From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

Today is a French holiday. There are a lot of French people at our Hotel, and they are going to have a party. They call it Bastille Day. The French people had a revolution against their King too, but theirs was much worse than ours. My father told me about it. He said….

“Once upon a time, France had a King and Queen. They were very cruel to their people, that is they didn’t beat or burn them, they just forgot all about them and the poor people were forced to pay taxes on every single thing they owned, not just tea and stamps. The farmers had to give the King their cows and pigs and vegetables and fruits off their trees and everything, and they had little for themselves even though it was their land, and they tended and grew what was on the farms. The Queen was a selfish wicked woman. When some good friends of hers came and told her that the people in her land were suffering and did not even have bread to eat she answered, “Well, let them eat cake” and that was an awful thing to say because some of the poor people didn’t even know what cake was. They never saw cake except maybe on their birthday. So one day they all got very angry, and the first thing they did was to open the Bastille. The Bastille is the prison, a big gray stone building full of dungeons and rats and spiders and the King and Queen put everyone into it that they didn’t like. All the prisoners then ran out in the street, and killed all the rich royal lords and ladies and took off their heads, and put them on long poles and ran around scaring everyone with them. Then one day they found the King and Queen who had tried to hide and run away and they took off their heads too and then, they all lived happily ever after.”