alism" began to replace "fraternity"; numerous
failures occurred in all the business quarters, and all the strangers
left the city. Crowds paraded the streets crying, "_A bas les aristos!_"
the last being a new word invented to designate the bourgeoisie, and the
latter, strengthened by the workmen in blouses, to the number of a
hundred thousand men, made a counter-demonstration, singing the
_Marseillaise_. In 1850, on the eve of the _Coup d'Etat_, "a profound
discouragement prevailed among the bourgeoisie. The sudden fall in
public securities, the rise in the premium on gold, the significant
increase in the purchase of foreign bonds, the departure of the numerous
strangers who had come to Paris to pass the season, the diminution, more
marked even than in the preceding month, in all industrial and
commercial transactions,--such were the symptoms of that confidence
which was to effect the conciliation of the electors."

The events of the first three or four days of December, 1851, justified
only too well these apprehensions, and have been but too frequently
related by indignant historians. "It was a sinister and inexpressible
moment," says the author of _Napoleon le Petit_,--"cries, arms lifted
toward Heaven, the surprise, the terror, the crowd flying in every
direction, a hail of bullets, from the pavements even to the roofs, and
in a minute the dead strewing the street, young men falling, their
cigars still in their mouths, ladies in velvet dresses killed by the
musketry, two booksellers shot on the threshold of their shops without
even knowing what was wanted of them, bullets fired into cellar-windows
and killing no matter whom, the _Bazar de l'Industrie_ riddled with
shell and balls, the Hotel Sallandrouze bombarded, the _Maison-d'Or_
mitrailleused, Tortoni taken by assault, hundreds of corpses on the
Boulevard, a stream of blood in the Rue Richelieu!"

Under the new Empire, Paris saw itself almost transformed by the opening
of wide and direct avenues of communication, the suppression of gloomy
and insalubrious quarters, the completion of the Louvre, the
construction of the Halles, the erection of churches, schools, mairies,
and the laying out of public gardens and promenades. Six hundred
kilometres of sewers were provided for the drainage of the capital, and
the Bois de Boulogne and de Vincennes greatly embellished. The
working-classes were still disturbed by vague discussions over social
questions, and by souvenirs