And the drums began to beat, and they all went down the rue de l'Odéon singing _la Marseillaise._ At the Bussy crossing, from some strategic manœuvre unknown to me, the troop divided itself into three. One part went towards the rue Sainte-Marguerite, another to the rue Dauphine and the third went straight on: I was among the latter. We had to approach the Louvre by the Pont des Arts, in order to take the bull by the horns. It was on coming out on the quay that I found the man with the rampart gun leant up against the wall, groaning, both his shoulder and his jaw dislocated. Oh! I must not forget to say that at every street-corner I had seen stuck up on the walls bills announcing the nomination of the Provisional Government and the proclamation by MM. La Fayette, Gérard and de Choiseul calling the people to arms. What a singular effect it would have produced on those three gentlemen if they had been in my place and read what I read! CHAPTER IX Aspect of the Louvre--Fight on the Pont des Arts--The dead and wounded--A cannon ball for myself--Madame Guyet-Desfontaines--Return from the Babylone barracks--Charras's cockade--The taking of the Tuileries--A copy of _Christine_--Quadrille danced in the Tuileries court--The men _who made the Revolution of 1830_ It was thirty-five minutes past ten in the morning by the Institut clock. The Louvre presented a formidable appearance. All the windows of the great picture galleries were open, and at each window there were two Swiss Guards armed with guns. The Charles IX. balcony was defended by Swiss who had made a rampart with mattresses. And then, behind, through the gratings of the two gardens that are, I believe, named the garden of the Infante and the garden of the Queen, we could see drawn up a double line of Swiss. In the foreground, a regiment of cuirassiers wound in and out along the parapet, like a great snake with scales of steel and gold, whose head had already entered the Tuileries gate, whilst its tail still trailed along the quai de l'École. In the background, away in the distance, stood the Louvre Colonnade, almost invisible from the cloud of smoke which arose by reason of the attack made upon it from the small streets surrounding the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. On the right, the Tricolour was floating from Notre-Dame and the Hôtel de Ville. And the breezes carried the trembling vibrations of the tocsin. A fiery sun burned high in the white, hot sky. They were firing all along the quay, especially from the windows and door of a little guard-house, situated by the river-side, opposite the point where the rue des Saints-Pères runs into the quay Malaquais. However, both attack and defence were weak: everyone seemed to be there because he thought it was his duty, and people were mauling one another to pass the time, till some leader came along to organise sides.