The spectators, who crowded the sidewalks and the windows, gazed in dismay at all these guns, sabres, and bayonets.
"'The troops were laughing and chatting,' says one witness.

Another witness says: 'The soldiers acted strangely.

Most of them were leaning on their muskets, with the butt-end on the ground, and seemed nearly falling from fatigue, or something else.' One of those old officers who are accustomed to read a soldier's thoughts in his eyes, General L----, said, as he passed Cafe Frascati: 'They are drunk.' "There were now some indications of what was about to happen.
"At one moment, when the crowd was crying to the troops, '_Vive la Republique!_' 'Down with Louis Bonaparte!' one of the officers was heard to say, in a low voice: 'There's going to be some pigsticking!' "A battalion of infantry debouches from Rue Richelieu.

Before the Cafe Cardinal it is greeted by a unanimous cry of '_Vive la Republique!_' A writer, the editor of a Conservative paper, who happens to be on the spot, adds: '_Down with Soulouque!_' The staff officer in command of the detachment aims a blow at him with his sabre, which, being dodged by the journalist, cuts in two one of the small trees on the boulevard.
"As the 1st Regiment of Lancers, commanded by Colonel Rochefort, reached a point abreast of Rue Taitbout, a numerous crowd covered the pavement of the boulevard.

They were residents of the quarter, tradesmen, artists, journalists, and among them several young mothers leading their children by the hand.