I had started, in company with a friend, from the Passage Choiseul on my way to the Tuileries, which has been occupied since yesterday by a battalion devoted to the Central Committee.  On arming at the corner of the Rue St. Roch and the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs we perceived a considerable crowd in the direction of the Rue de la Paix.  “What is going on now?” said I to my friend.  “I think,” said he, “that it is an unarmed manifestation going to the Place Vendome; it passed along the boulevards a short time since, crying “Vive l’Ordre.”

As we talked we were approaching the Rue de la Paix.  All at once a horrible noise was heard.  It was the report of musketry.  A white smoke rose along the walls, cries issued from all parts, the crowd fled terrified, and a hundred yards before us I saw a woman fall.  Is she wounded or dead?  What is this massacre?  What fearful deeds are passing in open day, in this glorious sunshine?  We had scarcely time to escape into one of the cross-streets, followed by the frightened crowd, when the shops were closed, hurriedly, and the horrible news spread to all parts of terrified Paris.

Reports, varying extremely in form, spread with extraordinary rapidity; some were grossly exaggerated, others the reverse.  “Two hundred victims have fallen,” said one.  “There were no balls in the guns,” said another.  The opinions regarding the cause of the conflict were strangely various.  Perhaps we shall never know, with absolute certainty, what passed in the Place, Vendome and the Rue de la Paix.  For myself, I was at once; too far and too near the scene of action; too near, for I had narrowly missed being killed; too far, for I saw nothing but the smoke and the flight, of the terrified crowd.

One thing certain is that the Friends of Order who, yesterday, succeeded in assembling a large number of citizens, had to-day tried to renew its attempt at pacification by unarmed numbers.  Three or four thousand persons entered the Rue de la Paix towards two o’clock in the afternoon, crying, “L’Ordre!  L’Ordre!  Vive l’Ordre!” The Central Committee had doubtless issued severe orders, for the foremost sentinels of the Place, far from presenting arms to the “Friends of Order,” as they had done the day before, formally refused to let them continue their way.  And then what happened?  Two crowds were face to face; one unarmed, the other armed, both under strong excitement, one trying to press forward, the other determined to oppose its passage.  A pistol-shot was heard.  This was a signal.  Down went the muskets, the armed crowd fired, and the unarmed dispersed in mad flight, leaving dead and wounded on their path.