We had toiled through our long journey, rendered doubly long by the dreariest and deepest roads on earth, and were winding round the spur of Montmartre, when a troop of citizen heroes, coming forth to sweep the country of the retreating Prussians, and whose courage had risen to the boiling point by the news of the retreat, surrounded the carriage. My Prussian uniform was proof enough for the brains of the patriots; and the quick discovery of Parisian ears, that I had not learned my French in their capital, settled the question of my being a traitor. The gendarme joined in the charge with his natural volubility; but rather insisted rashly on his right to take his prisoner into Paris on his own behalf. I saw a cloud gathering on the brow of the _chef_, a short, stout, and grim-looking fellow, with the true Faubourg St Antoine physiognomy. The prize was evidently too valuable not to be turned to good account with the authorities; and he resolved on returning at the head of his brother patriots to present me as the first-fruits of his martial career. The dispute grew hot; my escort was foolish enough to clap his hand on the hilt of his sabre--an affront intolerable to a citizen, at the head of fifty or sixty _braves_ from the counter or the shambles; the result was, a succession of blows from the whole troop, which closed in my seeing him stripped of every thing, and flung into the _cachot_ of the _corps de garde_, from which his only view of his beloved Paris must have been through an iron _grille_. My captor, determined to enter the capital for once with eclat, seated himself beside me in the _chaise de poste_, and, surrounded by his pike-bearers, we began our march down the descent of the hill. My new friend was communicative. He gave his history in a breath. He had been a clerk in the office of one of the small tribunals in the south; inflamed with patriotism, and indignant at the idea of selling his talents at the rate of ten sous a-day, "in a rat-hole called a bureau," he had resolved on being known in the world, and to Paris he came. Paris was the true place for talent. His _civisme_ had become conspicuous; he had "assisted" at the birth of liberty. He had carried a musket on the 10th of August, and had "been appointed by the Republic to the command of the civic force," which now moved, before and behind me. He was a "_grand homme_" already. Danton had told him so within the last fortnight, and France and Europe would no sooner read his last pamphlet on the "Crimes of Kings," than his fame would be fixed with posterity.