avowed, but here I had several opportunities of incorporating myself in groups in which his name was bandied about with every invective which French hatred and fluency could invent. Their tongues, like Baron Munchausen's horn, seemed to run with an accumulated rapidity from the long embargo laid upon them. "Sacré gueux, bête, voleur," &c., were the current coin in which they repaid his despotism, and I was happy to find that his conduct in Spain was by all held in utter detestation and considered as the ground work of his ruin. I saw one party in such a state of bodily and mental agitation that I ran up expecting to see a battle, but the multiplicity of hands, arms, and legs which were rising, falling, wheeling, and kicking, were merely energetic additions to the general subject.... The National guard were not (with few exceptions) actually engaged. To the amount of 36,000 they occupied the towns and barriers, by all accounts guessing, or, as one intelligent conductor assured us, very certain that they would not be called upon to fight much for the defence of Paris.... Indeed, from all I have been able to learn, and from all I have been able to see, it appears pretty clear that no serious defence was intended--a little opposition was necessary for the look of the thing. And although Marmont might have done more, I feel convinced that had he exerted himself to the utmost, Paris must have perished. The heights were defended in a very inadequate and unsoldierlike manner; not a single work was thrown up before the guns, no entrenchments, no bastions, and yet with three days' notice all this might have easily been done. The barriers all round Paris were, and still are, hemmed round with Palisades with loop holes, each of which might have been demolished by half a dozen rounds from a 6-pounder; the French, indeed, laugh at them and consider them as mere divertissements of Bonaparte's, and feeble attempts to excite a spirit of defence amongst the people--a spirit which, fortunately for Europe, was never excited. The lads of Paris had determined to take their chance and not to do one atom more than they were called upon or compelled to do. These wooden barriers are made of le bois de tremble (aspen), and the pun was that the fortifications "tremblaient partout." You will like to hear something of Edgeworth's friend, St. Jean d'Angély;[46] he came up to the barrier where our landlord (who had been formerly an imperial guardsman and fought in the battle of Marengo) was posted; here he called loudly for some brandy, for which he got laughed at by the whole line of guard; he then sallied forth and proceeded a short distance, when his horse took fright, and as St. Jean was, as our landlord told us, "entiérement du même avis avec son cheval," they both set off as fast as they could, and were in a few minutes far beyond all danger, nor did they appear again amid the din of arms. The fate of Paris was decided with a rapidity and sang-froid quite astonishing.