into a cafe. There were some students there who
had laid their arms on a table. There was a very notorious little
_lorette_, known as Pochardinette, who was so called because she was
always half-tipsy. She was even noted in a popular song as--

"La Pochardinette,
Qui ne sait refuser
Ni la ponche a pleine verre,
Ni sa bouohe a baiser."

Pochardinette picked up a horse-pistol, when its owner cried, "Let that
be! That is not the kind of weapon which _you_ are accustomed to
manage!" I stared at him with respect, for he had actually translated
into French an epigram by Jacopo Sannazar, word for word!

I should here mention that on the 24th there was actually a period of two
hours during which France had no Government--that is, none that it knew
of. Then there appeared on the walls all at once small placards giving
the list of names of the _Gouvernement Provisoire_. Now, during this
period of suspense there appeared at the Hotel de Ville a mysterious
stranger; a small, bustling, active individual, who came in and announced
that a new Government had been formed, that he himself had been appointed
Minister, that France expected every man to do his duty, and that no one
should lose their places who conformed to his orders. "I appoint," he
said, "So-and-so to take command of Vincennes. Here, you--_Chose_!
notify him at once and send orders. I believe that _Tel-et-tel_ had
better take Marseilles. Do any of you fellows know of a good governor
for Mauritius?" So _he_ governed France for half-an-hour and then
disappeared, and nobody ever knew to this day who this stupendous joker
was. A full account of it all appeared some time after, and the cream of
the joke was that some of his appointed ones contrived to keep their
places. This brief dynasty has not been recorded in any work save this!

It was a droll fact that I had, the year before, at Heidelberg, drawn a
picture of myself as an insurgent at a barricade, and written under it,
"The Boy of the Barricades." I had long had a strange presentiment as to
this event. I gave the picture to Peter A. Porter, then a student, and
owner of a singular piece of property--that is, Niagara Falls, or at
least Goat Island and more or less of the American side. Some time after
the 24th he showed me this picture in Paris. He himself, I have heard,
died fighting bravely in our Civil War. His men were so much attached to
him that they made, to recover his body, a spe