It is, as we compute, towards three in the afternoon.  Indignant National Guards may dine for once from their haversack:  dined or undined, they march with one heart.  Paris flings up her windows, claps hands, as the Avengers, with their shrilling drums and shalms tramp by; she will then sit pensive, apprehensive, and pass rather a sleepless night. (Deux Amis, iii. 165.) On the white charger, Lafayette, in the slowest possible manner, going and coming, and eloquently haranguing among the ranks, rolls onward with his thirty thousand.  Saint-Antoine, with pike and cannon, has preceded him; a mixed multitude, of all and of no arms, hovers on his flanks and skirts; the country once more pauses agape:  Paris marche sur nous.

Chapter 1.7.VI.

To Versailles.

For, indeed, about this same moment, Maillard has halted his draggled Menads on the last hill-top; and now Versailles, and the Chateau of Versailles, and far and wide the inheritance of Royalty opens to the wondering eye.  From far on the right, over Marly and Saint-Germains-en-Laye; round towards Rambouillet, on the left:  beautiful all; softly embosomed; as if in sadness, in the dim moist weather!  And near before us is Versailles, New and Old; with that broad frondent Avenue de Versailles between,—­stately-frondent, broad, three hundred feet as men reckon, with four Rows of Elms; and then the Chateau de Versailles, ending in royal Parks and Pleasances, gleaming lakelets, arbours, Labyrinths, the Menagerie, and Great and Little Trianon.  High-towered dwellings, leafy pleasant places; where the gods of this lower world abide:  whence, nevertheless, black Care cannot be excluded; whither Menadic Hunger is even now advancing, armed with pike-thyrsi!

Yes, yonder, Mesdames, where our straight frondent Avenue, joined, as you note, by Two frondent brother Avenues from this hand and from that, spreads out into Place Royale and Palace Forecourt; yonder is the Salle des Menus.  Yonder an august Assembly sits regenerating France.  Forecourt, Grand Court, Court of Marble, Court narrowing into Court you may discern next, or fancy:  on the extreme verge of which that glass-dome, visibly glittering like a star of hope, is the—­Oeil-de-Boeuf!  Yonder, or nowhere in the world, is bread baked for us.  But, O Mesdames, were not one thing good:  That our cannons, with Demoiselle Theroigne and all show of war, be put to the rear?  Submission beseems petitioners of a National Assembly; we are strangers in Versailles,—­whence, too audibly, there comes even now sound as of tocsin and generale!  Also to put on, if possible, a cheerful countenance, hiding our sorrows; and even to sing?  Sorrow, pitied of the Heavens, is hateful, suspicious to the Earth.—­So counsels shifty Maillard; haranguing his Menads, on the heights near Versailles. (See Hist.  Parl. iii. 70-117; Deux Amis, iii. 166-177, &c.)

Cunning Maillard’s dispositions are obeyed.  The draggled Insurrectionists advance up the Avenue, ’in three columns, among the four Elm-rows; ‘singing Henri Quatre,’ with what melody they can; and shouting Vive le Roi.  Versailles, though the Elm-rows are dripping wet, crowds from both sides, with:  “Vivent nos Parisiennes, Our Paris ones for ever!”