To this great demonstration the king replies by the royal word, “Veto!”
Monsieur de Brézé is sent to the rebels to order them to disperse.
“We are here by the will of the people,” said Mirabeau, “and we will not leave this place but with bayonets pointed at our breasts.”
And not, as it has been asserted, that he said” by the force of bayonets. “Why is it that there is always behind great men some paltry rhetorician who spoils his sayings under pretext of arranging them?
Why was there such a rhetorician behind Mirabeau at the Jeu de Paume?
And behind Cambronne at Waterloo?
The reply was at once reported to the king.
He walked about for some time with the air of a man who was suffering from ennui.
“They will not go away” said he.
“No, Sire.”
“Well, then, leave them where they are.”
As is here shown, royalty was already bending beneath the hand of the people, and bending very low.
From the 21st of June to the 12th of July all appeared tolerably calm; but it was that heavy and stifling calm which precedes the tempest.
It was like the uneasy dream of an uneasy slumber.
On the 11th the king formed a resolution, urged to it by the queen, the Count d’Artois, the Polignacs,—in fact, the whole of the Camarilla of Versailles; in short, he dismissed Necker.
On the 12th this intelligence reached Paris.
The effect which it produced has already been seen.
On the evening of the 13th, Billot arrived just in time to see the barriers burning.
On the 13th, in the evening, Paris was defending itself.
On the 14th, in the morning, Paris was ready to attack.
On the morning of the 14th Billot cried, “To the Bastille!” and three thousand men, imitating Billot, reiterated the same cry, which was about to become that of the whole population of Paris.
The reason was, that there had existed during five centuries a monument weighing heavily upon the breast of France, like the infernal rock upon the shoulders of Sisyphus.
Only that, less confiding than the Titan in his strength, France had never attempted to throw it off.
This monument, the seal of feudality, imprinted on the forehead of Paris, was the Bastille.
The king was too good, as Madame de Hausset had said, to have a head cut off.
But the king sent people to the Bastille.
When once a man became acquainted with the Bastille, by order of the king, that man was forgotten, sequestrated, interred, annihilated.
He remained there until the king remembered him; and kings have so many new things occurring around them every day, of which they are obliged to think, that they often forget to think of old matters.
Moreover, in France there was not only one Bastille, there were twenty other Bastilles, which were called Fort l’Evêque, Saint-Lazare, the Châtelet, the Conciergerie, Vincennes, the Castle of La Roche, the Castle of If, the Isles of St. Marguerite, Pignerolles, etc.
Only the fortress at the gate St. Antoine was called the Bastille, as Rome was called the city.
It was the Bastille, par excellence. It was of more importance than all the others.
During nearly a whole century the governorship of the Bastille had continued in one and the same family.
The grandfather of this elect race was Monsieur de Châteauneuf. His son, Lavrillière, succeeded him, who, in turn, was succeeded by his grandson, Saint Florentin. The dynasty became extinct in 1777.
During this triple reign, the greater part of which passed during the reign of Louis XV., it would be impossible to state the number of lettres de cachet.4 Saint Florentin alone received more than fifty thousand.
The lettres de cachet were a great source of revenue.
They were sold to fathers who wished to get rid of their sons.
They were sold to women who wished to get rid of their husbands.
The prettier the wives were, the less did the lettre de cachet cost them.
It then became, between them and the minister, an exchange of polite attentions, and that was all.
Since the end of the reign of Louis XIV., all the state
prisons, and particularly the Bastille, were in the hands of the Jesuits.