I dined at a restaurateur's on a beefsteak à l'Anglais and kickshaws, a bottle of tent dashed with brandy, and walked forth to enjoy a cigar on the Boulevards, where several of our bands from the Champs Elysées, and those of the Austrians from Montmartre, were playing divinely for the amusement of the thousands crowding those magnificent promenades, which, as all the world knows, or ought to know, encircle the good city of Paris, and were shaded by many a stately plane and lime tree, that was levelled to form the barricades of the last revolution.
There were the officers of the Allies in all uniforms, the scarlet of Britain, the white of Austria, the blue of Prussia, and the green of Russia, with all the varieties of their different branches of service, horse, foot, artillery, and rifles; Calmucks, Tartars, Scots, Highlanders, and English guardsmen, jostling and mingling among moustachioed students of l'Ecole de Medicine, French priests in their long plain surtouts and white collars, and Parisian dandies in their puckered trousers, short frock coats, and little hats; while the ladies, seated on camp stools, formed each the centre of a circle, in which revolved a little world of wit and chat and laughter; and the vendors of cigars, of bon-bons, hot coffee, and iced lemonade, pushed their way and a brisk trade through the crowd together.
I had tired of all this, and was thinking of my fifteen miles ride back to Ligny, through a rural district to which I was a stranger, though I had my sabre and pistols, and luckily the latter had been loaded by my groom. Nine o'clock was tolling from the steeples of Paris; the crowds on the Boulevards were dispersing; the bands had all played the old Bourbon anthem, 'Vive Henri Quatre!' and with the troops had repaired to their several cantonments. The trumpets of the Austrians had pealed their last night call from Montmartre, and the English drums from the Champs Elysées, and the shrill Scottish pipes from the Tuileries had replied to them. The lighted portfires of the Prussian artillery were beginning to gleam at the barriers. The streets were becoming deserted and still.
Turning down the Rue du Temple, as I have stated, from the Boulevard St. Martin, I endeavoured to make my way to the stables of the hotel where I had left my horse.