g since early morning, going from quarter to quarter and
from group to group.
"Tell me, now, what you really want?" said I. "Is it the Republic?"
"Oh! no, not this time, not yet," he answered. "What we want is
reform--no half measures, oh! dear no, that won't do at all. We want
complete reform, do you hear? And why not universal suffrage?"
"That's the style!" I said as we shook hands.
Patrols were marching up and down the quay, while the crowd shouted
"Hurrah for the line!" The shops were closed and the windows of the
houses open.
In the Place du Chatelet I heard a man say to a group:
"It is 1830 over again!"
I passed by the Hotel de Ville and along the Rue Saint Avoye. At the
Hotel de Ville all was quiet. Two National Guards were walking to and
fro in front of the gate, and there were no barricades in the Rue Saint
Avoye. In the Rue Rambuteau a few National Guards, in uniform, and
wearing their side arms, came and went. In the Temple quarter they were
beating to arms.
Up to the present the powers that be have made a show of doing without
the National Guard. This is perhaps prudent. A force of National Guards
was to have taken a hand. This morning the guard on duty at the Chamber
refused to obey orders. It is said that a National Guardsman of the 7th
Legion was killed just now while interposing between the people and the
troops.
The Mole Ministry assuredly is not a Reform one, but the Guizot Ministry
had been for so long an obstacle to reform! Its resistance was broken;
this was sufficient to pacify and content the child-like heart of the
generous people. In the evening Paris gave itself up to rejoicing. The
population turned out into the streets; everywhere was heard the popular
refrain _Des lampioms! des larnpioms!_ In the twinkling of an eye the
town was illuminated as though for a fete.
In the Place Royale, in front of the Mairie, a few yards from my house,
a crowd had gathered that every moment was becoming denser and noisier.
The officers and National Guards in the guard-house there, in order
to get them away from the Maine, shouted: "On to the Bastille!" and,
marching arm-in-arm, placed themselves at the head of a column, which
fell in joyously behind them and started off shouting: "On to the
Bastille!" The procession marched hat in hand round the Column of July,
to the shout of "Hurrah for Reform!" saluted the troops massed in the
Place with the cry of "Hurrah for the line!" and went of
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