THE PARIS INSURRECTION xxxix 



great alarm, there came so many reports that the insurgents 

 were getting the upper hand. One could tell the state of affairs 

 from the extreme quiet or the sudden hum in the street. When 

 the news was bad, all the houses closed and the people disap- 

 peared ; when better, the doors half opened and you heard the 

 sound of men again. From the upper windows we could see 

 each discharge from the Bastille I mean the smoke rising 

 and also the flames and smoke from the Boulevard la Chapelle. 

 We were four ladies, and only Fleeming by way of a man, and 

 difficulty enough we had to keep him from joining the National 

 Guards his pride and spirit were both fired. You cannot 

 picture to yourself the multitudes of soldiers, guards, and armed 

 men of all sorts we watched -not close to the window, however, 

 for such havoc had been made among them by the firing from 

 the windows, that as the battalions marched by, they cried, 

 " Fermez vos fenetres ! " and it was very painful to watch their 

 looks of anxiety and suspicion as they marched by.' 



'The Revolution,' writes Fleeming to Frank Scott, ' was 

 quite delightful : getting popped at and run at by horses, and 

 giving sous for the wounded into little boxes guarded by the 

 raggedest, picturesquest, delightful lest, sentinels ; but the in- 

 surrection ! ugh, I shudder to think at [sic] it.' He found it 

 1 not a bit of fun sitting boxed up in the house four days 

 almost. ... I was the only gentleman to four ladies, and didn't 

 they keep me in order ! I did not dare to show my face at 

 a window, for fear of catching a stray ball or being forced to 

 enter the National Guard ; [for] they would have it I was a man 

 full-grown, French, and every way fit to fight. And my mamma 

 was as bad as any of them ; she that told me I was a coward 

 last time if I stayed in the hou,se a quarter of an hour ! But I 

 drew, examined the pistols, of which I found lots with caps, 

 powder, and ball, while sometimes murderous intentions of 

 killing a dozen insurgents and dying violently overpowered by 

 numbers. . . .' We may drop this sentence here: under the 

 conduct of its boyish writer, it was to reach no legitimate end. 



Four days of such a discipline had cured the family of Paris ; Flight to 

 the same year Fleeming was to write, in answer apparently to a 



