Many ludicrous incidents occurred in
connexion with this panic. One night an elderly _bourgeois_, who had
recently married a charming young woman, was suddenly dragged from his bed
by a party of indignant National Guards, and consigned to the watch-house
until daybreak. This had been brought about by his wife's maid placing a
couple of lighted candles in her window as a signal to the wife's lover
that, "master being at home," he was not to come up to the flat that
night. On another occasion a poor old lady, who was patriotically
depriving herself of sleep in order to make lint for the ambulances, was
pounced upon and nearly strangled for exhibiting green and red signals
from her window. It turned out, however, that the signals in question were
merely the reflections of a harmless though charmingly variegated parrot
which was the zealous old dame's sole and faithful companion.
No matter what might be the quarter of Paris in which a presumed signal
was observed, the house whence it emanated was at once invaded by National
Guards, and perfectly innocent people were often carried off and subjected
to ill-treatment. To such proportions did the craze attain that some
papers even proposed that the Government should forbid any kind of light
whatever, after dark, in any room situated above the second floor, unless
the windows of that room were "hermetically sealed"! Most victims of the
mania submitted to the mob's invasion of their homes without raising any
particular protest; but a volunteer artilleryman, who wrote to the
authorities complaining that his rooms had been ransacked in his absence
and his aged mother frightened out of her wits, on the pretext that some
fusees had been fired from his windows, declared that if there should be
any repetition of such an intrusion whilst he was at home he would receive
the invaders bayonet and revolver in hand.
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