Marat jumped upon a stone horseblock. The uproar was indescribable.
"Silence," he called out; "I am Marat and I want to speak."
Like magic all was hushed and every eye was turned upon the orator.
"You want arms to take the Bastile? come with me to the Invalides where are twenty-five thousand stand of arms, and you shall have them."
"Now," continued Marat to Billet, "you be off to the Bastile but stay--you may want help before I come."
He wrote on a leaf of his tablets "From Marat," and tore this out to give it to Billet, who smiled to see that it also bore a masonic sign. He and Marat belonged to the Order of the Invisibles over which presided Balsamo-Cagliostro, and his work was what they were prosecuting.
"What am I to do with a paper having no name or address?" inquired the peasant.
"My friend has no address; but his name is well-known. Ask the first workingman you come across for the People's Spokesman, Gonchon."
"Gonchon, or Gonchonius, in Latin," repeated Pitou; "I shall retain it."
"To the Invalides," yelled the voices with increasing ferocity.
"Be on your way," said Marat, "and may the spirit of Liberty march by your side!"
"Now, then, brothers, on to the Invalides," shouted Marat in his turn.
He went off with more than twenty thousand men, while the farmer took away some six hundred in his train, but they were armed. As the two leaders were departing, the provost appeared at a window, calling out:
"Friends, why do I see the green cockade in your hats, when it is the color of Artois, though it may also be that of Hope? Don't look to be sporting the colors of a prince."
"No, no," was the chorus, with Billet's loudest of the voices.
"Then, change it, and as if you must wear a color, take that good old Paris town, our mother, blue and red, my friends."
(Later, General Lafayette, making the criticism that Blue and Red were the Orleans colors also, and perhaps having the stars and stripes of the Republic he had fought for in his mind, suggested the addition of white, saying that "The Red, White and Blue, would be a flag that would go round the world.")
With approving words, everybody tore off the leaves and trampled them underfoot, while they called for ribbons. As if by enchantment all windows opened, and there was a rain of red and blue ribbons. But this was scant supply for a thousand only. Aprons, silk dresses, tapes, scarves, all sorts of tissues were torn into strips and twisted up into rosettes, streamers, favors and ties, with which decorations the improvised army of Billet went its road.