The truth was that Paris was still very much afraid of them. I remember the infinite glee, and the outpouring of ridicule, which hailed the dispersion of a Republican “demonstration” (the reader will forgive the anachronism of the phrase), at the Porte St. Martin, by the judicious use of a powerful fire-engine. The heroes of the _drapeau rouge_ had boasted they would stand their ground against any charge of soldiery. Perhaps they would have done so. But the helter-skelter that ensued on the first well-directed jet of cold water from the pipe of a fire-engine furnished Paris with laughter for days afterwards. But, as I have said, Paris, not unreasonably, feared them. Secret conspiracy is always an ugly enemy to deal with. And no violence of mere speculative opinion would have sufficed, had fear been absent, to cause the very marked repulsion with which all the Parisians, who had anything to lose, in that day regarded their Republican fellow citizens. Assuredly the Conservatives of the Parisian world of 1835 were not “the stupid party.” Both in their newspapers, and other ephemeral literature, and in the never-ending succession of current _mots_ and jokes which circulated in the Parisian salons, they had the pull very decidedly. I remember some words of a parody on one of the Republican songs of the day, which had an immense vogue at that time. “_On devrait planter le chêne_,” it ran, “_pour l’arbre de la liberté_” (it will be remembered that planting “trees of liberty” was one of the common and more harmless “demonstrations” of the Republican party). “_Ses glands nouriraient sans peine les cochons qui l’ont planté._” And the burthen of the original which ran, “_Mourir pour la patrie, C’est le sort le plus beau le plus digne d’envie_,” was sufficiently and very appositely caricatured by the slight change of “_Mourir pour la patrie_” into “_Nourris_ par _la patrie_,” &c. To a stranger seeing Paris as I saw it, and frequenting the houses which I frequented, it seemed strange that such a community should have considered itself in serious danger from men who seemed to me, looking from such a stand-point, a mere handful of skulking melodramatic enthusiasts, playing at conspiracy and rebellion rather than really meditating it. But I was not at that time fully aware how entirely the real danger was to be found in regions of Paris, and strata of its population which were as entirely hidden from my observation, as if they had been a thousand miles away. But though I could not see the danger, I saw unmistakably enough the fear it inspired in all classes of those who, as I said before, had anything to lose.