I also knew, and frequently saw, a great, foolish fellow full of dreams and Utopian follies. His name was Flourens, and he was tall and nice looking. He wanted everyone to be happy and everyone to have money, and he shot down the soldiers without reflecting that he was commencing by making one or more of them unhappy. Reasoning with him was impossible, but he was charming and brave. I saw him two days before his death. He came to see me with a very young girl, who wanted to devote herself to dramatic art. I promised him to help her. Two days later the poor child came to tell me of the heroic death of Flourens. He had refused to surrender, and, stretching out his arms, and shouted to the hesitating soldiers: “Shoot! shoot! I would not have spared you!” And he had then fallen under the bullets. Another man, not so interesting, whom I looked upon as a dangerous madman, was a certain Raoul Rigault. For a short time he was Prefect of Police. He was very young and very daring, wildly ambitious, determined to do anything to succeed, and it seemed to him more easy to do harm than good. That man was a real danger. He belonged to that band of students who used to send me verses every day. I came across them everywhere, enthusiastic and mad. They had been nicknamed in Paris “the drivelers.” One day he brought me a little one-act play. This piece was so stupid and the verses so insipid that I sent it back to him with a few words, which he no doubt considered unkind, for he bore me malice for them and attempted to avenge himself in the following way. He called on me one day. Mme. Guérard was there when he was shown in. “Do you know that I am all-powerful at present?” he said. “In these days there is nothing surprising in that,” I replied. “I have come to see you, either to make peace or declare war,” he continued. This way of talking did not suit me, and I sprang up. “As I can foresee that your conditions of peace would not suit me, _cher monsieur_, I will not give you time to declare war. You are one of the men one would prefer, no matter how spiteful they might be, to have for enemies, rather than for friends.” With these words I rang for my footman to show the Prefect of Police to the door. Mme. Guérard was in despair. “That man will do us some harm, my dear Sarah, I assure you,” she said. She was not mistaken in her presentiment, except that she was thinking of me and not of herself, for his first vengeance was taken on her, by sending away one of her relatives, who was a police commissioner, to an inferior and dangerous post. He then began to invent a hundred miseries for me. One day I received an order to go at once to the Prefecture of Police, on urgent business. I took no notice. The following day a mounted courier brought me a note from Sire Raoul Rigault, threatening to send a prison van for me. I took no notice whatever of the threats of this wretch, who was shot shortly after, and died without showing any courage.