slightest sign of
tumult, at the least warning, shops were closed and shutters fastened,
doors strongly barricaded, and armed figures seen cautiously peering
from casements and parapets. At one time a single horseman at full
gallop would give the signal for these precautions; at others, they
seemed the result of some instinctive apprehension of danger, so rapidly
and so silently were they effected. Amid all these portents, the daily
life of Paris went on as before. It was just as we hear tell of in the
countries where earthquakes are frequent, and where in almost every
century some terrible convulsion has laid a whole city in ruins, the
inhabitants acquire a strange indifference to peril till the very
instant of its presence, and learn to forget calamities when once they
have passed.

As for myself, so accustomed had I become to these shocks of peril
that I no longer went to the window when the uproar beneath betokened
a conflict, nor even cared to see which side were conquerors in the
affray. It was in a mood of this acquired indifference that I sat
reading one evening in my office long after the others had taken their
departure; twice or thrice had loud and prolonged shouts from the street
disturbed me, but without exciting in me sufficient of curiosity to
see what was going forward, when at last, hearing the rumbling sound of
artillery trains as they moved past, I arose and went to the window.
To my surprise, the streets were densely crowded, an enormous concourse
filling them, and only leaving a narrow lane through which the wagons
could pass. That it was no mere procession was clear enough, for the
gunners carried their matches lighted, and there was that in the stern
air of the soldiery that bespoke service. They wheeled past the church
of St. Roch, and entered a small street off the Rue St. Honore called
La Dauphine, where, no sooner had they passed in, than the sappers
commenced tearing up the pavement in front of the guns, and speedily
formed a trench of about five feet in depth before them. While this was
doing, some mounted dragoons gave orders to the people to disperse, and
directed them to move away by the side streets,--an order so promptly
obeyed that in a few minutes the long line of the Rue St. Honore was
totally deserted. From the position at La Dauphine to the Tuileries I
could perceive that a line of communication was kept open, and orderlies
passed at a gallop frequently from one side to the other.