42 MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN 



(On Envelope.) 



' M. Lamartine has now by his eloquence con- 

 quered the whole armed crowd of citizens threaten- 

 ing to kill him if he did not immediately proclaim 

 the Republic and red flag. He said he could not 

 yield to the citizens of Paris alone, that the whole 

 country must be consulted, that he chose the tri- 

 colour, for it had followed and accompanied the 

 triumphs of France all over the world, and that the 

 red flag had only been dipped in the blood of the 

 citizens. For sixty hours he has been quieting the 

 people : he is at the head of everything. Don't 

 be prejudiced, Frank, by what you see in the papers. 

 The French have acted nobly, splendidly ; there 

 has been no brutality, plundering, or stealing. . . . 

 I did not like the French before ; but in this respect 

 they are the finest people in the world. I am so 

 glad to have been here.' 



And there one could wish to stop with this 

 apotheosis of liberty and order read with the gener- 

 ous enthusiasm of a boy ; but as the reader knows, 

 it was but the first act of the piece. The letters, 

 vivid as they are, written as they were by a hand 

 trembling with fear and excitement, yet do injustice, 

 in their boyishness of tone, to the profound effect 

 produced. At the sound of these songs and shot 

 of cannon, the boy's mind awoke. He dated his 

 own appreciation of the art of acting from the day 



