grim-looking fellow, with the true Faubourg St Antoine physiognomy.  The prize was evidently too valuable not to be turned to good account with the authorities; and he resolved on returning at the head of his brother patriots to present me as the first-fruits of his martial career.  The dispute grew hot; my escort was foolish enough to clap his hand on the hilt of his sabre—­an affront intolerable to a citizen, at the head of fifty or sixty braves from the counter or the shambles; the result was, a succession of blows from the whole troop, which closed in my seeing him stripped of every thing, and flung into the cachot of the corps de garde, from which his only view of his beloved Paris must have been through an iron grille.

My captor, determined to enter the capital for once with eclat, seated himself beside me in the chaise de poste, and, surrounded by his pike-bearers, we began our march down the descent of the hill.

My new friend was communicative.  He gave his history in a breath.  He had been a clerk in the office of one of the small tribunals in the south; inflamed with patriotism, and indignant at the idea of selling his talents at the rate of ten sous a-day, “in a rat-hole called a bureau,” he had resolved on being known in the world, and to Paris he came.  Paris was the true place for talent.  His civisme had become conspicuous; he had “assisted” at the birth of liberty.  He had carried a musket on the 10th of August, and had “been appointed by the Republic to the command of the civic force,” which now moved, before and behind me.  He was a “grand homme” already.  Danton had told him so within the last fortnight, and France and Europe would no sooner read his last pamphlet on the “Crimes of Kings,” than his fame would be fixed with posterity.

I believe that few men have passed through life without experiencing times when it would cost them little to lay it down.  At least such times have occurred to me, and this was among them.  Yet this feeling, whether it is to be called nonchalance or despair, has its advantages for the moment; it renders the individual considerably careless of the worst that man can do to him; and I began to question my oratorical judge’s clerk on the events in the “city of cities.”  No man could take fuller advantage of having a listener at his command.

“We have cut down the throne,” said he, clapping his hands with exultation, “and now you may buy it for firewood.  But you are an aristocrat, and of course a slave; while we have got liberty, equality, and a triumvirate that shears off the heads of traitors at a sign.  Suspicion of being suspected is quite sufficient.  Away goes the culprit; a true patriot is ordered to take possession of his house until the national pleasure is known; and thus every thing goes on well.  Of course, you have heard of the clearance of the prisons.  A magnificent work.  Five thousand aristocrats, rich, noble,