This measure provoked no little
dissatisfaction. It was also on September 19, the first day of the siege,
that the last diplomatic courier entered Paris. I well remember the
incident. Whilst I was walking along the Faubourg Saint Honore I suddenly
perceived an open _caleche_, drawn by a pair of horses, bestriding one of
which was a postillion arrayed in the traditional costume--hair a la
Catogan, jacket with scarlet facings, gold-banded hat, huge boots, and all
the other appurtenances which one saw during long years on the stage in
Adolphe Adam's sprightly but "impossible" opera-comique "Le Postillon de
Longjumeau." For an instant, indeed, I felt inclined to hum the famous
refrain, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, qu'il etait beau"--but many National Guards and
others regarded the equipage with great suspicion, particularly as it was
occupied by on individual in semi-military attire. Quite a number of
people decided in their own minds that this personage must be a Prussian
spy, and therefore desired to stop his carriage and march him off to
prison. As a matter of fact, however, he was a British officer, Captain
Johnson, discharging the duties of a Queen's Messenger; and as he
repeatedly flourished a cane in a very menacing manner, and the
door-porter of the British Embassy--a German, I believe--energetically
came to his assistance, he escaped actual molestation, and drove in
triumph into the courtyard of the ambassadorial mansion.
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