confess that I did not share their opinion. To me,
the whole looked like stern determined manifestors; not like turbulent
revolutionaries. I had seen nothing like them in '48. Nevertheless, it
was I who was mistaken, for, according to M. Sampierro Gavini, who,
unlike his brother Denis, belonged to the opposition during the Empire,
it was they who invaded the Chamber. I may add that M. Sampierro Gavini,
though in the opposition, had little or no sympathy with those who
overthrew the Empire or established the Commune. He had an almost
idealistic faith in constitutional means, and a somewhat exaggerated
reverence for the name of Bonaparte. He was a Corsican.

For several hours nothing occurred worthy of record. The accounts
brought to us by eye-witnesses of events going on simultaneously at the
Tuileries and the Palais-Bourbon showed plainly that there was no
intention on the mob's part to exalt the Empress into a
Marie-Antoinette. Our friend who had given us the news of the Chamber on
the previous night, and who was a relative of the celebrated Dr. Yvan,
an habitue of the Cafe de la Paix, had made up his mind in the morning
that "it would be more interesting to watch the" last heroic struggles
of an Empress against iron fortune than the "crownless coronation of a
half-score of 'rois Petauds.'"[81] As such, he had taken up his station
in the gardens of the Tuileries, close to the gate dividing the private
from the public gardens. It was he who gave us the particulars of the
scenes preceding and succeeding the Empress's flight, the exact moment
of which no one seemed to know. The account of these scenes was so
exceedingly graphic, that I have no difficulty whatsoever in remembering
them. Moreover, I put down at the time several of his own expressions. I
do not know what has become of him. He went to New-Zealand on account of
some unhappy love-affair, and was never heard of any more. Though
scarcely thirty then, he was a promising young doctor. His name was
Ramail, but I do not know in what relation he stood to Dr. Yvan; who,
however, always called him cousin.

[Footnote 81: In olden times, every community, corporation, and
guild in France elected annually a king;--even the mendicants,
whose ruler took the title of King Petaud, from the Latin
_peto_, I ask. The latter's court, as a matter of course, was a
perfect bear-garden, in which every one did as he liked, in
which