extreme quiet or the sudden hum in the street. When the news was
bad, all the houses closed and the people disappeared; when better,
the doors half opened and you heard the sound of men again. From
the upper windows we could see each discharge from the Bastille - I
mean the smoke rising - and also the flames and smoke from the
Boulevard la Chapelle. We were four ladies, and only Fleeming by
way of a man, and difficulty enough we had to keep him from joining
the National Guards - his pride and spirit were both fired. You
cannot picture to yourself the multitudes of soldiers, guards, and
armed men of all sorts we watched - not close to the window,
however, for such havoc had been made among them by the firing from
the windows, that as the battalions marched by, they cried, "Fermez
vos fenetres!" and it was very painful to watch their looks of
anxiety and suspicion as they marched by.'

'The Revolution,' writes Fleeming to Frank Scott, 'was quite
delightful: getting popped at and run at by horses, and giving
sous for the wounded into little boxes guarded by the raggedest,
picturesquest, delightfullest, sentinels; but the insurrection!
ugh, I shudder to think at [SIC] it.' He found it 'not a bit of
fun sitting boxed up in the house four days almost. . . I was the
only GENTLEMAN to four ladies, and didn't they keep me in order! I
did not dare to show my face at a window, for fear of catching a
stray ball or being forced to enter the National Guard; [for] they
would have it I was a man full-grown, French, and every way fit to
fight. And my mamma was as bad as any of them; she that told me I
was a coward last time if I stayed in the house a quarter of an
hour! But I drew, examined the pistols, of which I found lots with
caps, powder, and ball, while sometimes murderous intentions of
killing a dozen insurgents and dying violently overpowered by