to mix a police question with a question of liberty and oppose
the spirit of chicanery to the spirit of revolution? It is like sending
process-servers with stamped paper to serve upon a lion. The quibbles of
M. Hebert in presence of a riot! What do they amount to!"

As I was saying this a deputy passed us and said:

"The Ministry of Marine has been taken."

"Let us go and see!" said Franc d'Houdetot to me.

We went out. We passed through a regiment of infantry that was guarding
the head of the Pont de la Concorde. Another regiment barred the other
end of it. On the Place Louis XV. cavalry was charging sombre and
immobile groups, which at the approach of the soldiers fled like swarms
of bees. Nobody was on the bridge except a general in uniform and on
horseback, with the cross of a commander (of the Legion of Honour) hung
round his neck--General Prevot. As he galloped past us he shouted: "They
are attacking!"

As we reached the troops at the other end of the bridge a battalion
chief, mounted, in a bernouse with gold stripes on it, a stout man with
a kind and brave face, saluted M. d'Houdetot.

"Has anything happened?" Franc asked.

"It happened that I got here just in time!" replied the major.

It was this battalion chief who cleared the Palace of the Chamber, which
the rioters had invaded at six o'clock in the morning.

We walked on to the Place. Charging cavalry was whirling around us. At
the angle of the bridge a dragoon raised his sword against a man in a
blouse. I do not think he struck him. Besides, the Ministry of Marine
had not been "taken." A crowd had thrown a stone at one of the windows,
smashing it, and hurting a man who was peeping out. Nothing more.

We could see a number of vehicles lined up like a barricade in the broad
avenue of the Champs-Elysees, at the rond-point.

"They are firing, yonder," said d'Houdetot. "Can you see the smoke?"

"Pooh!" I replied. "It is the mist of the fountain. That fire is water."

And we burst into a laugh.

An engagement was going on there, however. The people had constructed
three barricades with chairs. The guard at the main square of the
Champs-Elysees had turned out to pull the barricades down. The people
had driven the soldiers back to the guard-house with volleys of stones.
General Prevot had sent a squad of Municipal Guards to the relief of the
soldiers. The squad had been surrounded and compelled to seek refuge
in the guard-house with the others.