:--

"There appears to be a squabble in the Rue Saint-Martin."

Or:--

"In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine."

Often he adds carelessly:--

"Or somewhere in that direction."

Later on, when the heart-rending and mournful hubbub of musketry and
firing by platoons becomes audible, the shopkeeper says:--

"It's getting hot! Hullo, it's getting hot!"

A moment later, the riot approaches and gains in force, he shuts up his
shop precipitately, hastily dons his uniform, that is to say, he places
his merchandise in safety and risks his own person.

Men fire in a square, in a passage, in a blind alley; they take and
re-take the barricade; blood flows, the grape-shot riddles the fronts
of the houses, the balls kill people in their beds, corpses encumber the
streets. A few streets away, the shock of billiard-balls can be heard in
the cafes.

The theatres open their doors and present vaudevilles; the curious laugh
and chat a couple of paces distant from these streets filled with
war. Hackney-carriages go their way; passers-by are going to a dinner
somewhere in town. Sometimes in the very quarter where the fighting is
going on.

In 1831, a fusillade was stopped to allow a wedding party to pass.

At the time of the insurrection of 1839, in the Rue Saint-Martin a
little, infirm old man, pushing a hand-cart surmounted by a tricolored
rag, in which he had carafes filled with some sort of liquid, went and
came from barricade to troops and from troops to the barricade, offering
his glasses of cocoa impartially,--now to the Government, now to
anarchy.

Nothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of uprisings
in Paris, which cannot be found in any other capital. To this end, two
things are requisite, the size of Paris and its gayety. The city of
Voltaire and Napoleon is necessary.

On this occasion, however, in the resort to arms of June 25th, 1832, the
great city felt something which was, perhaps, stronger than itself. It
was afraid.

Closed doors, windows, and shutters were to be seen everywhere, in the
most distant and most "disinterested" quarters. The courageous took to
arms, the poltroons hid. The busy and heedless passer-by disappeared.
Many streets were empty at four o'clock in the morning.

Alarming details were hawked about, fatal news was disseminated,--that
they were masters of the Bank;--that there were six hundred of them
in the Cloister of Saint-Merry alone, entrenched and embattled in the
chur