Yes, here with us is famine; but yonder at Versailles is food; enough and to spare!  Patriotism stands in queue, shivering hungerstruck, insulted by Patrollotism; while bloodyminded Aristocrats, heated with excess of high living, trample on the National Cockade.  Can the atrocity be true?  Nay, look:  green uniforms faced with red; black cockades,—­the colour of Night!  Are we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation?  For behold the Corbeil Cornboat, which used to come twice a-day, with its Plaster-of-Paris meal, now comes only once.  And the Townhall is deaf; and the men are laggard and dastard!—­At the Cafe de Foy, this Saturday evening, a new thing is seen, not the last of its kind:  a woman engaged in public speaking.  Her poor man, she says, was put to silence by his District; their Presidents and Officials would not let him speak.  Wherefore she here with her shrill tongue will speak; denouncing, while her breath endures, the Corbeil-Boat, the Plaster-of-Paris bread, sacrilegious Opera-dinners, green uniforms, Pirate Aristocrats, and those black cockades of theirs!—­

Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least, to vanish.  Them Patrollotism itself will not protect.  Nay, sharp-tempered ‘M.  Tassin,’ at the Tuileries parade on Sunday morning, forgets all National military rule; starts from the ranks, wrenches down one black cockade which is swashing ominous there; and tramples it fiercely into the soil of France.  Patrollotism itself is not without suppressed fury.  Also the Districts begin to stir; the voice of President Danton reverberates in the Cordeliers:  People’s-Friend Marat has flown to Versailles and back again;—­swart bird, not of the halcyon kind! (Camille’s Newspaper, Revolutions de Paris et de Brabant in Histoire Parlementaire, iii. 108.)

And so Patriot meets promenading Patriot, this Sunday; and sees his own grim care reflected on the face of another.  Groups, in spite of Patrollotism, which is not so alert as usual, fluctuate deliberative:  groups on the Bridges, on the Quais, at the patriotic Cafes.  And ever as any black cockade may emerge, rises the many-voiced growl and bark:  A bas, Down!  All black cockades are ruthlessly plucked off:  one individual picks his up again; kisses it, attempts to refix it; but a ’hundred canes start into the air,’ and he desists.  Still worse went it with another individual; doomed, by extempore Plebiscitum, to the Lanterne; saved, with difficulty, by some active Corps-de-Garde.—­Lafayette sees signs of an effervescence; which he doubles his Patrols, doubles his diligence, to prevent.  So passes Sunday, the 4th of October 1789.

Sullen is the male heart, repressed by Patrollotism; vehement is the female, irrepressible.  The public-speaking woman at the Palais Royal was not the only speaking one:—­Men know not what the pantry is, when it grows empty, only house-mothers know.  O women, wives of men that will only calculate and not act!  Patrollotism is strong; but Death, by starvation and military onfall, is stronger.  Patrollotism represses male Patriotism:  but female Patriotism?  Will Guards named National thrust their bayonets into the bosoms of women?  Such thought, or rather such dim unshaped raw-material of a thought, ferments universally under the female night-cap; and, by earliest daybreak, on slight hint, will explode.