Identifier: descriptiveport00king (find matches)
Title: Descriptive portraiture of Europe in storm and calm; twenty years' experiences and reminiscences of an American journalist, sketches and records of noted events, celebrated persons and places, national and international affairs in France, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Roumania, Turkey-in-Europe, Switzerland and Italy
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: King, Edward, 1848-1896
Subjects:
Publisher: Springfield, Mass., C.A. Nichols
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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was any attempt at a riot. It would be difficult to define thedemeanor of the vast crowd assembledat this gathering. I have seen butone other demonstration like it inFrance, and that was, oddly enough,also at a funeral, — that of M. Thiers,which took place during the greatcounter-revolution of 1877, when people, EUROPE IN STORM AND CALM. 135 laboring under strong excitement, feltconstrained in their own interests andin those of their country to refrainfrom any open expression of discontentwith the government. At this funeralof Victor Noir the sea of upturnedhuman faces, all filled with a profounddiscontent, a lurking ferocity which wasnot yet ready to wake into vigorous of Police clapped his hands and said,• Here are a hundred thousand bayonetsfallen from heaven to help us ! The clever prefect understood thevalue of rain in damping the enthusiasmof mobs as well as did old Petion, Mayorof Paris, who looked out of his windowand said, There will be no revolutionto-day, for it rains.
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UOCHKFOUT AKD THE VVOHKlNa-MKN RIDDEN DOWN. action, but which seemed to prophesyterrible things for the future, was an im-pressive spectacle, which no one whowitnessed it can ever forget. The Im-perial police knew full well upon thatday that a word, a song, a shout,might be sufficient to overturn theEmpire, and a friend who was pres-ent in M. Pietris cabinet, when the im-mense procession of workmen began toreturn from the cemetery, in the midstof a shower of rain, told mo that the Chief But revolution was near at hand, andnever nearer than when, as if moved bysome sudden inspiration, some influenceentirely independent of their volition,these thousands upon thousands of work-men began to sing the Marseillaise witha vigor and a rude energy which werequite startling. This splendid song,which had been so long tabooed, puta curious fire into the blood of manyof the spectators who did not mingle inthe manifestation. The end of the re- 136 EUROPE IN STORM AND CALM. pressive period had come.

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