“Does the instinct that you speak of to be kind and right always guide the young American lady?”

“I suppose so—­so far as I know.  It must.  She walks by it, and sets her feet down firmly.  Here I feel all the time as if I were walking among traps blindfolded.”

The ball of the Jardin d’Hiver in the Champs Elysees was a superb success.  The immense glass-house was fitted up for dancing, and all went merry as a marriage-bell, with a crater about to open under our feet, as at the duchess of Richmond’s ball at Brussels.

Miss Leare was there, but quiet and dignified.  There was not the smallest touch of vulgarity about her.  The coarse readiness to accept publicity which distinguishes the underbred woman, whether in England or America, the desire to show off a foreign emancipation from what appear ridiculous French rules, were not in her.

Yet she might have amused herself as she liked with complete impunity, for Mrs. Leare appeared to leave her entirely alone.  I danced with her as often as she would permit me, and my heart was no longer in my own possession when I put-her into her carriage about dawn.

Two or three days after I called, but the ladies were not in, so that except at church at the Hotel Marboeuf on Sunday morning I saw nothing of Miss Hermione.  Monday, February 21st, was sunny and bright.  The public excitement was such that an unusual number of working-men were keeping their St. Crispin.  The soldiers, however, were confined to their quarters:  not a uniform was to be seen abroad.  Our night had been disturbed by the continuous rumble of carts and carriages.

“Is it a fine day for the banquet?” I heard Amy say as our maid opened her windows on Tuesday morning.

“There is to be no banquet,” was the answer. “Voyez done the proclamation posted on the door of the barrack at the corner of the Rue Chaillot.”

I sprang from my bed and looked out of my window.  A strange change had taken place in the teeming little caserne at the corner.  Instead of the usual groups of well-behaved boy-soldiers in rough uniforms, the barrack looked deserted, and its lower windows had been closed up to their top panes with bags of hay and mattresses.  Not a soldier, not even a sentry, was to be seen.

I dressed myself and went out to collect news.  The carts that had disturbed us during the night had been not only employed in removing all preparations for the banquet, but in taking every loose paving-stone out of the way.  I found the Place de la Madeleine full of people, all looking up at the house of Odillon Barrot, asking “What next?” and “What shall we do?” Odillon Barrot was the hero of the moment—­literally of the moment.  In forty-eight hours from that time his name had faded from the page of history.  In the Place de la Concorde there was more excitement, for threats were being made to cross the bridge and to insult the Chambers.