The day advanced. The Republican and Communist power augments in its systematized order. Paris swarms with insurgents. Bakers' and gunsmiths' shops are plundered. Barricades are thrown up. A column rushes down the Champs-Elysées, and, having been repulsed at an escalade of the railings of the Chamber of Deputies, retires, shouting the Marseillaise and a chorus from the new opera of the Girondins, "Mourir pour la Patrie." At dusk a deputation of students, at the office of "Le National," presents a petition for the impeachment of the Ministry.
That impeachment had already taken place!
"What news?" shouted a student to a workman, as he hurried along.
"There has been fighting in the Faubourg St. Marceau; half a dozen Municipal Guards have been carried wounded to the hospital of Val-de-Grace and a captain was killed."
"And is it true that the Guard has been disarmed on the Rues Geoffroi and Langevin, and a gunmaker's shop near the Porte St. Martin broken into and rifled?"
"I hadn't heard of that," was the hurried reply. "But I hear this, that the guard-houses in the Champs-Elysées have been taken, and the troops driven off, and that lamps and windows have been torn down."
At that moment another workman rushed along.
"The news!" shouted the student and the first workman.
"The railing of the Church of the Assumption has been torn away by the people to supply arms; two women of the people have been crushed by a charge of the Municipal Guard; the shop of Lepage, the armorer, in the Rue Richelieu, has been entered by means of the pole of an omnibus used as a battering ram; and barricades rise on the Rue St. Honoré."