Leontine?”—­this last from the name of Leontine Fay, a favourite actress with young people.  But, apart from that, my life was as monotonous as ever it had been.  The riots and attempts at insurrection which succeeded each other with something very like regularity seemed to diversify it but very little.  Yet I did feel a certain excitement the first time I witnessed one of these attempts at sedition.  Our evening was just over at the Palais-Royal, and I had gone up to my room, when loud shouts, and an ejaculation of “Oh, good gracious!” from my valet, made me run to the window.  The Court of the Palais-Royal was closed, but all the galleries were filled with a surging, yelling crowd, the more violent of whom were battering at the staircase door facing Chevet’s shop.  “They are going to break it in and come upstairs:  they’ll be here in another moment,” we said to ourselves.  “What is to be done?”

Amidst the general shouting, yells of “Death to Louis Philippe!” were to be heard.  Then, all at once, in the gaslight, I saw the policemen’s swords twinkle, pinking people in all directions.  Soon the troops came hurrying up with fixed bayonets, and the rabble took to their heels at the sight of them.  This crowd had just come back from Vincennes, whither it had gone to demand the heads of Charles X.’s ministers, who were shut up in the fortress, from General Daumesnil, “the man with the wooden leg,” and having failed in that attempt it wanted to have my father’s instead.

So that affair ended; but fresh opportunities for creating disturbances soon occurred, and were as eagerly seized upon.  One was during a great diplomatic dinner given by my father in the dining-room of the Palais-Royal, which looks out on the Cour des Fontaines.  I was sitting by Lord Granville’s daughter, and doing my best to make myself pleasant, when the uproar of the riot burst upon us suddenly and interrupted all the talk.  Everybody looked at everybody else, and then down at their own plate, and everybody looked very sorry to be where he was at that moment.  Then the noise of a great trampling of hoofs on the pavement revealed the fact that the cavalry was charging, whereupon the sky cleared, and conversation began again, though not without some appearance of effort.

Another time, again, matters became more serious.  The riot—­I don’t remember which it was now, there were so many of them!—­became very threatening at one moment.  I see my father still, taking Casimir Perier by the arm, and shouting in his ear, “Tell them to serve out ball cartridge, ball cartridge, do you hear?” Casimir Perier, as excited as himself, was rushing away, when he was stopped by an officer, who said, “There are three students of the Ecole Polytechnique, sent to parley, waiting below.”

“Parley for whom?  For the rioters?  For the insurrection?  Lay hands on them!  Lock them up in prison.”