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barricade had opened their fire, and with a deadly precision, too, for several fell at the very first discharge.

      “Back to the houses!” exclaimed Martin, dragging Lady Dorothea along, who, in her eagerness, now forgot all personal danger, and only thought of the contest before her.

      “Get under cover of the troops, – to the rear!” cried the Captain, as he endeavored to bear her away.

      “Back – back – beneath the archway!” cried Kate, as, throwing her arms around Lady Dorothea, she lifted her fairly from the ground, and carried her within the deep recess of a porte cochère. Scarcely, however, had she deposited her in safety, than she fell tottering backwards and sank to the ground.

      “Good Heavens! she is struck,” exclaimed Martin, bending over her.

      “It is nothing, – a spent shot, and no more,” said Kate, as she showed the bullet which had perforated her dress beneath the arm.

      “A good soldier, by Jove!” said the Captain, gazing with real admiration on the beautiful features before him; the faint smile she wore heightening their loveliness, and contrasting happily with their pallor.

      “There they go! They are up the barricade already; they are over it, – through it!” cried the Captain. “Gallantly done! – gloriously done! No, by Jove! they are falling back; the fire is murderous. See how they bayonet them. The troops must win. They move together; they are like a wall! In vain, in vain; they cannot do it! They are beaten, – they are lost!”

      “Who are lost?” said Kate, in a half-fainting voice.

      “The soldiers. And there ‘s Massingbred on the top of the barricade, in the midst of it all. I see his hat They are driven back – beaten – beaten!”

      “Come in quickly,” cried a voice from behind; and a small portion of the door was opened to admit them. “The soldiers are retiring, and will kill all before them.”

      “Let me aid you; it is my turn now,” said Lady Dorothea, assisting Kate to rise. “Good Heavens! her arm is broken, – it is smashed in two.” And she caught the fainting girl in her arms.

      Gathering around, they bore her within the gate, and had but time to bar and bolt it when the hurried tramp without, and the wild yell of popular triumph, told that the soldiers were retreating, beaten and defeated.

      “And this to save me!” said Lady Dorothea, as she stooped over her. And the scalding tears dropped one by one on Kate’s cheek.

      “Tear this handkerchief, and bind it around my arm,” said Kate, calmly; “the pain is not very great, and there will be no bleeding, the doctors say, from a gun-shot wound.”

      “I’ll be the surgeon,” said the Captain, addressing himself to the task with more of skill than might be expected. “I ‘ve seen many a fellow struck down who did n’t bear it as calmly,” muttered he, as he bent over her. “Am I giving you any pain?”

      “Not in the least; and if I were in torture, that glorious cheer outside would rally me. Hear! – listen! – the soldiers are in full retreat; the people, the noble-hearted people, are the conquerors!”

      “Be calm, and think of yourself,” said Lady Dorothea, mildly, to her; “such excitement may peril your very life.”

      “And it is worth a thousand lives to taste of it,” said she, while her cheek flushed, and her dark eyes gleamed with added lustre.

      “The street is clear now,” said one of the servants to Martin, “and we might reach the Boulevard with ease.”

      “Let us go, then,” said Lady Dorothea. “Let us look to her and think of nothing till she be cared for.”

      CHAPTER IX. SOME CONFESSIONS OF JACK MASSINGBRED

      Upon two several occasions have we committed to Jack Massingbred the task of conducting this truthful history; for the third time do we now purpose to make his correspondence the link between the past and what is to follow. We are not quite sure that the course we thus adopt is free from its share of inconvenience, but we take it to avoid the evils of reiteration inseparable from following out the same events from merely different points of view. There is also another advantage to be gained. Jack is before our readers; we are not. Jack is an acquaintance; we cannot aspire to that honor. Jack’s opinions, right or wrong as they may be, are part and parcel of a character already awaiting their verdict. What he thought and felt, hoped, feared, or wished, are the materials by which he is to be judged; and so we leave his cause in his own hands.

      His letter is addressed to the same correspondent to whom he wrote before. It is written, too, at different intervals, and in different moods of mind. Like the letters of many men who practise concealment with the world at large, it is remarkable for great frankness and sincerity. He throws away his mask with such evident signs of enjoyment that we only wonder if he can ever resume it; but crafty men like to relax into candor, as royalty is said to indulge with pleasure in the chance moments of pretended equality. It is, at all events, a novel sensation; and even that much, in this routine life of ours, is something!

      He writes from Spa, and after some replies to matters with which we have no concern, proceeds thus: —

      “Of the Revolution, then, and the Three Glorious Days as they are called, I can tell you next to nothing, and for this simple reason, that I was there fighting, shouting, throwing up barricades, singing the ‘Marseillaise,’ smashing furniture, and shooting my ‘Swiss,’ like the rest. As to who beat the troops, forced the Tuileries, and drove Marmont back, you must consult the newspapers. Personal adventures I could give you to satiety, hairbreadth ‘scapes and acts of heroism by the dozen; but these narratives are never new, and always tiresome. The serious reflectiveness sounds like humbug, and, if one treats them lightly, the flippancy is an offence. Jocular heroism is ever an insult to the reader.

      “You say, ‘Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?’ and I answer, it was all her doing. Yes, Harry, she was there. I was thinking of nothing less in the world than a great ‘blow for freedom,’ as the ‘Globe’ has it. I had troubled my head wonderfully little about the whole affair. Any little interest I took was in the notion that if our ‘natural enemies,’ the French, were to fall to and kill each other, there would be so much the fewer left to fight against us; but as to who was to get the upper hand, or what they were to do when they had it, I gave myself no imaginable concern. I had a vague, shadowy kind of impression that the government was a bad one, but I had a much stronger conviction that the people deserved no better. My leanings – my instincts, if you prefer it – were with the Crown. The mob and its sentiments are always repulsive. Popular enthusiasm is a great ocean, but it is an ocean of dirty water, and you cannot come out clean from the contact; and so I should have wished well to royalty, but for an accident, – a mere trifle in its way, but one quite sufficient, even on historic grounds, to account for a man’s change of opinions. The troops shot my cab-horse, sent a bullet through poor ‘Beverley,’ and seriously damaged a new hat which I wore at the time, accompanying these acts with expressions the reverse of compliment or civility. I was pitched out into the gutter, and, most appropriately you will say, I got up a Radical, a Democrat, a Fourierist, – anything, in short, that shouts ‘Down with Kings, and up with the Sovereign People!’

      “My principles – don’t smile at the word – led me into a stupid altercation with a very pleasant acquaintance, and we parted to meet the next morning in hostility, – at least, such was our understanding; but by the time that our difference should have been settled, I was carried away on a stretcher to the Hôtel Dieu, wounded, and he was flung, a corpse, into the Seine. I intended to have been a most accurate narrator of events, journalizing for you, hour by hour, with all the stirring excitement of the present tense, but I cannot; the crash and the hubbub are still in my brain, and the infernal chaos of the streets is yet over me. Not to speak of my wound, – a very ugly sabre-cut in the neck, – severing I don’t know what amount of nerves, arteries, and such-like ‘small deer,’ every one of which, however, has its own peculiar perils in the shape of aneurisms, tetanus, and so forth, in case I am not a miracle of patience, calmness,

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