hey were indignant at the alternative thus put before them, convinced
that the object was to destroy the Republic. They were aggrieved by the
thought of having to live at a distance from the capital, as if it were
a kind of exile. They saw themselves dying of fevers in desolate parts
of the country. To many of them, moreover, who had been accustomed to
work of a refined description, agriculture seemed a degradation; it was,
in short, a mockery, a decisive breach of all the promises which had
been made to them. If they offered any resistance, force would be
employed against them. They had no doubt of it, and made preparations to
anticipate it.

About nine o'clock the riotous assemblies which had formed at the
Bastille and at the Chatelet ebbed back towards the boulevard. From the
Porte Saint-Denis to the Porte Saint-Martin nothing could be seen save
an enormous swarm of people, a single mass of a dark blue shade, nearly
black. The men of whom one caught a glimpse all had glowing eyes, pale
complexions, faces emaciated with hunger and excited with a sense of
wrong.

Meanwhile, some clouds had gathered. The tempestuous sky roused the
electricity that was in the people, and they kept whirling about of
their own accord with the great swaying movements of a swelling sea, and
one felt that there was an incalculable force in the depths of this
excited throng, and as it were, the energy of an element. Then they all
began exclaiming: "Lamps! lamps!" Many windows had no illumination, and
stones were flung at the panes. M. Dambreuse deemed it prudent to
withdraw from the scene. The two young men accompanied him home. He
predicted great disasters. The people might once more invade the
Chamber, and on this point he told them how he should have been killed
on the fifteenth of May had it not been for the devotion of a National
Guard.

"But I had forgotten! he is a friend of yours--your friend the
earthenware manufacturer--Jacques Arnoux!" The rioters had been actually
throttling him, when that brave citizen caught him in his arms and put
him safely out of their reach.

So it was that, since then, there had been a kind of intimacy between
them.

"It would be necessary, one of these days, to dine together, and, since
you often see him, give him the assurance that I like him very much. He
is an excellent man, and has, in my opinion, been slandered; and he has
his wits about him in the morning. My compliments once more! A very good