Several engagements with the soldiers had already taken place at different points.

I stood on the Boulevard Poissonniere, where I had just taken my luncheon, and was gazing with an artist's eye upon the dramatic scene spread out before me.

Men with bare arms and women panting with excitement were tearing up the pavements or felling trees.

An omnibus had just been upset; the rioters added cabriolets, furniture, and casks to it; everything became means of defence.

The crashing of the trees as they fell, the blows of crowbars on the stones, the confused roaring of thousands of voices, the Marseillaise sung in chorus, and the irregular cannonading which resounded from the direction of the Rue Saint-Denis, all composed a strident, stupefying, tempestuous harmony, beside which Beethoven's Tempest would have seemed like the buzzing of a bee.
"I was listening to the roaring of the people, who were gnawing at their chains before breaking them, when my eyes happened to fall upon a window of a second-floor apartment opposite me.