'After all," says one of them, named Mouchet, "the right of petition is sacred."-- " Open the gate!" shout Sergent and Boucher-Rene, "nobody has a right to shut it.

Every citizen has a right to go through it!"[2546] A gunner raises the latch, the gate opens and the court fills in the winkling of an eye;[2547] the crowd rushes under the archway and up the grand stairway with such impetuosity that a cannon borne along by hand reaches the third room on the first story before it stops.

The doors crack under the blows of axes and, in the large hall of the Oeil de Boeuf, the multitude find themselves face to face with the King.
In such circumstances the representatives of public authority, the directories, the municipalities, the military chiefs, and, on the 6th of October, the King himself, have all thus far yielded; they have either yielded or perished.

Santerre, certain of the issue, preferred to take no part in this affair; he prudently holds back, he shies away, and lets the crowd push him into the council chamber, where the Queen, the young Dauphin, and the ladies have taken refuge.[2548] There, with his tall, corpulent figure, he formed a sort of shield to forestall useless and compromising injuries.

In the mean time, in the Oeil de Boeuf, he lets things take their course; everything will be done in his absence that ought to be done, and in this he seems to have calculated justly .-- On one side, in a window recess, sits the King on a bench, almost alone, while in front of him, as a guard, are four or five of the National Guards; on the other side, in the apartments, is an immense crowd, hourly increasing according as the rumor of the irruption spreads in the vicinity, fifteen or twenty thousand persons, a prodigious accumulation, a pell-mell traversed by eddies, a howling sea of bodies crushing each other, and of which the simple flux and reflux would flatten against the walls obstacles ten times as strong, an uproar sufficient to shatter the window panes, "frightful yells," curses and imprecations, "Down with M.
Veto!" "Let Veto go to the devil!" "Take back the patriot ministers!" "He shall sign; we won't go away till he does!"[2549]--Foremost among them all, Legendre, more resolute than Santerre, declares himself the spokesman and trustee of the powers of the sovereign people: "Sir," says he to the King, who, he sees, makes a gesture of surprise, "yes, Sir, listen to us; you are made to listen to what we say! You are a traitor! You have always deceived us; you deceive us now! But look out, the measure is full; the people are tired of being played upon!"-- " Sire, Sire," exclaims another fanatic, "I ask you in the name of the hundred thousand beings around us to recall the patriot ministers...