Royale, across the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs Elysees as far
as the Rond Point. In addition, 100,000 men of the Garde Mobile were
assembled along the quays of the Seine and up the Champs Elysees from the
Rond Point to the Arc de Triomphe. I have never since set eyes on so large
a force of armed men. They were of all sorts. Some of the Mobiles, notably
the Breton ones, who afterwards gave a good account of themselves, looked
really soldierly; but the National Guards were a strangely mixed lot. They
all wore _kepis_, but quite half of them as yet had no uniforms, and were
attired in blouses and trousers of various hues. Only here and there could
one see a man of military bearing; most of them struck happy-go-lucky
attitudes, and were quite unable to keep step in marching. A particular
feature of the display was the number of flowers and sprigs of evergreen
with which the men had decorated the muzzles of the _fusils-a-tabatiere_
which they mostly carried. Here and there, moreover, one and another
fellow displayed on his bayonet-point some coloured caricature of the
ex-Emperor or the ex-Empress. What things they were, those innumerable
caricatures of the months which followed the Revolution! Now and again
there appeared one which was really clever, which embodied a smart,
a witty idea; but how many of them were simply the outcome of a depraved,
a lewd, a bestial imagination! The most offensive caricatures of
Marie-Antoinette were as nothing beside those levelled at that unfortunate
woman, the Empress Eugenie.

Our last days of liberty were now slipping by. Some of the poorest folk of
the environs of Paris were at last coming into the city, bringing their
chattels with them. Strange ideas, however, had taken hold of some of the
more simple-minded suburban bourgeois. Departing hastily into the
provinces, so as to place their skins out of harm's reach, they had not
troubled to store their household goods in the city; but had left them in
their coquettish villas and pavilions, the doors of which were barely