eak of Paris, it must be borne in
mind that it is the Paris of 1850-51, not the one we evoke when we think
of the Imperial capital of later days. It was the old city with its high
houses and crooked streets, with its nooks and rookeries, suggestive of
revolution and barricades; not the Paris we know with its gloriously
disciplined palaces, standing shoulder to shoulder, and with its
splendid military avenues that can carry conviction in the straightest
and most direct of lines from the mouth of the cannon to the heart of
the canaille.

The first restaurant I went into--it was a "Marchand de vins,
Traiteur"--I was addressed as "Citoyen," rather a startler for a newly
imported Leipsic schoolboy; but those were the days of the Republic that
had followed Louis Philippe's flight, and there was a great show of
"Liberte, Egalite', Fraternite," on walls, churches, and other public
buildings; whilst, as far as I could see, everybody seemed to be just as
anxious as before to be fraternally equal with his neighbour in the
matter of taking liberties, and whilst Prince Louis Napoleon and his
friends were looking round for a favourable opportunity to daub out the
foolish words and replace them with a capital "N," protected by an
imperial eagle with rather sharp claws.

The _coup d'etat_ came. I saw it all; first the soldiers bivouacking on
the quais and in the streets, eating and drinking to their hearts'
content; then the Prince President riding across the Place de la
Concorde on a proudly prancing horse, followed at some distance by a
brilliant staff of officers on more modestly prancing horses (according
to the rules of etiquette), and I heard the troops shouting "Vive
Napoleon! A bas la Republique!" and the crowd hooting "A bas Napoleon!
Vive la Republique!" and saw the future emperor bowing impartially left
and right, to the loyal and to the disloyal, and fulfilling his destiny
with the imperturbable passiveness of the fatalist. He really looked the
picture of Fate in the uniform of a General, and adorned with a
moustache waxed to inordinate lengths and culminating in sharp points.

Then I was run in, not for shouting, but because I was with a friend who
carried a stick with a lead-weighted knob. At the police-station they
proceeded to "dresser proces verbal," as they call it, and we were
temporarily released; that process, however, within the next few hours,
got so mixed up with human blood, ashes, and brick-rubbish, for the