They mustered slowly and incompletely, and some not at all; and scarcely had they arrived when several left the posts which had been assigned to them.

The king, being informed of this sluggishness, sent for the regiment of the French Guards, and for four thousand Swiss cantoned in the outskirts of Paris; and he himself mounted his horse, on the 12th of May, in the morning, to go and receive them at the gate of St.Honord.

These troops "filed along, without fife or drum, towards the cemetery of the Innocents." The populace regarded them as they passed with a feeling of angry curiosity and uneasy amazement.

When all the corps had arrived at the appointed spot, "they put themselves in motion towards different points, now making a great noise with their drums and fifes, which marvellously astonished the inhabitants of the quarter." Noise provokes noise.

"In continently," says L'Estoile, "everybody seizes his arms, goes out on guard in the streets and cantons; in less than no time chains are stretched across and barricades made at the corners of the streets; the mechanic leaves his tools, the tradesman his business, the University their books, the attorneys their bags, the advocates their bands; the presidents and councillors themselves take halberds in hand; nothing is heard but shouts, murmurs, and the seditious speeches that heat and alarm a people." The tocsin sounded everywhere; barricades sprang up in the twinkling of an eye; they were made within thirty paces of the Louvre.