As we advanced through the streets, my noisy “compagnons de voyage” dropped off one by one, some to the lowest places of entertainment, and some tired of the jest; and I proceeded to the Place de Vendome, where was my hotel, at my leisure.  The streets were now solitary; to a degree that was almost startling.  As I wound my way through long lines of houses, tortuous, narrow, and dark as Erebus, I saw the cause of the singular success which had attended all Parisian insurrections.  A chain across one of these dismal streets, an overturned cart, a pile of stones, would convert it at once into an impassable defile.  Walls and windows, massive, lofty, and nearly touching each other from above afforded a perpetual fortification; lanes innumerable, and extending from one depth of darkness and intricacy into another, a network of attack and ambush, obviously gave an extraordinary advantage to the irregular daring of men accustomed to thread those wretched and dismal dens, crowded with one of the fiercest and most capricious populations in the world.  Times have strikingly changed since.  The “fifteen fortresses” are but so many strong bars of the great cage, and they are neither too strong nor too many.  Paris is now the only city on earth which is defended against itself, garrisoned on its outside, and protected by a perpetual Praetorian band against a national mania of insurrection.

But, on turning into the Boulevards, the scene changed with the rapidity of magic.  Before me were raging thousands, the multitude which I had seen advancing to the gates.  The houses, as far as the eye could reach, were lighted up with lamps, torches, and every kind of hurried illumination.  Banners of all hues were waving from the casements, and borne along by the people; and in the midst of the wild procession were seen at a distance a train of travelling carriages, loaded on the roofs with the basest of the rabble.  A mixed crowd of National Guards, covered with dust, and drooping under the fatigue of the road, poissardes drunk, dancing, screaming the most horrid blasphemies, and a still wider circle, which seemed to me recruited from all the jails of Paris, surrounded the carriages, which I at length understood to be those of the royal family.  They had attempted to escape to the frontier, had been arrested, and were now returning as prisoners.  I caught a glimpse, by the torchlight, of the illustrious sufferers, as they passed the spot where I stood.  The Queen was pale, but exhibited that stateliness of countenance for which she was memorable to the last; she sat with the Dauphiness pressed in her arms.  The King looked overcome with exhaustion; the Dauphin gazed at the populace with a child’s curiosity.