"One moment! Why do you leave in this way? Why do you not go to Boulogne by the cars?"
"And do you not know--you, a journalist--that for three leagues around, in every direction, every railway radiating from Paris has been torn up? Do you not know that every public conveyance, even to the Mail Diligences, has been stopped, and that all the telegraph stations have been dismantled--all to prevent the further concentration of troops in Paris by the Government?"
"I did hear of this, indeed," said Beauchamp.
"At dawn I was at the railway dépôt, having late last night, with extreme difficulty, procured a passport. And whom think you, among crowds of others, I encountered there? You would never guess, and I haven't time for you to try. Lucien Debray, and with him--but that's impossible for you to divine--she who was Madame Danglars, wife of the rich banker years ago. Well, the banker is dead and she is immensely rich, and I suppose Lucien's spouse into the bargain."
"And where go they?"
"Oh! to England of course--that grand reservoir of all emigrant royalists, that asylum for all who love kings! But farewell, farewell! If I am not off soon I may have to go without my head! And if you are not massacred by your detestable party, I hope to hear of you yet as a Cabinet Minister. Despite your abominable principles, you have my best wishes! Farewell!"
And with a hearty shake of Beauchamp's hand, the young noble was off for an atmosphere more congenial to monarchists than was that of Paris.
Nor was he alone. Thousands fled from Paris in like manner that same day, and the only cry that followed them was this: "Let them go! Let them go!"
The streets of Paris were now choked with barricades--not the mere temporary breastworks of the first and second days, which a single charge of heavy dragoons would sweep away, but regular systematic, scientific structures, erected apparently under the direction of military engineers, and calculated upon every principle of art to insure resistance. Some of them were of immense size--that, for example, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu; some had port-holes from which protruded the mouths of ordnance in battery; all were surmounted by a flag, tri-color or red, and all were defended by desperate men. Some other thoroughfares were crossed by many barricades--the Rue St. Martin, for instance, by thirty or forty. The troops assailing these structures were mowed down, throughout the day, in a manner which even their opponents deemed most merciless. Instances of individual bravery on both sides were frequent. In the Rue Mauconseil, a young man exposed himself on the top of the barricade, time after time, firing with fatal aim, and every time a shower of balls from the troops assailing whistled around him. But he stood untouched, and, at length, the officer ordering the troops to fire at him no more, he retired at once behind the breastwork. A boy in the Rue St. Honoré mounted the barricade, enveloped in a tri-color flag, and dared the troops to fire on their colors. He descended unharmed. An officer of the Line was summoned to yield his sword. He did so, but first broke it in twain across his knee. The same demand was made to a lieutenant of the Municipal Guard, with a musket at his breast; he was bidden also to shout "Vive la République!" but he only cried "Vive le Roi!" as the weapon was wrenched from his grasp! Yet he was spared. Arms were demanded from every householder, and when given, the gift was endorsed on the door in these words: "Here we were given arms." One man received a sword splendidly decorated with gems upon its scabbard and hilt. "I want only the blade!" he said, tearing it away from its ornaments and grasping the naked steel!