The six hundred singers and the fiddlers now commenced the playing and
singing of a piece of music; and a part of the crew of the "Belle
Poule" skipped into the places that had been kept for them under us, and
listened to the music, chewing tobacco. While the actors and fiddlers
were going on, most of the spirits-of-wine lamps on altars went out.
When we arrived in the open air we passed through the court of the
Invalids, where thousands of people had been assembled, but where the
benches were now quite bare. Then we came on to the terrace before the
place: the old soldiers were firing off the great guns, which made a
dreadful stunning noise, and frightened some of us, who did not care to
pass before the cannon and be knocked down even by the wadding. The guns
were fired in honor of the King, who was going home by a back door. All
the forty thousand people who covered the great stands before the Hotel
had gone away too. The Imperial Barge had been dragged up the river, and
was lying lonely along the Quay, examined by some few shivering people
on the shore.
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