mly scaling the barricades,
carried off in triumph, as prisoners of war, 4 gamins, 3 women, and 1
Irishman loudly protesting innocence, and shrieking "Murther!" So ended
the first inglorious rise against the plebiscite and the Empire, on the
14th of May, 1870.

From Isaura Cicogna to Madame de Grantmesnil. Saturday. May 21.

"I am still, dearest Eulalie, under the excitement of impressions wholly
new to me. I have this day witnessed one of those scenes which take us
out of our private life, not into the world of fiction, but of history,
in which we live as in the life of a nation. You know how intimate I
have become with Valerie Duplessis. She is in herself so charming in her
combination of petulant wilfulness and guileless naivete, that she might
sit as a model for one of your exquisite heroines. Her father, who is in
great favour at Court, had tickets for the Salle des Etats of the
Louvre today--when, as the journals will tell you, the results of the
plebiscite were formally announced to the Emperor--and I accompanied him
and Valerie. I felt, on entering the hall, as if I had been living for
months in an atmosphere of false rumours, for those I chiefly meet in
the circles of artists and men of letters, and the wits and flaneurs who
haunt such circles, are nearly all hostile to the Emperor. They agree,
at least, in asserting the decline of his popularity--the failure of his
intellectual powers; in predicting his downfall--deriding the notion
of a successor in his son. Well, I know not how to reconcile these
statements with the spectacle I have beheld to-day.

"In the chorus of acclamation amidst which the Emperor entered the hall,
it seemed as if one heard the voice of the France he had just appealed
to. If the Fates are really weaving woe and shame in his woof, it is in
hues which, to mortal eyes, seem brilliant with glory and joy.

"You will read the address of the President of the Corps Legislatif; I
wonder how it will strike you! I own fairly that me it wholly carried
away. At each sentiment I murmured to myself, 'Is not this true? and, if
true, are France and human nature ungrateful?'

"'It is now,' said the President, 'eighteen years since France, wearied
with confusion, and anxious for security, confiding in your genuis and
the Napoleonic dynasty, placed in your hands, together with the Imperial
Crown, the authority which the public necessity demanded.' Then the
address proceeded to enumerate the blessings t