several sizes
too big for him:--

"For Paris is reserved the privilege, under circumstances now
existing, to accelerate the dawn of Universal Peace. Her suffrage is
awaited with the interest which so immense a result naturally
inspires,"

_et cetera_. Later on, I possessed myself of a copy of the Prince of
Schwartzenberg's proclamation, and identified the wooden rhetoric at
once.

"Parisians! you have the example of Bordeaux before you".... Ay, by the
Lord, they had--right under their eyes! The hay-coloured youth wound up
his reading with a "Vive le Roi!" and his band of walking gentlemen took
up the shout. The crowd looked on impassive; one or two edged away; and
a grey-haired, soldierly horseman (whom I recognised for the Duc de
Choiseul-Praslin) passing in full tenue of Colonel of the National
Guard, reined up, and addressed the young men in a few words of grave
rebuke. Two or three answered by snapping their fingers, and repeating
their "Vive le Roi" with a kind of embarrassed defiance. But their
performance, before so chilling an audience, was falling sadly flat when
a dozen or more of young royalist bloods came riding up to reanimate
it--among them, M. Louis de Chateaubriand, M. Talleyrand's brother,
Archambaut de Perigord, the scoundrelly Marquis de Maubreuil--yes, and
my cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Yves!

The indecency, the cynical and naked impudence of it, took me like a
buffet. There, in a group of strangers, my cheek reddened under it, and
for the moment I had a mind to run. I had done better to run. By a
chance his eye missed mine as he swaggered past at a canter, for all the
world like a tenore robusto on horseback, with the rouge on his face,
and his air of expansive Olympian black-guardism. He carried a lace
white handkerchief at the end of his riding switch, and this was bad
enough. But as he wheeled his bay thoroughbred, I saw that he had
followed the _declasse_ Maubreuil's example and decorated the brute's
tail with a Cross of the Legion of Honour. That brought my teeth
together, and I stood my ground.

"Vive le Roi!" "Vivent les Bourbons!" "A bas le sabot corse!" Maubreuil
had brought a basketful of white brassards and cockades, and the gallant
horsemen began to ride about and press them upon the unresponsive crowd.
Alain held one of the badges at arm's length as he pushed into the
little group about me, and our eyes met.

"_Merci_," said I, "_retenez-le jusqu'a ce que nous nous