Curiously enough, on the very day of the disaster of Woerth a rumour of a great French victory spread through Paris. My father had occasion to send me to his bankers in the Rue Vivienne, and on making my way to the Boulevards, which I proposed to follow, I was amazed to see the shopkeepers eagerly setting up the tricolour flags which they habitually displayed on the Emperor's fete-day (August 15). Nobody knew exactly how the rumours of victory had originated, nobody could give any precise details respecting the alleged great success, but everybody believed in it, and the enthusiasm was universal. It was about the middle of the day when I repaired to the Rue Vivienne, and after transacting my business there, I turned into the Place de la Bourse, where a huge crowd was assembled. The steps of the exchange were also covered with people, and amidst a myriad eager gesticulations a perfect babel of voices was ascending to the blue sky. One of the green omnibuses, which in those days ran from the Bourse to Passy, was waiting on the square, unable to depart owing to the density of the crowd; and all at once, amidst a scene of great excitement and repeated shouts of "La Marseillaise!" "La Marseillaise!" three or four well-dressed men climbed on to the vehicle, and turning towards the mob of speculators and sightseers covering the steps of the Bourse, they called to them repeatedly: "Silence! Silence!" The hubbub slightly subsided, and thereupon one of the party on the omnibus, a good-looking slim young fellow with a little moustache, took off his hat, raised his right arm, and began to sing the war-hymn of the Revolution. The stanza finished, the whole assembly took up the refrain. Since the days of the Coup d'Etat, the Marseillaise had been banned in France, the official imperial air being "Partant pour la Syrie," a military march composed by the Emperor's mother, Queen Hortense, with words by Count Alexandre de Laborde, who therein pictured a handsome young knight praying to the Blessed Virgin before his departure for Palestine, and soliciting of her benevolence that he might "prove to be the bravest brave, and love the fairest fair." During the twenty years of the third Napoleon's rule, Paris had heard the strains of "Partant pour la Syrie" many thousand times, and, though they were tuneful enough, had become thoroughly tired of them. To stimulate popular enthusiasm in the war the Ollivier Cabinet had accordingly authorized the playing and singing of the long-forbidden "Marseillaise," which, although it was well-remembered by the survivors of '48, and was hummed even by the young Republicans of Belleville and the Quartier Latin, proved quite a novelty to half the population, who were destined to hear it again and again and again from that period until the present time.