Chapter 16 - Page 2

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.

An engagement was going on there, however. The people
had constructed three barricades with chairs. The
guard at the main square of the Champs-Elysées had
turned out to pull the barricades down. The people had
driven the soldiers back to the guard-house with volleys
of stones. General Prévot had sent a squad of Municipal
Guards to the relief of the soldiers. The squad had been
surrounded and compelled to seek refuge in the guard-house
with the others. The crowd had hemmed in the
guard-house. A man had procured a ladder, mounted to
the roof, pulled down the flag, torn it up and thrown it to
the people. A battalion had to be sent to deliver the guard.

"Whew!" said Franc d'Houdetot to General Prévot,
who had recounted this to us. "A flag taken!"

"Taken, no!