At the windows they had stuck dummies,--bundles of straw with
blouses and caps on them.

I distinctly saw a man who had entrenched himself behind a barricade of
bricks in a corner of the balcony on the fourth floor of the house which
faces the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux. The man took careful aim and killed a
good many persons.

It was 3 o'clock. The troops and mobiles fringed the roofs of the
Boulevard du Temple and returned the fire of the insurgents. A cannon
had just been drawn up in front of the Gaite to demolish the house of
the Galiote and sweep the whole boulevard.

I thought I ought to make an effort to put a stop to the bloodshed,
if possible, and advanced to the corner of the Rue d'Angouleme. When I
reached the little turret near there I was greeted with a fusillade.
The bullets pattered upon the turret behind me, and ploughed up the
playbills with which it was covered. I detached a strip of paper as a
memento. The bill to which it belonged announced for that very Sunday a
fete at the Chateau des Flours, "with a thousand lanterns."

* * * * *

For four months we have been living in a furnace. What consoles me is
that the statue of the future will issue from it. It required such a
brazier to melt such a bronze.

VI. CHATEAUBRIAND.

July 5, 1848.

Chateaubriand is dead. One of the splendours of this century has passed
away.

He was seventy-nine years old according to his own reckoning; according
to the calculation of his old friend M. Bertin, senior, he was eighty
years of age. But he had a weakness, said M. Bertin, and that was that
he insisted that he was born not in 1768, but in 1769, because that was
the year of Napoleon's birth.

He died yesterday, July 4, at 8 o'clock in the morning. For five or six
months he had been suffering from paralysis which had almost destroyed
his brain, and for five days from inflammation of the lungs, which
abruptly snuffed out his life.

M. Ampere announced the news to the Academy, which thereupon decided to
adjourn.

I quitted the National Assembly, where a questor to succeed General
Negrier, who was killed in June, was being nominated, and went to M. de
Chateaubriand's house, No. 110, Rue du Bac.

I was received by M. de Preuille, son-in-law of his nephew. I entered
Chateaubriand's chamber.

He was lying upon his bed, a little iron bedstead with white curtains
round it and surmounted by an iron curtain ri