It was late when my ambassador had returned, and I had begun to feel some alarm for his peril by other than the shafts of Cupid in the rashness of exposing him to the jealous eye of his government, or perhaps to the denunciation of the Jewish firm, who, to screen themselves, might hasten with the intelligence to the first police-office. And I had an uneasy walk of a couple of hours, gazing from the ramparts, for every movement in the direction of the capital. The night was calm, and the glow of the lamps in the streets strikingly marked their outline; when on a sudden the sky was filled with flame of every colour, shot up in all directions, the cannon round the barriers began to roar, and Montmartre was in a perpetual blaze. It was plain that some extraordinary event had occurred; but whether this were the fall of the triumvirate or of their enemies, a new revolution or a new monarch, was beyond our knowledge; we were all hermetically sealed up in Vincennes; and if Paris had been buried in its own catacombs at the moment, the news would have been doled out to us only in the segments which suited the dignity of the governor. But Pantoufle for once was popular in the fortress. If he had brought nothing to raise my spirits, his tidings threw the garrison into ecstasy. The Republic "had gained a great victory," whose value was enhanced by the previous disasters of the campaign. The favourite of the French armies, too, had gained that victory. This was another feature of the rejoicing. Dumourier was one of the people; "no noble, no aristocrat, no son of landed wealth, no lord of forests and feeder on privileges." He had been a simple captain of engineers; he was now conqueror of those Austrian provinces on which France had cast an eager eye for centuries. That prize, which all the monarchs of France, with all their titled marshals, had never been able to seize, "the Republic, with a republican army and a republican general, had won in the first month of her first invasion."