however, rushed to the
window, and just as my wife and her mother reached the street, shouted
to a free band who were on guard across the way, 'Fire! they are
Bonapartists!' Fortunately the men, more merciful than the woman, seeing
two ladies quite alone, did not hinder their passage, and as just then
my brother-in-law came by, whose opinions were well known and whose
uniform was respected, he was allowed to take them under his protection
and conduct them to his house in safety.
"A young man, employed at the Prefecture, who had called at my house
the day before, I having promised to help him in editing the Journal des
Bouches-du-Rhone, was not so lucky. His occupation and his visit to
me laid him under suspicion of possessing dangerous opinions, and his
friends urged him to fly; but it was too late. He was attacked at the
corner of the rue de Noailles, and fell wounded by a stab from a dagger.
Happily, however, he ultimately recovered.
"The whole day was passed in the commission of deeds still more bloody
than those of the day before; the sewers ran blood, and every hundred
yards a dead body was to be met. But this sight, instead of satiating
the thirst for blood of the assassins, only seemed to awaken a general
feeling of gaiety. In the evening the streets resounded with song and
roundelay, and for many a year to come that which we looked back on as
'the day of the massacre' lived in the memory of the Royalists as 'the
day of the farce.'
"As we felt we could not live any longer in the midst of such scenes,
even though, as far as we were concerned, all danger was over, we
set out for Nimes that same evening, having been offered the use of a
carriage.
"Nothing worthy of note happened on the road to Orgon, which we reached
next day; but the isolated detachments of troops which we passed from
time to time reminded us that the tranquillity was nowhere perfect.
As we neared the town we saw three men going about arm in arm; this
friendliness seemed strange to us after our recent experiences, for one
of them wore a white cockade, the second a tricolour, and the third
none at all, and yet they went about on the most brotherly terms, each
awaiting under a different banner the outcome of events. Their
wisdom impressed me much, and feeling I had nothing to fear from such
philosophers, I went up to them and questioned them, and they explained
their hopes to me with the greatest innocence, and above all, their firm
determi
|