I went away by the little gate opening into the rue Mazarine and regained my lodgings in the rue de l'Université. This time I was received by my porter as a hero; the position of affairs soon declared itself. Instead of showing me the door, it was now a question of raising an Arc de triomphe for me! Joseph was rubbing up the armour belonging to François I. "Ah! monsieur," he said, "how beautiful it is! I had not discovered all the little absurdities that there are on it." He meant the battle scenes. I went home to change my shirt (pardon this detail, it will be seen, later, that it was not without importance in my story), and also to renew my stock of powder and bullets. But I had not had time to take off my jacket before I heard a great uproar in the street outside. It was made by Charras and his troop returning from the barracks in the rue de Babylone. There had been a frightful slaughter: after half an hour's siege, they had been obliged to set fire to the barracks, to dislodge the Swiss Guard. They carried the red coats of the vanquished enemy at the point of their bayonets as victorious trophies. Charras (he must remember the circumstance well enough to-day, for he is not one of those who forget) wore a sleeve from some Swiss Guard's coat in place of the cockade, which was fastened to the top of his three-cornered hat and fell coquettishly over his shoulder. They were all marching upon the Tuileries, with drums to the fore. At the same moment, the cries increased, coming from the direction of the château. I turned my eyes in the direction whence they came and, from my window, which looked out on the rue du Bac, I saw thousands of letters and papers fluttering into the Tuileries garden. It looked as though all the wood pigeons about the place were taking flight. It was the correspondence of Napoleon, of Louis XVIII. and of Charles X. being scattered to the winds. The Tuileries had been taken. Although I was not Crillon, I was seized with a sudden desire to go and hang myself. Now, a man in that state of mind does not think it worth while changing his shirt. So I replaced my jacket and rushed downstairs. I rejoined the tail of the column just as it entered the Tuileries by the gate at the water-side. On the pavilion in the centre, the Tricolour had replaced the White standard. Joubert, the patriot of the Dauphine passage, had planted it on the roof and had then fainted away, from fatigue or joy, or probably both combined. The gates of the Carrousel had been forced open and people were rushing in by every door, among them hundreds of women: where did they spring from? No one who witnessed the spectacle will ever forget it. One student of the École polytechnique, named Baduel, was being drawn in triumph on a cannon. Like Achilles, he had been wounded in the heel, but, in his case, by grapeshot, and not by a poisoned arrow. Neither did he die, although he expected he should. Had he lost his life on that occasion it would not