The Prince--Heaven forgive him--and the Duke of Beaufort hoped to
terrify the magistracy into subservience by raising the populace
against them. Foolish people! as if their magistrates were not
guarding them from horrible miseries. In fact, however, the mobs who
raved up and down the streets, yelling round the Hotel de Ville,
hunting the magistrates like a pack of wolves, shouting and dancing
round Monsieur's carriage, or Beaufort's horse--these wretches were
not the peaceable work-people, but bandits, ruffians, disbanded
soldiers, criminals, excited by distributions of wine and money in
the cabarets that they might terrify all who upheld law and order.
If the hotels of the nobles and magistrates had not been constructed
like little fortresses, no doubt these wretches would have carried
their violence further. It seems to me, when I look back at that
time, that even in the Louvre or the Luxembourg, one's ears were
never free from the sound of howls and yells, more or less distant.
Clement Darpent, who had been separated from his work by his injury,
and had not resumed it, so far as I could learn, was doing his best
as a deputy at the Hotel de Ville to work on those whom he could
influence to stand firm to their purpose of not admitting the King's
enemies, but, on the other hand, of not opening their gates to the
royal arm itself till the summons to the States-General should be
actually issued, and the right of Parliament to refuse registration
acknowledged.
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