the document to his
astonished predecessor. It contained notice of his own appointment by
the people, in place of the Count Dejean, dismissed.

The Count read and folded the paper, and having made a copy of it, which
he laid carefully in his porte-monnaie, he placed the original on file
among the papers of the day belonging to the department. Then,
courteously bowing, he took his hat and cane and marched out of the
building.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.

In the Hotel de Ville, closely closeted, sat the Provisional Government
of France. Over that stern old citadel, over the dismantled Palace of
the Tuileries, from the tall summit of the Column of Vendome, over the
Hotel des Invalides and in the Place de la Bastille is seen a blood-red
banner, streaming out like a meteor on the keen north-western blast.
Eighty thousand armed men invest the Hotel de Ville, and wave on wave,
wave on wave, the living and stormy tide eddies and welters and dashes
around that dark old pile. All its avenues are held; its courts are
thronged; ordnance frowns from its black portals and against its gates;
drums roll--banners stream--bayonets glitter; and from those tens of
thousands of hoarse and stormy voices goes up but one shout of menace
and command:

"Vive la Republique! Vive la Republique! No kings! No Bourbons!
Down--down forever with the kings!"

And upward to that dark old pile of despotism, as to the temple of
Liberty herself, are turned those tens of thousands of swarthy faces,
dark with the smoke of battle, yet livid with excitement and
exhaustion--and as they realize that within those walls the question of
their fate and that of their country is then being settled--that from
that night's counsels in that vast and ancient edifice are to flow peace
and prosperity, and freedom and plenty, or else all the untold terrors
of anarchy, civil war, bloodshed, violence and strife--what wonder that
the sitting of the council seemed endless and their own impatience
became intolerable--that all imaginable doubts and fears and absurd
apprehensions took possession of their inflamed imaginations?--that at
one time the rumor should fly, and win credence as it flew, that the
Provisional Government were consulting with the friends of Henry V.--or
again, that they were considering the question of a Regency--and that
under such influences they should roar and yell, and thunder for
admission at the gates, and burden the air wi