Invasion of the Artillery Museum--Armour of François I.--Charles IX.'s arquebuse--La place de l'Odéon--What Charras had been doing--The uniform of the École polytechnique--Millotte--The prison Montaigu--The barracks of l'Estrapade--D'Hostel--A Bonapartist--Riding master Chopin--Lothon--The general in command I was awakened next morning by my servant Joseph. He was standing by my bedside calling me with ever increasing loudness. "Monsieur!... Monsieur!!... Monsieur!!!..." At the third _Monsieur_, I groaned, rubbed my eyes and sat up. "Well," I asked, "what is the matter?" "Oh, don't you hear, monsieur?" Joseph exclaimed, holding his head with his hands. "How should I hear, you idiot? I was asleep." "But fighting is going on all round us, monsieur!" "Really?" He opened the window. "Listen! it sounds as if it were in the courtyard." And, indeed, the firing seemed to me to come from no very distant point. "The deuce!" I said, "where does it come from?" "From Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, monsieur." "What! from the church itself?" "No, from the Artillery Museum.... Monsieur knows that a post is stationed there." "Ah! true," I exclaimed, "the Artillery Museum! I will go there." "What! Monsieur will go there?" "Certainly." "Oh, good Heavens!" "Quick, help me! ... A glass of Madeira or Alicante wine!... Oh! the wretches! they will pillage everything!" That, indeed, was the thought which preoccupied my mind, and that was what made me run to the place where I heard the firing going on. I remembered the archæological treasures that I had seen and handled, one after another, in the studies I had written on Henri III., Henri IV. and Louis XIII., and I saw them all being scattered among the hands of people who did not know their value: marvellous rich treasures of art being given to the first comer who would exchange them for a pound of tobacco or a packet of cartridges. I was ready in five minutes and darted off in the direction of Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin. For the third time, the assailants had been repulsed. This was easily explained: they were madly attacking the Museum by the two openings made by the rue du Bac and the rue Saint-Dominique. The firing of the soldiers raked the two streets and swept them clean with deplorable facility. I looked at the houses in the rue du Bac, which on both sides formed the corner of the rue Gribauval, and I judged that their backs must look upon the place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, and that from their upper storeys one could easily dominate the post of the Museum of Artillery. I confided to the combatants the plan suggested to me by the view of the position: it was instantly adopted by them. I knocked at the door of one of two houses, No. 35 rue du Bac, and it was opened after a long wait; still, it did open, in the end, and eight to ten armed men entered with me and we rushed upstairs to the higher storeys. I and three or four other