Loyal cheers resounded from every part of the theatre, and the feelings excited became so fervid that some officers of the National Guard, who were among the guests, reversed their new tricolor cockade, and, displaying the white side outermost, seemed to have resumed the time-honored badge under which the army had reaped all its old glories.

The band struck up a favorite air from one of the new operas, "Peut-on affliger ce qu'on aime ?" which those who saw the anxiety which recent events had already stamped upon the queen's majestic brow could hardly avoid applying to their royal mistress; and when it followed it up by Blondel's lamentation for Richard, "O Richard, O mon roi, l'univers t'abandonne," the first notes of the well-known song touched a chord in every heart, and the whole company, courtiers, ladies, soldiers, and deputies, were all carried away in a perfect delirium of loyal rapture.

The whole company escorted the royal family back to their apartments; though it was remarked afterward that some of the soldiers, who on this occasion were the most vociferous in their exultation, were, before the end of the same week, among the most furious threateners and assailants of the palace.
But a demonstration such as this, in which the whole number of the soldiers concerned did not exceed fifteen hundred men, could not deter the organizers of the impending riot from carrying out their plan: if it did not even aid them by the opportunities which it afforded for spreading abroad exaggerated accounts of what had taken place, as an additional proof of the settled hatred and contempt which the court entertained for the people.

Mirabeau had suggested that the best chance of success for an insurrection in Paris lay in placing women at its head; and, in compliance with his hint, at day-break on the appointed morning a woman of notorious infamy of character moved toward the chief market-place of Paris, beating a drum, and calling on all who heard her to follow her.[3] She soon gathered round her a troop of followers worthy of such a leader, market- women, fish-women, and men in women's clothes, whose deep voices, and the power with which they brandished their weapons, betrayed their sex through their disguise.
One man, Maillard, who had been conspicuous as one of the fiercest of the stormers of the Bastile, disdained any concealment or dress but his own; they chose him for their leader, mingling with their cries for bread horrid threats against the queen and the aristocrats.

Their numbers increased till they felt themselves strong enough to attack the Hotel de Ville.