"Faith, no," he said; "I have just come from Cléry Hall. My carriage could not pass the Pont-Neuf, which was guarded, so I was obliged to get here by the quays, where the drums are making a devil of a noise. I crossed the Pont Égalité. It is raining in torrents. Mesdames Todi and Mara sang, exquisitely, three or four selections from Gluck and Cimarosa."
"What did I tell you?" asked Benjamin Constant.
"Is it indeed drums that we hear?" asked a voice.
"Yes," replied Garat, "but they are relaxed by the rain, and nothing is more lugubrious than the sound of wet drums."
"Ah! here is Boissy d'Anglas," exclaimed Madame de Staël. "He has probably come from the Convention, unless he has resigned his position as president."
"Yes, baroness," said Boissy d'Anglas, with his melancholy smile, "I have come from the Convention; and I wish I could bring you better news."
"Good!" said Barbé-Marbois, "another Prairial?"
"If that were all," sighed Boissy d'Anglas.
"What is it, then?"
"Unless I am much mistaken, all Paris will be in flames to-morrow. And this time it is indeed civil war. The Section Le Peletier replied to our last summons that 'The Convention has five thousand men, and the Sections sixty thousand; we will give the Conventionals until daybreak to-morrow to vacate the hall of sessions. If it is not done by that time we will drive you out.'"