From the Place de Grève, along Pelletier Quay; across the Ponts au Change and St Michel; westwards by the Rue St André des Arcs, where a little diversion was caused by a street-singer at whom the crowd took offence, in that he, being an insignificant buffoon, did pelt it with its classic pretentiousness, wagging his coat-tails in contempt thereof (“À bas, Pitou!” they shrieked; “we will dock thee of thy sting and put thee to buzz in a stone bottle!”--and they had him unfrocked in a twinkling and hoisted for punishment); round, with a curve to the south, into the Rue de Bussi; thence, again westwards, along the street of St Marguerite; finally, weathering the sinister cape of the Abbaye St Germain, northwards into the Rue St Benoit and up to the yard entrance of the very prison itself,--such was the long course by which I was borne, in the midst of clamour, hate, and revilings, some dreadful early scenes in the panorama of the Revolution unfolded before my eyes--scenes crudely limned by crude street artists, splashed and boltered with crimson, horrible for the ghastly applause they evoked. I saw and I was helpless--the block about the carriages of the nonjurants--the desperate stroke at the _sans-culotte_ that cut the knot of indecision--the crashing panels, the flying and flung priests. One damnable with a sabre split a bald head, that came wavering in my direction, like a melon, and the brains flew like its seeds. I shut my eyes and thought, Mercy is in right ratio with the hardness of the blow. Strike deep, poor guttersnipes, if you must strike at all! Then began the “severe justice of the people.” * * * * * * * What was I, poor philosophic _misérable_, but a germ of those germs in that great artery of blood that the revolted system was endeavouring to expel. I saw numbers of my kind thrown forth and mangled in the midst of horrors unspeakable; I was borne helpless to the heart, and was rejected to fly shuddering to remote veins of the prison’s circulation, only to return by an irresistible attraction to the central terror. More than once my mad expostulations brought me into perilous notice. “You have hard wrongs to avenge!” I shrieked; “but at least the form of pleading has been granted you!” “And these!” cried the killers. “Blood of God! is not Bastille Maillard within there checking the tally of the accursed? Aristocrat art thou!” They bounded from me to a fresh victim thrust that moment from the door. She came dazed into the flare of the torches--a white face with umber hair tumbled all about it. Two gloating hounds took her under the arm-pits; a third---- _Ciel! pour tant de rigueur, de quoi suis-je coupable?_ * * * * * * *