light filters through the interstices of the boards. Go
close up to them, apply your eye to one of those lighted crevices,
listen to the cannon roaring, the mitrailleuses horribly spitting, the
musketry cracking, and then look into the interior of the closed rooms.
People are talking, eating, and smoking; waiters go to and fro. There
are women too. The men are gay and silly. Champagne bottles are being
uncorked. "Ah! ah! it's the fusillade!" Lovers and mistresses are in
common here. This orgie has the most telling effect, I tell you, in the
midst of the city loaded with maledictions, a few steps from the
battle-field where the bayonets are dealing their death thrusts, and the
shells are scattering blood. And later, after the laughter and the songs
and the drink, they take an open carriage, if the night is fine, and go
to the Champs Elysees, and there mount upon the box by the coachman to
try and see the fight--if "those people" knew how to die as well as they
know how to laugh it would be better for them.

Other _bons viveurs_, more discreet, hide themselves on the first floors
of some houses and in some of the clubs. But they are betrayed by the
sparkle of the chandeliers which pierces the heavy curtains. If you walk
along by the walls you will hear the conversation of the gamesters and
the joyous clink of the gold pieces.

Ah! the cowardice of the merry ones! Oh, thrice pardonable anger of
those who starve!

XXIX.

At one o'clock this morning, the 5th of April, on my return from one of
these nightly excursions through Paris, I was following the Rue du Mont
Thabor so as to gain the boulevards, when on crossing the Rue
Saint-Honore I perceived a small number of National Guards ranged along
the pavement. The incident was a common one, and I took no notice of it.
In the Rue du Mont Thabor not a person was to be seen; all was in
silence and solitude. Suddenly a door opened a few steps in front of
me; a man came out and hurried away in the direction opposite to that of
the church. This departure looked like a flight. I stopped and lent my
attention. Soon two National Guards rushed out by the same door, ran,
shouting as they went, after the fugitive, who had had but a short start
of them, and overtaking him, without difficulty brought him back between
them, while the National Guards that I had seen in the Rue Saint-Honore
ran up at the noise. The exclamations and insults of all kinds that were
vociferated led me