"I summon you in the people's name to give up the Bastile."
"Queer animals the people," sneered Launay, snapping his fingers. "What do they want with the Bastile?"
"Why, what the mischief is the Bastile to the people? is any common man ever shut up herein? why, the people ought to bless every stone of the Bastile. Who are locked up here? philosophers, learned men, aristocrats, statesmen, princes--all the enemies of the dregs."
"This only proves that the people are not selfish and want to do good to others."
"It is plain that you are not a soldier, my friend," said the other with a kind of pity.
"It is true and come fresh from the country."
"For you do not know what the Bastile is: come with me and I will show you."
"He is going to pull the spring of some trap which will open beneath my feet," thought the adventurer, "and then good-bye, Old Billet!"
But he was intrepid and did not wince as he prepared to accede to the invitation.
"In the first place," continued Launay, "it is well to know that I have enough powder in the store to blow up the castle and lay half the suburbs in ashes."
"Do you see these cannon? They rake this gallery, which is defended by a guardhouse, and by two ditches only to be crossed by draw-bridges; lastly there is a portcullis."
"Oh, I am not saying that the Bastile will be badly defended, but that it will be well attacked."
"To proceed: here is a postern opening on the moats: observe the thickness of the walls. Forty feet here and fifteen above. You see that though the people have nails they will break against such walls."
"I am not saying that the people will demolish the Bastile to master it but that, having mastered it, they will demolish it," said the leader of the revolutionists.
"Let us go upstairs," said the governor, leading up thirty steps, where he paused to say: "This embrasure opens on the passage by which you would be bound to come. It is defended by one rampart gun, but it enjoys a fair reputation. You know the song:
"'Oh, my sweet-voiced Sackbut, I love your dear song?'"
"Certainly, I have heard it, but I do not think this a time to sing it, or anything else."
"Stay; Marshal Saxe called this gun his Sackbut, because it sang the only music he cared anything for. This is a historical fact. But let us go on."