The war at last came and fixed itself outside the barriers of Paris. From the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, one could see the head of the Russian columns appear, like the first undulations of the tide of the sea upon a beach. I felt what a Roman must have experienced when, from the ridge of the Capitol, he beheld the soldiers of Alaric[119] and the old city of the Latins at his feet, as I beheld the Russian soldiers and, at my feet, the old city of the Gauls. Farewell, then, paternal gods, hearths which preserved the traditions of the country, roofs beneath which had breathed both Virginia[120], sacrificed by her father to modesty and liberty, and Héloïse, consecrated by love to letters and religion. Paris had not since centuries seen the smoke of an enemy's camp, and it was Bonaparte who, from triumph to triumph, brought the Thebans within sight of the women of Sparta. Paris was the bourn from which he had started to conquer the earth: he returned to it leaving behind him the huge conflagration of his useless conquests. The people rushed to the Jardin des Plantes, which, in olden times, the fortified Abbey of St. Victor might have been able to protect: the small world of swans and plantain-trees, to which our power had promised an eternal peace, was perturbed. From the summit of the labyrinth, looking over the great cedar, over the public granaries which Bonaparte had not had time to complete, beyond the site of the Bastille and the keep of Vincennes (spots which told the tale of our successive history), the crowd watched the infantry-fire in the combat of Belleville. Montmartre was carried: the cannon-balls fell as far as the Boulevard du Temple. A few companies of the National Guard made a sortie and lost three hundred men in the fields around the tomb of the "martyrs." Never did military France, in the midst of her reverses, shine with a brighter glory; the last heroes were the one hundred and fifty lads of the Polytechnic School, transformed into gunners in the redoubts on the Vincennes Road. Surrounded by the enemy, they refused to surrender; they had to be tom from their pieces: the Russian grenadier seized them, blackened with gun-powder and covered with wounds; while they struggled in his arms, he lifted those young French palm-branches in the air with cries of victory and admiration and restored them all bleeding to their mothers. During that time Cambacérès was fleeing with Marie-Louise, the King of Rome and the Regency. The following proclamation was read on the walls: "KING JOSEPH[121], LIEUTENANT-GENERAL OF THE EMPEROR, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE NATIONAL GUARD. "CITIZENS OF PARIS,