olumn.
Squads chose themselves leaders; a man armed with a pair of pistols in
full view, seemed to pass the host in review, and the files separated
before him. On the side alleys of the boulevards, in the branches of the
trees, on balconies, in windows, on the roofs, swarmed the heads of men,
women, and children; all eyes were filled with anxiety. An armed throng
was passing, and a terrified throng looked on.

The Government, on its side, was taking observations. It observed with
its hand on its sword. Four squadrons of carabineers could be seen in
the Place Louis XV. in their saddles, with their trumpets at their head,
cartridge-boxes filled and muskets loaded, all in readiness to march;
in the Latin country and at the Jardin des Plantes, the Municipal Guard
echelonned from street to street; at the Halle-aux-Vins, a squadron of
dragoons; at the Greve half of the 12th Light Infantry, the other
half being at the Bastille; the 6th Dragoons at the Celestins; and the
courtyard of the Louvre full of artillery. The remainder of the troops
were confined to their barracks, without reckoning the regiments of the
environs of Paris. Power being uneasy, held suspended over the menacing
multitude twenty-four thousand soldiers in the city and thirty thousand
in the banlieue.

Divers reports were in circulation in the cortege. Legitimist tricks
were hinted at; they spoke of the Duc de Reichstadt, whom God had marked
out for death at that very moment when the populace were designating
him for the Empire. One personage, whose name has remained unknown,
announced that at a given hour two overseers who had been won over,
would throw open the doors of a factory of arms to the people. That
which predominated on the uncovered brows of the majority of those
present was enthusiasm mingled with dejection. Here and there, also, in
that multitude given over to such violent but noble emotions, there were
visible genuine visages of criminals and ignoble mouths which said: "Let
us plunder!" There are certain agitations which stir up the bottoms of
marshes and make clouds of mud rise through the water. A phenomenon to
which "well drilled" policemen are no strangers.

The procession proceeded, with feverish slowness, from the house of the
deceased, by way of the boulevards as far as the Bastille. It rained
from time to time; the rain mattered nothing to that throng. Many
incidents, the coffin borne round the Vendome column, stones thrown at
the Duc