On the morning of the 30th, I received a note from the Grand Referendary summoning me to the meeting of the Peers, at the Luxembourg. I wanted first to learn some news. I went down the Rue d'Enfer, the Place Saint-Michel and the Rue Dauphine. There was still a little excitement around the broken barricades. I compared what I saw with the great revolutionary movement of 1789, and the present struck me as orderly and silent: the change of manners was visible. At the Pont-Neuf, the statue of Henry IV., like an ensign of the League, held a tricolour flag in its hand. Men of the people said, as they looked at the bronze King: "You would never have been such a fool, old man." Groups had assembled on the Quai de l'École: I saw, in the distance, a general accompanied by two aides-de-camp, all on horse-back. I went in their direction. As I elbowed my way through the crowd, my eyes were on the general: a tricolour sash across his coat, his hat cocked over the back of his head, with one comer in front. He caught sight of me in his turn, and cried: "See! The viscount!" [Sidenote: General Dubourg.] And I, surprised, recognised Colonel or Captain Dubourg, my companion at Ghent, who was going, during our return to Paris, to take the open towns in the name of Louis XVIII., and who brought us, as I have related, half a sheep for dinner in a dirty lodging at Arnouville[255]. This is the officer whom the newspapers had represented as an austere soldier of the Republic, with grey mustachios, who had refused to serve under the imperial tyranny and who was so poor that they had been obliged to buy him a uniform of the days of Larevellière-Lepeaux[256] at the rag-fair. Then I exclaimed: "Why, it's you! What..." He stretched out his arms to me, pressed my hand on Flanquine's neck; a circle was formed around us: "My dear fellow," said the military head of the Provisional Government, pointing out the Louvre to me, "there were twelve hundred of them in there: we gave them prunes in their hinder parts! And they ran, oh, how they ran!" M. Dubourg's aides-de-camp burst into loud roars of laughter; the rabble laughed in unison, the general spurred his nag, which caracoled like a broken-backed beast, followed by two other Rosinantes slipping on the paving-stones as though ready to fall on their noses between their riders' legs. Thus, proudly borne away, did the Diomedes of the Hôtel de Ville, a man, for the rest, of courage and wit, abandon me. I have seen men who, taking all the scenes of 1830 for serious, blushed at this story, because it somewhat counteracted their heroic credulity. I myself was ashamed on seeing the comical side of the gravest revolutions and how easy it is to trifle with the good faith of the people. M. Louis Blanc, in the first volume of his excellent _Histoire de dix ans_, published after what I have just written here, confirms my story: