Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/434

 Fontainebleau—to happen on his vedettes, but we had the road to ourselves, and reached Longjumeau a little before daybreak without having encountered a living creature. Here we knocked up the proprietor of a cabaret, who assured us, between yawns, that we were going to our doom; and after baiting the grey and dosing ourselves with execrable brandy, pushed forward again. As the sky grew pale about us, I had my ears alert for the sound of artillery. But Paris kept silence. We passed Sceaux, and arrived at length at Montrouge and the barrier. It was open—abandoned—not a sentry, not a douanier visible.

"Where will Monsieur be pleased to descend?" my driver enquired, and added with an effort of memory, that he had a wife and two adorable children on a top floor in the Rue du Mont Parnasse, and stabled his mare handy by. I paid, and watched him from the deserted pavement as he drove away. A small child came running from a doorway behind me, and blundered against my legs. I caught him by the collar and demanded what had happened to Paris. "That I do not know," said the child, "but mamma is dressing herself to take me to the Review. Tenez, he pointed, and at the head of the long street I saw advancing the front rank of a blue-coated regiment of Prussians, marching across Paris to take up position on the Orleans road.

That was my answer. Paris had surrendered! And I had entered it from the south just in time, if I wished, to witness the entry of His Majesty the Emperor Alexander from the north. Soon I found myself one of a crowd converging towards the bridges, to scatter northward along the line of His Majesty's progress, from the Barrière de Pontin to the Champs Élysées, where the grand review was to be held. I chose this for my objective, and making my way along the Quays, found myself shortly before ten o'clock