The crisis came (in 1848) as often happens, over a comparatively small matter. The king forbade a banquet of his opponents, and the mob seized upon the refusal as an excuse to fight. The National Guards should have served as a buffer between the royal garrison and the rabble, but the rabble stole their guns and the worthy _bourgeois_ of the Guards were of small service to anybody. There was fighting here and there all over the city, but chiefly in the neighborhood of the boulevard of the Temple. There seems to have been no especial reason in these skirmishes; the coatless fought the wearers of coats without stopping to inquire their political belief. Huge crowds collected along the rue de Rivoli and along the quay, hemming into the Place du Carrousel another throng packed almost to inmovability. His wife and daughters watching him anxiously from the windows, the king, now a man of seventy-five, came from the Tuileries, mounted a horse and moved slowly through the press. Only an occasional voice cried “Long live the king,” and he soon returned to the palace. In a few minutes word flew from mouth to mouth that Louis Philippe had abdicated. It was true. An hour and a half later he left the Tuileries never to return. With him went his family, leaving behind them all their personal belongings. At once a horde of roughs took possession of the palace, slashing pictures, breaking furniture, breakfasting in the royal dining room, and sending out to buy a better quality than the king’s coffee which they drank in exquisite Sèvres cups taken out through the broken glass of a locked cabinet. The royal cellars were emptied promptly. The princesses’ dresses adorned the sweethearts of the most persistent fighters. Again, as in 1830, the throne went up in smoke after every rascal in town had had a chance to test the softness of its cushions. At the Hôtel de Ville the second Republic was proclaimed, the poet Lamartine at its head for the money there was in it, it is said. A minor actor who was in a general’s costume at a dress rehearsal and who put his head out of a theater window to see the cause of the uproar in the street, was haled forth, set upon a horse, escorted to the City Hall and introduced to the nondescript and self-appointed members of the provisional government there gathered as “governor of the Hôtel de Ville.” They accepted him without question and Lamartine confirmed him in his office the next day!