f Etampes apparently had entered his soul
and effaced all memory of his antecedent career. Of the war, of any
recent public events, he could tell me nothing.

I had half expected--supposing the Emperor to be near Fontainebleau--to
happen on his vedettes, but we had the road to ourselves, and reached
Longjumeau a little before daybreak without having encountered a living
creature. Here we knocked up the proprietor of a cabaret, who assured us
between yawns that we were going to our doom, and after baiting the grey
and dosing ourselves with execrable brandy, pushed forward again. As the
sky grew pale about us, I had my ears alert for the sound of artillery.
But Paris kept silence. We passed Sceaux, and arrived at length at
Montrouge and the barrier. It was open--abandoned--not a sentry, not a
douanier visible.

"Where will Monsieur be pleased to descend?" my driver inquired, and
added, with an effort of memory, that he had a wife and two adorable
children on a top floor in the Rue du Mont Parnasse, and stabled his
mare handy by. I paid and watched him from the deserted pavement as he
drove away. A small child came running from a doorway behind me, and
blundered against my legs. I caught him by the collar and demanded what
had happened to Paris. "That I do not know," said the child, "but mamma
is dressing herself to take me to the review. Tenez!" he pointed, and at
the head of the long street I saw advancing the front rank of a
blue-coated regiment of Prussians, marching across Paris to take up
position on the Orleans road.

That was my answer. Paris had surrendered! And I had entered it from the
south just in time, if I wished, to witness the entry of His Majesty the
Emperor Alexander from the north. Soon I found myself one of a crowd
converging towards the bridges, to scatter northward along the line of
His Majesty's progress, from the Barriere de Pantin to the Champs
Elysees, where the grand review was to be held. I chose this for my
objective, and, making my way along the Quays, found myself shortly
before ten o'clock in the Place de la Concorde, where a singular little
scene brought me to a halt.

About a score of young men--aristocrats by their dress and
carriage--were gathered about the centre of the square. Each wore a
white scarf and the Bourbon cockade in his hat; and their leader, a
weedy youth with hay-coloured hair, had drawn a paper from his pocket
and was declaiming its contents at the top of a voice by