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Rh to demand the déchéance, to be signed at the Champs de Mars on the following Sunday. In the brilliant sunshine of the 17th of July crowds of holiday-makers began to collect, and Madame Roland, who went there herself in the morning, bears witness to the peaceable demeanour of the citizens prepared to sign the petition. But a dreadful change soon came over the spirit of the scene. Two mysterious individuals discovered in hiding under the hollow structure of the Altar of the Federation gave rise to suspicions of the most ominous kind in the minds of the populace, and, seeing they refused to confess what had brought them there, they were struck down by some infuriated patriots, or, as others suspected, by villains set on for the purpose of bringing about a massacre. For this murder, the rumour that Lafayette had been wounded, and some stones thrown at the National Guards, sufficed for the unfurling of the Drapeau Rouge and the proclamation of martial law. Before the people—most of them armed with nothing more deadly than walking-sticks and parasols—realised the situation, a frightful detonation of artillery struck down men, women and children, till Lafayette, at his life's peril, sparred his white horse right in front of the cannon's mouth to stop the indiscriminate slaughter. That altar, where, only one short year before, citizens had sworn concord and fraternity, was now stained with blood; some hundreds, at least, of harmless people having perished on the spot.

The Massacre of the Champs de Mars fell like a blight on Madame Roland's heart. She faltered, fell ill, and lost hope for a time. "Mourning and death are within our walls," was her cry. ”But let us keep the fire of liberty alive, and transmit it in its purity to a happier generation, if our continued efforts