opened by thus piercing into the bowels of the land?

There are moments on which the destiny of a nation, perhaps of an age,
turns. I had reached Paris at one of those moments. As my caleche wound
its slow way round the base of Montmartre, I perceived, through the
deepening twilight, a long train of flame, spreading from the horizon to
the gates of the city. Shouts were heard, with now and then the heavy
sounds of cannon. This produced a dead stop in my progress. My postilion
stoutly protested against venturing his caleche, his horses, and, what he
probably regarded much more than either, himself, into the very heart of
what he pronounced a counter-revolution. My courier, freighted with
despatches, which might have been high treason to the majesty of the mob,
and who saw nothing less than suspension from the first lamp-post in their
discovery, protested, with about the same number of _sacres_; and my
diplomatic beams seemed in a fair way to be shorn.

But this was the actual thing which I had come to see: Paris in its new
existence; the capital of the populace; the headquarters of the grand army
of insurgency; the living centre of all those flashes of fantasy, fury,
and fire, which were already darting out towards every throne of Europe. I
determined to have a voice on the occasion, and I exerted it with such
vigour, that I roused the inmates of a blockhouse, a party of the National
Guard, who, early as it was, had been as fast asleep as if they had been a
_posse_ of city watchmen. They clustered round us, applauded my resolve,
to see what was to be seen, as perfectly national, _vraiment Francais_;
kicked my postilion till he mounted his horse, beat my sulky courier with
the flats of their little swords, and would have bastinadoed, or probably
hanged him, if I had not interposed; and, finally, hoisting me into the
caleche, which they loaded with half a dozen of their number before and
behind, commenced our march into Paris. This was evidently not the age of
discipline.

It may have been owing to this curious escort that I got in at all; for at
the gate I found a strong guard of the regular troops, who drove back a
long succession of carriages which had preceded me. But my cortege were so
thoroughly in the new fashion, they danced the "_carmagnole_" so
boisterously, and sang patriotic rhymes with such strength of lungs, that
it was impossible to refuse admission to patriots of such sonorousness.
The popular conjecture