But that dread hour is not yet come, at the time the sketch is taken. Aware of the designs of the conspirators, the government has sent reinforcements to protect the fortress of Vincennes. The whole forest around is now a camp. In the midst looms the donjon, with its towers and walls, a dark and gloomy prison house: the cannon is on the battlements; the garrison is on duty, as if the fortress were at that moment in a state of siege; and, strikingly contrasting with this stern spectre of stone, is the scene presented by the wooded environs. It partakes of the camp and the fair. The whole place is beleaguered with troops. But if you look among the trees, you will see the tents gleaming forth from among the green. Pickets are scattered here and there; now you see a body of troops of the line drawn up under arms; there again they are reposing upon the grass, or playing among themselves. At intervals comes up the white smoke of a fire, at which the mid-day meal of the soldiers is being cooked, from among the trees; then _improviso al fresco_ kitchens are glimmering, and crackling, and smoking heavily in all directions. The jaunty _vivandières_, in their short blue petticoats, their tight red jacket boddices, and their little boots, with hats, bearing tricolor-cockades, stuck jauntily on the sides of their heads, are serving out wine to red-epauletted and red-breeched soldiers under the green branches, from their little painted barrels; and booths there are in every direction, with canvass coverings, gleaming out from the low forest, where there are wine and cider venders, and where sausages and other savoury dainties are being fired by little hand-stoves upon the ground. Venders of pamphlets and newspapers, all for one sou, are there also in herds, to tempt the young soldiers to buy their ultra-republican literary wares; and there may be a deeper purpose than mere speculation in the movements of some of the herd. Petty merchants there are also moving about, with every imaginable article of petty merchandise; ragged men with cracked voices, old women, and children of both sexes, are among these speculators upon the scanty purses of the military. The scene is gay and diversified, but it is sadly confused; and above all, when its component parts, and their various details be considered, it tells a sad tale of a city close by, given up to all the miseries of opposition, hatred, suspicion, mistrust, and active conspiracy. Pass we on, then, to the picture of the reorganised national workshops,--of the reorganisation of which so much boast has been made by members of the government: we come to it at last, having only turned over, on our way, a leaf containing another sketch, which caught our eye in passing.