“The Cabinet is gravely culpable. It forgot that in times like ours there are precipices right and left and that it does not do to govern too near to the edge. It says to itself: ‘It is only a riot,’ and it almost rejoices at the outbreak. It believes it has been strengthened by it; yesterday it fell, to-day it is up again! But, in the first place, who can tell what the end of a riot will be? Riots, it is true, strengthen the hands of Cabinets, but revolutions overthrow dynasties. And what an imprudent game in which the dynasty is risked to save the ministry! The tension of the situation draws the knot tighter, and now it is impossible to undo it. The hawser may break and then everything will go adrift. The Left has manoeuvred imprudently and the Cabinet wildly. Both sides are responsible. But what madness possesses the Cabinet to mix a police question with a question of liberty and oppose the spirit of chicanery to the spirit of revolution? It is like sending process-servers with stamped paper to serve upon a lion. The quibbles of M. Hébert in presence of a riot! What do they amount to!” As I was saying this a deputy passed us and said: “The Ministry of Marine has been taken.” “Let us go and see!” said Franc d’Houdetot to me. We went out. We passed through a regiment of infantry that was guarding the head of the Pont de la Concorde. Another regiment barred the other end of it. On the Place Louis XV. cavalry was charging sombre and immobile groups, which at the approach of the soldiers fled like swarms of bees. Nobody was on the bridge except a general in uniform and on horseback, with the cross of a commander (of the Legion of Honour) hung round his neck--General Prévot. As he galloped past us he shouted: “They are attacking!” As we reached the troops at the other end of the bridge a battalion chief, mounted, in a bernouse with gold stripes on it, a stout man with a kind and brave face, saluted M. d’Houdetot. “Has anything happened?” Franc asked. “It happened that I got here just in time!” replied the major. It was this battalion chief who cleared the Palace of the Chamber, which the rioters had invaded at six o’clock in the morning. We walked on to the Place. Charging cavalry was whirling around us. At the angle of the bridge a dragoon raised his sword against a man in a blouse. I do not think he struck him. Besides, the Ministry of Marine had not been “taken.” A crowd had thrown a stone at one of the windows, smashing it, and hurting a man who was peeping out. Nothing more. We could see a number of vehicles lined up like a barricade in the broad avenue of the Champs-Elysées, at the rond-point. “They are firing, yonder,” said d’Houdetot. “Can you see the smoke?” “Pooh!” I replied. “It is the mist of the fountain. That fire is water.” And we burst into a laugh.