ded the wholesale robbers. The pillagers afoot stepped
aside to let the pillagers in carriages pass.

There were, it is true, a few patrols, if a squad of five or six monkeys
disguised as soldiers and each beating at his own sweet will on a drum
can be called a patrol.

Near the gate of the town, through which this immense stream of vehicles
was issuing, pranced a mulatto, a tall, lean, yellow rascal, rigged out
in a judge's gown and white tie, with his sleeves rolled up, a sword in
his hand, and his legs bare. He was digging his heels into a fat-bellied
horse that pawed about in the crowd. He was the magistrate charged with
the duty of preserving order at the gate.

A little further on galloped another group. A negro in a red coat with
a blue sash, a general's epaulettes and an immense hat surcharged with
tri-colour feathers, was forcing his way through the rabble. He was
preceded by a horrible, helmetted negro boy beating upon a drum, and
followed by two mulattoes, one in a colonel's coat, the other dressed as
a Turk with a hideous Mardi Gras turban on his ugly Chinese-like head.

Out on the plain I could see battalions of ragged soldiers drawn
up round a big house, on which was a crowded balcony draped with a
tri-colour flag. It had all the appearance of a balcony from which a
speech was being delivered.

Beyond these battalions, this balcony, this flag and this speech was a
calm, magnificent prospect-trees green and charming, mountains of superb
shape, a cloudless sky, the ocean without a ripple.

Strange and sad it is to see the grimace of man made with such
effrontery in presence of the face of God!

III. A DREAM. September 6, 1847.

Last night I dreamed this--we had been talking all the evening about
riots, a propos of the troubles in the Rue Saint Honore:

I entered an obscure passage way. Men passed and elbowed me in the
shadow. I issued from the passage. I was in a large square, which was
longer than it was wide, and surrounded by a sort of vast wall, or high
edifice that resembled a wall, which enclosed it on all four sides.
There were neither doors nor windows in this wall; just a few holes here
and there. At certain spots it appeared to have been riddled with shot;
at others it was cracked and hanging over as though it had been shaken
by an earthquake. It had the bare, crumbling and desolate aspect of
places in Oriental cities.

No one was in sight. Day was breaking. The stone was grey,