I had met Col.—­, in the course of the morning, and we visited this spot together.  He told me that curiosity had led him to penetrate as far as this street, which faces the citadel of the revolters, the previous day, and he showed me a porte-cochere, under which he had taken shelter, during a part of the attack.  The troops engaged were a little in advance of him, and he described them as repeatedly recoiling from the fire of the house, which, at times, was rather sharp.  The troops, however, were completely exposed, and fought to great disadvantage.  Several hundreds must have been killed and wounded at and near this spot.

There existed plain proof of the importance of nerve in battle, in a shot that just appeared sticking in the wall of one of the lateral buildings, nearly opposite the porte-cochere, where Col.—­had taken shelter.  The artillerist who pointed the gun from which it had been discharged, had the two sides of the street to assist his range, and yet his shot had hit one of the lateral buildings, at no great distance from the gun, and at a height that would have sent it far above the chimneys of the house at which it was fired!  But any one in the least acquainted with life, knows that great allowances must be made for the poetry, when he reads of “charges,” “free use of the bayonet,” and “braving murderous discharges of grape.”  Old and steady troops do sometimes display extraordinary fortitude, but I am inclined to think that the most brilliant things are performed by those who have been drilled just long enough to obey orders and act together, but who are still so young as not to know exactly the amount of the risk they run.  Extraordinary acts of intrepidity are related of the revolters on this occasion, which are most probably true, as this desperate self-devotion, under a state of high excitement, enters fully into the composition of the character of the French, who are more distinguished for their dashing than for their enduring qualities.

The Rue St. Mery exhibited proofs of the late contest, for some distance, but nowhere had the struggle been so fierce as at the house just mentioned.  The church had been yielded the last, but it did not strike me that there had been as sharp fighting near it, as at the other place.

It was a strange spectacle to witness the population of a large town crowding through its streets, curious to witness the scene of a combat that so nearly touched their own interests, and yet apparently regarding the whole with entire indifference to everything but the physical results.  I thought the sympathies of the throng were with the conquered rather than with their conquerors, and this more from admiration of their prowess, than from any feeling of a political character, for no one appeared to know who the revolters were.