That night what crowds thronged from Paris to the top of the Montmartre heights, from the observatory on which the celebrated inventor Bazin had lighted up, with some magical electric machine, all the plain of Gennevilliers from Mont Valerien to the Fort de la Briche! The splendour of the blaze wrapped the great city;--distinctly above the roofs of the houses soared the Dome des Invalides, the spires of Notre Dame, the giant turrets of the Tuileries;--and died away on resting on the _infames scapulos Acroceraunia_, the "thunder crags" of the heights occupied by the invading army. Lemercier, De Breze, and the elder Rameau--who, despite his peaceful habits and grey hairs, insisted on joining in the aid of _la patrie_-- were among the National Guards attached to the Fort de la Briche and the neighbouring eminence, and they met in conversation. "What a victory we have had!" said the old Rameau. "Rather mortifying to your son, M. Rameau," said LeMercier. "Mortifying to my son, sir!--the victory of his countrymen. What do you mean?" "I had the honour to hear M. Gustave the other night at the club de la Vengeance." "Bon Dieu! do you frequent those tragic reunions?" asked De Breze. "They are not at all tragic: they are the only comedies left us, as one must amuse one's self somewhere, and the club de la Vengeance is the prettiest thing of the sort going. I quite understand why it should fascinate a poet like your son, M. Rameau. It is held in a _salle de cafe chantant_--style _Louis Quinze_--decorated with a pastoral scene from Watteau. I and my dog Fox drop in. We hear your son haranguing. In what poetical sentences he despaired of the Republic! The Government (he called them _les charlatans de l'Hotel de Ville_) were imbeciles. They pretended to inaugurate a revolution, and did not employ the most obvious of revolutionary means. There Fox and I pricked up our ears: what were those means? Your son proceeded to explain: 'All mankind were to be appealed to against individual interests. The commerce of luxury was to be abolished. Clearly luxury was not at the command of all mankind. Cafes and theatres were to be closed for ever--all mankind could not go to cafes and theatres. It was idle to expect the masses to combine for anything in which the masses had not an interest in common. The masses had no interest in any property that did not belong to the masses. Programmes of the society to be founded, called the Ligue Cosmopolite Democratique, should be sent at once into all the States of the civilised world--how? by balloons. Money corrupts the world as now composed: but the money at the command of the masses could buy all the monarchs and courtiers and priests of the universe.' At that sentiment, vehemently delivered, the applauses were frantic, and Fox in his excitement began to bark. At the sound of his bark one man cried out, 'That's a Prussian!' another, 'Down with the spy!' another, 'There's an