The party of the left and the spectators in the galleries burst into transports of joy, and gave three rounds of applause. The soldiers entered the hall to the beating of drums and cries of "Long live the nation!" They were followed by a large procession of men and women carrying pikes and banners. Collot d'Herbois, the showman of the Swiss, pronounced an emphatic address in praise of the pretended martyrs of liberty, which the Assembly ordered to be printed. One Goachon, speaking for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and holding a pike ornamented with a { 118} red liberty cap, exclaimed: "The citizens of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the victors of the Bastille, the men of July 14, have charged me to warn you that they are going to make ten thousand more pikes after the model which you see."
The fête took place on Sunday, April 15. It was the triumph of anarchy, the glorification of indiscipline and revolt. On that day the galley slaves were treated like heroes. The emblems adopted were a colossal galley, ornamented with flowers, and the convicts' head gear, that hideous red bonnet in which Dumouriez had already played the buffoon, and which was presently to be set on the august head of Louis XVI. The soldier galley slaves, whose chains were kissed with transports by a swarm of harlots, came forward wearing civic crowns. What a difference between the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative Assembly! Under the one, a grand expiatory ceremony on the Champ-de-Mars had honored the soldiers slain at Nancy, and the National Guards had worn mourning for these martyrs of duty. Under the other, it was not the victims who were lauded, but their assassins. A goddess of Liberty in a Phrygian cap was borne in a state chariot. The procession halted at the Bastille, the Hôtel de Ville, and the Champ-de-Mars. The mayor and municipality of Paris were present in their official capacity. The _Ça ira_ was sung in a frenzy of enthusiasm. Soldiers and public women embraced each other. It was David who had { 119} designed the costumes, planned the chariot, and organized the whole performance,--David, the revolutionary artist who was destined by a change of fortune to paint the portrait of a Pope and the coronation of an Emperor.