Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.

"Such a rumor," I broke in, rather annoyed by this turn in the conversation, "may well buy her the right to be a marchioness if she will."

"Indeed it won't, then," said Ellen sharply, "for she thinks Americans should not 'fix' themselves permanently abroad. She says she means to marry one of her own folks, as she calls her countrymen."

"She knows an infinite variety of things, and has had all kinds of masters," sighed Lætitia: "she speaks all the languages in Europe. I believe Americans have a peculiar facility for pronunciation, like the Russians, and she learned at her school in America philosophy, rhetoric, logic, Latin, algebra, chemistry."

"I wonder she should be so sweet a woman," said my father. "She seems a good girl—I never took her for a learned one—but her mother is a fool, and I should think her father must be that or worse. I wonder what he can be like? It seems to an Englishman so strange that a man should stay at home alone for years, and suffer his wife and family to travel all over the Continent without protection."

Though my father, mother and sisters declined the Sunday invitation of Mrs. Leare, I went to her reception. The guests were nearly all Italians, Poles, Spaniards or Frenchmen. There was no Englishman present, but myself, and only one or two Americans. I felt at once how out of place my mother, the country matron, and my father, ce respectable viellard, would have been in such a circle. But Mrs. Leare's guests were not the jeunesse dorée nor the dubious nobility I had expected to meet in her salon. The Frenchmen among them were all men whose names were familiar in French political circles—men of revolutionary tendencies and of advanced opinions. I afterward discovered they had taken advantage of Mrs. Leare's desire to be the head of a salon to use her rooms as a convenient rendezvous. It was safe ground on which to simmer their revolutionary cauldron. It was seething and bubbling that night, although neither the Leares nor myself were aware of what was brewing. The talk was all about the Banquets, especially the impending reform banquet in the Rue Chaillot. The gentlemen present were not exactly conspirators: they were for the most part political reformers, who, being cut off from the usual modes of expressing themselves through a recognized parliamentary opposition or by the medium of petition, had devised a system of political banquets, some fifty of which had already been held in the departments, and they were now engaged in getting one up in Paris in the Twelfth arrondissement.

At that time, in a population of thirty-five millions, there were but a quarter of a million of French voters, and as in France all places (from that of a railroad guard to a seat on the bench) were disposed of by the government, it was very easy for ministers to control the legislature. A reform, really needed in the franchise, was the object proposed to themselves by the original heads of the Revolution of 1848, though when they had set their ball in motion they could neither control it nor keep up with it as it rolled downward.

The prevalent idea in Mrs. Leare's salon was that the banquet of the Rue Chaillot would go off quietly, that the prefect of police would protest, and that the affair would then pass into the law-courts, where it would remain until all interest in the subject had passed away. One was sensible, however, that there was a general feeling of excitement in the atmosphere. Paris swarmed with troops, evidently under stricter discipline than usual. People looked into each other's faces interrogatively and read the daily papers with an anxious air.

Though I did not at the time fully appreciate what I saw, I was struck by the business-like character of the men about me. The guests, I thought, took very little notice of the lady of the house. I did not then suspect that they were using her hospitality for their own purposes, and that they felt secure in her total incapacity to understand what they were doing. She, meantime, intent on filling her reception-rooms with celebrities and titled persons, was charmed to have collected so many distinguished men around her.

Hermione appeared bewildered, uncomfortable and restless, like a spectator on the edge of a great crowd. "There are too many strangers here to-night," she said: "mamma and I do not know one half of them. They have been brought here by their friends. To have a salon is mamma's ambition, but this is not my idea of it. I feel as if we were out of place among these men, who talk to each other and hardly notice us at all."

We sat together and exchanged our thoughts in whispers. It was one of those crowds that create a solitude for lovers. Not that we talked sentiment or that we were lovers. We conversed about the excitements of the day—of the Leste affair, in which the king and the king's ministry were accused of protecting dishonesty; of the Beauvallon and D'Equivilley duel and the Praslin murder, in connection with both of which the royal family and the ministry were popularly accused of protecting criminals—and at last the conversation strayed away from France to Hermione's own girlhood. She told me of her happy country home in Maryland with her grandmother, and sighed. I asked her if she was going to the English ball to be given on Wednesday night at the beautiful Jardin d'Hiver in the Champs Élysées.

"I suppose so," she replied, "but I don't care for large assemblies: I feel afraid of the men I meet. I wish your mother could chaperon me: it would be much nicer to be with her than with my own. Mamma understands nothing about looking after me; she wants to have a good time herself, and I am only in her way. Do you know, Mr. Farquhar, I have a theory that when women have missed anything they ought to have enjoyed in early life, they always want to go back and pick it up. Mamma had no pleasures in her youth, no attentions, no gayety. If I am to be chaperoned, I like the real thing. If I were at home in Maryland, where my father came from, I should need no one to protect me: you could take me to the ball."

"I, Miss Hermione?"

"Yes, you. You would call for me, and wait till I was ready to come down. Then you and I would go alone," she added, enjoying my look of incredulity. "It is the custom: no harm could come of it," she added. "We would walk to our ball."

"No harm in the case that you have supposed, but in some other cases—"

"You suppose a good deal," she interrupted. "You suppose a girl without self-respect or good sense, and perhaps a man without honor. Here, of course, things cannot be like that. Society seems founded upon different ideas from those prevalent with us about men and women. Here, I admit, a girl finds comfort and protection and ease of mind in a good chaperon. Yet it seemed strange to me to put on leading-strings when I came out here: I had been used to take care of myself for so many years."

"Why, Miss Leare," I said, laughing, "you cannot have been many years in society."

"I am twenty," she said frankly, "and we came to Europe about three years ago. But before that time I had been in company a good deal. Not in the city, for I was not 'out,' but in the hotels at Newport, at the Springs and in the country. In America one has but to do what one knows is kind and right, and no one will think evil: here one may do, without suspecting it, so many compromising things."

"Does the instinct that you speak of to be kind and right always guide the young American lady?"

"I suppose so—so far as I know. It must. She walks by it, and sets her feet down firmly. Here I feel all the time as if I were walking among traps blindfolded."

The ball of the Jardin d'Hiver in the Champs Élysées was a superb success. The immense glass-house was fitted up for dancing, and all went merry as a marriage-bell, with a crater about to open under our feet, as at the duchess of Richmond's ball at Brussels.

Miss Leare was there, but quiet and dignified. There was not the smallest touch of vulgarity about her. The coarse readiness to accept publicity which distinguishes the underbred woman, whether in England or America, the desire to show off a foreign emancipation from what appear ridiculous French rules, were not in her.

Yet she might have amused herself as she liked with complete impunity, for Mrs. Leare appeared to leave her entirely alone. I danced with her as often as she would permit me, and my heart was no longer in my own possession when I put-her into her carriage about dawn.

Two or three days after I called, but the ladies were not in, so that except at church at the Hôtel Marboeuf on Sunday morning I saw nothing of Miss Hermione. Monday, February 21st, was sunny and bright. The public excitement was such that an unusual number of working-men were keeping their St. Crispin. The soldiers, however, were confined to their quarters: not a uniform was to be seen abroad. Our night had been disturbed by the continuous rumble of carts and carriages.

"Is it a fine day for the banquet?" I heard Amy say as our maid opened her windows on Tuesday morning.

"There is to be no banquet," was the answer. "Voyez done the proclamation posted on the door of the barrack at the corner of the Rue Chaillot."

I sprang from my bed and looked out of my window. A strange change had taken place in the teeming little caserne at the corner. Instead of the usual groups of well-behaved boy-soldiers in rough uniforms, the barrack looked deserted, and its lower windows had been closed up to their top panes with bags of hay and mattresses. Not a soldier, not even a sentry, was to be seen.

I dressed myself and went out to collect news. The carts that had disturbed us during the night had been not only employed in removing all preparations for the banquet, but in taking every loose paving-stone out of the way. I found the Place de la Madeleine full of people, all looking up at the house of Odillon Barrot, asking "What next?" and "What shall we do?" Odillon Barrot was the hero of the moment—literally of the moment. In forty-eight hours from that time his name had faded from the page of history. In the Place de la Concorde there was more excitement, for threats were being made to cross the bridge and to insult the Chambers. The Pont de l'Institut, notwithstanding the efforts of the garde municipale or mounted police, was greatly crowded. A party of dragoons, on sorrel ponies barely fourteen hands high, rode up and began to clear the bridge, but gently and gradually. The crowd was retiring as fast as its numbers would permit, when some of the municipal guard rode through the ranks of the dragoons and set themselves, with ill-judged roughness, to accelerate the operation. The crowd grew angry, and stones began to be thrown at the guard and soldiers.

Growing anxious for the women I had left in the Rue Neuve de Berri, I returned home by side-streets. A crowd had collected on the Champs Élysées about thirty yards from the corner of our street, and was forming a barricade. All were shouting, all gesticulating. Citadines at full speed were driving out of reach of requisition; horses were going off disencumbered of their vehicles; the driver of a remise was seated astride his animal, the long flaps of his driving-coat covering it from neck to tail; a noble elm was being hewn down by hatchets and even common knives. An omnibus, the remise, a few barrels and dining-tables, a dozen yards of pave torn up by eager hands, a sentry-box, some benches and the tree, formed the barricade. Gamins and blouses worked at it. The respectables looked on and did not trouble the workers. Suddenly there was a general stampede among them. A squadron of about fifty dragoons charged up the Champs Élysées. One old peasant-woman in a scanty yellow-and-black skirt, which she twitched above her knees, led the retreat. But soon they stopped and turned again, while the dragoons rode slowly back, breathing their horses. Nobody was angry, for nobody had been hurt, but they were frightened enough.

At this moment, stealing from a porte-cochère where she had taken refuge during the fright and sauve gui peut, came a figure wrapped in dark drapery. Could it be possible? Hermione Leare! In a moment I was at her side. She was very pale and breathless, and she was glad to take my arm. "What brings you here?" I whispered.

"Our servants have all run away: they think mamma is compromised. Victor, our chasseur, broke open mamma's secretary and took his wages. She is almost beside herself. She wanted to send a letter to the post, and as it is steamer-day I thought papa had better know that thus far nothing has happened to us. There was nobody to take the letter: I said I would put it in the box in the Rue Ponthieu."

"And did you post it?"

"No: I could not get to the Rue Ponthieu. They were firing down the street, and now I dare not."

"Trust it to me, Miss Leare, and promise me to send for me if you have any more such errands. You must never run such risks again."

"I have to be the man of the family," she answered, almost with an apologetic air.

"Do not say that again. I shall come over three times a day while this thing lasts to see if you have any commissions."

She smiled and pressed my hand as she turned into her own porte-cochère. Frightened servants and their friends were in the porter's lodge, who gazed after her with exclamations as she went up the common stair.

The remainder of that day passed with very little fighting. Up to that time it had been a riot apropos of a change of ministry, but in the night the secret societies met and flung aside the previous question.

When we awoke on Wednesday morning, February 23d, we were struck by the strange quiet of the streets. No provisions entered Paris through the barrier, no vehicles nor venders of small wares. The absolute silence, save when "Mourir pour la Patrie" sounded hoarsely in the distance, was as strange as it was unexpected. I had always connected an insurrection with noise. It was rumored that Guizot the Unpopular had been dismissed, and that Count Mole, a man of half measures, had been called to the king's councils. The affair looked to me as if it were going to die out for want of fuel. But I was mistaken: the blouses, who had not had one gun to a hundred the day before, had been all night arming themselves by domiciliary requisitions. The national guard was not believed to be firm.

The night before, an hour after I had parted with Miss Hermione, I had made an attempt to see her and Mrs. Leare, without any success. Not even bribery would induce the concierge to let me in. His orders were peremptory: "Pas un seul, monsieur, personne"—madame received nobody.

Early on Wednesday morning I again presented myself: the ladies were not visible. Later in the day I called again, and was again refused. But several times Amy had seen Hermione at a window, and they had made signs across the street to one another. I began to understand that Mrs. Leare was overwhelmed by the responsibility she had incurred in opening her salon to men whom she now perceived to have been conspirators, and that she was obstinately determined not to compromise herself further by giving admittance to any one.

Our bonne had been able to ascertain from the concierge of the Leare house that madame was hysterical, and could hardly be controlled by mademoiselle.

I was in the streets till five o'clock on Wednesday, when, concluding all was over, I came home, intending to make another effort to see the Leares, and if possible to take Miss Hermione, with Ellen and Lætitia, to view the debris of the two days' fight—to let them get their first glimpse of real war in the Place de la Concorde, where a regiment was littering down its horses for the night, and a peep into the closed gardens of the Tuileries.

When I got up to our rooms I found my sisters at a window overlooking the courtyard of Mrs. Leare's hotel, and they all cried out with one voice, "Mrs. Leare's carriage is just ready to drive away."

I looked. A travelling-equipage stood in the courtyard. On it the concierge was hoisting trunks, and into it was being heaped a promiscuous variety of knick-knackery and wearing apparel. A country postilion—who, but for his dirt, would have looked more like a character in a comedy than a real live, serviceable post-boy—was standing in carpet slippers (having divested himself of his boots of office) harnessing three undersized gray Normandy mares to an elegant travelling-carriage.

Hermione herself, Claribel her little sister, Mrs. Leare and the old colored nurse got quickly in. Mrs. Leare was in tears, with her head muffled in a yard or two of green barège, then the distinctive mark of a travelling American woman. The child's-nurse had long gold ear-drops and a head-dress of red bandanna. There was not a man of any kind with them except the postilion. The concierge opened the gates of the courtyard.

"Stop! stop!" I cried, and rushed down our own staircase and out of our front door.

As I ran past their entrance a woman put a paper into my hand. I had no time to glance at it, for the carriage had already turned into the Rue Ponthieu. For some distance I ran after it, encountering at every step excited groups of people, some of whom seemed to me in search of mischief, while some had apparently come out to gather news. There were no other carriages in the streets, and that alone enabled me to track the one I was in chase of, for everybody I met had noticed which way it had turned. It wound its way most deviously through by-streets to avoid those in which paving-stones had been torn up or barricades been formed, and the postilion made all possible speed, fearing the carriage might be seized and detached from his horses. But the day's work was finished and the disorders of the night were not begun.

Forced at last to slacken my speed and to take breath, I glanced at the paper that I still held in my hand. It contained a few words from Hermione: "Thank you for all the kindness you have tried to show us, dear sir. My mother has heard that all the English in Paris are to be massacred at midnight by the mob, and directs me to give you notice, which is the reason I address this note to you and not to Amy. Mamma is afraid of being mistaken for an Englishwoman. We have secured post-horses and are setting out for Argenteuil, where we shall take the railway. Again, thank you: your kindness will not be forgotten by H. LEARE."

This note reassured me. I no longer endeavored to overtake the carriage, but I pushed my way as fast as possible beyond the nearest barrier. Once outside the wall of Paris, I was in the Banlieu, that zone of rascality whose inhabitants are all suspected by the police and live under the ban. Of course on such a gala-day of lawlessness this hive was all astir. At a village I passed through I tried to hire a conveyance to Argenteuil. I also tried to get some railway information, but nobody could tell me anything and all were ravenous for news. I secured, however, without losing too much time, a seat with a stout young country-man who drove a little country cart with a powerful gray horse, and was going in the direction I wanted to travel.

"What will be the result of this affair?" I said to him when he had got his beast into a steady trot.

He shrugged his shoulders. A French workingman has a far larger vocabulary at his command than the English laborer. "Bon Dieu!" he exclaimed: "who knows what will come of it? A land without a master is no civilized land. We shall fall back into barbarism. What there is certain is, that we shall all be ruined."

At length, to my great relief, we saw a carriage before us; and we drove into the railway-station at the same moment as the Leares.

Before the ladies could alight I was beside the window of their carriage.

"You here, Mr. Farquhar?" cried Hermione. "How good of you! You cannot guess the relief. Help me to get them out, these helpless ones."

We lifted Mrs. Leare on to the platform of the railway, weeping and trembling. The old colored nurse could not speak French, and seemed to think her only duty was to hold the hand of little Claribel and to stand where her young mistress placed her. All looked to Hermione. She carried a canvas bag of five-franc pieces and paid right and left. I tried to interfere, as she was giving the postilion an exorbitant sum.

"No, hush!" she whispered: "we can afford to pay, but in our situation we cannot afford to dispute."

She then deputed me to see after the "baggage," as she called the luggage of the party, and went with her mother into the glass cage that the French call a salle d'attente at a railway-station.

We had come from the seat of war, and every one crowded around us asking for news. I had little to tell, but replied that I believed the affair was nearly over. I did not foresee that two hours later a procession roaring "Mourir pour la Patrie" under the windows of the Hôtel des Affaires Étrangères would be fired into by accident, and that the émeute of February, 1848, would be converted into a revolution.

It was nine o'clock in the evening. The lamps were lighted in the station. The night was cloudy, but far off on the horizon we could see a gleam of radiance, marking the locality of the great city.

After an hour of very anxious waiting, during which Mrs. Leare was beside herself with nervous agitation, the locked doors of our prison were flung open and we were permitted to seat ourselves in a railway-carriage.

Hermione's tender devotion to her mother, the old servant and the child was beautiful to witness. Now that Mrs. Leare was helpless on her daughter's hands, they seemed to have found their natural relations. Hermione said few words to me, but a glance now and then thanked me for being with them. The train started. For about three miles all went on well, although we travelled cautiously, fearing obstructions. Suddenly the speed of our train was checked, and there was a cry of consternation as we rounded a sharp curve. The bridge over the Seine at its third bend was ablaze before us!

All the men upon the train sprang out upon the track as soon as the carriage-doors were opened, and in a few moments we were surrounded by ruffians refusing to let us go on.

"Back the train!" cried the railroad official in charge.

No, they were not willing to let us go back to Paris. Conspirators against the people might be making their escape. They had set fire to the bridge, they said, to prevent the train from passing over. It must remain where it was. If we passengers desired to return to Paris, we must walk there.

"Walk?" I exclaimed: "it is ten miles! Women—delicate ladies—children!"

My remonstrance was drowned in the confusion. Suddenly the party of women under my charge stood at my elbow: Mrs. Leare was leaning on Hermione's arm; Mammy Christine and Claribel cowered close and held her by her drapery.

"Make no remonstrances," she said in a low voice: "let us not excite attention. An Englishman never knows when not to complain: an American accepts his fate more quietly. These people mean to sack the train. We had better get away as soon as possible."

"But how?" I cried.

"I can walk. We must find some means of transporting mamma, Mammy Chris and Clary."

As Hermione said this she turned to an official and questioned him upon the subject. He thought that there was a little cart and horse which might be hired at a neighboring cottage.

"Let us go and see about it, Mr. Farquhar," said Hermione.

"I will."

"No: I put greater trust in my own powers of persuasion.—Mammy dear, take good care of mamma: we shall be back directly."

Her we was very sweet to me, and I shared her mistrust of my French and my diplomacy.

The glare of the burning bridge lighted our steps: the air was full of falling flakes of fire. The cottage was a quarter of a mile off. Hermione refused my arm, but, holding her skirts daintily, stepped bravely at my side. She exhibited no bashfulness, no excitement, no confusion, no fear: she was simply bent on business. We reached the peasant's farmyard. He and his family were outside the house. We like to say a Frenchman has no word for home. But the conclusion that the man of Anglo-Saxon birth deduces from this lack in his vocabulary is false: no man cares more for the domicile that shelters him. Hermione made her request with sweet persuasiveness. I saw at once it would have been refused if I had made it, but to her they made excuses. The old horse, they said, was very old, the old cart was broken.