The day before, one insurgent had offered me a beautiful old silver-mounted sword for one of my pistols, fire-arms being so much in demand, but I declined the offer.
The day after, I went into a café. There were some students there who had laid their arms on a table. There was a very notorious little lorette, known as Pochardinette, who was so called because she was always half-tipsy. She was even noted in a popular song as—
“La Pochardinette,
Qui ne sait refuser
Ni la ponche a pleine verre,
Ni sa bouohe à baiser.”
Pochardinette picked up a horse-pistol, when its owner cried, “Let that be! That is not the kind of weapon which you are accustomed to manage!” I stared at him with respect, for he had actually translated into French an epigram by Jacopo Sannazar, word for word!
I should here mention that on the 24th there was actually a period of two hours during which France had no Government—that is, none that it knew of. Then there appeared on the walls all at once small placards giving the list of names of the Gouvernement Provisoire. Now, during this period of suspense there appeared at the Hôtel de Ville a mysterious stranger; a small, bustling, active individual, who came in and announced that a new Government had been formed, that he himself had been appointed Minister, that France expected every man to do his duty, and that no one should lose their places who conformed to his orders. “I appoint,” he said, “So-and-so to take command of Vincennes. Here, you—Chose! notify him at once and send orders. I believe that Tel-et-tel had better take Marseilles. Do any of you fellows know of a good governor for Mauritius?” So he governed France for half-an-hour and then disappeared, and nobody ever knew to this day who this stupendous joker was.
A full account of it all appeared some time after, and the cream of the joke was that some of his appointed ones contrived to keep their places. This brief dynasty has not been recorded in any work save this!
It was a droll fact that I had, the year before, at Heidelberg, drawn a picture of myself as an insurgent at a barricade, and written under it, “The Boy of the Barricades.” I had long had a strange presentiment as to this event. I gave the picture to Peter A. Porter, then a student, and owner of a singular piece of property—that is, Niagara Falls, or at least Goat Island and more or less of the American side. Some time after the 24th he showed me this picture in Paris. He himself, I have heard, died fighting bravely in our Civil War. His men were so much attached to him that they made, to recover his body, a special sally, in which twelve of them were killed. He was bon compagnon, very pleasant, and gifted with a very original, quaint humour.
If our ungrateful temporary stepmother, France, did not know it, at least the waiters in the cafés, shopkeepers, and other people in the Latin Quarter were aware that Field and I were among the extremely small and select number of gentlemen who had operated at the barricades for the health of Freedom, and for some time we never entered a restaurant without hearing admiring exclamations from the respectful waiters of “Ces sont les Américains!” or “Les Anglais.” And indeed, to a small degree, I even made a legendary local impression; for a friend of mine who went from Philadelphia to Paris two years later, reported that I was still in the memory of the Quarter as associated with the Revolution and life in general. One incident was indeed of a character which French students would not forget. I had among my many friends, reputable and demi-reputable, a rather remarkable lorette named Maria, whose face was the very replica of that of the Laughing Faun of the Louvre—or, if one can conceive it, of a very pretty “white nigger.” This young lady being either ennuyée or frightened by the roar of musketry—
probably the former—and knowing that I was a Revolutionist and at work, conceived the eccentric idea of hiring a coach, just when the fighting was at the worst, and driving over from the Rue Helder to visit me. Which she actually did. When she came to a barricade, she gave five francs to the champions of liberty, and told them she was bearing important political orders to one of their leaders. Then the warriors would unharness the horses, lift the carriage and beasts somehow over the barricade, re-harness, hurrah, and “Adieu, madame! Vive la liberté!” And so, amid bullets and cheers, and death-stroke, and powder-smoke—hinc et inde mors et luctus—Maria came to my door in a carriage, and found me out with a vengeance—for I was revelling at the time in the royal halls of the Bourbons, or at least drinking wine out of a tin pail in the guard-house, whereby I escaped the expense of a truffled champagne dinner at Magny’s—while the young lady was about fifty francs out of pocket by her little drive, probably the only one taken that day in Paris. But she had a fearfully jolly time of it, and saw the way that guns were fired to perfection. This, too, became one of the published wonders of the day, and a local legend of renown.
Of course all these proceedings put an end to lectures and study for the time. Then Mr. Goodrich, our Consul, as I have before said, organised a deputation of Americans in Paris to go and congratulate the new Gouvernement Provisoire on the new Republic, of which I was one, and we saw all the great men, and Arago made us a speech. Unfortunately all the bankers stopped paying money, and I had to live principally on credit, or sailed rather close to it, until I could write to my father and get a draft on London.