gs of which glory is composed. The
horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in a cloud
of gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of magnificent
body-guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the
Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting
sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde,
which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy
promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the
white-watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from
button-holes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls
threw to the winds, amid the passersby, who formed into circles and
applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to strike
the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:--

"Rendez-nous notre pere de Gand,
Rendez-nous notre pere."

"Give us back our father from Ghent,
Give us back our father."

Groups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even
decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the
large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings and revolving
on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking; some journeyman
printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible. Every thing
was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist
security; it was the epoch when a special and private report of Chief
of Police Angeles to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of Paris,
terminated with these lines:--

"Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be
feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats.
The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These are
very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one
of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the
populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of
this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and
the populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the
Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble."

Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform
itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the
miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Mor