accompanied the unfortunate man to the bedside, where they had scarcely laid him before he died. The report of that death spread with the fearful rapidity with which bad news always travels. When Arago re-appeared the crowd turned in earnest to wrath; it was in one of those moods when it sharpens its teeth and nails, and aches to tear to pieces and to devour.... What? In such a crisis it matters but little what, so long as it can tear and devour someone or something! It was frenzied to the extent of hurling itself upon Arago himself, mistaking the saviour for the murderer. In the twinkling of an eye our great astronomer was dragged towards the Seine, where he was going to be flung with the furniture, books and archiépiscopal vestments; when, happily, some of the spectators recognised him, called out his name, setting forth his reputation and his popularity in order to save him from death. When recognised, he was safe; but, robbed of a man, the excited crowd had to have something else, and, not being able to drown Arago, they demolished the archbishop's palace. With what rapidity they destroyed that building we have already spoken. And the remarkable thing was that many honourable witnesses watched the proceedings. M. Thiers was present, making his first practical study of the downfall of palaces and of monarchies. M. de Schonen was there, in colonel's uniform, but reduced to powerlessness because he had but few men at command. M. Talabot was there with his battalion; but he averred to M. Arago, who urged him to act, that he had been ordered to _appear and then to return._ The passive presence of all these notable persons at the riot of the archbishop's palace put a seal of sanction upon the proceedings, which I had never seen before, or have ever again seen at any other riot. This was no riot of the people, filled with enthusiasm, risking their lives in the midst of flashings of musketry fire and thunder of artillery; it was a riot in yellow kid-gloves, and overcoats and coats, it was a scoffing and impious, destructive and insolent crowd, without the excuse of previous insult or destruction offered it; in fact, it was a bourgeois riot, that most pitiless and contemptible of all riots. I returned home heart-broken: I am wrong, I mean upset. I learnt that night that they had wished to demolish Notre-Dame, and only a very little more and the chef-d'oœuvre of four centuries, begun by Charlemagne and finished by Philippe-Auguste, would have disappeared in a few hours as the archbishop's palace had done. As I returned home, I had passed by the Palais-Royal. The king who had refused to make to Casimir Périer the sacrifice of the fleurs-de-lis, made that sacrifice to the rioters: they scratched it off the coats-of-arms on his carriages and mutilated the iron balconies of his palace.