124 Jeanette Needham. 
be needful to do.” He adds that the speaker was ap- 
plauded.¥ 
Arthur Young corroborates the reports of excitement in the 
capital. ‘‘The ferment at Paris is beyond all conception,’’ he 
wrote on June 24; ‘‘10,000 people have been all this day in the 
Palais Royal; a full detail of yesterday’s proceedings was brought 
this morning and read by many apparent leaders of little parties 
with comment to the people. To my surprise, the king’s propo- 
sitions are received with universal disgust . . . the people seem, 
with a sort of frenzy, to reject all idea of compromise, and to 
insist on the necessity of the orders uniting, that full power 
may consequently reside in the commons, to effect what they 
call the regeneration of the kingdom .... It is plain to me, 
from many conversations and harangues I have been witness to, 
that the constant meetings at the Palais Royal which are carried 
to a degree of licentiousness and fury of liberty, that is scarcely 
credible, united with the innumerable inflammatory publi- 
cations that have been hourly appearing since the assembly of 
the estates, have so heated the people’s expectations and given 
them the idea of such total changes, that nothing the king or 
court could do would now satisfy them.” 
On June 26 Young wrote again: ‘‘Every hour that passes 
seems to give to the people fresh spirit; the meetings at the 
Palais Royal are more numerous, more violent, and more as- 
sured .... In the streets, one is stunned by the hawkers of 
seditious pamphlets and descriptions of pretended events, that 
all tend to keep the people equally ignorant and alarmed ... . 
The spectacle the Palais Royal presented this night, till eleven 
o'clock, and as we afterward heard, almost till morning is cur- 
ious. The crowd was prodigious and fireworks of all sorts were 
played off, and all the building was illuminated; these were 
said to be rejoicings on account of the Duc d’Orleans and the 
nobility joining the commons.” 
Another eyewitness of events in Paris, the author of the 
Bulletins d’un agent secret, gives a similar picture of the situation. 
He stated that during the night of June 24-25, bonfires were 
15 Maleissye, 29. 
16 Young, Travels in France, 176-177, 181. 
238 
