When midnight approaches, the _cafés_ are shut. The delegates of the Central Committee at the ex-prefecture have the habit of sending patrols of National Guards to hasten and overlook the closing of all public places. But this precaution, like so many others, is useless. There are secret doors which escape the closest investigations. When the shutters are put up, light filters through the interstices of the boards. Go close up to them, apply your eye to one of those lighted crevices, listen to the cannon roaring, the mitrailleuses horribly spitting, the musketry cracking, and then look into the interior of the closed rooms. People are talking, eating, and smoking; waiters go to and fro. There are women too. The men are gay and silly. Champagne bottles are being uncorked. "Ah! ah! it's the fusillade!" Lovers and mistresses are in common here. This orgie has the most telling effect, I tell you, in the midst of the city loaded with maledictions, a few steps from the battle-field where the bayonets are dealing their death thrusts, and the shells are scattering blood. And later, after the laughter and the songs and the drink, they take an open carriage, if the night is fine, and go to the Champs Elysées, and there mount upon the box by the coachman to try and see the fight--if "those people" knew how to die as well as they know how to laugh it would be better for them.
Other _bons viveurs_, more discreet, hide themselves on the first floors of some houses and in some of the clubs. But they are betrayed by the sparkle of the chandeliers which pierces the heavy curtains. If you walk along by the walls you will hear the conversation of the gamesters and the joyous clink of the gold pieces.
Ah! the cowardice of the merry ones! Oh, thrice pardonable anger of those who starve!
At one o'clock this morning, the 5th of April, on my return from one of these nightly excursions through Paris, I was following the Rue du Mont Thabor so as to gain the boulevards, when on crossing the Rue Saint-Honoré I perceived a small number of National Guards ranged along the pavement. The incident was a common one, and I took no notice of it. In the Rue du Mont Thabor not a person was to be seen; all was in silence and solitude. Suddenly a door opened a few steps in front of me; a man came out and hurried away in the direction opposite to that of the church. This departure looked like a flight. I stopped and lent my attention. Soon two National Guards rushed out by the same door, ran, shouting as they went, after the fugitive, who had had but a short start of them, and overtaking him, without difficulty brought him back between them, while the National Guards that I had seen in the Rue Saint-Honoré ran up at the noise. The exclamations and insults of all kinds that were vociferated led me to ascertain that the man they had arrested was the Abbé Deguerry, _curé_ of the Madeleine. He was dragged into the house, the door was shut, and all sank into silence again.