"
"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.
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