I was ten years old in 1832. My hair was braided with flowers in the summertime, and the Place Saint-Michel was my world. We lived in modest rooms above my father's shop: Papa, Maman, my little brother, and me.

I didn't understand much that happened the year the barricades rose in a night and fell at dawn. They told me I would learn when I got older. I think I understand less now than ever. But all I knew in those balmy nights at the beginning of June was that something was coming, and it was coming from the Café Musain.

As a child, I was allowed to run and play in the bustling streets with the other children, allowed to get smudges on my cheeks and stains on my dresses without Maman scolding too much, and allowed to mill around from the flower vendors to the sweet shops, but the Musain was always forbidden. Papa said I had no business there, that it was for the grown-ups. Maman simply shook her head whenever the establishment was mentioned, though it could hardly be avoided since we lived so very close. Many a night passed when I would fall asleep to the raucous laughter and drunken singing of the students in the upper floor of the café.

At ten, I couldn't understand how they seemed so angry and so happy all at once. But I heard their shouts in the street, calling for a bright new world, and when the time came, the shouts turned to gunfire, and the gunfire turned to cannons. The cannons turned to silence before too long, and the streets ran red with blood. And after they had all gone, I was there to clean it up. And I will never understand.