though generally narrow, are rendered picturesque by several old houses, the architecture of which is striking; and the place for even St.-Rémy has its Place Publique and Hôtel-de-Ville is not without pretensions to ornament. In the centre of this place is a pretty fountain, of a pyramidal form.
They glided over the Pont Saint-Michel between the houses that lined both sides, and, turning to the right, entered one of the narrow streets of the Cite, and after many turnings, during which they met no one, they stopped at the door of a house situated behind the Hotel-de-Ville. "Many thanks, monsieur," said de Jars, "many thanks; we need no further help."
In the early part of the Christian ages it was converted into a church, and dedicated to St.-Étienne the Martyr; and in the eleventh century it was used as the Hôtel-de-Ville.
At last a free corps commanded by Tibaldi, an Italian conspirator of Imperial days, effected an entrance into the Hotel-de-Ville, followed by a good many of the mob. In the throne-room they were met by Jules Favre, whose attempts to address them failed, the shouts of "La Commune! La Commune!" speedily drowning his voice.
You, pleasure loving Parisian, who have never made any great journey save that to Dieppe to eat fresh fish; who know nothing but your varnished town house, your pretty country house, and your box at that Opera where the rest of Europe persists in feeling bored; who speak your own language agreeably enough because you know no other, you love all that, and you love further the girls you keep, the champagne which comes to you from Rheims, the dividends which the Hôtel-de-Ville pays you every six months, and you say you love your fatherland!
It was growing night, and the announcement of this new arrangement somewhat calmed the crowd; but at midnight an attack was made on the Hôtel-de-Ville, and the new rulers had to defend themselves by personal strength, setting their backs against the doors of the Council Chamber, and repelling their assailants with their own hands.
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