n'auras qu'a demander a la premiere epicerie venue ce qu'il
te faut, et ainsi au premier bureau de tabac. Ils ont si peur, ces sales
bourgeois qu'ils n'oseront pas te refuser. En tout cas prends un fusil;
on ne sait pas ce qui peut arriver; mais ne t'en sers pas qu'en cas de
necessite:"--which meant plainly enough, "If they refuse to give you the
coffee and the tobacco, shoot them down."

Of course, I am unable to say how these two commodities were eventually
procured; but I have every reason to believe that this messenger had
only "to ask and have," without as much as showing his musket. There is
no greater cur at troublous times than the Paris shopkeeper. The merest
urchin will terrify him. Even on the previous day I had seen bands of
gamins who had constituted themselves the guardians of the
barricades--and there was one in nearly every street--levy toll without
the slightest resistance, when a few well-administered cuffs would have
sent them flying, so I have not the slightest doubt that our friend had
all the credit of his generosity without disbursing a penny--unless his
delegate fleeced him also, on the theory that a man who could "fork out"
ten francs at a moment's notice was nothing more or less than a
bourgeois. However, when I returned after about forty minutes' absence,
it was very evident that both the coffee and the tobacco had arrived,
because the Galerie de Diane, large as it was, was full of smoke, and
three saucepans, filled with water, were standing on the fire, while two
or three smaller ones were arranged on the almost priceless marble
mantelpiece. Another batch of ravenous republicans had taken their seats
at the board, their predecessors whiling the time away in sweet converse
with the "ladies." Some of the latter were more usefully engaged; they
were rifling the cabinets of the most rare and valuable Sevres, and
arranging the cups, saucers, platters on their tops to be ready for the
beverage that was being brewed. I was wondering how they had got at
these art treasures, having noticed an hour before that their
receptacles were locked and the keys taken away. The doors had simply
been battered in with the hammer of the great clock of the Tuileries.

It was of a piece with the wanton destruction I had witnessed elsewhere,
during my absence from the Galerie de Diane. Before I returned thither,
I had seen the portrait of General Bugeaud in the Salle des Marechaux,
literally stabbed with bayonets; th