een
pulled down since to make room for its prolongation to the east were
bristling with barricades: hence the terrible, suffocating crush, in
which several persons lost their lives. The most curious incident
connected with these awful ten minutes was that of a woman and her baby.
When Cremieux issued for the second time from the Tuileries, it was to
confirm the news of the King's abdication. Almost immediately
afterwards, the masses on the quay were making for the Place de la
Concorde and the Palais-Bourbon, whither, it was rumoured, the Duchesse
D'Orleans and her two sons were going; and gradually the wedged-in mass
on the Place du Carrousel found breathing space. Then the woman was seen
to fall down like a ninepin that has been toppled over; she was dead,
but her baby, which she had held above the crowd, and which they had, as
it were, to wrench from her grasp, was alive and well.

[Footnote 46: So called after a large ornamental fountain; the
same, I believe, which subsequently was transferred to what is
now called the Place de la Republique, and which finally found
its way to the Avenue Daumesnil, where it stands at
present.--EDITOR.]

I stood for a little while longer on the Place du Carrousel, trying to
make up my mind whether to proceed to the Place de la Concorde or to the
Place de l'Hotel de Ville. I knew that the newly-elected powers,
whosoever they might be, would make their appearance at the latter spot,
but how long it would be before they came, I had not the least idea. I
was determined, however, to see at any rate one act of the drama or the
farce; for even then there was no knowing in what guise events would
present themselves. I could hear the reports of firearms on both sides
of me, though why there should be firing when the King had thrown up the
sponge, I could not make out for the life of me. I did not know France
so well then as I know her now. I did not know then that there is no man
or, for that matter, no woman on the civilized earth so heedlessly and
obdurately bloodthirsty when he or she works himself into a fury as the
professedly debonnaire Parisian proletarian. Nevertheless, I decided to
go to the Hotel de Ville, and had carefully worked my way as far as the
site of the present Place du Chatelet, when I was compelled to retrace
my steps. The elite of the Paris scum was going to dictate its will to
the new Government; it was marching to the Chamb