two o'clock
in the morning
Yesterday it was the fashion at Versailles not to believe that there were any disturbances at Paris . I presume that this day 's transactions will induce a conviction that all is not perfectly quiet ! But , even with this awful evidence , the King is capable of not being convinced , I venture to say . '' He was quite right in his surmise , and 't was not until two o'clock in the morning that Monsieur de Liancourt was able to force his way into the King 's bed-chamber and compel His Majesty to listen to a narrative of the awful events of the day in Paris . In the meantime crowds of the greatest ladies and gentlemen flocked to the Place de la Bastille to witness the strange and horrid scenes there enacting , rubbing elbows with the armed and drunken scum of the city , and only retiring when night hid the sight of it all from them . It was amid a very carnival of mad liberty , of flaring lights and hideous noises , of fantastic and terrible figures thrusting their infuriated countenances in at the coach-windows , with a hundred orders to halt and to move on , a hundred demands to know if there were arms in the carriage , that Mr. Jefferson and Calvert finally regained the Champs Elysées and the American Legation . With the next day the foreign troops were dismissed by order of the frightened King , and Paris had an armed Milice Bourgeoise of forty thousand men , at the head of which , to Mr. Jefferson 's satisfaction and Mr. Morris 's dismay , Lafayette was placed as commander-in-chief .