conclusions

The rattIe of musket-fire roused him suddenly from his sleep; and despite Rosanette's entreaties, Frédéric insisted on going out to see what was happening. He went down the Champs-Élysées, where the firing had taken plaœ. On the corner of the Rue Saint-Honoré he met some men in smacks who shouted to him
'No! Not this way! To the Palais-Royal!'
Frédéric followed them. The railings of the Church of the Assumption had been torn down. Further on he notiœd three paving-stones in the middle of the roadway, presumably the beginnings of a barricade, and then some broken bottles and coils of wire intended to obstruct the cavalry. Suddenly, out of an alley, there rushed a tall, pale young man, with black hair hanging down over his shoulders, and wearing a sort of singlet with coloured dots. He was carrying a long infantry musket and running along on tiptoe, looking as tense as a sleepwalker and as lithe as a tiger. Every now and then an explosion could be heard.
The previous evening the sight of a cart containing five of the corpses collected from the Boulevard des Capucines had altered the mood of the common people; and while aides-de-camp came and went at the Tuileries, while Monsieur Molé, who was constructing a new cabinet, failed to reappear, while Monsieur Thiers tried to form another, and while the King dillied and dallied, giving Bugeaud complete authority only to prevent him from using it, the insurrection grew in strength, as if it were directed by a single hand. Men harangued the mob at street corners with frenzied eloquence; others set all the bells ringing in the churches; lead was melted down, cartridges rolled; on the boulevards the trees, public urinals, benches, railings, and gas-lamps were all pulled down or overturned; by the morning, Paris was covered with barricades. Resistanœ did not last long; everywhere the National Guard intervened, so that by eight o'clock, by force or consent, the people had taken possession of five barracks, nearly all the town halls, and the strongest strategic positions. Quietly and rapidly, the monarchy was disintegrating all by itself. Now the mob was attacking the guard-house at the Château-d'Eau, to liberate fifty prisoners who were not there. Frédéric was obliged to stop at the entranœ to the square, which was full of groups of men carrying arms. Infantry companies occupied the Rue Saint-Thomas and the Rue Fromanteau. A huge barricade blocked the Rue de Valois. The smoke hanging over it broke up; men rushed at it with wild gestures and disappeared; then the firing started again. The guard-house replied, although nobody could be seen inside; its windows were protected by oak shutters, pierœd with loop-holes; and the monument, with its two storeys and two wings, its fountain on the first floor and its little door in the middle, was beginning to show white pock-marks where the bullets had struck. Its flight of three steps remained empty.
Next to Frédéric a man in a fez, with a cartridge-pouch slung over his woollen jacket, was arguing with a wornan with a kerchief round her hair. She was saying:
'Come back! Come back, I say!'
'Leave me alone!' the husband replied. 'You can easily look after the lodge by yourself. I ask you, Citizen, is it fair? I've done my duty every time, in I830, in' 32, in '34, in '39. Today they're fighting again, and I've got to fight with them! Go away!'
The concierge's wife finally gave in to his protests and those of a National Guard beside them, a man in his forties whose kindly face was fringed with a fair beard. He was loading his gun and firing it while talking to Frédéric,as calm in the midst of the riot as a gardener among his flowers. A boy wearing a tradesman's apron was trying to coax him into giving him some firing caps, so that he could use his gun, a fine sporting carbine which 'a gentleman' had given him.
'Grab some of those I've got behind me,' said the man, 'and make yourself scarcw ! You're going to get yourself killed !'
The drums beat the charge. Shrill cries arose, and shouts of triumph. The crowd surged backwards and forwards. Frédéric, caught between two dense masses,did not budge; in any case, he was fascinated and enjoying himself tremendously. The wounded falling to the ground, and the dead Iying stretched out, did not look as if they were reatly wounded or dead. He felt as if he were watching a play.
In the middle of the crowd, above the swaying heads,-an old man in a black coat could be seen on a white horse with a velvet saddle. He was holding a green branch in one hand and a piece of paper in the other, and he kept waving them stubbornly. Finally, giving up hope of making himself heard, he withdrew.
The troops had disappeared, and only the municipal guards remained to defend the guard-house. A wave of fearless men surged up the steps; they fell, only to be followed by others; the door echoed with the sound of iron bars battering at it; the guards would not give in. But then a carriage stuffed with hay and burning like a giant torch was dragged up against the walls. Faggots were hurriedly brought up, together with straw and a barrel of alcohol. The fire licked the stone wall; the building began smoking all over like a sulphur spring; and great roaring flames burst out ehrough the balustrade round the roof terrace. The first floor of the Palais Royal was crowded with National Guards. There was firing from every window overlooking the square; bullets whistled through the air; the fountain had been pierœd, and the water, mingling with blood, spread in puddles on the ground. People slipped in the mud on clothes, shakos, and weapons; Frédéric felt something soft under his foot; it was the hand of a sergeant in a grey overcoat who was Iying face down in the gutter. Fresh groups of workers kept coming up, driving the fighters towards the guard-house. The firing became more rapid. The wine-merchants' shops were open, and every now and then somebody would go in to smoke a pipe or drink a glass of beer, before returning to the fight. A stray dog started howling. This raised a laugh.
Frédéric was suddenly shaken by a man who fell groaning against his shoulder, with a bullet in his back This shot, which for all he knew might have been aimed at him, infuriated him; and he was rushing forward when a National Guard stopped him.
'There's no point in it The King has just left. Well, if you don't believe me, go and see for yourselfl'
This assertion calmed Frédéric down. The Place du Carrousel looked peaceful enough. The Hôtel de Nantes still stood there on its own; and the houses behind, the dome of the Louvre in front, the long wooden gallery on the right, and the uneven waste land stretching as far as the shopkeepers' booths, appeared to be steeped in the greyish air, in which distant murmurs seemed to merge into the mist. But at the other end of the square a harsh light, falling through a gap in the clouds on to the facade of the Tuileries, made all its windows stand out in glaring white. Near the Arc de Triomphe a dead horse was stretched out on the ground. Behind the railings people were chatting in groups of five or six. The doors of the palace were openand the servants on the threshold were letting people go in.
Downstairs, bowls of coffee were being served in a little room. Some of the spectators sat down to table jokingly; the others remained standing, induding a cabman who seized a jar full of caster sugar, darted a worried glance to right and left, and then started eating greedily, plunging his nose right into the neck of the jar. At the foot of the main staircase a man was writing his name in a register. Frédéric recognized him from behind.
'Well, if it isn't Hussonnet!'
'Himself,' replied the Bohemian. 'I'm presenting myself at Court. This is great fun, isn't it?'
'Shall we go upstairs?'
And they went up to the Hall of the Marshals. The portraits of these great men were all intact, except for Bugeaud, who had been pierced through the stomach. They stood there, leaning on their swords, with gun-carriages behind them, in awe-inspiring postures ill-suited to the present circumstances. A bulky clock showed that it was twenty past one.
Suddenly the Marseillaise rang out. Hussonnet and Frédéric leaned over the banisters. It was the mob. It swept up the staircase in a bewildering flood of bare heads, helmets, red caps, bayonets, and shoulders, surging forward so violently that people disappeared in the swarming mass as it went up and up, like a spring-tide pushing back a river, driven by an irresistible impulse and giving a continuous roar. At the top of the stairs it broke up and the singing stopped.
Nothing more could be heard but the shuffling of shoes and the babble of voiœs. The mob was content to stare inoffensively. But now and then an elbow, cramped for room, smashed a window-pane, or else a vase or a statuette rolled off a table on to the floor. The wainscoting creaked under the pressure of the crowd Every faœ was red, with sweat dripping off it in large drops. Hussonnet rernarked:
'Heroes don't smell very nice!'
'Oh, you're impossible,' retorted Frédéri«
Pushed along in spite of themselves, they entered a room in which a red velvet canopy was stretched across the ceiling. On the throne underneath sat a worker with a black beard, his shirt half-open, grinning like a stupid ape. Others clambered on to the platform to sit in his place.
'What a myth!' said Hussonnet. 'There's the sovereign people for you!'
The throne was picked up and passed unsteadily from hand to hand across the room.
'Good Lord! Look how it's pitching! The ship of state is being tossed on a stormy sea! It's dancing a can-can! It's dancing a can-can!'
It was taksn to a window and thrown out, to the accompaniment of hisses and boos.s
'Poor old thing!' said Hussonnet, as he watched it fall into the garden, where it was quickly picked up to be taken to the Baseille and then burnt.
An explosion of frenzied joy followed, as if, in place of the throne, a future of boundless joy had appeared; and the mob, less out of vengeance than from a desire to assert its supremacy, smashed or tore up mirrors,curtains, chandeliers, sconces, tables, chairs, stools - everything that was movable, in fact, down to albums of drawings and needlework baskets. They were the victors, so surely they were entitled to enjoy themselves. The rabble draped ehemselves mockingly in lace and cashmere. Gold fringes were twined round the sleeves of smocks, hats with ostrich plumes adorned the heads of blacksmiths, and ribbons of the Legion of Honour served as sashes for prostitutes. Everybody satisfied his whims; some danced, others drank. In the Queen's bedroom a woman was greasing her hair with pomade; behind a screen, a couple of keen gamblers were playing cards; Hussonnet pointed out to Frédéric a man leaning on a balcony and smoking his clay pipe; and in the mounting fury the continuous din was swollen by the sound of broken china and crystal, which tinkled as it fell like the keys of a harmonica.
Then the frenzy took on a darker note. An obscene curiosity impelled the mob to ransack all the closets, search all the alcoves, and turn out all the drawers. Jailbirds thrust their arms into the princesses' bed, and rolled about on it as a consolation for not being able to rape them. Others with more sinister faces wandered silently about, looking for something to steal; but there was too much of a crowd. Looking through the doorways across the long string of rooms, one could see nothing but the dark mass of people in a cloud of dust between the gilded carvings Everybody was gasping for breath, the heat was becoming more and more stifling; and the two friends went out for fear of being suffocated.