vainly tried to keep it back. Men and women, drunk with brandy and exultation, shouted "Quatorze Juillet!" and amidst curses and threats demanded the opening of the gates.
The people of France would have its will.
Was it not the supreme lord and ruler of the land, the arbiter of the Fate of this great, beautiful, and maddened country?
The National Guard was powerless; the officers in command could offer but feeble resistance.
The desultory fire, which in the darkness and the pouring rain did very little harm, had the effect of further infuriating the mob.
The drizzle had turned to a deluge, a veritable heavy summer downpour, with occasional distant claps of thunder and incessant sheet lightning, which ever and anon illumined with its weird, fantastic flash this heaving throng, these begrimed faces, crowned with red caps of Liberty, these witchlike female creatures with wet, straggly hair and gaunt, menacing arms.
Within half-an-hour the people of Paris was outside its own gates.
Victory was complete. The Guard did not resist; the officers had surrendered; the great and mighty rabble had had its way.
Exultant, it swarmed around the fortifications and along the terrains vagues which it had conquered by its will.
