"A stupified and awe-stricken nobility, lazing under the ennui of southern climes, sipping wine and listlessly inert, apathetic to the life of their Sovereign; they who could only say a dull "Tant pis pour lui," like dim rushlights, blinking uselessly in the gloom of France's peril. Presently, ten thousand wailing mouths, lamenting in the streets, verily professional lamenters, husbandmen and yokesmen all come the city of Paris, and a great groan rose like a death-rattle, of an entire country into the air and dispersed into a rolling dark fog of anguish, which covered the entire kingdom in sorrow, for the teeming thousands and for the hopeless nobility the end was upon them! Great breakers and rollers, rumbling and churning in the sky, filling the vast gray sea above to the swell of grief, threatening to break apart the barrier between the Earth and Sky—O lovely France, cry out for life and not death!"