The 13th was a great day for the National Guards, who were then reviewed by General Trochu. With my father and my young stepmother, I went to see the sight, which was in many respects an interesting one. A hundred and thirty-six battalions, or approximately 180,000 men, of the so-called "citizen soldiery" were under arms; their lines extending, first, along the Boulevards from the Bastille to the Madeleine, then down the Rue Royale, across the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs Elysees as far as the Rond Point. In addition, 100,000 men of the Garde Mobile were assembled along the quays of the Seine and up the Champs Elysees from the Rond Point to the Arc de Triomphe. I have never since set eyes on so large a force of armed men. They were of all sorts. Some of the Mobiles, notably the Breton ones, who afterwards gave a good account of themselves, looked really soldierly; but the National Guards were a strangely mixed lot. They all wore _kepis_, but quite half of them as yet had no uniforms, and were attired in blouses and trousers of various hues. Only here and there could one see a man of military bearing; most of them struck happy-go-lucky attitudes, and were quite unable to keep step in marching. A particular feature of the display was the number of flowers and sprigs of evergreen with which the men had decorated the muzzles of the _fusils-a-tabatiere_ which they mostly carried. Here and there, moreover, one and another fellow displayed on his bayonet-point some coloured caricature of the ex-Emperor or the ex-Empress. What things they were, those innumerable caricatures of the months which followed the Revolution! Now and again there appeared one which was really clever, which embodied a smart, a witty idea; but how many of them were simply the outcome of a depraved, a lewd, a bestial imagination! The most offensive caricatures of Marie-Antoinette were as nothing beside those levelled at that unfortunate woman, the Empress Eugenie.