As I finished my cantata the Revolution broke out and the Institute was a curious sight. Grape shot rattled on the barred doors, cannon balls shook the façade, women screamed and, in the momentary pauses, the interrupted swallows took up their sweet, shrill cry. I hurried over the last pages of my cantata, and on the 29th was free to maraud about the streets, pistol in hand, with the “blessed riffraff” as Barbier said. I shall never forget the look of Paris during those few days. The frantic bravery of the gutter-snipe, the enthusiasm of the men, the calm, sad resignation of the Swiss and Royal Guards, the odd pride of the mob in being “masters of Paris and looting nothing.” One day, just after this harmonious revolution, I had a strange musical shock. Going through the Palais Royal, I heard some young men singing a familiar air; it was my own: “Forget not our wounded companions, who stood In the day of distress by our side; While the moss of the valley grew red with their blood They stirred not, but conquered and died.”[7] Not used to such fame I, in great delight, asked the leader whether I might join in, and incontinently began a hot argument with him as to the time at which it should be taken. Of course I was not recognised. As we sang, three of the National Guard handed round their shakos to collect money for the wounded and there was a welcome deluge of five franc pieces. The crowd increased and our breathing space became less and less; we should have ended in being smothered had not a kindly haberdasher asked us up to her first floor windows, that looked out upon the covered gallery, whence we could rain down our music upon the crowd below, as the Pope does his blessing from the balcony of St Peter’s. First we gave them the _Marseillaise_. At the opening bar the noisy crowd stood motionless; at the end of the second verse the same silence; even so with the third. Irate at their apparent coldness, I roared out-- “Confound it all! SING!” And they sang. Remember, those four or five thousand tightly packed people were--men, women and children--hot from the barricades, inflamed with lust for combat, and imagine how their “Aux armes, citoyens!” rolled out. Aghast at the explosion we had provoked, our little band stood silent as birds after a thunder clap. I, literally not metaphorically, sank on the floor. Some time before this I had arranged the _Marseillaise_ for full orchestra and double chorus and had dedicated it to Rouget de Lisle, who wrote inviting me to go and see him at Choisy, as he had several proposals to make to me. Unfortunately I could not go then, as I was on the point of starting for Italy, and he died before I returned. I only heard much later that he had written many fine songs besides the _Marseillaise_ and had also a libretto for _Othello_ put aside; it is probably this that he wished to discuss with me.