Early on the morning of 14 July, 1789, an air of reckoning and vengeance hung over Paris. Thick clouds rolled across the sky. Parisians gathered on every street corner, fearful of the royal army and the regiments of foreign mercenaries in the king’s service. Their gatherings grew in number, and soon a vast crowd had formed. They looked one another in the eyes with an air of understanding, bonded by injustice and poverty. Surely now the time had come to take action against their king, Louis XVI. Slowly the thought of revolution simmered, until suddenly it boiled over. The crowds attacked the Hotel des Invalides to make off with the stores of firearms, muskets and cannons kept in its cellars. Many bands of rebels had formed, but the largest was around the prison of the Bastille. The royal forces capitulated. Prisoners being held at the mercy of arbitrary royal edicts were liberated. Seven detainees were freed by the Parisians; none knew the reasons for their imprisonment. “The fall of the Bastille is the fall of all Bastilles,” Victor Hugo would later write. “It was the end of all slavery, and the festival of all nations.” Today, this monumental uprising is still called Bastille Day.
Since that day, at the city’s stock exchange – the Place de la Bourse – Parisians have gathered every year to celebrate the fall of the Bastille. Pride fills the air, and an open-air ball is held. The people dance joyously, swapping partners and basking in the memory of that great feat. Even the 1929 American stock market collapse, or the Great Depression that followed, would not quell their festivities, for the 14th of July is an important day. The women come to the ball in their finest robes, and the men are dressed to the nines. Everyone is here: horse-dealers, blacksmiths, metalworkers, newspaper sellers, postmen, ironmongers, wheelwrights, midwives, seamstresses, shoemakers and tanners.
Marianne had gotten all dressed up for the occasion. She was a shop-girl, aged only twenty-four, and she sought out Jean amidst the dancing crowd on the Place de la Bourse. 14 July was a sacred day, a holiday, a feast for all those who worked and toiled. How was she to find him? All the men looked the same in their three-piece suits and slicked-back hair. The task appeared impossible. She looked near the band, who were playing beneath a tent erected at the entrance to the stock exchange building. Then she tried the old café, whose doors were opened onto the pavement. Men were queuing up to buy a glass of wine for five francs. There she recognised him among the others. “Jean!” she called. Jean was a shoemaker, and his brogues always stood out. He had made them himself, after all. He was passionate about his work, and Marianne smiled as she saw him step forward in his polished shoes. “Fancy a dance?” Marianne suggested. Jean grabbed his glass and drank a mouthful. “With these shoes I’ll be able to go all night!” he laughed.
Jean hugged Marianne close to him, turning her in a waltzing pattern. He tried not to take too many steps until his shoes were broken in. Marianne was on cloud nine. She could have stayed there at the Bourse until the sun went down. With a heave Jean lifted her, and she smiled at him. Then she clasped her arms around his neck and fell back on her heels. Their love was tender. Finally they kissed, full of joy.
Alan Alfredo Geday