the "Marseillaise." The carriage of Madame Marie Sasse, the prima
donna, who was on her way to a rehearsal at the Grand Opera House,
was stopped, and she was requested to sing the "Marseillaise."
She stood up on the seat of her carriage and complied at once.
"There was profound silence," wrote a gentleman who was in the
crowd, "when she gave the first notes of the 'Marseillaise;' but
all Paris seemed to take up the chorus after each stanza. There was
uproarious applause. The last verse was even more moving than when
Faure had sung it, on account of the novelty of the surroundings
and the spontaneous feeling of the people. There were real tears
in the singer's eyes, and her voice trembled with genuine emotion
as she came to the thrilling appeal to _Liberté_."

At the same moment Capoul also was singing the "Marseillaise" in
another street, and in the Rue Richelieu the mob, having stopped a
beer cart and borrowed some glasses from a restaurant, were drinking
healths to the army and the emperor.

"All this time," says the American, who mingled in the crowd and
shouted with the rest in his excitement, "it never occurred to me
to doubt the accuracy of the news that had so stirred up Paris;
for the newspapers on the preceding days had prepared us to expect
something of the kind. All at once, upon the Boulevard, I was aware
of a violent altercation going on between a respectable-looking man
and a number of infuriated bystanders. He seemed to be insisting
that the whole story of the victory was untrue, and that despatches
had been received announcing heavy disasters. I saw that unlucky
citizen hustled about, and finally collared and led off by a policeman,
the people pursuing him with cries of 'Prussian!' But some time
later in the day some persons in a cab drove down the Boulevards