The hearse passed the Bastille, traversed the small bridge, and reached the esplanade of the bridge of Austerlitz.
There it halted.
The crowd, surveyed at that moment with a bird’s-eye view, would have presented the aspect of a comet whose head was on the esplanade and whose tail spread out over the Quai Bourdon, covered the Bastille, and was prolonged on the boulevard as far as the Porte Saint-Martin.
A circle was traced around the hearse.
The vast rout held their peace.
Lafayette spoke and bade Lamarque farewell.
This was a touching and august instant, all heads uncovered, all hearts beat high.
All at once, a man on horseback, clad in black, made his appearance in the middle of the group with a red flag, others say, with a pike surmounted with a red liberty-cap.
Lafayette turned aside his head.
Exelmans quitted the procession.
This red flag raised a storm, and disappeared in the midst of it.
From the Boulevard Bourdon to the bridge of Austerlitz one of those clamors which resemble billows stirred the multitude.
Two prodigious shouts went up: “Lamarque to the Pantheon!—Lafayette to the Town-hall!”
Some young men, amid the declamations of the throng, harnessed themselves and began to drag Lamarque in the hearse across the bridge of Austerlitz and Lafayette in a hackney-coach along the Quai Morland.
In the crowd which surrounded and cheered Lafayette, it was noticed that a German showed himself named Ludwig Snyder, who died a centenarian afterwards, who had also been in the war of 1776, and who had fought at Trenton under Washington, and at Brandywine under Lafayette.
In the meantime, the municipal cavalry on the left bank had been set in motion, and came to bar the bridge, on the right bank the dragoons emerged from the Celestins and deployed along the Quai Morland.
The men who were dragging Lafayette suddenly caught sight of them at the corner of the quay and shouted:
“The dragoons!”
The dragoons advanced at a walk, in silence, with their pistols in their holsters, their swords in their scabbards, their guns slung in their leather sockets, with an air of gloomy expectation.
They halted two hundred paces from the little bridge.
The carriage in which sat Lafayette advanced to them, their ranks opened and allowed it to pass, and then closed behind it.
At that moment the dragoons and the crowd touched.
The women fled in terror.
What took place during that fatal minute?
No one can say.
It is the dark moment when two clouds come together.
Some declare that a blast of trumpets sounding the charge was heard in the direction of the Arsenal, others that a blow from a dagger was given by a child to a dragoon.
The fact is, that three shots were suddenly discharged: the first killed Cholet, chief of the squadron, the second killed an old deaf woman who was in the act of closing her window, the third singed the shoulder of an officer; a woman screamed:
“They are beginning too soon!” and all at once, a squadron of dragoons which had remained in the barracks up to this time, was seen to debouch at a gallop with bared swords, through the Rue Bassompierre and the Boulevard Bourdon, sweeping all before them.
Then all is said, the tempest is loosed, stones rain down, a fusillade breaks forth, many precipitate themselves to the bottom of the bank, and pass the small arm of the Seine, now filled in, the timber-yards of the Isle Louviers, that vast citadel ready to hand, bristle with combatants, stakes are torn up, pistol-shots fired, a barricade begun, the young men who are thrust back pass the Austerlitz bridge with the hearse at a run, and the municipal guard, the carabineers rush up, the dragoons ply their swords, the crowd disperses in all directions, a rumor of war flies to all four quarters of Paris, men shout:
“To arms!” they run, tumble down, flee, resist.
Wrath spreads abroad the riot as wind spreads a fire.
CHAPTER IV—THE EBULLITIONS OF FORMER DAYS
Nothing is more extraordinary than the first breaking out of a riot.
Everything bursts forth everywhere at once.
Was it foreseen?
Yes.
Was it prepared?
No.
Whence comes it?
From the pavements.
Whence falls it?
From the clouds.
Here insurrection assumes the character of a plot; there of an improvisation.
The first comer seizes a current of the throng and leads it whither he wills.
A beginning full of terror, in which is mingled a sort of formidable gayety.
First come clamors, the shops are closed, the displays of the merchants disappear; then come isolated shots; people flee; blows from gun-stocks beat against portes-cocheres, servants can be heard laughing in the courtyards of houses and saying:
“There’s going to be a row!”
A quarter of an hour had not elapsed when this is what was taking place at twenty different spots in Paris at once.
In the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, twenty young men, bearded and with long hair, entered a dram-shop and emerged a moment later, carrying a horizontal tricolored flag covered with crape, and having at their head three men armed, one with a sword, one with a gun, and the third with a pike.