The Duchess of Orleans found the Chamber occupied by armed men.  She was jostled and pressed upon.  A feeble effort was made to proclaim her son king, and to appoint her regent during his minority.  She endeavored several times to speak, and behaved with an intrepidity which did her honor.  But when Lamartine, mounting the tribune, cast aside her claims, and announced that the moment had arrived for proclaiming a provisional government and a republic, she was hustled and pushed aside by the crowd.

She was dressed in deep mourning.  Her long black veil, partly raised, showed her fair face marred with sorrow and anxiety.  Her children were dressed in little black velvet skirts and jackets, with large white turned-down collars.  Soon the crowd around the tribune, beneath which the duchess had her seat, grew so furious that her attendants, fearing for her life, hurried her away.

In the press and the confusion the Duc de Nemours and her two children were parted from her.  The Comte de Paris was seized by a gigantic man en blouse, who said afterwards that he had been only anxious to protect the child; but a National Guard forced the boy from his grasp, and restored him to his mother.  The Duc de Chartres was for some time lost, and was in great danger, having been knocked down on the staircase by an ascending crowd.

At last, however, the little party, under the escort of the Duc de Nemours, who had disguised himself, escaped on foot into the streets, then growing dark; and finding a hackney-coach, persuaded the coachman to drive them to a place of safety.  The Duc de Chartres was not to be found, and his mother passed many hours of terrible anxiety before he was restored to her arms.

Very strange that night was the scene in the Champs Elysees.  They were filled with a joyous and triumphant crowd in every variety of military costume, and armed with every sort of weapon.  Soldiers alone were unarmed.  They marched arm-in-arm with their new friends, singing, like them, the “Marseillaise” and “Mourir pour la Patrie.”  In the quarter of the Champs Elysees, where well-to-do foreigners formed a considerable part of the population, there was no ferocity exhibited by the mob.  The insurgents were like children at play,—­children on their good behavior.  They had achieved a wonderful and unexpected victory.  The throne had fallen, as if built on sand.  Those who had overturned it were in high good-humor.

A French mob at the present day is very different.  It has the modern grudge of laborer against employer, it has memories of the license of the Commune, and above all it has learned the use of absinthe.  There is a hatred and a contempt for all things that should command men’s reverence, which did not display itself in 1848.