Twenty thousand workmen were employed to clear it, but, as
they could not finish the work by the appointed day, all Paris went
out. There I saw bishops, court marshals, generals, monks, nuns,
society ladies, workmen, sailors, dustmen, and street-girls
levelling the ground with hoes and spades. Finally the King himself
made up his mind to join in the work. That was the greatest feat of
equalisation which mankind have carried out; the hills were made
low, and the valleys filled. At last the great theatre of liberty
was ready. At the altar of the Fatherland a fire of perfumed wood
was kindled, and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, with a retinue of four
hundred white-robed priests consecrated the flags. The King in civil
dress and the Queen sat on the platform, and, as the 'first citizens
of the State,' took the constitutional oath. All was forgotten; all
was forgiven. Half a million people, collected in one place,
animated by one spirit, felt themselves that day to be brothers
and sisters. We wept, we fell in each other's arms, we kissed each
other. We wept to think what wretches we had been, and how good and
amiable we were now. We wept perhaps, also, because we guessed how
fragile all this was.
"And afterwards, in the evening, when Paris turned out in the
streets and market-places.
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