“It would have been well, Madame, had you allowed Rosanne to accompany my sisters and the others to Les Vignes.” Lisle spoke coldly; but when the comtesse answered, with tears in her eyes, that she had not dreamed of all that twenty-four hours would bring forth, he said simply, “I will care for Rosanne as though she were my little sister.” Then he went out of the room. There was no one in the great hall, and going into an anteroom he took down his black velvet cape and cap and went out through the great entrance door, closing it after him. He ran quickly down the marble steps, and, after standing a moment uncertainly on the corner, turned to the right and walked toward the Champs Élysées. It was a strange walk, the first one he had ever taken alone in the city. He had always been accompanied by his tutor or a servant. Boys of noble birth did not go out unattended. It was the strangest day that he had ever known. A wild exhileration seized him and he began to run. He had felt this way before when he had ridden to the hounds, when he had run at top speed across the fields at Les Vignes, but to-day it was as though he had never really known emotion. The thunder of the cannonading at the Tuileries pounded through the great avenue. As he came nearer a black sea of people loomed before him. The deafening roar of the guns, the screams of the wounded, the wild shouting from thousands of throats mingled, making a hurricane of sound. He stopped suddenly, a little bewildered, and seeing there would be no chance of going farther on the avenue he turned off and round down a side street, slackening his steps as he came to the rue Royale. Here the noise was greater, but although the street was filled with people, some leaning out of the windows of shops, others shouting from the roof tops, he was able to make his way for some rods. No one noticed him. He was only a drop in a mighty ocean, only one among millions that tenth day of August, 1792! There was a noisy crowd of excited onlookers on top of a coach just beside him and the owner of the coach, a prosperous spinner, who had drunk deeply of Rhenish wine, was the noisiest of them all. He caught sight of Lisle, who was wedged in between a group of taller people, and cried out to him: “Come up and see the show, my fine fellow!” It was the first time that any one in all the wild city had spoken to him. He jumped up on to the coach and stood there with the spinner and his family. The next instant he forgot everything but the sight before his eyes. There was a group of people close to the cart. One could hear their rough voices and harsh cries above the seething roar of the battle in the great square beyond. Their scarlet caps gleamed in the relentless August sunshine. They held on to the sides of the cart, screaming, “Vive la nation!” and throwing their arms about each other in a sort of frenzy. It was such as they who were to make a part of the mob that was soon to govern Paris.