We started about eight o’clock at night, my mother, my aunt Adelaide, and we children, in an omnibus, so as not to attract notice.  We began to come to barricades at the Barriere de l’Etoile, but openings had been made in them already, large enough for carriages to pass through, all which openings were watched by guards of armed people—­I beg their pardons, I was mistaken—­armed citizens, playing at soldiers and police, who stopped and cross-questioned everybody in the most childish fashion.  The omnibus could not get beyond the Place Louis XV., so many obstacles did we find in the way.  We got out, and my mother divided us into twos, and told us to scatter and meet again at the Palais-Royal.

Paris was a curious sight that night, lighted up everywhere with lamps, and tricolour flags at every window.  How people found time to make up so many emblems in those two days is a mystery!  The streets were all torn up, and the paving-stones piled into the barricades, mixed up with overturned carriages, casks, and rubbish of all kinds.  Behind these barriers were extemporized guardians, passers-by, people walking about with guns and firing them off every minute, and everybody, man, woman, and child, wore huge tricolour cockades in hats and caps or bonnets, or in their hair.

In the centre of a great crowd on the Place du Palais-Royal there was one of the Laffitte et Caillard diligences, which had been used as a barricade, and set up again.  It was full of people inside, and they clustered on the roof like bees, all of them singing in chorus.  Between the choruses, sharp volleys of musketry rang out, and the vehicle, drawn by three or four hundred people holding on to ropes, tore round the square, amid a concert of varied yells.  Though it was very late when we reached the palace, it was all lighted up, and every door stood open.  Anybody who chose could go in, and when we went up the stairs we found many people already settled on the steps, prepared to spend the night there.  We saw my father in his study, and then we were sent to bed, or rather to camp out in the rooms we usually slept in.  The next day the firing slackened, but the general idleness continued; everybody was walking about.  Soon the question of food began to press, for all supplies and trade were stopped by the universal barricades.  Everybody asked everybody else what was going on, a subject upon which every one except the leaders was profoundly ignorant.  The multitude was just like an immense flock of sheep, whose shepherds had been driven away, and who seemed to wonder why the new dogs who were to herd them did not make their appearance.  There was no bad feeling; now and then there would be a panic, everybody taking to their heels, nobody knew why, and then stopping again and bursting out laughing.  Sometimes a noise arose, and swelled as it drew nearer.  It was some popular leader going to the Hotel de Ville or the Palais-Royal, with two or three claqueurs before him, to stir up