no tumult anywhere but facing the Hôtel de Ville. I was standing on the parapet when I saw raised above the crowd the figure of an old man with gray hair; it was the unfortunate Foulon being hanged at the lamp-post. I returned home to study my beloved Montesquieu; and from that moment I began to hate a revolution in which people were murdered without being heard in their defence."
There is something thrilling in this plain, blunt, terse narrative of that awful day. Familiar as the scene is to us all, these few lines seem to me singularly effective—above all things, by bringing out the fact, which is to be found in more than one scene in the Revolution, that this epoch-making tragedy passed through so narrow an area of disturbance. "There was no tumult anywhere but facing the Hôtel de Ville." By-and-by we shall see other and even more remarkable instances of this peculiar phenomenon of the Revolution. Lavalette, as a National Guard, was also present at the great march of the women to Versailles. His account of that day would gladden the heart of Taine. The Mœnads who headed the procession were "inebriated women, the refuse of humankind." Lavalette's company would have little to do with these creatures; and he was strongly of opinion that the whole manifestation could have been put down if the King had shown some firmness.
