Page:Lectures on the French Revolution of John Acton.djvu/140

128 had not yet adopted the Tricolor, displayed the utmost contempt for it. It required no exaggeration to represent the scene in a light odious to the public. When Madame Campan came home and described with admiration what she had just beheld, Beaumetz, a deputy, and friend of Talleyrand, became very grave, and took his leave, that he might make up his mind whether he should not emigrate at once. Hostile witnesses reported the particulars to the press next day, and it was stated, figuratively or literally, that the Royal Guards had trampled the national colours under foot. Marat came over to inquire, and Camille Desmoulins says that he hurried back to Paris making as much noise as all the trumpets of the Last Day. The feast had been held on a Thursday. On the Sunday, October 4, Paris was in a ferment. The insult to the nation, the summoning of troops, the projected flight, as was now supposed, to the fortress of Metz, were taken to mean civil war, for the restoration of despotism. At the Palais Royal the agitators talked of going out to Versailles, to punish the insolent guards. On the evening of Sunday, one district of the city, the Cordeliers, who were governed by Danton, were ready to march. The men of other districts were not so ready for action, or so zealous to avenge the new cockade. To carry the entire population more was required than the vague rumour of Metz, or even than the symbolical outrage.

There was hunger among the 800,000 inhabitants of Paris, between last year's corn that was exhausted, and the new harvest that was not yet ground. Nobody, says Dumont, could wonder if so much suffering led to tumult. The suffering was due to poverty more than to scarcity; but Lafayette asserted that above 2000 a week were paid to bakers, or to millers, to create discontent by shortening supplies. There were people who thought that money spent in this way would rouse indignation against the incompetent and inactive Assembly. Upon sixteen days in the course of September the bakers' shops had to be guarded by troops. The reduced noble families were putting down their establishments; and 200,000