ABSTRACT
There were strange movements in Paris. Sometimes, before a storm, the leaves of the forest will be full of wide rumours, premonitions; yet, to the onlooker, not a breath accounts for these tremulous agitations. In the early days of May something very similar was taking place in the French capital. M. Ribou, now bearing the Portfolio of the Interior, in place of the disgraced de Tournon, said one day, in an interview with Prince Henri of Navarre: 'Depend upon it, the days of bourgeois rule, monsieur, are nearing their end. The middle-class has had its day. It is the top or the bottom which must now rule; or the top and the bottom together'. M. Ribou's deep, dark eyes looked keenly at the young man's face; his narrow forehead and high nose were wrinkled into a frown of intense meaning.
