"On the morning of 5 June 1832 my father sent me on an errand along the boulevard du Temple. It was the day of the funeral of the famous General Lamarque and there were large crowds in the place de la Bastille and along the boulevards. Like the true child of Paris that I am, eager to know everything, I stopped at each crowd: they were talking hotly about politics; several persons were so exasperated that they broke the little trees newly planted in place of those which had been sawed down in 1830, to make the barricades. We are well aware, they said, that they will not be of much use against rifles and cannons, but they are first-rate against spies and policemen. There was nothing for it but for me to play truant. Instead, then, of returning home promptly, urged on by my insatiable curiosity I soon reached the Porte Saint-Martin; then I caught sight of General Lamarque's procession in the distance. The hearse came on slowly and stopped from time to time. I was surprised to see so few troops at a general's funeral-cortège; there were at the most only enough soldiers to keep some order during the march. At my age one judges the magnificence of a funeral procession by the number of troops which accompany it, and as a few weeks before I had seen at Casimir Périer's splendid cortège long and wide columns of soldiers marching on both sides of the carriage, I was at first astonished that they did not pay the same military honours to a general as to a banker. "There were no soldiers; but an immense crowd flooded the boulevards, pushing and squeezing to get near the hearse. People were attached to it and drew the catafalque, shouting from time to time: 'Honour to General Lamarque!' That cry went all through me each time I heard it. They were quarrelling to get hands on the ropes: every one wanted the honour of drawing the precious burden; it was then, for the first time, that I heard men call each other by the name of _citizens._ Every face was stamped with an indefinable electrical enthusiasm, which was communicated through the whole of the crowd; a strong emotional feeling which was neither of grief nor of reflection lit up every face. I was only fourteen then, and I felt the enthusiasm to the bottom of my heart, and an emotion which no language could possibly express. "'Bah!' I said, 'my father will scold me, but never mind that! I must pull that rope; some day, if I have any children, I will tell them, "I too helped to draw General Lamarque's hearse!" Just as my grandfather is always telling us, "I too belonged to the federation!"'