Our arrival created a diversion just when interest had begun to flag. There were about a hundred and twenty of us. We divided ourselves in half (_Égaillâmes_, as they say in the Vendean patois), one part going back by the Pont Neuf side and the other going along by the Palais Mazarin, as far as the small guard-house already referred to. I first of all settled myself under one of the turnstile shelters, but I soon saw that I should be constantly disturbed by people coming and going past. I therefore made for the fountain and installed myself behind the bronze lion that was nearest to the rue Mazarine. I had the great entrance gate of the palace, therefore, on my right, which, like that of the Jubilee at St. Peter's in Rome, is only opened once in fifty years. I had the small door leading to the apartments of persons who lodged at the Institut on my left. Thus, in front of me was the Pont des Arts, which presented an object to my view that inspired me with some disquiet, for it looked very like a piece of cannon in position. It had a magnificent target before it: no less than a whole regiment of cuirassiers presenting its flank! And, behind these, the Swiss in their red coats with their white lace facings, not two hundred yards off. The mere thought of the situation made one's mouth water; to dwell on it made the perspiration stand out on one's forehead. I have elsewhere described my sensations when confronted with danger--I approach it at first reluctantly, but very quickly familiarise myself with it. Now, my apprenticeship of the previous day upon the quay Notre-Dame, and of the morning following at the Artillery Museum, had removed my first feelings of fear. Moreover, I ought to say that my position was a good one and that it would take either a very extreme chance, or a very clever marksman, for a bullet to find me out behind my lion. I therefore watched with much coolness the scene I am about to describe. Out of the hundred or hundred and twenty combatants, the uniforms of two soldiers of the National Guard were hardly noticeable. Most of the men who composed the gathering in the midst of which I found myself were of the lower classes--shopmen and students and street lads. All were armed with muskets or fowling-pieces, the latter in the proportion of one to fifteen. The street boys had either pistols or sabres or swords, and one of the most zealous of them had only a bayonet. Usually, it was the street lads who marched in front and were the first in any row; whether from recklessness or ignorance of danger I cannot say. Probably it was the influence of young hot blood, which from the age of eighteen pulses in the veins of man at the rate of from seventy-five to eighty-five beats to the minute; then gradually calms down, but, with each expiring pulsation, deposits at the bottom of every heart a shameful vice or an evil thought.