"Away," cried a trooper to a blouse, in the Place de la Concorde, at the corner, near the Turkish Embassy; "Away, or I'll cut you down!"
"Will you, coward!" replied the artisan, calmly, with folded arms. At that moment a body of the people rushed on the Municipal Guards and drove them for safety into their barracks; then they fled themselves to avoid the fusillade of the enraged troops.
On the Pont de la Concorde the people stopped the carriage of a Ministerial Deputy and saluted him with groans. The next moment Armand Marrast, of "Le National," approached and was most rapturously cheered.
The money-changers, those seers of Napoleon, scented not yet the revolution. On Friday, the three per cents. were 75f. 85c. On Tuesday they opened at 73f. 90c. and closed at 74f.
The day advanced. The Republican and Communist power augments in its systematized order. Paris swarms with insurgents. Bakers' and gunsmiths' shops are plundered. Barricades are thrown up. A column rushes down the Champs-Elysées, and, having been repulsed at an escalade of the railings of the Chamber of Deputies, retires, shouting the Marseillaise and a chorus from the new opera of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie." At dusk a deputation of students, at the office of "Le National," presents a petition for the impeachment of the Ministry.
That impeachment had already taken place!
"What news?" shouted a student to a workman, as he hurried along.
"There has been fighting in the Faubourg St. Marceau; half a dozen Municipal Guards have been carried wounded to the hospital of Val-de-Grace and a captain was killed."
"And is it true that the Guard has been disarmed on the Rues Geoffroi and Langevin, and a gunmaker's shop near the Porte St. Martin broken into and rifled?"
"I hadn't heard of that," was the hurried reply. "But I hear this, that the guard-houses in the Champs-Elysées have been taken, and the troops driven off, and that lamps and windows have been torn down."
At that moment another workman rushed along.
"The news!" shouted the student and the first workman.
"The railing of the Church of the Assumption has been torn away by the people to supply arms; two women of the people have been crushed by a charge of the Municipal Guard; the shop of Lepage, the armorer, in the Rue Richelieu, has been entered by means of the pole of an omnibus used as a battering ram; and barricades rise on the Rue St. Honoré."
At three o'clock a column of the people dashed down the boulevards, smashing lamps and breaking shop windows. In the Rue St. Honoré and the Rue de Rivoli an omnibus and two carriages were seized to aid in erecting a barricade. A guard-house in the Champs-Elysées was burned. The troops at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were increased. No one was suffered to pass. A Municipal Guard was dismounted and nearly killed by the people. The crowd in the Rue Royale had become so dense that it was impossible to pass to the Place de la Concorde. The troops charged. The people gave way. Some were wounded badly; but still rose the shouts, "Vive la Ligne! Down with the Municipal Guard!"