eplied the other, "Donegal and I saw a sparrow
on the Tuileries, and we thought we'd have a shot at it, that's all."
"Hurroo! look out for squalls," here cried the intrepid Hibernian; for
at this moment one of Paixhans' shells fell into the counterscarp of the
demilune on which they were standing, and sent a ravelin and a couple of
embrasures flying about their ears.

Fort Twenty-three, which held out for Louis Philippe, seeing Fort
Twenty-four, or Potato, open a fire on the Tuileries, instantly replied
by its guns, with which it blazed away at the Bourbonite fort. On seeing
this, Fort Twenty-two, occupied by the Imperialists, began pummelling
Twenty-three; Twenty-one began at Twenty-two; and in a quarter of an
hour the whole of this vast line of fortification was in a blaze of
flame, flashing, roaring, cannonading, rocketing, bombing, in the most
tremendous manner. The world has never perhaps, before or since, heard
such an uproar. Fancy twenty-four thousand guns thundering at each
other. Fancy the sky red with the fires of hundreds of thousands of
blazing, brazen meteors; the air thick with impenetrable smoke--the
universe almost in a flame! for the noise of the cannonading was heard
on the peaks of the Andes, and broke three windows in the English
factory at Canton. Boom, boom, boom! for three days incessantly the
gigantic--I may say, Cyclopean battle went on: boom, boom, boom, bong!
The air was thick with cannon-balls: they hurtled, they jostled each
other in the heavens, and fell whizzing, whirling, crashing, back into
the very forts from which they came. Boom, boom, boom, bong--brrwrrwrrr!

On the second day a band might have been seen (had the smoke permitted
it) assembling at the sally-port of Fort Potato, and have been heard
(if the tremendous clang of the cannonading had allowed it) giving
mysterious signs and countersigns. "Tom," was the word whispered,
"Steele" was the sibilated response. (It is astonishing how, in the
roar of elements, THE HUMAN WHISPER hisses above all!) It was the
Irish Brigade assembling. "Now or never, boys!" said their leaders; and
sticking their doodeens into their mouths, they dropped stealthily into
the trenches, heedless of the broken glass and sword-blades; rose from
those trenches; formed in silent order; and marched to Paris. They
knew they could arrive there unobserved--nobody, indeed, remarked their
absence.

The frivolous Parisians were, in the meanwhile, amusing themselves