an enthusiasm in which everybody shared, without having a notion of the name of the hero they were acclaiming, yet glad to be able thus to show off their civic rights.  Then there would be a fit of general tenderness.  Everybody kissed everybody else vehemently.  In some cases a transport of patriotism thus calmed itself; in others perhaps it was the effect of the extreme heat, and the consequent thirst, which had not gone unquenched, and in others, again, it was merely the relaxation of morals an era of universal brotherhood brought with it.  The hero of this general and infectious kissing match was Lafayette.  Everybody wanted to kiss him.  A great rattle of drums having announced his arrival at the Palais-Royal one day, he had to take his stand in one of the drawing-rooms, in front of me, and be kissed by thousands of persons of all ages.  I did it, like all the others, but I saw people I knew come up again many times over to be kissed by the illustrious veteran, and each time their agitation seemed to increase.

Every one went in and out of the Palais-Royal as they chose.  It was a strange march past, of people of all sorts, who came to take notes, see how the wind blew, and give in an adhesion which might be more or less disinterested.  Some of them, inspired by real devotion, came to try if they might even yet serve a cause that was so dear to them.  Thus I saw M. de Chateaubriand led into my mother’s drawing-room by Anatole de Montesquiou.  And, on the other hand, I saw Savary, Duc de Rovigo, notorious in connection with the Duc d’Enghien, in full uniform, booted and spurred, leave the study, whither he had gone to offer my father his services.

One evening, as we were all gathered together, we heard a great noise coming from the staircase.  We hurried towards it.  A crowd of armed men, with lighted torches, were coming up, shouting loudly and waving flags.  At their head came five or six pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique, with their three-cornered hats cocked and swords drawn.  Behind them a woman in man’s attire, red belt and close-fitting pantaloons, was being borne in triumph.  She was a heroine of the barricades, whom the yelling crowd desired to introduce to my father, and he had to receive her.  This scene filled me with disgust, and it was soon followed by another, no less painful.  The leaders of the Revolution had sent an army of volunteers to dislodge the old King and his Guard from Rambouillet.  They did not turn him out, first of all because the King himself had decided to disband his guard and retire to Cherbourg with no escort but four companies of his bodyguard; and, secondly, because these same volunteers, numerous as they were on leaving Paris, melted away rapidly on the road, and above all things took good care not to venture within range of the Guard’s fire.  Nevertheless, they returned in triumph from Rambouillet, bringing back the royal horses and carriages, which they had seized without striking a blow.