Soon the gardens of the Tuileries were white with papers flung from the windows of the palace, many of them of great historical value.  A piece of pink gauze, the property, probably, of some maid-of-honor, streamed from one of the windows in the roof and fluttered across the whole building.  The crowd, in high good humor, tossed forth livery coats, fragments of state furniture, and papers.  The beds still stood unmade, and all the apparatus of the ladies’ toilet-tables remained in disorder.  In one royal bed-chamber a man was rubbing pomade with both hands into his hair, another was drenching himself with perfume, a third was scrubbing his teeth furiously with a brush that had that morning parted the lips of royalty.  In another room a man en blouse was seated at a piano playing the “Marseillaise” to an admiring audience (the “Marseillaise” had been forbidden in Paris for many years).  Elsewhere a party of gamins were turning over a magnificent scrapbook.  In the next room was a grand piano, on which four men were thumping at once.  In another, a party of working-men were dancing a quadrille, while a gentleman played for them upon a piano.  At every chimney-piece and before every work of art stood a guard, generally ragged and powder-stained, bearing a placard, “Death to Robbers!” while at the head of the Grand Staircase others stood, crying, “Enter, messieurs!  Enter!  We don’t have cards of admission to this house every day!” While the cry that passed through the crowd was:  “Look as much as you like, but take nothing!” “Are not we magnificent in our own house, Monsieur?” said a gamin to an Englishman; while another was to be seen walking about in one of poor Queen Amelie’s state head-dresses, surmounted by a bird-of-paradise with a long tail.

At first the crowd injured nothing, even the king’s portraits being respected; but after a while the destruction of state furniture began.  Three men were seen smoking in the state bed; some ate up the royal breakfast; and the cigars of the princes were freely handed to rough men in the crowd.

Meantime in the Chamber of Deputies the scene was terrible.  M. Dupin, its president, lost his head.  Had he, when he knew of the king’s abdication, declared the sitting closed, and directed the Deputies to disperse, he might possibly have saved the monarchy.  But the mob got possession of the tribune (the pulpit from which alone speeches can be made in the Chamber); they pointed their guns at the Deputies, who cowered under their benches, and the last chance for Louis Philippe’s dynasty was over.  Odillon Barrot, who had come down to the house full of self-importance, notwithstanding his reception on the Boulevards, found that his hour was over and his power gone.

M. de Lamartine was the idol of the mob, though he was very nearly shot in the confusion.  Armed insurgents crowded round him, clinging to his skirts, his hands, his knees.  Throughout the tumult the reporters for the “Moniteur” kept their seats, taking notes of what was passing.