but no longer deadly rifle (the friend of sixty years)
lying across his knees. I quote from memory; what a gun that was!

Then on Thursdays, long walks, two by two, in Paris, with Bonzig or
Dumollard; or else in the Bois to play rounders or prisoners' base
in a clearing, or skate on the Mare aux Biches, which was always so
hard to find in the dense thicket ... poor Lord Runswick! _He_ found
it once too often!

La Mare d'Auteuil was too deep, and too popular with "la flotte de
Passy," as we called the Passy voyous, big and small, who came there
in their hundreds--to slide and pick up quarrels with well-dressed
and respectable school-boys. Liberte--egalite--fraternite! ou la
mort! Vive la republique! (This, by-the-way, applies to the winter
that came _next_.)

So time wore on with us gently; through the short vacation at
New-year's day till the 23d or 24th of February, when the Revolution
broke out, and Louis Philippe premier had to fly for his life. It
was a very troublous time, and the school for a whole week was in a
state of quite heavenly demoralization! Ten times a day, or in the
dead of night, the drum would beat _le rappel_ or _la generale_. A
warm wet wind was blowing--the most violent wind I can remember that
was not an absolute gale. It didn't rain, but the clouds hurried
across the sky all day long, and the tops of the trees tried to bend
themselves in two; and their leafless boughs and black broken twigs
littered the deserted playground--for we all sat on the parapet of
the terrace by the lingerie; boys and servants, le pere et la mere
Jaurion, Mlle. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris--all
feeling bound to each other by a common danger, like wild beasts in
a flood. Dear me! I'm out of breath from sheer pleasure in the
remembrance.

One night we had to sleep on the floor for fear of stray bullets;
and that was a fearful joy never to be forgotten--it almost kept us
awake! Peering out of the school-room windows at dusk, we saw great
fires, three or four at a time. Suburban retreats of the
over-wealthy, in full conflagration; and all day the rattle of
distant musketry and the boom of cannon a long way off, near
Montmartre and Montfaucon, kept us alive.

Most of the boys went home, and some of them never came back--and
from that day the school began to slowly decline. Pere Brossard--an
ancient "Brigand de la Loire," as the republicans of his youth were
called--was elected a representative of his