- treaties; egress to the avenues, Rue de Rivoli,
Rue Royale, all severely barred. You rubbed your eyes, and wondered if the city were besieged. Well, not a soul sought to cross the Place de la Concorde, except some curious, inoffensive spectator like myself. So quiet, so still and silent, was everything that it was impossible to account for all these regiments and this look of a besieged city. Visiting a friend who lives near the Pont des Invalides, she informed me that two young English girls had just left her in a state of acute disappointment. "We came to Paris to see the great French Revolution, and there was nothing." That has been the true state of affairs in Paris for the past two or three years. We were constantly sallying forth into the streets, and there never was anything much to be seen. What little there was in the way of civic uproar was centred round the reactionary and anti-semitic beershop Maxeville on the Boulevard. It rarely led to anything but a few arrests of a few hours' duration, and then we quieted down to await with fortitude and patience the next explosion.
The public ball is, if less revolutionary in its consequences, more morally disastrous. The French love dancing; when they dance together in the open or in big kitchens, as the peasants dance, there is nothing for us to do but cheer and envy them. Here we recognise in the dancing of
