All this while the Empress sat quiet in the Tuileries,
but the instant the Dicheance was decreed, Pietri, the Corsican Prefect of Police, warned her hurriedly that she was in danger, and fled from Paris. The Empress, who is brave, at first refused to fly, but in a few minutes the shouts of a mob advancing to the attack overcame her resolution. She shook hands with her ladies, and, under cover of a thick veil, absolutely alone descended into the street, hailed a cab, drove to the North-East Railway Station, took a ticket for Belgium, and reached the frontier in safety. She remains in Belgium at present, the guest of a friend ; her son is at Hastings ; Prince Jerome at Florence ; Pierre Bonaparte, who killedlrictor Noir, at Namur ; and the principal Bonapartists in Belgium and England. The entire Court, its ministers, its great ladies, and its police agents, was scattered by the Decheance as by a shell. Not one stroke vas struck for the Empire, not one tear shed, except of joy, at its extinction ; and its epitaph was the sentence uttered by an old officer of the National Guard, " One breathes better."
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