The things we do!

Yet, their entrance is effected only because
they are let in. If they get into the Invalides it is owing to the
connivance of the soldiers. -- At the Bastille, firearms are
discharged from ten in the morning to five in the evening against
walls forty feet high and thirty feet thick, and it is by chance
that one of their shots reaches an invalid on the towers. They are
treated the same as children whom one wishes to hurt as little as
possible. The governor, on the first summons to surrender, orders
the cannon to be withdrawn from the embrasures; he makes the
garrison swear not to fire if it is not attacked; he invites the
first of the deputations to lunch; he allows the messenger
dispatched from the H?tel-de-Ville to inspect the fortress; he
receives several discharges without returning them, and lets the
first bridge be carried without firing a shot.[42] When, at length,
he does fire, it is at the last extremity, to defend the second
bridge, and after having notified the assailants that he is going to
do so.


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