A slight mist was still hanging over
the city as I strolled in the direction of the Madeleine, and the
weather was damp and raw, but in about half an hour the sun broke
through. A shot was heard now and then, but I myself saw no collision
then between the troops and the people. On the contrary, it looked to me
as if the former would have been glad to be left alone. As I had been
obliged to leave home without my usual cup of tea for want of milk--the
servant had told me there was none--I went back a little way to
Tortoni's, where I was greeted with the same answer. I could have tea or
coffee or chocolate made with water, but milk there was none on that
side of Paris, and, unless things took a turn, there would be no butter.
The sovereign people had thrown up barricades during the night round all
the northern and north-western issues, and would not let the milk-carts
pass. They, no doubt, had some more potent fluids to fall back upon, for
a good many, even at that early hour, were by no means steady in their
gait. The Boulevards were swarming with them. Since then, I have seen
these sovereign people getting the upper hand twice, viz. on the 4th of
September, '70, and on the 18th of March, '71. I have seen them during
the siege of Paris, and I have no hesitation in saying that, for
cold-blooded, apish, monkeyish, tigerish cruelty, there is nothing on
the face of God's earth to match them, and that no concessions wrung
from society on their behalf will ever make them anything else but the
fiends in human shape they are.

After my fruitless attempt to get my accustomed breakfast, I resumed my
perambulations, this time taking the Rue Vivienne as far as the
Palais-Royal. It must have been between half-past ten and eleven when I
reached the Place du Carrousel, which, at a rough guess, was occupied by
about five thousand regular infantry and horse and National Guards. The
Place du Carrousel was not then, what it became later on, a large open
space. Part of it was encumbered with narrow streets of very tall
houses, and from their windows and roofs the sovereign people--according
to an officer who had been on duty from early morn--had been amusing
themselves by firing on the troops,--not in downright volleys, but with
isolated shots, picking out a man here and there. "But," I remonstrated,
"half a dozen pompiers and a score of linesmen could dislodge them in
less than ten minutes, instead of returning their shots one by one." "So