,
"to rid her of the English." Lamartine peremptorily refused, saying:
"When one is not united by blood to a people, it is not allowable to
interfere in its affairs with the strong hand." Smith O'Brien and
his followers, deeply mortified, repaired at once to Ledru-Rollin's
Red Republican Club, where they were loudly applauded, and Lamartine
condemned.

Meantime there were disturbances everywhere. Men out of employment,
excited by club orators, were ready for any violence. At Lyons they
destroyed the hospitals and orphan asylums, out of mere wantonness.

One afternoon Lamartine received news that the soldiers at the
Invalides, dissatisfied with General Petit, their commander, had
dragged him to the street, placed him on a cart, and were carrying
him thus around Paris. On foot he rushed to the rescue, trusting
to his powers of haranguing the multitude; but luckily the general
had been released before his arrival. There is but one step from
the sublime to the ridiculous. We smile at the spectacle of the
ruler of France rushing on foot, through dim streets, after a cart
he could not find. General Petit was that officer of the Old Guard
whom Napoleon had embraced when he took leave of his beloved corps
at Fontainebleau. Lamartine re-established him as commander at
the Invalides, and the mutiny was put down.

On the night of the first day of the Provisional Government, a mob
having demanded that the red flag of Communism should be substituted
for the tricolor, Lamartine replied,--

"Citizens! neither I nor any member of the Government will adopt
the Drapeau Rouge. We would rather adopt that other flag which is
hoisted in a bombarded city to mark to the enemy the hospitals
of the wounded. I will tell you in one word why I will oppose the
red flag with the whole force of patriotic determination. It is,
citizens, because the tricolor has made the tour of the world with
the Republic and the Empire, with your liberties and your glory;
the red flag has only made the tour of the Champ de Mars, dragged
through the blood of citizens."

Muskets in the crowd were here levelled at the speaker, but were
knocked up by the more peaceable of his hearers.

There was soon great discontent throughout the departments because
of the imposition of a land-tax; but as Lamartine said truly, farmers
would have found war or the triumph of Red Republicanism more expensive
still.

On March 17, about three weeks after the departure of the king,