It's 222 years since that ragtag mob invaded the Bastille and seized its entire population of four forgers, two lunatics, and one deviant aristocrat (there had been two, but the Marquis de Sade had been transferred elsewhere ten days previously). The unfortunate Governor, the Comte De Launay, was beaten to death and his head was mounted on a pike, in traditional peasant-insurrectionist style. Things calmed down for awhile, then got worse, and before you could say "Robespierre," there he was, admiring the oiled movement of the guillotine that, in '93, took the King's head, and the Queen's, then his. And there was Napoleon.
