May I here be permitted to relate a little story connected with this day’s events?  I was with my family in Paris during those days of revolution.  Our nurse,—­an Englishwoman who had then been with us twenty-five years, and who died recently, at the age of ninety-eight, still a member of our family,—­when we returned home from viewing the devastation at the Tuileries, expressed strongly her regret at not having accompanied us.  She was consoled, however, by an offer from our man-servant to escort her down the Champs Elysees.  They made their way to the Place du Carrousel, at the back of the palace, where a dense crowd was assembled, and the good lady became separated from her protector.  The National Guard and the servants in the palace had just succeeded in getting the crowd out of the rooms and in closing the doors.  This greatly disappointed our good nurse.  She had counted on seeing the interior of the king’s abode, and above all, the king’s throne.  She could speak very little French, but she must in some way have communicated her regrets to the crowd around her.  “Does Madame desire so much to pass in?” said a big man in a blouse, girt with a red sash, and carrying a naked sword; “then Madame shall pass in!” Thereupon he and his followers in the front rank of the crowd so bepummelled the door with the hilts of their swords and the stocks of their muskets that those within were forced to throw it open.  In marched our dear nurse beside her protector.  They passed through room after room until they reached the throne-room; there she indicated her wish to obtain a relic of departed royalty.  Instantly her friend with the bare sword sliced off from the throne a piece of red velvet with gold embroidery.  She kept it ever after, together with a delicate china cup marked L. P.; but the cup was much broken.  “You see, dears,” she would say to us, “there was lots of things like these lying about, but there were men standing round with naked swords ready to cut your head off if you stole anything.  So I took this cup and broke it.  It was not stealing to carry off a broken cup, you know.”  And she would add, when winding up her narrative:  “Those Frenchmen was so polite to me that they did n’t even tread on my corns.”

That night there was a brilliant conflagration in the Carrousel.  It was a bonfire of those very carriages which eighteen years before the mob had brought in triumph to Louis Philippe from the stables of Charles X. at Rambouillet.

All the next day not a newspaper was to be had.  The “Presse,” indeed, brought out a half sheet, mainly taken up in returning thanks to two compositors “who, between two fires,” had been “so considerate” as to set up the type.  But their consideration could not have lasted long, for the news broke off abruptly in the middle of a sentence on the first page.  Events worked faster than compositors.

By noon on Friday, February 25, the entire population of Paris was in the streets.  From the flags on public offices, the blue and white strips had been tom away.  On that day—­but on that day only—­every man wore a red ribbon in his button-hole.  Many did so very unwillingly, for red was understood to be the badge of Red Republicanism.