Every one was much excited about the news. The officers pretended not to know more than _we_ did; perhaps what they did know they did not care to tell. We saw messengers flying in all directions, papers handed about, more messengers galloping down the avenue, agitation written on the faces around us. All I knew was that there was a revolution in Paris and _I was here_. Going out to the stables, we found the soldiers grooming their horses unconcernedly. From there we went to the _orangerie_, which presented a queer sight. The soldiers, of whom there must have been sixty, had arranged their beds all along the walls on both sides, and to separate them one from another had placed a tub with its orange-tree. The aviary had been converted into a drying-ground for their _lingerie_; they had suspended ropes from side to side, and thereon hung their _week's wash_ amid all its "unavoidable destruction." Henry told me that when the Germans first came to Petit Val they begged old Perault (the butler) to hand them the key of the wine-cellar, and on his refusing they had tied the old man to a tree in the park, and left him there the whole of one cold night to consider the situation. Needless to say, the next day the Germans had the key. After they had taken all the best Château-Lafitte and all the rare wines Mr. Moulton had bought during the Revolution of 1848, they emptied the casks containing the _Petit Bleu, made on the estate!_ The result was disastrous, and could Mr. Moulton have only seen the poor creatures doubled up with torture he would have felt himself amply revenged. We ascended the hill behind the château to the high terrace, from where one can see Paris. We saw no smoke, therefore Paris was not burning. But what was happening there? We returned to breakfast, where the military band was playing on the lawn (a superfluous luxury, I thought, but I did not realize that so trivial a thing as a revolution could not interfere with military order). We were treated to the eternal sausage and something they called beefsteak; it might as well have been called "_suprême de donkey_," it was so tough. However, the others ate it with iron jaws and without a pang. Count Arco suggested I should take a drive, _en attendant les événements_, and see the neighborhood. I acquiesced, thinking anything in the way of distraction would be a welcome relief. Imagine my feelings when I saw our _calèche_, a mere ghost of its former self, dragged by four artillery horses and postilioned by two heavy dragoons. "The exigencies of war" had obliged the soldiers to remove the leather, the carpet, the cushions, and all the cloth; only the iron and wood remained to show that once this had been a carriage.