ed in the pillow.

"What's the matter with you now, my own darling?"

"'Tis the excess of happiness," said Frederick. "I have been too long
yearning after you!"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BARRICADE.

He was abruptly roused from sleep by the noise of a discharge of
musketry; and, in spite of Rosanette's entreaties, Frederick was fully
determined to go and see what was happening. He hurried down to the
Champs-Elysees, from which shots were being fired. At the corner of the
Rue Saint-Honore some men in blouses ran past him, exclaiming:

"No! not that way! to the Palais-Royal!"

Frederick followed them. The grating of the Convent of the Assumption
had been torn away. A little further on he noticed three paving-stones
in the middle of the street, the beginning of a barricade, no doubt;
then fragments of bottles and bundles of iron-wire, to obstruct the
cavalry; and, at the same moment, there rushed suddenly out of a lane a
tall young man of pale complexion, with his black hair flowing over his
shoulders, and with a sort of pea-coloured swaddling-cloth thrown round
him. In his hand he held a long military musket, and he dashed along on
the tips of his slippers with the air of a somnambulist and with the
nimbleness of a tiger. At intervals a detonation could be heard.

On the evening of the day before, the spectacle of the wagon containing
five corpses picked up from amongst those that were lying on the
Boulevard des Capucines had charged the disposition of the people; and,
while at the Tuileries the aides-de-camp succeeded each other, and M.
Mole, having set about the composition of a new Cabinet, did not come
back, and M. Thiers was making efforts to constitute another, and while
the King was cavilling and hesitating, and finally assigned the post of
commander-in-chief to Bugeaud in order to prevent him from making use of
it, the insurrection was organising itself in a formidable manner, as if
it were directed by a single arm.

Men endowed with a kind of frantic eloquence were engaged in haranguing
the populace at the street-corners, others were in the churches ringing
the tocsin as loudly as ever they could. Lead was cast for bullets,
cartridges were rolled about. The trees on the boulevards, the urinals,
the benches, the gratings, the gas-burners, everything was torn off and
thrown down. Paris, that morning, was covered with barricades. The
resistance which was offered was of short duration, so that at eight
o'c