yielded to the entreaties of those persons who implored him as the only
person in a position to do it, to check France on that fateful descent
which must bring her from the Republic to a Dictatorship, and so on to
invasion, and to mutilation. He delayed that disastrous succession of
events for eighteen years, at the risk of his own life, which was
incessantly threatened. and history will do him honour for it in spite
of the injustice of human nature.]

We started about eight o'clock at night, my mother, my aunt Adelaide,
and we children, in an omnibus, so as not to attract notice. We began to
come to barricades at the Barriere de l'Etoile, but openings had been
made in them already, large enough for carriages to pass through, all
which openings were watched by guards of armed people--I beg their
pardons, I was mistaken--armed CITIZENS, playing at soldiers and police,
who stopped and cross-questioned everybody in the most childish fashion.
The omnibus could not get beyond the Place Louis XV., so many obstacles
did we find in the way. We got out, and my mother divided us into twos,
and told us to scatter and meet again at the Palais-Royal.

Paris was a curious sight that night, lighted up everywhere with lamps,
and tricolour flags at every window. How people found time to make up so
many emblems in those two days is a mystery! The streets were all torn
up, and the paving-stones piled into the barricades, mixed up with
overturned carriages, casks, and rubbish of all kinds. Behind these
barriers were extemporized guardians, passers-by, people walking about
with guns and firing them off every minute, and everybody, man, woman,
and child, wore huge tricolour cockades in hats and caps or bonnets, or
in their hair.

In the centre of a great crowd on the Place du Palais-Royal there was