After the deputies and generals came the exiles of all countries, each group carrying its own national banner. Two battalions formed the escorting troop and marched in echelon on each side. Then--just as, in the midst of its quays, the flowing river overflows its banks after a storm--rolled by nearly six hundred artillerymen with loaded rifles and cartridges in their cartridge-boxes and pockets; then ten thousand of the National Guard without guns, but armed with sabres; then groups of working men intermingled with members of secret societies; then thirty, perhaps forty or fifty thousand citizens! All these moved past in the rain. The cortège turned at the Madeleine along the boulevard, crowded on both sides with women and men, forming a variegated carpet, which the citizens at their doors or windows, men, women and children, took part in as though on a tapestry pattern. Not one of the ordinary sounds men make at great gatherings issued from that crowd. Only, from time to time a signal was given and, with incredible cohesion, the cry was uttered by a hundred thousand voices whilst flags, banners, pennons, branches of laurel and of oak were waved-- "_Honneur au général Lamarque!_..." Then all lips were silent; and the branches of oak and laurel, pennons, banners and flags expressed no more motion than as before a brief and hot squall during a tempest. All was as silent and nearly as still as death. But in the air there floated an invisible something, whispering low: "Misfortune!" All eyes were fastened on us, the artillerymen. They knew well that if anything burst forth it would be from among the ranks of the men in that severe uniform who marched side by side, with gloomy looks and clenched teeth, who, like impatient horses shaking their plumes, shook the red streamers on their shakos. I could the better judge of these arrangements, as, under instruction from the family, I did not walk in the ranks, but by the side of the artillery. From time to time, men of the people whom I did not know broke through the hedge, and shook me by the left hand--I held my sabre in my right--and said to me-- "The artillery need not be anxious, we are here!" It took nearly three-quarters of an hour to get to the rue de la Paix. There, a movement was, all at once, set on foot which no one at first understood. It was not in the programme. The head of the cortège was drawn in the midst of unintelligible shoutings in the direction of the place Vendôme. I ran to make inquiries: thanks to my uniform and to a certain popularity which it had already acquired, and especially to the gold-fringed tri-coloured scarf which I wore on my left arm, everybody made way for me. I therefore gained with more ease than I should have expected the head of the column, which was already moving into the rue de la Paix. And this is what had happened.