Some gentlemen went to the battalion of the guards stationed in front of the Prince Polignac's, and suggested to the officer in command the propriety of sending a few men to arrest the progress of the insurgents, a thing then easily to be accomplished; but the officer, having no orders, declined to take any step, and the populace continued their depredations within three hundred yards of so imposing a force as a battalion of the guards! What may not to-morrow's sun witness, ere it goes down? But conjecture is vain in a crisis in which every thing appears to go on in a mode so wholly unaccountable. The exhibition of a powerful force might and would, I am persuaded, have precluded the collision that has occurred between the populace and the military. Blood has been shed on both sides, and this has rendered the breach between people and sovereign too wide to be repaired except by something almost miraculous, and alas! the time of miracles is past. I cannot help wondering at the calmness I feel on this occasion. I experience no personal alarm; but I am apprehensive for my friends, some of whom are deeply interested in this struggle. How may their destinies, lately so brilliant, be overclouded by the change that menaces to take place! Well may Monsieur Salvandy have observed at the ball so recently given by the Duc of Orléans to the royal families of France and Naples, "This may be termed a Neapolitan _fête_, for they are dancing over a volcano." CHAPTER XXIII. All now seems quiet, so I will go to bed. Heaven only knows if to-morrow night we may be allowed to seek our pillows in safety. _28th_.--My _femme-de-chambre_ undrew my curtains this morning, "with such a face--so faint, so spiritless, so dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone"--proclaiming that barricades had been erected during the night, and that the bodies of those killed in the encounter yesterday have been paraded through the streets in order to excite still more the angry feelings of the people. This last measure reminds one of the appalling exhibitions in the fearful and memorable Revolution of former days; and the reminiscences it awakens are not calculated to tranquillize the mind. She states that the shops are all closed, and that no provisions can be obtained; the cook complains that his stockpots want replenishing; and the _femme de charge_ hints that the larder is not so well supplied as it would have been had she known what was to occur. Each and all of these functionaries seem wholly occupied by the dread of not being able to furnish us with as copious repasts as usual, unmindful that a mighty throne is tottering to its foundation, and that a struggle is going on in which many lives may be sacrificed.