"Yes, yes, that is what you were going to tell us!" was shouted on all sides. "We want to know it."
"Tell us, tell us!" cried the giantess. "Give me your hand once more, that I may press it in the name of all the women of Paris!"
Marat with an assuring smile reached his great, bony hand to the woman, who held it in both of her own for a moment, and then retreated and was lost in the crowd.
But in Marat's hand now blazed the jewelled ring which had a moment before adorned the large, soft hand of the woman. He, perhaps, did not know it himself; he paid no attention to it, but turned all his thoughts to the people who now filled the immense square, and hemmed him in with thousands upon thousands of blazing eyes.
"You want to know why you have no bread?" snarled he. "You ask why you starve? Well, my friends and brothers, the answer is an easy one to give. The baker of France has shut up his storehouse because the baker's wife has told him to do so, because she hates the people and wants them to starve! But she does not intend to starve, and so she has called the baker and the little apprentices to Versailles, where are her storehouses, guarded by her paid soldiers. What does it concern her if the people of Paris are miserably perishing? She has an abundance of bread, for the baker must always keep his store open for her, and her son eats cake, while your children are starving!
You must always keep demanding that the baker, the baker's wife, and the whole brood come to Paris and live in your midst, and then you will see how they keep their flour, and you will then compel them to give you of their superfluous supplies."
"Yes, we will make her come!" cried Simon the cobbler, with a coarse laugh. "Up, brothers, up! We must compel the baker and his wife to open the flour-store to us!"
"Let us go to Versailles!" roared the great woman, who had posted herself among a group of fishwives. "Come, my friends, let us go to Versailles, and we will tell the baker's wife that our children have no bread, while she is giving her apprentices cakes. We will demand of her that she give our children bread, and if she refuses it, we will compel her to come with her baker and her whole brood to Paris and starve with us! Come, let us go to Versailles!"
"Yes, yes, let us go to Versailles!" was the hideous cry which echoed across the square; "the baker's wife shall give us bread!"
"She keeps the keys to the stores!" howled Marat, "she prevents the baker opening them."
"She shall give us the keys!" yelled the great woman.
"All the mothers and all the women of Paris must go to Versailles to the baker's wife!"
"All mothers, all women to Versailles!" resounded in a thousand-voiced chorus over the square, and then through the streets, and then into the houses.
And all the mothers and wives caught up these thundering cries, which came to them like unseen voices from the air, commissioning them to engage in a noble, an exalted mission, calling to them to save Paris and procure bread for their children.
"To Versailles, to Versailles! All mothers and women to Versailles!"
Who was able to resist obeying this command, which no one had given, which was heard by no single ear, yet was intelligible to every heart--who could resist it?
The men had stormed the Bastile, the women must storm the heart of the baker's wife in Versailles, till it yield and give to the children of the poor the bread for which they hunger.
"Up, to Versailles! All wives and mothers!"
The cry sweeps like a hurricane through the streets, and everywhere finds an echo in the maddened, panic-stricken, despairing, raging hearts of the women who see their children hunger, and suffer hunger themselves.
"The baker's wife feeds her apprentices with cakes, and we have not a crumb of bread to give to our poor little ones!"
In whole crowds the women dashed into the largest squares, where were the men who fomented the revolution, Marat, Danton, Santerre, Chaumette, and all the rest, the speakers at the clubs; there they are, giving their counsels to the maddened women, and spurring them on!
"Do not be afraid, do not be turned aside! Go to Versailles, brave women! Save your children, your husbands, from death by starvation!
Compel the baker's wife to give bread to you and for us all! And if she conceals it from you, storm her palace with violence; there will be men there to help you. Only be brave and undismayed, God will go with mothers who are bringing bread to their children, and your husbands will protect you!"
They were brave and undismayed, the wives and mothers of Paris. In broad streams they rushed on; they broke over every thing which was in their way; they drew all the women into their seething ranks. "To Versailles! To Versailles!"
It was to no avail that De Bailly, the mayor of Paris, encountered the women on the street, and urged them with pressing words to return to their families and their work, and assured them that the bakers had already opened their shops, and had been ordered to bake bread. It was in vain that the general of the National Guard, Lafayette, had a discussion with the women, and tried to show them how vain and useless was their action.
Louder and louder grew the commanding cry, "To Versailles! We will bring the baker and his wife to Paris! To Versailles!"
The crowds of women grew more and more dense, and still mightier was the shout, "To Versailles!"
Bailly went with pain to General Lafayette. "We must pacify them, or you, general, must prevent them by force!" "It is impossible," replied Lafayette. "How could we use force against defenceless women? Not one of my soldiers would obey my commands, for these women are the wives, the mothers, the sisters of my soldiers! They have no other weapons than their tongues with which to storm the heart of the queen! How could we conquer them with weapons of steel?
We must let them go! But we must take precautions that the king and the queen do not fall into danger."
