We took a walk together one evening, to hear music in the Luxembourg
Gardens. As we approached them, the clock on the old building of the
Chamber of Peers struck eight, and at once the band commenced playing
some operatic airs of exquisite beauty. Now a gay and enlivening passage
was performed, and then a mournful air, or something martial and
soul-stirring. The music ceased at nine, and a company of soldiers
marched to the drum around the frontiers of the gardens, to notify all
who were in it that the gates must soon close.

"What very fine drumming," I said to my companion.

"Yes," he replied, "but you should hear a night _rappel_. I heard it
often in the days of the June fight. One morning I heard it at three
o'clock, calling the soldiers together for battle. You cannot know what
a thrill of horror it sent through every avenue of this great city. I
got up hastily, and dressed myself and ran into the streets. It was not
for me to shrink from the conflict. But the alarm was a false one.
Soldiers were in every street, but there was no fighting that day."

A few months before, my friend ventured to publish a pamphlet on the
subject of French interference in Italy. He condemned in unequivocal
terms the expedition to Italy, and showed how it violated the feelings
of the French nation. A few days afterward, he received the following
laconic note:

"M. Blank is invited to call on the prefect of the police, at his
office, to-morrow, Friday, at eleven o'clock."

M. Blank sat down, first, and wrote an able letter to the minister for
the interior, for he well knew that the note signified the suppression
of the pamphlet, and very likely his ejection from France. He sent the
same letter to the American minister, and the next day answered the
summons of the prefect. This is the account of the interview which he
gave me from a journal he was in the habit of keeping at that time:

"I read the word '_Refugies_' over the door, and it reminded me of the
inscription on the gates of hell--'Leave all hope far behind.' Everyone
knows that the very reason that ghosts are dreaded, is that ghosts were
_never seen_. It is the same for policemen--those 'Finders out of
Occasions,' as Othello styles them--those 'rough and ready' to choke
ideas, as the bud is bit by the venomous worm 'ere it can spread its
sweet leaves to the air.' I was about to encounter the assailing eyes of
knavery. A gentleman of the administration welcomed me in. 'Sir,'