M. Sibour, a Republican priest appointed Archbishop of Paris by General

Cavaignac, was the true chief of the Church dreamed of by the liberal

Catholicism of Arnauld de l'Ariége. On behalf of the Archbishop, Arnauld

de l'Ariége represented in the Assembly that Catholicism which M. de

Montalembert perverted. The democratic Representative and the Republic

Archbishop had at times frequent conferences, in which acted as

intermediatory the Abbé Maret, an intelligent priest, a friend of the

people and of progress, Vicar-General of Paris, who has since been Bishop

_in partibus_ of Surat. Some days previously Arnauld had seen the

Archbishop, and had received his complaints of the encroachment of the

Clerical party upon the episcopal authority, and he even proposed shortly

to interpellate the Ministry on this subject and to take the question

into the Tribune.

Arnauld added to the workman's letter a letter of introduction, signed

by himself, and enclosed the two letters in the same envelope.

But here the same question arose.

How was the letter to be delivered?

Arnauld, for still weightier reasons than those of the workman, could

not take it himself.

And time pressed!

His wife saw his difficulty and quietly said,--

"I will take charge of it."

Madame Arnauld de l'Ariége, handsome and quite young, married scarcely

two years, was the daughter of the Republican ex-Constituent Guichard,

worthy daughter of such a father, and worthy wife of such a husband.

They were fighting in Paris; it was necessary to face the dangers of the

streets, to pass among musket-balls, to risk her life.

Arnauld de l'Ariége hesitated.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I will take this letter."

"You yourself?"

"I myself."

"But there is danger."

She raised her eyes, and answered,--

"Did I make that objection to you when you left me the day before

yesterday?"

He kissed her with tears in his eyes, and answered, "Go."

But the police of the _coup d'état_ were suspicious, many women were

searched while going through the streets; this letter might be found on

Madame Arnauld. Where could this letter be hidden?

"I will take my baby with me," said Madame Arnauld.

She undid the linen of her little girl, hid the letter there, and

refastened the swaddling band.

When this was finished the father kissed his child on the forehead, and

the mother exclaimed laughingly,--

"Oh, the little Red! She is only six months' old, and she is already a

conspirator!"

Madame Arnauld reached the Archbishop's Palace with some difficulty. Her

carriage was obliged to take a long round. Nevertheless she arrived

there. She asked for the Archbishop. A woman with a child in her arms

could not be a very terrible visitor, and she was allowed to enter.

But she lost herself in courtyards and staircases. She was seeking her

way somewhat discouraged, when she met the Abbé Maret. She knew him. She

addressed him. She told him the object of her expedition. The Abbé Maret

read the workman's letter, and was seized with enthusiasm: "This may

save all," said he.

He added, "Follow me, madam, I will introduce you."

The Archbishop of Paris was in the room which adjoins his study. The

Abbé Maret ushered Madame Arnauldé into the study, informed the

Archbishop, and a moment later the Archbishop entered. Besides the Abbé

Maret, the Abbé Deguerry, the Curé of the Madeleine, was with him.

Madame Arnauld handed to M. Sibour the two letters of her husband and

the workman. The Archbishop read them, and remained thoughtful.

"What answer am I to take back to my husband?" asked Madame Arnauld.

"Madame," replied the Archbishop, "it is too late. This should have been

done before the struggle began. Now, it would be only to risk the

shedding of more blood than perhaps has yet been spilled."

The Abbé Deguerry was silent. The Abbé Maret tried respectfully to turn

the mind of his Bishop towards the grand effort unsoiled by the workman.

He spoke eloquently. He laid great stress open this argument, that the

appearance of the Archbishop would bring about a manifestation of the

National Guard, and that a manifestation of the National Guard would

compel the Elysée to draw back.

"No," said the Archbishop, "you hope for the impossible. The Elysée will

not draw back now. You believe that I should stop the bloodshed--not at

all; I should cause it to flow, and that in torrents. The National Guard

has no longer any influence. If the legions appeared, the Elysée could

crush the legions by the regiments. And then, what is an Archbishop in

the presence of the Man of the _coup d'état_? Where is the oath? Where

is the sworn faith? Where is the Respect for Right? A man does not turn

back when he has made three steps in such a crime. No! No! Do not hope.

This man will do all. He has struck the Law in the hand of the

Representatives. He will strike God in mine."

And he dismissed Madame Arnauld with the look of a man overwhelmed with

sorrow.

Let us do the duty of the Historian. Six weeks afterwards, in the Church

of Notre Dame, some one was singing the _Te Deum_ in honor of the

treason of December--thus making God a partner in a crime.

This man was the Archbishop Sibour.

CHAPTER VIII.

MOUNT VALERIEN

Of the two hundred and thirty Representatives prisoners at the barracks

of the Quai d'Orsay fifty-three had been sent to Mount Valérien. They

loaded them in four police vans. Some few remained who were packed in an

omnibus. MM. Benoist d'Azy, Falloux, Piscatory, Vatimesail, were locked

in the wheeled cells, as also Eugène Sue and Esquiros. The worthy M.

Gustave de Beaumont, a great upholder of the cellular system, rode in a

cell vehicle. It is not an undesirable thing, as we have said, that the

legislator should taste of the law.

The Commandant of Mount Valérien appeared under the archway of the fort

to receive the Representative prisoners.

He at first made some show of registering them in the jailer's book.

General Oudinot, under whom he had served, rebuked him severely,--

"Do you know me?"

"Yes, General."

"Well then, let that suffice. Ask no more."

"Yes," said Tamisier. "Ask more and salute. We are more than the Army;

we are France."

The commandant understood. From that moment he was hat in hand before

the generals, and bowed low before the Representatives.

They led them to the barracks of the fort and shut them up promiscuously

in a dormitory, to which they added fresh beds, and which the soldiers

had just quitted. They spent their first night there. The beds touched

each other. The sheets were dirty.

Next morning, owing to a few words which had been heard outside, the

rumor spread amongst them that the fifty-three were to be sorted, and

that the Republicans were to be placed by themselves. Shortly afterwards

the rumor was confirmed. Madame de Luynes gained admission to her

husband, and brought some items of news. It was asserted, amongst other

things, that the Keeper of the Seals of the _coup d'état_, the man who

signed himself Eugène Rouher, "Minister of Justice," had said, "Let them

set the men of the Right at liberty, and send the men of the Left to the

dungeon. If the populace stirs they will answer for everything. As a

guarantee for the submission of the Faubourgs we shall have the head of

the Reds."

We do not believe that M. Rouher uttered these words, in which there is

so much audacity. At that moment M. Rouher did not possess any.

Appointed Minister on the 2d December, he temporized, he exhibited a

vague prudery, he did not venture to install himself in the Place

Vendôme. Was all that was being done quite correct? In certain minds the

doubt of success changes into scruples of conscience. To violate every

law, to perjure oneself, to strangle Right, to assassinate the country,

are all these proceedings wholly honest? While the deed is not

accomplished they hesitate. When the deed has succeeded they throw

themselves upon it. Where there is victory there is no longer treason;

nothing serves like success to cleanse and render acceptable that

unknown thing which is called crime. During the first moments M. Rocher

reserved himself. Later on he has been one of the most violent advisers

of Louis Bonaparte. It is all very simple. His fear beforehand explains

his subsequent zeal.

The truth is, that these threatening words had been spoken not by

Rouher, but by Persigny.

M. de Luynes imparted to his colleagues what was in preparation, and

warned them that they would be asked for their names in order that the

white sheep might be separated from the scarlet goats. A murmur which

seemed to be unanimous arose. These generous manifestations did honor to

the Representatives of the Right.

"No! no! Let us name no one, let us not allow ourselves to be sorted,"

exclaimed M. Gustave de Beaumont.

M. de Vatimesnil added, "We have come in here all together, we ought to

go out all together."

Nevertheless a few moments afterwards Antony Thouret was informed that a

list of names was being secretly prepared, and that the Royalist

Representatives were invited to sign it. They attributed, doubtless

wrongly, this unworthy resolution to the honorable M. de Falloux.

Antony Thouret spoke somewhat warmly in the centre of the group, which

were muttering together in the dormitory.

"Gentlemen," said he, "a list of names is being prepared. This would be

an unworthy action. Yesterday at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement

you said to us, 'There is no longer Left or Right; we are the Assembly.'

You believed in the victory of the People, and you sheltered yourself

behind us Republicans. Today you believe in the victory of the _coup

d'état_, and you would again become Royalists, to deliver us up, us

Democrats! Truly excellent. Very well! Pray do so."

A universal shout arose.

"No! No! No more Right or Left! All are the Assembly. The same lot for

all!"

The list which had been begun was seized and burnt.

"By decision of the Chamber," said M. de Vatimesnil, smiling. A

Legitimist Representative added,--

"Of the Chamber? No, let us say of the Chambered."

A few moments afterwards the Commissary of the fort appeared, and in

polite phrases, which, however, savored somewhat of authority, invited

each of the Representatives of the People to declare his name in order

that each might be allotted to his ultimate destination.

A shout of indignation answered him.

"No one! No one will give his name," said General Oudinot.

Gustave de Beaumont added,--

"We all bear the same name: Representatives of the People."

The Commissary saluted them and went away.

After two hours he came back. He was accompanied this time by the Chief

of the Ushers of the Assembly, a man named Duponceau, a species of

arrogant fellow with a red face and white hair, who on grand days

strutted at the foot of the Tribune with a silvered collar, a chain over

his stomach, and a sword between his legs.

The Commissary said to Duponceau,--"Do your duty."

What the Commissary meant, and what Duponceau understood by this word

_duty_, was that the Usher should denounce the Legislators. Like the

lackey who betrays his masters.

It was done in this manner.

This Duponceau dared to look in the faces of the Representatives by

turn, and he named them one after the other to a policeman, who took

notes of them.

The Sieur Duponceau was sharply castigated while holding this review.

"M. Duponceau," said M. Vatimesnil to him, "I always thought you an

idiot, but I believed you to be an honest man."

The severest rebuke was administered by Antony Thouret. He looked Sieur

Duponceau in the face, and said to him, "You deserve to be named Dupin."

The Usher in truth was worthy of being the President, and the President

was worthy of being the Usher.

The flock having been counted, the classification having been made,

there were found to be thirteen goats: ten Representatives of the Left;

Eugène Sue, Esquires, Antony Thouret, Pascal Duprat, Chanay, Fayolle,

Paulin Durrien, Benoit, Tamisier, Tailard Latérisse, and three members

of the Right, who since the preceding day had suddenly become Red in the

eyes of the _coups d'état_; Oudinot, Piscatory, and Thuriot de la

Rosière.

They confined these separately, and they set at liberty one by one the

forty who remained.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LIGHTNING BEGINS TO FLASH AMONGST THE PEOPLE

The evening wore a threatening aspect.

Groups were formed on the Boulevards. As night advanced they grew larger

and became mobs, which speedily mingled together, and only formed one

crowd. An enormous crowd, reinforced and agitated by tributary currents

from the side-streets, jostling one against another, surging, stormy,

and whence ascended an ominous hum. This hubbub resolved itself into one

word, into one name which issued simultaneously from every mouth, and

which expressed the whole of the situation: "Soulouque!"[12] Throughout

that long line from the Madeleine to the Bastille, the roadway nearly

everywhere, except (was this on purpose?) at the Porte St. Denis and the

Porte St. Martin, was occupied by the soldiers--infantry and cavalry,

ranged in battle-order, the artillery batteries being harnessed; on the

pavements on each side of this motionless and gloomy mass, bristling

with cannon, swords, and bayonets, flowed a torrent of angry people. On

all sides public indignation prevailed. Such was the aspect of the

Boulevards. At the Bastille there was a dead calm.

At the Porte St. Martin the crowd, hemmed together and uneasy, spoke in

low tones. Groups of workmen talked in whispers. The Society of the 10th

December made some efforts there. Men in white blouses, a sort of

uniform which the police assumed during those days, said, "Let us leave

them alone; let the 'Twenty-five francs' settle it amongst themselves!

They deserted us in June, 1848; to-day let them get out of the

difficulty alone! It does not concern us!" Other blouses, blue blouses,

answered them, "We know what we have to do. This is only the beginning,

wait and see."

Others told how the barricades of the Rue Aumaire were being rebuilt,

how a large number of persons had already been killed there, how they

fired without any summons, how the soldiers were drunk, how at various

points in the district there were ambulances already crowded with killed

and wounded. All this was said seriously, without loud speaking, without

gesture, in a confidential tone. From time to time the crowd were silent

and listened, and distant firing was heard.

The groups said, "Now they are beginning to tear down the curtain."

We were holding Permanent Session at Marie's house in the Rue Croix des

Petits Champs. Promises of co-operation poured in upon us from every

side. Several of our colleagues, who had not been able to find us on the

previous day, had joined us, amongst others Emmanuel Arago, gallant son

of an illustrious father; Farconnet and Roussel (de l'Yonne), and some

Parisian celebrities, amongst whom was the young and already well-known

defender of the _Avénement du Peuple_, M. Desmarets.

Two eloquent men, Jules Favre and Alexander Rey, seated at a large table

near the window of the small room, were drawing up a Proclamation to the

National Guard. In the large room Sain, seated in an arm-chair, his feet

on the dog-irons, drying his wet boots before a huge fire, said, with

that calm and courageous smile which he wore in the Tribune, "Things are

looking badly for us, but well for the Republic. Martial law is

proclaimed; it will be carried out with ferocity, above all against us.

We are laid in wait for, followed, tracked, there is little probability

that we shall escape. To-day, to-morrow, perhaps in ten minutes, there

will be a 'miniature massacre' of Representatives. We shall be taken

here or elsewhere, shot down on the spot or killed with bayonet thrusts.

They will parade our corpses, and we must hope that that will at length

raise the people and overthrow Bonaparte. We are dead, but Bonaparte is

lost."

At eight o'clock, as Emile de Girardin had promised, we received from

the printing office of the _Presse_ five hundred copies of the decree of

deposition and of outlawry endorsing the judgment of the High Court, and

with all our signatures attached. It was a placard twice as large as

one's hand, and printed on paper used for proofs. Noël Parfait brought us

the five hundred copies, still damp, between his waistcoat and his shirt.

Thirty Representatives divided the bills amongst them, and we sent them

on the Boulevards to distribute the Decree to the People.

The effect of this Decree falling in the midst of the crowd was

marvellous. Some _cafés_ had remained open, people eagerly snatched the

bills, they pressed round the lighted shop windows, they crowded under

the street lamps. Some mounted on kerbstones or on tables, and read

aloud the Decree.--"That is it! Bravo!" cried the people. "The

signatures!" "The signatures!" they shouted. The signatures were read

out, and at each popular name the crowd applauded. Charamaule, merry and

indignant, wandered through the groups, distributing copies of the

Decree; his great stature, his loud and bold words, the packet of

handbills which he raised, and waved above his head, caused all hands to

be stretched out towards him. "Shout 'Down with Soulouque!'" said he,

"and you shall have some." All this in the presence of the soldiers.

Even a sergeant of the line, noticing Charamaule, stretched out his hand

for one of the bills which Charamaule was distributing. "Sergeant," said

Charamaule to him, "cry, 'Down with Soulouque!'" The sergeant hesitated

for a moment, and answered "No." "Well, then," replied Charamaule,

"Shout, 'Long live Soulouque.'" This time the sergeant did not hesitate,

he raised his sword, and, amid bursts of laughter and of applause, he

resolutely shouted, "Long live Soulouque!"

The reading of the Decree added a gloomy warmth to the popular anger.

They set to work on all sides to tear down the placards of the _coup

d'état_. At the door of the Café des Variétés a young man cried out to

the officers, "You are drunk!" Some workmen on the Boulevard

Bonne-Nouvelle shook their fists at the soldiers and said, "Fire, then,

you cowards, on unarmed men! If we had guns you would throw the butts of

your muskets in the air." Charges of cavalry began to be made in front

of the Café Cardinal.

As there were no troops on the Boulevard St. Martin and the Boulevard du

Temple, the crowd was more compact pact there than elsewhere. All the

shops were shut there; the street lamps alone gave any light. Against

the gloss of the unlighted windows heads might be dimly seen peering

out. Darkness produced silence; this multitude, as we have already said,

was hushed. There was only heard a confused whispering. Suddenly a

light, a noise, an uproar burst forth from the entrance of the Rue St.

Martin. Every eye was turned in that direction; a profound upheaving

agitated the crowd; they rushed forward, they pressed against the

railings of the high pavements which border the cutting between the

theatres of the Porte St. Martin and the Ambigu. A moving mass was seen,

and an approaching light. Voices were singing. This formidable chorus

was recognized,

"Aux armes, Citoyens; formez vos bataillons!"

Lighted torches were coming, it was the "Marseillaise," that other torch

of Revolution and of warfare which was blazing.

The crowd made way for the mob which carried the torches, and which were

singing. The mob reached the St. Martin cutting, and entered it. It was

then seen what this mournful procession meant. The mob was composed of

two distinct groups. The first carried on its shoulders a plank, on which

could be seen stretched an old man with a white beard, stark, the mouth

open, the eyes fixed, and with a hole in his forehead. The swinging

movement of the bearers shook the corpse, and the dead head rose and fell

in a threatening and pathetic manner. One of the men who carried him,

pale, and wounded in the breast, placed his hand to his wound, leant

against the feet of the old man, and at times himself appeared ready to

fall. The other group bore a second litter, on which a young man was

stretched, his countenance pale and his eyes closed, his shirt stained,

open over his breast, displaying his wounds. While bearing the two

litters the groups sang. They sang the "Marseillaise," and at each chorus

they stopped and raised their torches, crying, "To arms!" Some young men

waved drawn swords. The torches shed a lurid light on the pallid

foreheads of the corpses and on the livid faces of the crowd. A shudder

ran through the people. It appeared as though they again saw the terrible

vision of February, 1848.

This gloomy procession came from the Rue Aumaire. About eight o'clock

some thirty workmen gathered together from the neighborhood of the

markets, the same who on the next day raised the barricade of the

Guérin-Boisseau, reached the Rue Aumaire by the Rue de Petit Lion, the

Rue Neuve-Bourg-l'Abbé, and the Carré St. Martin. They came to fight,

but here the combat was at an end. The infantry had withdrawn after

having pulled down the barricades. Two corpses, an old man of seventy

and a young man of five-and-twenty, lay at the corner of the street on

the ground, with uncovered faces, their bodies in a pool of blood, their

heads on the pavement where they had fallen. Both were dressed in

overcoats, and seemed to belong to the middle class. The old man had his

hat by his side; he was a venerable figure with a white beard, white

hair, and a calm expression. A ball had pierced his skull.

The young man's breast was pierced with buck-shot. One was the father,

the other the son. The son, seeing his father fall, had said, "I also

will die." Both were lying side by side.

Opposite the gateway of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers there was

a house in course of building. They fetched two planks from it, they

laid the corpses on the planks, the crowd raised them upon their

shoulders, they brought torches, and they began their march. In the Rue

St. Denis a man in a white blouse barred the way. "Where are you going?"

said he to them. "You will bring about disasters! You are helping the

'Twenty-five francs!'" "Down with the police! Down with the white

blouse!" shouted the crowd. The man slunk away.

The mob swelled on its road; the crowd opened out and repeated the

"Marseillaise" in chorus, but with the exception of a few swords no one

was armed. On the boulevard the emotion was intense. Women clasped their

hands in pity. Workmen were heard to exclaim, "And to think that we have

no arms!"

The procession, after having for some time followed the Boulevards,

re-entered the streets, followed by a deeply-affected and angry

multitude. In this manner it reached the Rue de Gravilliers. Then a

squad of twenty _sergents de ville_ suddenly emerging from a narrow

street rushed with drawn swords upon the men who were carrying the

litters, and overturned the corpses into the mud. A regiment of

Chasseurs came up at the double, and put an end to the conflict with

bayonet thrusts. A hundred and two citizen prisoners were conducted to

the Prefecture. The two corpses received several sword-cuts in the

confusion, and were killed a second time. The brigadier Revial, who

commanded the squad of the _sergents de ville_, received the Cross of

Honor for this deed of arms.

At Marie's we were on the point of being surrounded. We decided to leave

the Rue Croix des Petits Champs.

At the Elysée they commenced to tremble. The ex-Commandant Fleury, one

of the aides-de-camp of the Presidency, was summoned into the little

room where M. Bonaparte had remained throughout the day. M. Bonaparte

conferred a few moments alone with M. Fleury, then the aide-de-camp came

out of the room, mounted his horse, and galloped off in the direction of

Mazas.

After this the men of the _coup d'état_ met together in M. Bonaparte's

room, and held council. Matters were visibly going badly; it was

probable that the battle would end by assuming formidable proportions.

Up to that time they had desired this, now they did not feel sure that

they did not fear it. They pushed forward towards it, but they

mistrusted it. There were alarming symptoms in the steadfastness of the

resistance, and others not less serious in the cowardice of adherents.

Not one of the new Ministers appointed during the morning had taken

possession of his Ministry--a significant timidity on the part of people

ordinarily so prompt to throw themselves upon such things. M. Roulier,

in particular, had disappeared, no one knew where--a sign of tempest.

Putting Louis Bonaparte on one side, the _coup d'état_ continued to rest

solely upon three names, Morny, St. Arnaud, and Maupas. St. Arnaud

answered for Magnan. Morny laughed and said in a whisper, "But does

Magnan answer for St. Arnaud?" These men adopted energetic measures,

they sent for new regiments; an order to the garrisons to march upon

Paris was despatched in the one direction as far as Cherbourg, and on

the other as far as Maubeuge. These criminals, in the main deeply

uneasy, sought to deceive each other. They assumed a cheerful

countenance; all spoke of victory; each in the background arranged for

flight; in secret, and saying nothing, in order not to give the alarm to

his compromised colleagues, so as, in case of failure, to leave the

people some men to devour. For this little school of Machiavellian apes

the hopes of a successful escape lie in the abandonment of their

friends. During their flight they throw their accomplices behind them.

[12] A popular nickname for Louis Bonaparte. Faustin Soulouque was the

negro Emperor of Hayti, who, when President of the Republic, had carried

out a somewhat similar _coup d'état_ in 1848, being subsequently elected

Emperor. He treated the Republicans with great cruelty, putting most of

them to death.

CHAPTER X.

WHAT FLEURY WENT TO DO AT MAZAS

During the same night towards four o'clock the approaches of the

Northern Railway Station were silently invested by two regiments; one

of Chasseurs de Vincennes, the other of _Gendarmerie Mobile_. Numerous

squads of _sergents de ville_ installed themselves in the terminus. The

station-master was ordered to prepare a special train and to have an

engine ready. A certain number of stokers and engineers for night

service were retained. No explanation however was vouchsafed to any

one, and absolute secrecy was maintained. A little before six o'clock a

movement was apparent in the troops. Some _sergents de ville_ came

running up, and a few minutes afterwards a squadron of Lancers emerged

at a sharp trot from the Rue du Nord. In the centre of the squadron and

between the two lines of horse-soldiers could be seen two police-vans

drawn by post-horses, behind each vehicle came a little open barouche,

in which there sat one man. At the head of the Lancers galloped the

aide-de-camp Fleury.

The procession entered the courtyard, then the railway station, and the

gates and doors were reclosed.

The two men in the barouches made themselves known to the Special

Commissary of the station, to whom the aide-de-camp Fleury spoke

privately. This mysterious convoy excited the curiosity of the railway

officials; they questioned the policemen, but these knew nothing. All

that they could tell was that these police-vans contained eight places,

that in each van there were four prisoners, each occupying a cell, and

that the four other cells were filled by four _sergents de ville_

placed between the prisoners so as to prevent any communication between

the cells.

After various consultations between the aide-de-camp of the Elysée and

the men of the Prefect Maupas, the two police-vans were placed on

railway trucks, each having behind it the open barouche like a wheeled

sentry-box, where a police agent acted as sentinel. The engine was

ready, the trucks were attached to the tender, and the train started. It

was still pitch dark.

For a long time the train sped on in the most profound silence.

Meanwhile it was freezing, in the second of the two police-vans, the

_sergents de ville_, cramped and chilled, opened their cells, and in

order to warm and stretch themselves walked up and down the narrow

gangway which runs from end to end of the police-vans. Day had broken,

the four _sergents de ville_ inhaled the outside air and gazed at the

passing country through a species of port-hole which borders each side

of the ceiling of the passage. Suddenly a loud voice issued from one of

the cells which had remained closed, and cried out, "Hey! there! it is

very cold, cannot I relight my cigar here?"

Another voice immediately issued from a second cell, and said, "What! it

is you? Good-morning, Lamoricière!"

"Good-morning, Cavaignac!" replied the first voice.

General Cavaignac and General Lamoricière had just recognized each

other.

A third voice was raised from a third cell. "Ah! you are there,

gentlemen. Good-morning and a pleasant journey."

He who spoke then was General Changarnier.

"Generals?" cried out a fourth voice. "I am one of you!"

The three generals recognized M. Baze. A burst of laughter came from the

four cells simultaneously.

This police-van in truth contained, and was carrying away from Paris,

the Questor Baze, and the Generals Lamoricière, Cavaignac, and

Changarnier. In the other vehicle, which was placed foremost on the

trucks, there were Colonel Charras, Generals Bedeau and Le Flô, and

Count Roger (du Nord).

At midnight these eight Representative prisoners were sleeping in their

cells at Mazas, when they heard a sudden knocking at their doors, and a

voice cried out to them, "Dress, they are coming to fetch you." "Is it to

shoot us?" cried Charras from the other side of the door. They did not

answer him. It is worth remarking that this idea came simultaneously to

all. And in truth, if we can believe what has since transpired through

the quarrels of accomplices, it appears that in the event of a sudden

attack being made by us upon Mazas to deliver them, a fusillade had been

resolved upon, and that St. Arnaud had in his pocket the written order,

signed "Louis Bonaparte."

The prisoners got up. Already on the preceding night a similar notice

had been given to them. They had passed the night on their feet, and at

six o'clock in the morning the jailer said to them, "You can go to bed."

The hours passed by; they ended by thinking it would be the same as the

preceding night, and many of them, hearing five o'clock strike from the

clock tower inside the prison, were going to get back into bed, when the

doors of their cells were opened. All the eight were taken downstairs

one by one into the clerk's office in the Rotunda, and were then ushered

into the police-van without having met or seen each other during the

passage. A man dressed in black, with an impertinent bearing, seated at

a table with pen in hand, stopped them on their way, and asked their

names. "I am no more disposed to tell you my name than I am curious to

learn yours," answered General Lamoricière, and he passed outside.

The aide-de-camp Fleury, concealing his uniform under his hooded cloak,

stationed himself in the clerk's office. He was charged, to use his own

words, to "embark" them, and to go and report their "embarkation" at the

Elysée. The aide-de-camp Fleury had passed nearly the whole of his

military career in Africa in General Lamoricière's division; and it was

General Lamoricière who in 1848, then being Minister of War, had

promoted him to the rank of major. While passing through the clerk's

office, General Lamoricière looked fixedly at him.

When they entered the police-vans the generals were smoking cigars. They

took them from them. General Lamoricière had kept his. A voice from

outside cried three separate times, "Stop his smoking!" A _sergent de

ville_ who was standing by the door of the cell hesitated for

some time, but however ended by saying to the general, "Throw away your

cigar."

Thence later on ensued the exclamation which caused General Cavaignac to

recognize General Lamoricière. The vehicles having been loaded they set

off.

They did not know either with whom they were or where they were going.

Each observed for himself in his box the turnings of the streets, and

tried to speculate. Some believed that they were being taken to the

Northern Railway Station; others thought to the Havre Railway Station.

They heard the trot of the escort on the paving-stones.

On the railway the discomfort of the cells greatly increased. General

Lamoricière, encumbered with a parcel and a cloak, was still more jammed

in than the others. He could not move, the cold seized him, and he ended

by the exclamation which put all four of them in communication with each

other.

On hearing the names of the prisoners their keepers, who up to that time

had been rough, became respectful. "I say there," said General

Changarnier, "open our cells, and let us walk up and down the passage

like yourselves." "General," said a _sergent de ville_, "we are forbidden

to do so. The Commissary of Police is behind the carriage in a barouche,

whence he sees everything that is taking place here." Nevertheless, a

few moments afterwards, the keepers, under pretext of cold, pulled up

the ground-glass window which closed the vehicle on the side of the

Commissary, and having thus "blocked the police," as one of them

remarked, they opened the cells of the prisoners.

It was with great delight that the four Representatives met again and

shook hands. Each of these three generals at this demonstrative moment

maintained the character of his temperament. Lamoricière, impetuous and

witty, throwing himself with all his military energy upon "the Bonaparte;"

Cavaignac, calm and cold; Changarnier, silent and looking out through

the port-hole at the landscape. The _sergents de ville_ ventured to put

in a word here and there. One of them related to the prisoners that the

ex-Prefect Carlier had spent the night of the First and Second at the

Prefecture of Police. "As for me," said he, "I left the Prefecture at

midnight, but I saw him up to that hour, and I can affirm that at

midnight he was there still."

They reached Creil, and then Noyon. At Noyon they gave them some

breakfast, without letting them get out, a hurried morsel and a glass of

wine. The Commissaries of Police did not open their lips to them. Then

the carriages were reclosed, and they felt they were being taken off the

trucks and being replaced on the wheels. Post horses arrived, and the

vehicles set out, but slowly; they were now escorted by a company of

infantry _Gendarmerie Mobile_.

When they left Noyon they had been ten hours in the police-van. Meanwhile

the infantry halted. They asked permission to get out for a moment "We

consent," said one of the Commissaries of the Police, "but only for a

minute, and on condition that you will give your word of honor not to

escape." "We will give our word of honor," replied the prisoners.

"Gentlemen," continued the Commissary, "give it to me only for one

minute, the time to drink a glass of water." "No," said General

Lamoricière, "but the time to do the contrary," and he added, "To Louis

Bonaparte's health." They allowed them to get out, one by one, and they

were, able to inhale for a moment the fresh air in the open country by

the side of the road.

Then the convoy resumed its march.

As the day waned they saw through their port-hole a mass of high walls,

somewhat overtopped by a great round tower. A moment afterwards the

carriages entered beneath a low archway, and then stopped in the centre

of a long courtyard, steeply embanked, surrounded by high walls, and

commanded by two buildings, of which one had the appearance of a

barrack, and the other, with bars at all the windows, had the appearance

of a prison. The doors of the carriages were opened. An officer who wore

a captain's epaulets was standing by the steps. General Changarnier came

down first. "Where are we?" said he. The officer answered, "You are at

Ham."

This officer was the Commandant of the Fort. He had been appointed to

this post by General Cavaignac.

The journey from Noyon to Ham had lasted three hours and a half. They

had spent thirteen hours in the police van, of which ten were on the

railway.

They led them separately into the

prison, each to the room that was allotted to him. However, General

Lamoricière having been taken by mistake into Cavaignac's room, the two

generals could again exchange a shake of the hand. General Lamoricière

wished to write to his wife; the only letter which the Commissaries of

Police consented to take charge of was a note containing this line: "I

am well."

The principal building of the prison of Ham is composed of a story above

the ground floor. The ground floor is traversed by a dark and low

archway, which leads from the principal courtyard into a back yard, and

contains three rooms separated by a passage; the first floor contains

five rooms. One of the three rooms on the ground floor is only a little

ante-room, almost uninhabitable; there they lodged M. Baze. In the

remaining lower chambers they installed General Lamoricière and General

Changarnier. The five other prisoners were distributed in the five rooms

of the first floor.

The room allotted to General Lamoricière had been occupied in the time

of the captivity of the Ministers of Charles X. by the ex-Minister of

Marine, M. d'Haussez. It was a low, damp room, long uninhabited, and

which had served as a chapel, adjoining the dreary archway which led

from one courtyard to the other, floored with great planks slimy and

mouldy, to which the foot adhered, papered with a gray paper which had

turned green, and which hung in rags, exuding saltpetre from the floor

to the ceiling, lighted by two barred windows looking on to the

courtyard, which had always to be left open on account of the smoky

chimney. At the bottom of the room was the bed, and between the windows

a table and two straw-bottomed chairs. The damp ran down the walls. When

General Lamoricière left this room he carried away rheumatism with him;

M. de Haussez went out crippled.

When the eight prisoners had entered their rooms, the doors were shut

upon them; they heard the bolts shot from outside, and they were told:

"You are in close confinement."

General Cavaignac occupied on the first floor the former room of M. Louis

Bonaparte, the best in the prison. The first thing which struck the eye

of the General was an inscription traced on the well, and stating the day

when Louis Bonaparte had entered this fortress, and the day when he had

left it, as is well known, disguised as a mason, and with a plank on his

shoulder. Moreover, the choice of this building was an attention on the

part of M. Louis Bonaparte, who having in 1848 taken the place of General

Cavaignac in power; wished that in 1851 General Cavaignac should take his

place in prison.

"Turn and turn about!" Morny had said, smiling.

The prisoners were guarded by the 48th of the Line, who formed the

garrison at Ham. The old Bastilles are quite impartial. They obey those

who make _coups d'état_ until the day when they clutch them. What do

these words matter to them, Equity, Truth, Conscience, which moreover in

certain circles do not move men any more than stones? They are the cold

and gloomy servants of the just and of the unjust. They take whatever is

given them. All is good to them. Are they guilty? Good! Are they

innocent? Excellent! This man is the organizer of an ambush. To prison!

This man is the victim of an ambush! Enter him in the prison register!

In the same room. To the dungeon with all the vanquished!

These hideous Bastilles resemble that old human justice which possessed

precisely as much conscience as they have, which condemned Socrates and

Jesus, and which also takes and leaves, seizes and releases, absolves

and condemns, liberates and incarcerates, opens and shuts, at the will

of whatever hand manipulates the bolt from outside.

CHAPTER XI.

THE END OF THE SECOND DAY

We left Marie's house just in time. The regiment charged to track us and

to arrest us was approaching. We heard the measured steps of soldiers in

the gloom. The streets were dark. We dispersed. I will not speak of a

refuge which was refused to us.

Less than ten minutes after our departure M. Marie's house was invested.

A swarm of guns and swords poured in, and overran it from cellar to

attic. "Everywhere! everywhere!" cried the chiefs. The soldiers sought

us with considerable energy. Without taking the trouble to lean down and

look, they ransacked under the beds with bayonet thrusts. Sometimes they

had difficulty in withdrawing the bayonets which they had driven into the

wall. Unfortunately for this zeal, we were not there.

This zeal came frown higher sources. The poor soldiers obeyed. "Kill

the Representatives," such were their instructions. It was at that

moment when Morny sent this despatch to Maupas: "If you take Victor

Hugo, do what you like with him." These were their politest phrases.

Later on the _coup d'état_ in its decree of banishment, called us

"those individuals," which caused Schoelcher to say these haughty

words: "These people do not even know how to exile politely."

Dr. Véron who publishes in his "Mémoires" the Morny-Maupas despatch,

adds: "M. du Maupas sent to look for Victor Hugo at the house of his

brother-in-law, M. Victor Foucher, Councillor to the Court of Cassation.

He did not find him."

An old friend, a man of heart and of talent, M. Henry d'E----, had

offered me a refuge in rooms which he occupied in the Rue Richelieu;

these rooms adjoining the Théâtre Français, were on the first floor of a

house which, like M. Grévy's residence, had an exit into the Rue

Fontaine Molière.

I went there. M. Henry d'E---- being from home, his porter was awaiting

me, and handed me the key.

A candle lighted the room which I entered. There was a table near the

fire, a blotting-book, and some paper. It was past midnight, and I was

somewhat tired; but before going to bed, foreseeing that if I should

survive this adventure I should write its history, I resolved immediately

to note down some details of the state of affairs in Paris at the end of

this day, the second of the _coup d'état_. I wrote this page, which I

reproduce here, because it is a life-like portrayal--a sort of direct

photograph:--

"Louis Bonaparte has invented something which he calls a 'Consultative

Committee,' and which he commissions to draw up the postscript of his

crimes.

"Léon Foucher refuses to be in it; Montalember hesitates; Baroche

accepts.

"Falloux despises Dupin.

"The first shots were fired at the Record Office. In the Markets in the

Rue Rambuteau, in the Rue Beaubourg I heard firing.

"Fleury, the aide-de-camp, ventured to pass down the Rue Montmartre. A

musket ball pierced his képi. He galloped quickly off. At one o'clock

the regiments were summoned to vote on the _coup d'état_. All gave their

adhesion. The students of law and medicine assembled together at the

Ecole de Droit to protest. The Municipal Guards dispersed them. There

were a great many arrests. This evening, patrols are everywhere.

Sometimes an entire regiment forms a patrol.

"Representative Hespel, who is six feet high, was not able to find a

cell long enough for him at Mazas, and he has been obliged to remain in

the porter's lodge, where he is carefully watched.

"Mesdames Odilon Barrot and de Tocqueville do not know where their

husbands are. They go from Mazas to Mont Valérien. The jailers are dumb.

It is the 19th Light Infantry which attacked the barricade when Baudin

was killed. Fifty men of the _Gendarmerie Mobile_ have carried at the

double the barricade of the Oratoire in the Rue St. Honoré. Moreover, the

conflict reveals itself. They sound the tocsin at the Chapelle Bréa. One

barricade overturned sets twenty barricades on their feet. There is the

barricade of the Schools in the Rue St. André des Arts, the barricade of

the Rue du Temple, the barricade of the Carrefour Phélippeaux defended by

twenty young men who have all been killed; they are reconstructing it;

the barricade of the Rue de Bretagne, which at this moment Courtigis is

bombarding. There is the barricade of the Invalides, the barricade of the

Barrière des Martyres, the barricade of the Chapelle St. Denis. The

councils of war are sitting in permanence, and order all prisoners to be

shot. The 30th of the Line have shot a woman. Oil upon fire.

"The colonel of the 49th of the Line has resigned. Louis Bonaparte has

appointed in his place Lieutenant Colonel Négrier. M. Brun, Officer of

the Police of the Assembly, was arrested at the same time as the

Questors.

"It is said that fifty members of the majority have signed a protest at

M. Odilon Barrot's house.

"This evening there is an increasing uneasiness at the Elysée.

Incendiarism is feared. Two battalions of engineer-sappers have

reinforced the Fire Brigade. Maupas has placed guards over the

gasometers.

"Here are the military talons by which Paris has been grasped:--Bivouacs

at all the strategical points. At the Pont Neuf and the Quai aux Fleurs,

the Municipal Guards; at the Place de la Bastille twelve pieces of

cannon, three mortars, lighted matches; at the corner of the Faubourg the

six-storied houses are occupied by soldiers from top to bottom; the

Marulaz brigade at the Hôtel de Ville; the Sauboul brigade at the

Panthéon; the Courtigis brigade at the Faubourg St. Antoine; the Renaud

division at the Faubourg St. Marceau. At the Legislative Palace the

Chasseurs de Vincennes, and a battalion of the 15th Light Infantry; in

the Champs Elysées infantry and cavalry; in the Avenue Marigny artillery.

Inside the circus is an entire regiment; it has bivouacked there all

night. A squadron of the Municipal Guard is bivouacking in the Place

Dauphine. A bivouac in the Council of State. A bivouac in the courtyard

of the Tuileries. In addition, the garrisons of St. Germain and of

Courbevoie. Two colonels killed, Loubeau, of the 75th, and Quilio. On all

sides hospital attendants are passing, bearing litters. Ambulances are

everywhere; in the Bazar de l'Industry (Boulevard Poissionière); in the

Salle St. Jean at the Hôtel de Ville; in the Rue du Petit Carreau. In

this gloomy battle nine brigades are engaged. All have a battery of

artillery; a squadron of cavalry maintains the communications between the

brigades; forty thousand men are taking part in the struggle; with a

reserve of sixty thousand men; a hundred thousand soldiers upon Paris.

Such is the Army of the Crime. The Reibell brigade, the first and second

Lancers, protect the Elysée. The Ministers are all sleeping at the

Ministry of the Interior, close by Morny. Morny watches, Magnan commands.

To-morrow will be a terrible day."

This page written, I went to bed, and fell asleep.

THE THIRD DAY--THE MASSACRE.

CHAPTER I.

THOSE WHO SLEEP AND HE WHO DOES NOT SLEEP

During this night of the 3d and 4th of December, while we who were

overcome with fatigue and betrothed to calamity slept an honest slumber,

not an eye was closed at the Elysée. An infamous sleeplessness reigned

there. Towards two o'clock in the morning the Comte Roguet, after Morny

the most intimate of the confidants of the Elysée, an ex-peer of France

and a lieutenant-general, came out of Louis Bonaparte's private room;

Roguet was accompanied by Saint-Arnaud. Saint-Arnaud, it may be

remembered, was at that time Minister of War.

Two colonels were waiting in the little ante-room.

Saint-Arnaud was a general who had been a supernumerary at the Ambigu

Theatre. He had made his first appearance as a comedian in the suburbs.

A tragedian later on. He may be described as follows:--tall, bony, thin,

angular, with gray moustaches, lank air, a mean countenance. He was a

cut-throat, and badly educated. Morny laughed at him for his pronunciation

of the "Sovereign People." "He pronounces the word no better than he

understands the thing," said he. The Elysée, which prides itself upon its

refinement, only half-accepted Saint-Arnaud. His bloody side had caused

his vulgar side to be condoned. Saint-Arnaud was brave, violent, and yet

timid; he had the audacity of a gold-laced veteran and the awkwardness of

a man who had formerly been "down upon his luck." We saw him one day in

the tribune, pale, stammering, but daring. He had a long bony face, and

a distrust-inspiring jaw. His theatrical name was Florivan. He was a

strolling player transformed into a trooper. He died Marshal of France.

An ill-omened figure.

The two colonels who awaited Saint-Arnaud in the anteroom were two

business-like men, both leaders of those decisive regiments which at

critical times carry the other regiments with them, according to their

instructions, into glory, as at Austerlitz, or into crime, as on the

Eighteenth Brumaire. These two officers belonged to what Morny called

"the cream of indebted and free-living colonels." We will not mention

their names here; one is dead, the other is still living; he will

recognize himself. Besides, we have caught a glimpse of them in the

first pages of this book.

One, a man of thirty-eight, was cunning, dauntless, ungrateful, three

qualifications for success. The Duc d'Aumale had saved his life in the

Aurés. He was then a young captain. A ball had pierced his body; he fell

into a thicket; the Kabyles rushed up to cut off and carry away his

head, when the Duc d'Aumale arriving with two officers, a soldier, and a

bugler, charged the Kabyles and saved this captain. Having saved him, he

loved him. One was grateful, the other was not. The one who was grateful

was the deliverer. The Duc d'Aumale was pleased with this young captain

for having given him an opportunity for a deed of gallantry. He made

him a major; in 1849 this major became lieutenant-colonel, and commanded

a storming column at the siege of Rome; he then came back to Africa,

where Fleury bought him over at the same time as Saint-Arnaud. Louis

Bonaparte made him colonel in July, 1851, and reckoned upon him. In

November this colonel of Louis Bonaparte wrote to the Duc d'Aumale,

"Nothing need be apprehended from this miserable adventurer." In

December he commanded one of the massacring regiments. Later on, in the

Dobrudscha, an ill-used horse turned upon him and bit off his cheek, so

that there was only room on his face for one slap.

The other man was growing gray, and was about forty-eight. He also was

a man of pleasure and of murder. Despicable as a citizen; brave as a

soldier. He was one of the first who had sprung into the breach at

Constantine. Plenty of bravery and plenty of baseness. No chivalry but

that of the green cloth. Louis Bonaparte had made him colonel in 1851.

His debts had been twice paid by two Princes; the first time by the Duc

d'Orléans, the second time by the Duc de Némours.

Such were these colonels.

Saint-Arnaud spoke to them for some time in a low tone.

CHAPTER II.

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMITTEE

As soon as it was daylight we had assembled in the house of our

imprisoned colleague, M. Grévy. We had been installed in his private

room. Michel de Bourges and myself were seated near the fireplace; Jules

Favre and Carnot were writing, the one at a table near the window, the

other at a high desk. The Left had invested us with discretionary

powers. It became more and more impossible at every moment to meet

together again in session. We drew up in its name and remitted to

Hingray, so that he might print it immediately, the following decree,

compiled on the spur of the moment by Jules Favre:--

"FRENCH REPUBLIC.

"_Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_.

"The undersigned Representatives of the People who still remain at

liberty, having met together in an Extraordinary Permanent Session,

considering the arrest of the majority of their colleagues, considering

the urgency of the moment;

"Seeing that the crime of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in violently

abolishing the operations of the Public Powers has reinstated the

Nation in the direct exercise of its sovereignty, and that all which

fetters that sovereignty at the present time should he annulled;

"Seeing that all the prosecutions commenced, all the sentences

pronounced, by what right soever, on account of political crimes or

offences are quashed by the imprescriptible right of the People;

"DECREE:

"ARTICLE I. All prosecutions which have begun, and all sentences which

have been pronounced, for political crimes or offences are annulled as

regards all their civil or criminal effects.

"ARTICLE II. Consequently, all directors of jails or of houses of

detention are enjoined immediately to set at liberty all persons

detained in prison for the reasons above indicated.

"ARTICLE III. All magistrates' officers and officers of the judiciary

police are similarly enjoined, under penalty of treason, to annul all

the prosecutions which have been begun for the same causes.

"ARTICLE IV. The police functionaries and agents are charged with the

execution of the present decree.

"Given at Paris, in Permanent Session, on the 4th December, 1851."

Jules Favre, as he passed me the decree for my signature, said to me,

smiling, "Let us set your sons and your friends at liberty." "Yes," said

I, "four combatants the more on the barricades." The Representative

Duputz, a few hours later, received from our hands a duplicate of the

decree, with the charge to take it himself to the Concièrgerie as soon

as the surprise which we premeditated upon the Prefecture of Police and

the Hôtel de Ville should have succeeded. Unhappily this surprise

failed.

Landrin came in. His duties in Paris in 1848 had enabled him to know the

whole body of the political and municipal police. He warned us that he

had seen suspicious figures roving about the neighborhood. We were in the

Rue Richelieu, almost opposite the Théâtre Français, one of the points

where passers-by are most numerous, and in consequence one of the points

most carefully watched. The goings and comings of the Representatives

who were communicating with the Committee, and who came in and out

unceasingly, would be inevitably noticed, and would bring about a visit

from the Police. The porters and the neighbors already manifested an

evil-boding surprise. We ran, so Landrin declared and assured us, the

greatest danger. "You will be taken and shot," said he to us.

He entreated us to go elsewhere. M. Grévy's brother, consulted by us,

stated that he could not answer for the people of his house.

But what was to be done? Hunted now for two days, we had exhausted the

goodwill of nearly everybody, one refuge had been refused on the

preceding evening, and at this moment no house was offered to us. Since

the night of the 2d we had changed our refuge seventeen times, at times

going from one extremity of Paris to the other. We began to experience

some weariness. Besides, as I have already said, the house where we were

had this signal advantage--a back outlet upon the Rue Fontaine-Molière.

We decided to remain. Only we thought we ought to take precautionary

measures.

Every species of devotion burst forth from the ranks of the Left around

us. A noteworthy member of the Assembly--a man of rare mind and of rare

courage--Durand-Savoyat--who from the preceding evening until the last

day constituted himself our doorkeeper, and even more than this, our

usher and our attendant, himself had placed a bell on our table, and had

said to us, "When you want me, ring, and I will come in." Wherever we

went, there was he. He remained in the ante-chamber, calm, impassive,

silent, with his grave and noble countenance, his buttoned frock coat,

and his broad-brimmed hat, which gave him the appearance of an Anglican

clergyman. He himself opened the entrance door, scanned the faces of

those who came, and kept away the importunate and the useless. Besides,

he was always cheerful, and ready to say unceasingly, "Things are

looking well." We were lost, yet he smiled. Optimism in Despair.

We called him in. Landrin set forth to him his misgivings. We begged

Durand-Savoyat in future to allow no one to remain in the apartments,

not even the Representatives of the People, to take note of all news and

information, and to allow no one to penetrate to us but men who were

indispensable, in short, as far as possible, to send away every one in

order that the goings and comings might cease. Durand-Savoyat nodded his

head, and went back into the ante-chamber, saying, "It shall be done."

He confined himself of his own accord to these two formulas; for us,

"Things are looking well," for himself, "It shall be done." "It shall be

done," a noble manner in which to speak of duty.

Landrin and Durand-Savoyat having left, Michel de Bourges began to

speak.

"The artifice of Louis Bonaparte, imitator of his uncle in this as in

everything," said Michel de Bourges, "had been to throw out in advance

an appeal to the People, a vote to be taken, a plebiscitum, in short, to

create a Government in appearance at the very moment when he overturned

one. In great crises, where everything totters and seems ready to fall,

a People has need to lay hold of something. Failing any other support,

it will take the sovereignty of Louis Bonaparte. Well, it was necessary

that a support should be offered to the people, by us, in the form of

its own sovereignty. The Assembly," continued Michel de Bourges, "was,

as a fact, dead. The Left, the popular stump of this hated Assembly,

might suffice for the situation for a few days. No more. It was

necessary that it should be reinvigorated by the national sovereignty.

It was therefore important that we also should appeal to universal

suffrage, should oppose vote to vote, should raise erect the Sovereign

People before the usurping Prince, and should immediately convoke a new

Assembly." Michel de Bourges proposed a decree.

Michel de Bourges was right. Behind the victory of Louis Bonaparte could

be seen something hateful, but something which was familiar--the Empire;

behind the victory of the Left there was obscurity. We must bring in

daylight behind us. That which causes the greatest uneasiness to

people's imagination is the dictatorship of the Unknown. To convoke a

new Assembly as soon as possible, to restore France at once into the

hands of France, this was to reassure people's minds during the combat,

and to rally them afterwards; this was the true policy.

For some time, while listening to Michel de Bourges and Jules Favre, who

supported him, we fancied we heard, in the next room, a murmur which

resembled the sound of voices. Jules Favre had several times exclaimed,

"Is any one there?"

"It is not possible," was the answer. "We have instructed Durand-Savoyat

to allow no one to remain there." And the discussion continued.

Nevertheless the sound of voices insensibly increased, and ultimately

grew so distinct that it became necessary to see what it meant. Carnot

half opened the door. The room and the ante-chamber adjoining the room

where we were deliberating were filled with Representatives, who were

peaceably conversing.

Surprised, we called in Durand-Savoyat.

"Did you not understand us?" asked Michel de Bourges.

"Yes, certainly," answered Durand-Savoyat.

"This house is perhaps marked," resumed Carnot; "we are in danger of

being taken."

"And killed upon the spot," added Jules Favre, smiling with his calm

smile.

"Exactly so," answered Durand-Savoyat, with a look still quieter than

Jules Favre's smile. "The door of this inner room is shrouded in the

darkness, and is little noticeable. I have detained all the

Representatives who have come in, and have placed them in the larger

room and in the ante-chamber, whichever they have wished. A species of

crowd has thus been formed. If the police and the troops arrive, I shall

say to them, 'Here we are.' They will take us. They will not perceive

the door of the inner room, and they will not reach you. We shall pay

for you. If there is any one to be killed, they will content themselves

with us."

And without imagining that he had just uttered the words of a hero,

Durand-Savoyat went back to the antechamber.

We resumed our deliberation on the subject of a decree. We were

unanimously agreed upon the advantage of an immediate convocation of a

New Assembly. But for what date? Louis Bonaparte had appointed the 20th

of December for his Plebiscitum; we chose the 21st. Then, what should we

call this Assembly? Michel de Bourges strongly advocated the title of

"National Convention," Jules Favre that its name should be "Constituent

Assembly," Carnot proposed the title of "Sovereign Assembly," which,

awakening no remembrances, would leave the field free to all hopes. The

name of "Sovereign Assembly" was adopted.

The decree, the preamble of which Carnot insisted upon writing from my

dictation, was drawn up in these terms. It is one of those which has

been printed and placarded.

"DECREE.

"The crime of Louis Bonaparte imposes great duties upon the

Representatives of the People remaining at liberty.

"Brute force seeks to render the fulfilment of these duties impossible.

"Hunted, wandering from refuge to refuge, assassinated in the streets,

the Republican Representatives deliberate and act, notwithstanding the

infamous police of the _coup d'état_.

"The outrage of Louis Napoleon, in overturning all the Public Powers,

has only left one authority standing,--the supreme authority,--the

authority of the people: Universal Suffrage.

"It is the duty of the Sovereign People to recapture and reconstitute

all the social forces which to-day are dispersed.

"Consequently, the Representatives of the People decree:--

"ARTICLE I.--The People are convoked on the 21st December, 1851, for

the election of a Sovereign Assembly.

"ARTICLE II.--The election will take place by Universal Suffrage,

according to the formalities determined by the decree of the

Provisional Government of March 5, 1848.

"Given at Paris, in Permanent Session, December 4, 1851."

As I finished signing this decree, Durand-Savoyat entered and whispered

to me that a woman had asked for me, and was waiting in the ante-chamber.

I went out to her. It was Madame Charassin. Her husband had disappeared.

The Representative Charassin, a political economist, an agriculturist, a

man of science, was at the same time a man of great courage. We had seen

him on the preceding evening at the most perilous points. Had he been

arrested? Madame Charassin came to ask me if we knew where he was. I was

ignorant. She went to Mazas to make inquiries for him there. A colonel

who simultaneously commanded in the army and in the police, received her,

and said, "I can only permit you to see your husband on one condition."

"What is that?" "You will talk to him about nothing." "What do you mean

Nothing?" "No news, no politics." "Very well." "Give me your word of

honor." And she had answered him, "How is it that you wish me to give you

my word of honor, since I should decline to receive yours?"

I have since seen Charassin in exile.

Madame Charassin had just left me when Théodore Bac arrived. He brought

us the protest of the Council of State.

Here it is:--

"PROTEST OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE.

"The undersigned members of the Council of State, elected by the

Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, having assembled together,

notwithstanding the decree of the 2d of December, at their usual place,

and having found it surrounded by an armed force, which prohibited their

access thereto, protest against the decree which has pronounced the

dissolution of the Council of State, and declare that they only ceased

their functions when hindered by force.

"Paris, this 3d December, 1851.

"Signed: BETHMONT, VIVIEN, BUREAU DE PUZY, ED. CHARTON, CUVIER, DE

RENNEVILLE, HORACE SAY, BOULATIGNIER, GAUTIER DE RUMILLY, DE JOUVENCEL,

DUNOYER, CARTERET, DE FRESNE, BOUCHENAY-LEFER, RIVET, BOUDET, CORMENIN,

PONS DE L'HERAULT."

Let us relate the adventure of the Council of State.

Louis Bonaparte had driven away the Assembly by the Army, and the High

Court of Justice by the Police; he expelled the Council of State by the

porter.

On the morning of the 2d of December, at the very hour at which the

Representatives of the Right had gone from M. Daru's to the Mairie of

the Tenth Arrondissement, the Councillors of State betook themselves to

the Hotel on the Quai d'Orsay. They went in one by one.

The quay was thronged with soldiers. A regiment was bivouacking there

with their arms piled.

The Councillors of State soon numbered about thirty. They set to work to

deliberate. A draft protest was drawn up. At the moment when it was about

to be signed the porter came in, pale and stammering. He declared that he

was executing his orders, and he enjoined them to withdraw.

Upon this several Councillors of State declared that, indignant as they

were, they could not place their signatures beside the Republican

signatures.

A means of obeying the porter.

M. Bethmont, one of the Presidents of the Council of State, offered the

use of his house. He lived in the Rue Saint-Romain. The Republican

members repaired there, and without discussion signed the protocol which

has been given above.

Some members who lived in the more distant quarters had not been able to

come to the meeting. The youngest Councillor of State, a man of firm

heart and of noble mind, M. Edouard Charton, undertook to take the

protest to his absent colleagues.

He did this, not without serious risk, on foot, not having been able to

obtain a carriage, and he was arrested by the soldiery and threatened

with being searched, which would have been highly dangerous. Nevertheless

he succeeded in reaching some of the Councillors of State. Many signed,

Pons de l'Hérault resolutely, Cormenin with a sort of fever, Boudet after

some hesitation. M. Boudet trembled, his family were alarmed, they heard

through the open window the discharge of artillery. Charton, brave and

calm, said to him, "Your friends, Vivien, Rivet, and Stourm have signed."

Boullet signed.

Many refused, one alleging his great age, another the _res angusta domi_,

a third "the fear of doing the work of the Reds." "Say 'fear,' in short,"

replied Charton.

On the following day, December 3d, MM. Vivien and Bethmont took the

protest to Boulay de la Meurthe, Vice-President of the Republic, and

President of the Council of State, who received them in his dressing-gown,

and exclaimed to them, "Be off! Ruin yourselves, if you like, but without

me."

On the morning of the 4th, M. de Cormenin erased his signature, giving

this unprecedented but authentic excuse: "The word _ex_-Councillor of

State does not look well in a book; I am afraid of injuring my

publisher."

Yet another characteristic detail. M. Béhic, on the morning of the 2d,

had arrived while they were drawing up the protest. He had half opened

the door. Near the door was standing M. Gautier de Rumilly, one of the

most justly respected members of the Council of State. M. Béhic had

asked M. Gautier de Rumilly, "What are they doing? It is a crime. What

are we doing?" M. Gautier de Rumilly had answered, "A protest." Upon,

this word M. Béhic had reclosed the door, and had disappeared. He

reappeared later on under the Empire--a Minister.

CHAPTER III.

INSIDE THE ELYSEE

During the morning Dr. Yvan met Dr. Conneau. They were acquainted. They

talked together. Yvan belonged to the Left. Conneau belonged to the

Elysée. Yvan knew through Conneau the details of what had taken place

during the night at the Elysée, which he transmitted to us.

One of these details was the following:--

An inexorable decree had been compiled, and was about to be placarded.

This decree enjoined upon all submission to the _coup d'état_.

Saint-Arnaud, who, as Minister of War, should sign the decree, had drawn

it up. He had reached the last paragraph, which ran thus: "Whoever shall

be detected constructing a barricade, posting a placard of the

ex-Representatives, or reading it, shall be...." here Saint-Arnaud had

paused; Morny had shrugged his shoulders, had snatched the pen from his

hand, and written "_shot_!"

Other matters had been decided, but these were not recorded.

Various pieces of information came in in addition to these.

A National Guard, named Boillay de Dole, had formed one of the Guard at

the Elysée, on the night of the 3d and 4th. The windows of Louis

Bonaparte's private room, which was on the ground floor, were lighted up

throughout the night. In the adjoining room there was a Council of War.

From the sentry-box where he was stationed Boillay saw defined on the

windows black profiles and gesticulating shadows, which were

Magnan, Saint-Arnaud, Persigny, Fleury,--the spectres of the crime.

Korte, the General of the Cuirassiers, had been summoned, as also

Carrelet, who commanded the division which did the hardest work on the

following day, the 4th. From midnight to three o'clock in the morning

Generals and Colonels "did nothing but come and go." Even mere captains

had come there. Towards four o'clock some carriages arrived "with

women." Treason and debauchery went hand in hand. The boudoir in the

palace answered to the brothel in the barracks.

The courtyard was filled with lancers, who held the horses of the

generals who were deliberating.

Two of the women who came that night belong in a certain measure to

History. There are always feminine shadows of this sort in the

background. These women influenced the unhappy generals. Both belonged

to the best circles. The one was the Marquise of ----, she who became

enamored of her husband after having deceived him. She discovered that

her lover was not worth her husband. Such a thing does happen. She was

the daughter of the most whimsical Marshal of France, and of that pretty

Countess of ---- to whom M. de Chateaubriand, after a night of love,

composed this quatrain, which may now be published--all the personages

being dead.

The Dawn peeps in at the window, she paints the sky with red;

And over our loving embraces her rosy rays are shed:

She looks on the slumbering world, love, with eyes that seem divine.

But can she show on her lips, love, a smile as sweet as thine?[13]

The smile of the daughter was as sweet as that of the mother, and more

fatal. The other was Madame K----, a Russian, fair, tall, blonde,

lighthearted, involved in the hidden paths of diplomacy, possessing and

displaying a casket full of love letters from Count Molé somewhat of a

spy, absolutely charming and terrifying.

The precautions which had been taken in case of accident were visible

even from outside. Since the preceding evening there had been seen from

the windows of the neighboring houses two post-chaises in the courtyard

of the Elysée, horsed, ready to start, the postilions in their saddles.

In the stables of the Elysée in the Rue Montaigne there were other

carriages horsed, and horses saddled and bridled.

Louis Bonaparte had not slept. During the night he had given mysterious

orders; thence when morning came there was on this pale face a sort of

appalling serenity.

The Crime grown calm was a disquieting symptom.

During the morning he had almost laughed. Morny had come into his private

room. Louis Bonaparte, having been feverish, had called in Conneau, who

joined in the conversation. People are believed to be trustworthy,

nevertheless they listen.

Morny brought the police reports. Twelve workmen of the National Printing

Office had, during the night of the Second, refused to print the decrees

and the proclamations. They had been immediately arrested. Colonel

Forestier was arrested. They had transferred him to the Fort of Bicêtre,

together with Crocé Spinelli, Genillier, Hippolyte Magen, a talented and

courageous writer, Goudounèche, a schoolmaster, and Polino. This last

name had struck Louis Bonaparte. "Who is this Polino?" Morny had

answered, "An ex-officer of the Shah of Persia's service." And he had

added, "A mixture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza." These prisoners had

been placed in Number Six Casemate. Further questions on the part of

Louis Bonaparte, "What are these casemates?" And Morny had answered,

"Cellars without air or daylight, twenty-four mètres long, eight wide,

five high, dripping walls, damp pavements." Louis Bonaparte had asked,

"Do they give them a truss of straw?" And Morny had said, "Not yet, we

shall see by and by." He had added, "Those who are to be transported are

at Bicêtre, those who are to be shot are at Ivry."

Louis Bonaparte had inquired, "What precautions had been taken?" Morny

gave him full particulars; that guards had been placed in all the

steeples; that all printing-presses had been placed under seal; that

all the drums of the National Guard had been locked up; that there

was therefore no fear either of a proclamation emanating from a

printing-office, or of a call to arms issuing from a Mairie, or of

the tocsin ringing from a steeple.

Louis Bonaparte had asked whether all the batteries contained their full

complements, as each battery should be composed of four pieces and two

mortars. He had expressly ordered that only pieces of eight, and mortars

of sixteen centimètres in diameter should be employed.

"In truth," Morny, who was in the secret, had said, "all this apparatus

will have work to do."

Then Morny had spoken of Mazas, that there were 600 men of the

Republican Guards in the courtyard, all picked men, and who when

attacked would defend themselves to the bitter end; that the soldiers

received the arrested Representatives with shouts of laughter, and that

they had gone so far as to stare Thiers in the face; that the officers

kept the soldiers at a distance, but with discretion and with a "species

of respect;" that three prisoners were kept in solitary confinement,

Greppo, Nadaud, and a member of the Socialist Committee, Arsène Meunier.

This last named occupied No. 32 of the Sixth Division. Adjoining, in No.

30, there was a Representative of the Right, who sobbed and cried

unceasingly. This made Arsène Meunier laugh, and this made Louis

Bonaparte laugh.

Another detail. When the _fiacre_ bringing M. Baze was entering the

courtyard of Mazas, it had struck against the gate, and the lamp of the

_fiacre_ had fallen to the ground and been broken to pieces. The

coachman, dismayed at the damage, bewailed it. "Who will pay for this?"

exclaimed he. One of the police agents, who was in the carriage with the

arrested Questor, had said to the driver, "Don't be uneasy, speak to the

Brigadier. In matters such as this, _where there is a breakage_, it is

the Government which pays."

And Bonaparte had smiled, and muttered under his moustache, "That is

only fair."

Another anecdote from Morny also amused him. This was Cavaignac's anger

on entering his cell at Mazas. There is an aperture at the door of each

cell, called the "spy-hole," through which the prisoners are played the

spy upon unknown to themselves. The jailers had watched Cavaignac. He had

begun by pacing up and down with folded arms, and then the space being

too confined, he had seated himself on the stool in his cell. These

stools are narrow pieces of plank upon three converging legs, which

pierce the seat in the centre, and project beyond the plank, so that one

is uncomfortably seated. Cavaignac had stood up, and with a violent kick

had sent the stool to the other end of the cell. Then, furious and

swearing, he had broken with a blow of his fist the little table of five

inches by twelve, which, with the stool, formed the sole furniture of the

dungeon.

This kick and fisticuff amused Louis Bonaparte.

"And Maupas is as frightened as ever," said Morny. This made Bonaparte

laugh still further.

Morny having given in his report, went away. Louis Bonaparte entered an

adjoining room; a woman awaited him there. It appears that she came to

entreat mercy for some one. Dr. Conneau heard these expressive words:

"Madam, I wink at your loves; do you wink at my hatreds."

[13] The above is a free rendering of the original, which is as follows:--

Des rayons du matin l'horizon se colore,

Le jour vient éclairer notre tendre entretien,

Mais est-il un sourire aux lèvres de l'aurore.

Aussi doux que le tien?

CHAPTER IV.

BONAPARTE'S FAMILIAR SPIRITS

M. Mérimée was vile by nature, he must not be blamed for it.

With regard to M. de Morny it is otherwise, he was more worthy; there was

something of the brigand in him.

M. de Morny was courageous. Brigandage has its sentiments of honor.

M. Mérimée has wrongly given himself out as one of the confederates of

the _coup d'état_. He had, however, nothing to boast of in this.

The truth is that M. Mérimée was in no way a confidant. Louis Bonaparte

made no useless confidences.

Let us add that it is little probable, notwithstanding some slight

evidence to the contrary, that M. Mérimée, at the date of the 2d

December, had any direct relations with Louis Bonaparte. This ensued

later on. At first Mérimée only knew Morny.

Morny and Mérimée were both intimate at the Elysée, but on a different

footing. Morny can be believed, but not Mérimée. Morny was in the great

secrets, Mérimée in the small ones. Commissions of gallantry formed his

vocation.

The familiars of the Elysée were of two kinds, the trustworthy

confederates and the courtiers.

The first of the trustworthy confederates was Morny; the first--or the

last--of the courtiers was Mérimée.

This is what made the fortune of M. Mérimée.

Crimes are only glorious during the first moment; they fade quickly. This

kind of success lacks permanency; it is necessary promptly to supplement

it with something else.

At the Elysée a literary ornament was wanted. A little savor of the

Academy is not out of place in a brigand's cavern. M. Mérimée was

available. It was his destiny to sign himself "the Empress's Jester."

Madame de Montijo presented him to Louis Bonaparte, who accepted him,

and who completed his Court with this insipid but plausible writer.

This Court was a heterogeneous collection; a dinner-wagon of basenesses,

a menagerie of reptiles, a herbal of poisons.

Besides the trustworthy confederates who were for use, and the courtiers

who were for ornament, there were the auxiliaries.

Certain circumstances called for reinforcements; sometimes these were

women, _the Flying Squadron_.

Sometimes men: Saint-Arnaud, Espinasse, Saint-George, Maupas.

Sometimes neither men nor women: the Marquis de C.

The whole troop was noteworthy.

Let us say a few words of it.

There was Vieillard the preceptor, an atheist with a tinge of

Catholicism, a good billiard player.

Vieillard was an anecdotist. He recounted smilingly the following:--

Towards the close of 1807 Queen Hortense, who of her own accord lived

in Paris, wrote to the King Louis that she could not exist any longer

without seeing him, that she could not do without him, and that she was

about to come to the Hague. The King said, "She is with child." He sent

for his minister Van Maanen, showed him the Queen's letter, and added,

"She is coming. Very good. Our two chambers communicate by a door; the

Queen will find it walled up." Louis took his royal mantle in earnest,

for he exclaimed, "A King's mantle shall never serve as coverlet to a

harlot." The minister Van Maanen, terrified, sent word of this to the

Emperor. The Emperor fell into a rage, not against Hortense, but against

Louis. Nevertheless Louis held firm; the door was not walled up, but his

Majesty was; and when the Queen came he turned his back upon her. This

did not prevent Napoleon III. from being born.

A suitable number of salvoes of cannon saluted this birth.

Such was the story which, in the summer of 1840, in the house called La

Terrasse, before witnesses, among whom was Ferdinand B----, Marquis de la

L----, a companion during boyhood of the author of this book, was told by

M. Vieillard, an ironical Bonapartist, an arrant sceptic.

Besides Vieillard there was Vaudrey, whom Louis Bonaparte made a General

at the same time as Espinasse. In case of need a Colonel of Conspiracies

can become a General of Ambuscades.

There was Fialin,[14] the corporal who became a Duke.

There was Fleury, who was destined to the glory of travelling by the side

of the Czar on his buttocks.

There was Lacrosse, a Liberal turned Clerical, one of those Conservatives

who push order as far as the embalming, and preservation as far as the

mummy: later on a senator.

There was Larabit, a friend of Lacrosse, as much a domestic and not less

a senator.

There was Canon Coquereau, the "Abbé of La Belle-Poule." The answer is

known which he made to a princess who asked him, "What is the Elysée?" It

appears that one can say to a princess what one cannot say to a woman.

There was Hippolyte Fortoul, of the climbing genus, of the worth of a

Gustave Planche or of some Philarête Chasles, an ill-tempered writer who

had become Minister of the Marine, which caused Béranger to say, "This

Fortoul knows all the spars, including the 'greased pole.'"

There were some Auvergants there. Two. They hated each other. One had

nicknamed the other "the melancholy tinker."

There was Sainte-Beuve, a distinguished but inferior man, having a

pardonable fondness for ugliness. A great critic like Cousin is a great

philosopher.

There was Troplong, who had had Dupin for Procurator, and whom Dupin had

had for President. Dupin, Troplong; the two side faces of the mask placed

upon the brow of the law.

There was Abbatucci; a conscience which let everything pass by. To-day a

street.

There was the Abbé M----, later on Bishop of Nancy, who emphasized with a

smile the oaths of Louis Bonaparte.

There were the frequenters of a famous box at the Opera, Montg---- and

Sept----, placing at the service of an unscrupulous prince the deep side

of frivolous men.

There was Romieu--the outline of a drunkard behind a Red spectre.

There was Malitourne--not a bad friend, coarse and sincere.

There was Cuch----, whose name caused hesitation amongst the ushers at

the saloon doors.

There was Suin--a man able to furnish excellent counsel for bail actions.

There was Dr. Veron--who had on his cheek what the other men of the

Elysée had in their hearts.

There was Mocquart--once a handsome member of the Dutch Court. Mocquart

possessed romantic recollections. He might by age, and perhaps otherwise,

have been the father of Louis Bonaparte. He was a lawyer. He had shown

himself quick-witted about 1829, at the same time as Romieu. Later on he

had published something, I no longer remember what, which was pompous and

in quarto size, and which he sent to me. It was he who in May, 1847, had

come with Prince de la Moskowa to bring me King Jérome's petition to the

Chamber of Peers. This petition requested the readmittance of the

banished Bonaparte family into France. I supported it; a good action, and

a fault which I would again commit.

There was Billault, a semblance of an orator, rambling with facility, and

making mistakes with authority, a reputed statesman. What constitutes the

statesman is a certain superior mediocrity.

There was Lavalette, completing Morny and Walewski.

There was Bacciochi.

And yet others.

It was at the inspiration of these intimate associates that during his

Presidency Louis Bonaparte, a species of Dutch Machiavelli, went hither

and thither, to the Chamber and elsewhere, to Tours, to Ham, to Dijon,

snuffling, with a sleepy air, speeches full of treason.

The Elysée, wretched as it was, holds a place in the age. The Elysée, has

engendered catastrophes and ridicule.

One cannot pass it over in silence.

The Elysée was the disquieting and dark corner of Paris. In this bad

spot, the denizens were little and formidable. They formed a family

circle--of dwarfs. They had their maxim: to enjoy themselves. They lived

on public death. There they inhaled shame, and they throve on that which

kills others. It was there that was reared up with art, purpose,

industry, and goodwill, the decadence of France. There worked the bought,

fed, and obliging public men;--read prostituted. Even literature was

compounded there as we have shown; Vieillard was a classic of 1830, Morny

created Choufleury, Louis Bonaparte was a candidate for the Academy.

Strange place. Rambouillet's hotel mingled itself with the house of

Bancal. The Elysée has been the laboratory, the counting-house, the

confessional, the alcove, the den of the reign. The Elysée assumed to

govern everything, even the morals--above all the morals. It spread the

paint on the bosom of women at the same time as the color on the faces of

the men. It set the fashion for toilette and for music. It invented the

crinoline and the operetta. At the Elysée a certain ugliness was

considered as elegance; that which makes the countenance noble was there

scoffed at, as was that which makes the soul great; the phrase, "human

face divine" was ridiculed at the Elysée, and it was there that for

twenty years every baseness was brought into fashion--effrontery

included.

History, whatever may be its pride, is condemned to know that the Elysée

existed. The grotesque side does not prevent the tragic side. There is at

the Elysée a room which has seen the second abdication, the abdication

after Waterloo. It is at the Elysée that Napoleon the First ended and

that Napoleon the Third began. It is at the Elysée that Dupin appeared to

the two Napoleons; in 1815 to depose the Great, in 1851 to worship the

Little. At this last epoch this place was perfectly villainous. There no

longer remained one virtue there. At the Court of Tiberius there was

still Thraseas, but round Louis Bonaparte there was nobody. If one sought

Conscience, one found Baroche; if one sought Religion, one found

Montalembert.

[14] Better known afterwards as Persigny.

CHAPTER V.

A WAVERING ALLY

During this terribly historical morning of the 4th of December, a day the

master was closely observed by his satellites, Louis Bonaparte had shut

himself up, but in doing so he betrayed himself. A man who shuts himself

up meditates, and for such men to meditate is to premeditate. What could

be the premeditation of Louis Bonaparte? What was working in his mind.

Questions which all asked themselves, two persons excepted,--Morny, the

man of thought; Saint-Arnaud, the man of action.

Louis Bonaparte claimed, justly, a knowledge of men. He prided himself

upon it, and from a certain point of view he was right. Others have the

power of divination; he had the faculty of scent. It is brute-like, but

trustworthy.

He had assuredly not been mistaken in Maupas. To pick the lock of the Law

he needed a skeleton key. He took Maupas. Nor could any burglar's

implement have answered better in the lock of the Constitution than

Maupas. Neither was he mistaken in Q.B. He saw at once that this serious

man had in him the necessary composite qualities of a rascal. And in

fact, Q.B., after having voted and signed the Deposition at the Mairie of

the Tenth Arrondissement, became one of the three reporters of the Joint

Commissions; and his share in the abominable total recorded by history

amounts to _sixteen hundred and thirty four victims_.

Louis Bonaparte, however, at times judged amiss, especially respecting

Peauger. Peauger, though chosen by him, remained an honest man. Louis

Bonaparte, mistrusting the workmen of the National Printing-Office, and

not without reason, for twelve, as has been seen, were refractory, had

improvised a branch establishment in case of emergency, a sort of State

Sub-Printing-Office, as it were, situated in the Rue de Luxembourg, with

steam and hand presses, and eight workmen. He had given the management of

it to Peauger. When the hour of the Crime arrived, and with it the

necessity of printing the nefarious placards, he sounded Peauger, and

found him rebellious. He then turned to Saint Georges, a more subservient

lackey.

He was less mistaken, but still he was mistaken, in his appreciation of

X.

On the 2d of December, X., an ally thought necessary by Morny, became a

source of anxiety to Louis Bonaparte.

X. was forty-four years of age, loved women, craved promotion, and,

therefore, was not over-scrupulous. He began his career in Africa under

Colonel Combes in the forty-seventh of the line. He showed great bravery

at Constantine; at Zaatcha he extricated Herbillon, and the siege, badly

begun by Herbillon, had been brought to a successful termination by him.

X., who was a little short man, his head sunk in his shoulders, was

intrepid, and admirably understood the handling of a brigade. Bugeaud,

Lamoricière, Cavaignac, and Changarnier were his four stepping-stones to

advancement. At Paris, in 1851, he met Lamoricière, who received him

coldly, and Changarnier, who treated him better. He left Satory

indignant, exclaiming, "_We must finish with this Louis Bonaparte. He is

corrupting the army. These drunken soldiers make one sick at heart. I

shall return to Africa_." In October Changarnier's influence decreased,

and X.'s enthusiasm abated. X. then frequented the Elysée, but without

giving his adherence. He promised his support to General Bedeau, who

counted upon him. At daybreak on the 2d of December some one came to

waken X. It was Edgar Ney. X. was a prop for the _coup d'état_, but would

he consent? Edgar Ney explained the affair to him, and left him only

after seeing him leave the barracks of the Rue Verte at the head of the

first regiment. X. took up his position at the Place de la Madeleine. As

he arrived there La Rochejaquelein, thrust back from the Chamber by its

invaders, crossed the Place. La Rochejaquelein, not yet a Bonapartist,

was furious. He perceived X., his old schoolfellow at the Ecole Militaire

in 1830, with whom he was on intimate terms. He went up to him,

exclaiming, "This is an infamous act. What are you doing?" "_I am

waiting_," answered X. La Rochejaquelein left him; X. dismounted, and

went to see a relation, a Councillor of State, M.R., who lived in the Rue

de Suresne. He asked his advice. M.R., an honest man, did not hesitate.

He answered, "I am going to the Council of State to do my duty. It is a

Crime." X. shook his head, and said, "_We must wait and see_."

This _I am waiting_, and _We must see_, preoccupied Louis Bonaparte.

Morny said, "_Let us make use of the flying squadron_."

CHAPTER VI.

DENIS DUSSOUBS

Gaston Dussoubs was one of the bravest members of the Left. He was a

Representative of the Haute-Vienne. At the time of his first appearance

in the Assembly he wore, as formerly did Théophile Gautier, a red

waistcoat, and the shudder which Gautier's waistcoat caused among the men

of letters in 1830, Gaston Dussoubs' waistcoat caused among the Royalists

of 1851. M. Parisis, Bishop of Langres, who would have had no objection

to a red hat, was terrified by Gaston Dussoubs' red waistcoat. Another

source of horror to the Right was that Dussoubs had, it was said, passed

three years at Belle Isle as a political prisoner, a penalty incurred by

the "Limoges Affair." Universal Suffrage had, it would seem, taken him

thence to place him in the Assembly. To go from the prison to the Senate

is certainly not very surprising in our changeful times, although it is

sometimes followed by a return from the Senate to the prison. But the

Right was mistaken, the culprit of Limoges was, not Gaston Dussoubs, but

his brother Denis.

In fine, Gaston Dussoubs inspired fear. He was witty, courageous, and

gentle.

In the summer of 1851 I went to dine every day at the Concièrgerie with

my two sons and my two imprisoned friends. These great hearts and great

minds, Vacquerie, Meurice, Charles, and François Victor, attracted men of

like quality. The livid half-light that crept in through latticed and

barred windows disclosed a family circle at which there often assembled

eloquent orators, among others Crémieux, and powerful and charming

writers, including Peyrat.

One day Michel de Bourges brought to us Gaston Dussoubs.

Gaston Dussoubs lived in the Faubourg St. Germain, near the Assembly.

On the 2d of December we did not see him at our meetings. He was ill,

"nailed down" as he wrote me, by rheumatism of the joints, and compelled

to keep his bed.

He had a brother younger than himself, whom we have just mentioned, Denis

Dussoubs. On the morning of the 4th his brother went to see him.

Gaston Dussoubs knew of the _coup d'état_, and was exasperated at being

obliged to remain in bed. He exclaimed, "I am dishonored. There will be

barricades, and my sash will not be there!"

"Yes," said his brother. "It will be there!"

"How?"

"Lend it to me."

"Take it."

Denis took Gaston's sash, and went away.

We shall see Denis Dussoubs later on.

CHAPTER VII.

ITEMS AND INTERVIEWS

Lamoricière on the same morning found means to convey to me by Madame de

Courbonne[15] the following information.

"---- Fortress of Ham.--The Commandant's name is Baudot. His appointment,

made by Cavaignac in 1848, was countersigned by Charras. Both are to-day

his prisoners. The Commissary of Police, sent by Morny to the village of

Ham to watch the movements of the jailer and the prisoners, is Dufaure de

Pouillac."[16]

I thought when I received this communication that the Commandant Baudot,

"the jailer," had connived at its rapid transmission.

A sign of the instability of the central power.

Lamoricière, by the same means, put me in possession of some details

concerning his arrest and that of his fellow-generals.

These details complete those which I have already given.

The arrests of the Generals were affected at the same time at their

respective homes under nearly similar circumstances. Everywhere houses

surrounded, doors opened by artifice or burst open by force, porters

deceived, sometimes garotted, men in disguise, men provided with ropes,

men armed with axes, surprises in bed, nocturnal violence. A plan of

action which resembled, as I have said, an invasion of brigands.

General Lamoricière, according to his own expression, was a sound

sleeper. Notwithstanding the noise at his door, he did not awake. His

servant, a devoted old soldier, spoke in a loud voice, and called out to

arouse the General. He even offered resistance to the police. A police

agent wounded him in the knee with a sword thrust.[17] The General was

awakened, seized, and carried away.

While passing in a carriage along the Quai Malaquais, Lamoricière noticed

troops marching by with their knapsacks on their backs. He leaned quickly

forward out of the window. The Commissary of Police thought he was about

to address the soldiers. He seized the General by the arm, and said to

him, "General, if you say a word I shall put this on you." And with the

other hand he showed him in the dim light something which proved to be a

gag.

All the Generals arrested were taken to Mazas. There they were locked up

and forgotten. At eight in the evening General Changarnier had eaten

nothing.

These arrests were not pleasant tasks for the Commissaries of Police.

They were made to drink down their shame in large draughts. Cavaignac,

Leflô, Changarnier, Bedeau, and Lamoricière did not spare them any more

than Charras did. As he was leaving, General Cavaignac took some money

with him. Before putting it in his pocket, he turned towards Colin, the

Commissary of Police who had arrested him, and said, "Will this money be

safe on me?"

The Commissary exclaimed, "Oh, General, what are you thinking of?"

"What assurance have I that you are not thieves?" answered Cavaignac. At

the same time, nearly the same moment, Charras said to Courteille, the

Commissary of Police, "Who can tell me that you are not pick-pockets?"

A few days afterwards these pitiful wretches all received the Cross of

the Legion of Honor.

This cross given by the last Bonaparte to policemen after the 2d of

December is the same as that affixed by the first Napoleon to the eagles

of the Grand Army after Austerlitz.

I communicated these details to the Committee. Other reports came in. A

few concerned the Press. Since the morning of the 4th the Press was

treated with soldierlike brutality. Serrière, the courageous printer,

came to tell us what had happened at the _Presse_. Serrière published

the _Presse_ and the _Avénement du Peuple_, the latter a new name for

the _Evénement_, which had been judicially suppressed. On the 2d, at

seven o'clock in the morning, the printing-office had been occupied by

twenty-eight soldiers of the Republican Guard, commanded by a

Lieutenant named Pape (since decorated for this achievement). This man

had given Serrière an order prohibiting the printing of any article

signed "Nusse." A Commissary of Police accompanied Lieutenant Pape.

This Commissary had notified Serrière of a "decree of the President of

the Republic," suppressing the _Avénement du Peuple_, and had placed

sentinels over the presses. The workmen had resisted, and one of them

said to the soldiers, "_We shall print it in spite of you_." Then forty

additional Municipal Guards arrived, with two quarter-masters, four

corporals, and a detachment of the line, with drums at their head,

commanded by a captain. Girardin came up indignant, and protested with

so much energy that a quarter-master said to him, "_I should like a

Colonel of your stamp_." Girardin's courage communicated itself to the

workmen, and by dint of skill and daring, under the very eyes of the

gendarmes, they succeeded in printing Girardin's proclamations with the

hand-press, and ours with the brush. They carried them away wet, in

small packages, under their waistcoats.

Luckily the soldiers were drunk. The gendarmes made them drink, and

the workmen, profiting by their revels, printed. The Municipal Guards

laughed, swore and jested, drank champagne and coffee, and said, "_We

fill the places of the Representatives, we have twenty-five francs a

day_." All the printing-houses in Paris were occupied in the same manner

by the soldiery. The _coup d'état_ reigned everywhere. The Crime even

ill-treated the Press which supported it. At the office of the _Moniteur

Parisien_, the police agents threatened to fire on any one who should

open a door. M. Delamare, director of the _Patrie_, had forty Municipal

Guards on his hands, and trembled lest they should break his presses. He

said to one of them, "_Why, I am on your side_." The gendarme replied,

"_What is that to me?_"

At three o'clock on the morning of the 4th all the printing-offices were

evacuated by the soldiers. The Captain said to Serrière, "We have orders

to concentrate in our own quarters." And Serrière, in announcing this

fact, added, "Something is in preparation."

I had had since the previous night several conversations with Georges

Biscarrat, an honest and brave man, of whom I shall have occasion to

speak hereafter. I had given him rendezvous at No. 19, Rue Richelieu.

Many persons came and went during this morning of the 4th from No. 15,

where we deliberated, to No. 19, where I slept.

As I left this honest and courageous man in the street I saw M. Mérimée,

his exact opposite, coming towards me.

"Oh!" said M. Mérimée, "I was looking for you."

I answered him,--

"I hope you will not find me."

He held out his hand to me, and I turned my back on him.

I have not seen him since. I believe he is dead.

In speaking one day in 1847 with Mérimée about Morny, we had the

following conversation:--Mérimée said, "M. de Morny has a great future

before him." And he asked me, "Do you know him?"

I answered,--

"Ah! he has a fine future before him! Yes, I know M. de Morny. He is a

clever man. He goes a great deal into society, and conducts commercial

operations. He started the Vieille Montagne affair, the zinc-mines, and

the coal-mines of Liège. I have the honor of his acquaintance. He is a

sharper."

There was this difference between Mérimée and myself: I despised Morny,

and he esteemed him.

Morny reciprocated his feeling. It was natural.

I waited until Mérimée had passed the corner of the street. As soon as

he disappeared I went into No. 15.

There, they had received news of Canrobert. On the 2d he went to see

Madame Leflô, that noble woman, who was most indignant at what had

happened. There was to be a ball next day given by Saint-Arnaud at the

Ministry of War. General and Madame Leflô were invited, and had made an

appointment there with General Canrobert. But the ball did not form a

part of Madame Leflô's conversation with him. "General," said she, "all

your comrades are arrested; is it possible that you give your support

to such an act?" "What I intend giving," replied Canrobert, "is my

resignation and," he added, "you may tell General Leflô so." He was pale,

and walked up and down, apparently much agitated. "Your resignation,

General?" "Yes, Madame." "Is it positive?" "Yes, Madame, if there is no

riot." "General Canrobert," exclaimed Madame Leflô, "that _if_ tells me

your intentions."

Canrobert, however, had not yet taken his decision. Indeed, indecision

was one of his chief characteristics. Pelissier, who was cross-grained

and gruff, used to say, "Judge men by their names, indeed! I am

christened _Amable_, Randon _César_, and Canrobert _Certain_."

[15] No. 16, Rue d'Anjou, Saint Honoré.

[16] The author still has in his possession the note written by

Lamoricière.

[17] Later on, the wound having got worse, he was obliged to have his

leg taken off.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SITUATION

Although the fighting tactics of the Committee were, for the reasons

which I have already given, not to concentrate all their means of

resistance into one hour, or in one particular place, but to spread

them over as many points and as many days as possible, each of us knew

instinctively, as also the criminals of the Elysée on their side, that

the day would be decisive.

The moment drew near when the _coup d'état_ would storm us from every

side, and when we should have to sustain the onslaught of an entire

army. Would the people, that great revolutionary populace of the

faubourgs of Paris, abandon their Representatives? Would they abandon

themselves? Or, awakened and enlightened, would they at length arise? A

question more and more vital, and which we repeated to ourselves with

anxiety.

The National Guard had shown no sign of earnestness. The eloquent

proclamation, written at Marie's by Jules Favre and Alexander Rey, and

addressed in our name to the National Legions, had not been printed.

Hetzel's scheme had failed. Versigny and Lebrousse had not been able to

rejoin him; the place appointed for their meeting, the corner of the

boulevard and the Rue de Richelieu, having been continually scoured by

charges of cavalry. The courageous effort of Colonel Grassier to win

over the Sixth Legion, the more timid attempt of Lieutenant Colonel

Howyne upon the Fifth, had failed. Nevertheless indignation began to

manifest itself in Paris. The preceding evening had been significant.

Hingray came to us during the morning, bringing under his cloak a

bundle of copies of the Decree of Deposition, which had been reprinted.

In order to bring them to us he had twice run the risk of being

arrested and shot. We immediately caused these copies to be distributed

and placarded. This placarding was resolutely carried out; at several

points our placards were posted by the side of the placards of the

_coup d'état_, which pronounced the penalty of death against any one

who should placard the decrees emanating from the Representatives.

Hingray told us that our proclamations and our decrees had been

lithographed and distributed by hand in thousands. It Was urgently

necessary that we should continue our publications. A printer, who had

formerly been a publisher of several democratic journals, M. Boulé, had

offered me his services on the preceding evening. In June, 1848, I had

protected his printing-office, then being devastated by the National

Guards. I wrote to him: I enclosed our judgments and our decrees in the

letter, and the Representative Montaigu undertook to take them to him.

M. Boulé excused himself; his printing-presses had been seized by the

police at midnight.

Through the precautions which we had taken, and thanks to the patriotic

assistance of several young medical and chemical students, powder had

been manufactured in several quarters. At one point alone, the Rue

Jacob, a hundred kilogrammes had been turned out during the night. As,

however, this manufacture was principally carried out on the left bank

of the river, and as the fighting took place on the right bank, it was

necessary to transport this powder across the bridges. They managed

this In the best manner they could. Towards nine o'clock we were warned

that the police, having been informed of this, had organized a system

of inspection, and that all persons crossing the river were searched,

particularly on the Pont Neuf.

A certain strategical plan became manifest. The ten central bridges

mere militarily guarded.

People were arrested in the street on account of their personal

appearance. A sergent-de-ville, at the corner of he Pont-au-Change,

exclaimed, loud enough for the passers-by to hear, "We shall lay hold

of all those who have not their beards properly trimmed, or who do not

appear to have slept."

Notwithstanding all this we had a little powder; the disarming of the

National Guard at various points had produced about eight hundred

muskets, our proclamations and our decrees were being placarded, our

voice was reaching the people, a certain confidence was springing up.

"The wave is rising! the wave is rising!" exclaimed Edgar Quinet, who

had come to shake my hand.

We were informed that the schools were rising in insurrection during

the day, and that they offered us a refuge in the midst of them.

Jules Favre exclaimed joyfully,--

"To-morrow we shall date our decrees from the Pantheon."

Signs of good omen grew more numerous. An old hotbed of insurrection,

the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts, was becoming agitated. The association

called La Presse du Travail gave signs of life. Some brave workmen, at

the house of one of their colleagues, Nétré No. 13, Rue du Jardinet,

had organized a little printing-press in a garret, a few steps from the

barracks of the Gendarmerie Mobile. They had spent the night first in

compiling, and then in printing "A Manifesto to Working Men," which

called the people to arms. They were five skilful and determined men;

they had procured paper, they had perfectly new type; some of them

moistened the paper, while the others composed; towards two o'clock in

the morning they began to print. It was essential that they should not

be heard by the neighbors; they had succeeded in muffling the hollow

blows of the ink-rollers, alternating with the rapid sound of the

printing blankets. In a few hours fifteen hundred copies were pulled,

and at daybreak they were placarded at the corners of the streets. The

leader of these intrepid workmen, A. Desmoulins, who belonged to that

sturdy race of men who are both cultured and who can fight, had been

greatly disheartened on the preceding day; he now had become hopeful.

On the preceding day he wrote:--"Where are the Representatives? The

communications are cut. The quays and the boulevards can no longer be

crossed. It has become impossible to reunite the popular Assembly. The

people need direction. De Flotte in one district, Victor Hugo in

another, Schoelcher in a third, are actively urging on the combat, and

expose their lives a score of times, but none feel themselves supported

by any organized body: and moreover the attempt of the Royalists in the

Tenth Arrondissement has roused apprehension. People dread lest they

should see them reappear when all is accomplished."

Now, this man so intelligent and so courageous recovered confidence,

and he wrote,--

"Decidedly, Louis Napoleon is afraid. The police reports are alarming

for him. The resistance of the Republican Representatives is bearing

fruit. Paris is arming. Certain regiments appear ready to turn back.

The Gendarmerie itself is not to be depended upon, and this morning an

entire regiment refused to march. Disorder is beginning to show itself

in the services. Two batteries fired upon each other for a long time

without recognition. One would say that the _coup d'état_ is about to

fail."

The symptoms, as may be seen, were growing more reassuring.

Had Maupas become unequal to the task? Had they resorted to a more

skilful man? An incident seemed to point to this. On the preceding

evening a tall man had been seen, between five and seven o'clock,

walking up and down before the café of the Place Saint-Michel; he had

been joined by two of the Commissaries of the Police who had effected

the arrests of the 2d of December, and had talked to them for a long

time. This man was Carlier. Was he about to supplant Maupas?

The Representative Labrousse, seated at a table of the café, had

witnessed this conspirators' parley.

Each of the two Commissaries was followed by that species of police

agent which is called "the Commissary's dog."

At the same time strange warnings reached the Committee; the following

letter[18] was brought to our knowledge.

"3d December.

"MY DEAR BOCAGE,

"To-day at six o'clock, 25,000 francs has been offered to any one who

arrests or kills Hugo.

"You know where he is. He must not go out under any pretext whatever.

"Yours ever,

"AL. DUMAS."

At the back was written, "Bocage, 18, Rue Cassette." It was necessary

that the minutest details should be considered. In the different places

of combat a diversity of passwords prevailed, which might cause danger.

For the password on the day before we had given the name of "Baudin." In

imitation of this the names of other Representatives had been adopted as

passwords on barricades. In the Rue Rambuteau the password was "Eugène

Sue and Michel de Bourges;" in the Rue Beaubourg, "Victor Hugo;" at the

Saint Denis chapel, "Esquiros and De Flotte." We thought it necessary to

put a stop to this confusion, and to suppress the proper names, which

are always easy to guess. The password settled upon was, "What is Joseph

doing?"

At every moment items of news and information came to us from all

sides, that barricades were everywhere being raised, and that firing

was beginning in the central streets. Michel de Bourges exclaimed,

"Construct a square of four barricades, and we will go and deliberate

in the centre."

We received news from Mont Valérien. Two prisoners the more. Rigal and

Belle had just been committed. Both of the Left. Dr. Rigal was the

Representative of Gaillac, and Belle of Lavaur. Rigal was ill; they had

arrested him in bed. In prison he lay upon a pallet, and could not

dress himself. His colleague Belle acted as his _valet de chambre_.

Towards nine o'clock an ex-Captain of the 8th Legion of the National

Guard of 1848, named Jourdan, came to place himself at our service. He

was a bold man, one of those who had carried out, on the morning of the

24th February, the rash surprise of the Hôtel de Ville. We charged him

to repeat this surprise, and to extend it to the Prefecture of Police.

He knew how to set about the work. He told us that he had only a few

men, but that during the day he would cause certain houses of strategical

importance on the Quai des Cèvres, on the Quai Lepelletier, and in the

Rue de la Cité, to be silently occupied, and that if it should chance

that the leaders of the _coup d'état_, owing to the combat in the centre

of Paris growing more serious, should be forced to withdraw the troops

from the Hôtel de Ville and the Prefecture, an attack would be immediately

commenced on these two points. Captain Jourdan, we may at once mention,

did what he had promised us; unfortunately, as we learnt that evening,

he began perhaps a little too soon. As he had foreseen, a moment arrived

when the square of the Hôtel de Ville was almost devoid of troops, General

Herbillon having been forced to leave it with his cavalry to take the

barricades of the centre in the rear. The attack of the Republicans burst

forth instantly. Musket shots were fired from the windows on the Quai

Lepelletier; but the left of the column was still on the Pont d'Arcole,

a line of riflemen had been placed by a major named Larochette before

the Hôtel de Ville, the 44th retraced its steps, and the attempt

failed.

Bastide arrived, with Chauffour and Laissac.

"Good news," said he to us, "all is going on well." His grave, honest,

and dispassionate countenance shone with a sort of patriotic serenity.

He came from the barricades, and was about to return thither. He had

received two balls in his cloak. I took him aside, and said to him,

"Are you going back?" "Yes." "Take me with you." "No," answered he,

"you are necessary here. To-day you are the general, I am the soldier."

I insisted in vain. He persisted in refusing, repeating continually.

"The Committee is our centre, it should not disperse itself. It is your

duty to remain here. Besides," added he, "Make your mind easy. You run

here more risk than we do. If you are taken you will be shot." "Well,

then," said I, "the moment may come when our duty will be to join in

the combat." "Without doubt." I resumed, "You who are on the barricades

will be better judges than we shall of that moment. Give me your word

of honor that you will treat me as you would wish me to treat you, and

that you will come and fetch us." "I give it you," he answered, and he

pressed my two hands in his own.

Later on, however, a few moments after Bastide had left, great as was

my confidence in the loyal word of this courageous and generous man, I

could no longer restrain myself, and I profited by an interval of two

hours of which I could dispose, to go and see with my own eyes what was

taking place, and in what manner the resistance was behaving.

I took a carriage in the square of the Palais Royal. I explained to the

driver who I was, and that I was about to visit and encourage the

barricades; that I should go sometimes on foot, sometimes in the

carriage, and that I trusted myself to him. I told him my name.

The first comer is almost always an honest man. This true-hearted

coachman answered me, "I know where the barricades are. I will drive

you wherever it is necessary. I will wait for you wherever it is

necessary. I will drive you there and bring you back; and if you have

no money, do not pay me, I am proud of such an action."

And we started.

[18] The original of this note is in the hands of the author of this

book. It was handed to us by M. Avenel on the part of M. Bocage.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PORTE SAINT MARTIN

Important deeds had been already achieved during the morning.

"It is taking root," Bastide had said.

The difficulty is not to spread the flames but to light the fire.

It was evident that Paris began to grow ill-tempered. Paris does not

get angry at will. She must be in the humor for it. A volcano possesses

nerves. The anger was coming slowly, but it was coming. On the horizon

might be seen the first glimmering of the eruption.

For the Elysée, as for us, the critical moment was drawing nigh. From

the preceding evening they were nursing their resources. The _coup

d'état_ and the Republic were at length about to close with each other.

The Committee had in vain attempted to drag the wheel; some

irresistible impulse carried away the last defenders of liberty and

hurried them on to action. The decisive battle was about to be fought.

In Paris, when certain hours have sounded, when there appears an

immediate necessity for a progressive movement to be carried out, or a

right to be vindicated, the insurrections rapidly spread throughout the

whole city. But they always begin at some particular point. Paris, in

its vast historical task, comprises two revolutionary classes, the

"middle-class" and the "people." And to these two combatants correspond

two places of combat; the Porte Saint Martin when the middle-class are

revolting, the Bastille when the people are revolting. The eye of the

politician should always be fixed on these two points. There, famous in

contemporary history, are two spots where a small portion of the hot

cinders of Revolution seem ever to smoulder.

When a wind blows from above, these burning cinders are dispersed, and

fill the city with sparks.

This time, as we have already explained, the formidable Faubourg

Antoine slumbered, and, as has been seen, nothing had been able to

awaken it. An entire park of artillery was encamped with lighted

matches around the July Column, that enormous deaf-and-dumb memento of

the Bastille. This lofty revolutionary pillar, this silent witness of

the great deeds of the past, seemed to have forgotten all. Sad to say,

the paving stones which had seen the 14th of July did not rise under

the cannon-wheels of the 2d of December. It was therefore not the

Bastille which began, it was the Porte Saint Martin.

From eight o'clock in the morning the Rue Saint Denis and the Rue Saint

Martin were in an uproar throughout their length; throngs of indignant

passers-by went up and down those thoroughfares. They tore down the

placards of the _coup d'état_; they posted up our Proclamations; groups

at the corners of all the adjacent streets commented upon the decree of

outlawry drawn up by the members of the Left remaining at liberty; they

snatched the copies from each other. Men mounted on the kerbstones read

aloud the names of the 120 signatories, and, still more than on the day

before, each significant or celebrated name was hailed with applause.

The crowd increased every moment--and the anger. The entire Rue Saint

Denis presented the strange aspect of a street with all the doors and

windows closed, and all the inhabitants in the open air. Look at the

houses, there is death; look at the street, it is the tempest.

Some fifty determined men suddenly emerged from a side alley, and

began to run through the streets, saying, "To arms! Long live the

Representatives of the Left! Long live the Constitution!" The disarming

of the National Guards began. It was carried out more easily than on

the preceding evening. In less than an hour more than 150 muskets had

been obtained.

In the meanwhile the street became covered with barricades.

CHAPTER X.

MY VISIT TO THE BARRICADE

My coachman deposited me at the corner of Saint Eustache, and said to

me, "Here you are in the hornets' nest."

He added, "I will wait for you in the Rue de la Vrillière, near the

Place des Victoires. Take your time."

I began walking from barricade to barricade.

In the first I met De Flotte, who offered to serve me as a guide. There

is not a more determined man than De Flotte. I accepted his offer; he

took me everywhere where my presence could be of use.

On the way he gave me an account of the steps taken by him to print our

proclamations; Boulé's printing-office having failed him, he had applied

to a lithographic press, at No. 30, Rue Bergère, and at the peril of

their lives two brave men had printed 500 copies of our decrees. These

two true-hearted workmen were named, the one Rubens, the other Achille

Poincellot.

While walking I made jottings in pencil (with Baudin's pencil, which I

had with me); I registered facts at random; I reproduce this page here.

These living facts are useful for History; the _coup d'état_ is there,

as though freshly bleeding.

"Morning of the 4th. It looks as if the combat was suspended. Will it

burst forth again? Barricades visited by me: one at the corner of

Saint Eustache. One at the Oyster Market. One in the Rue Mauconseil.

One in the Rue Tiquetonne. One in the Rue Mandar (Rocher de Cancale).

One barring the Rue du Cadran and the Rue Montorgueil. Four closing

the Petit-Carreau. The beginning of one between the Rue des Deux

Portes and the Rue Saint Sauveur, barring the Rue Saint Denis. One,

the largest, barring the Rue Saint Denis, at the top of the Rue

Guérin-Boisseau. One barring the Rue Grenetat. One farther on in the

Rue Grenetat, barring the Rue Bourg-Labbé (in the centre an overturned

flour wagon; a good barricade). In the Rue Saint Denis one barring the

Rue de Petit-Lion-Saint-Sauveur. One barring the Rue du Grand

Hurleur, with its four corners barricaded. This barricade has already

been attacked this morning. A combatant, Massonnet, a comb-maker of

154, Rue Saint Denis, received a ball in his overcoat; Dupapet, called

'the man with the long beard,' was the last to stay on the summit of

the barricade. He was heard to cry out to the officers commanding the

attack, 'You are traitors!' He is believed to have been shot. The

troops retired--strange to say without demolishing the barricade. A

barricade is being constructed in the Rue du Renard. Some National

Guards in uniform watch its construction, but do not work on it. One

of them said to me, 'We are not against you, you are on the side of

Right.' They add that there are twelve or fifteen barricades in the

Rue Rambuteau. This morning at daybreak the cannon had fired

'steadily,' as one of them remarks, in the Rue Bourbon-Villeneuve. I

visit a powder manufactory improvised by Leguevel at a chemist's

opposite the Rue Guérin-Boisseau.

"They are constructing the barricades amicably, without angering any

one. They do what they can not to annoy the neighborhood. The combatants

of the Bourg-Labbé barricades are ankle-deep in mud on account of the

rain. It is a perfect sewer. They hesitate to ask for a truss of straw.

They lie down in the water or on the pavement.

"I saw there a young man who was ill, and who had just got up from his

bed with the fever still on him. He said to me, 'I am going to my death'

(he did so).

"In the Rue Bourbon-Villeneuve they had not even asked a mattress of the

'shopkeepers,' although, the barricade being bombarded, they needed them

to deaden the effect of the balls.

"The soldiers make bad barricades, because they make them too well. A

barricade should be tottering; when well built it is worth nothing; the

paving-stones should want equilibrium, 'so that they may roll down on

the troopers,' said a street-boy to me, 'and break their paws.' Sprains

form a part of barricade warfare.

"Jeanty Sarre is the chief of a complete group of barricades. He

presented his first lieutenant to me, Charpentier, a man of thirty-six,

lettered and scientific. Charpentier busies himself with experiments

with the object of substituting gas for coal and wood in the firing of

china, and he asks permission to read a tragedy to me 'one of these

days.' I said to him, 'We shall make one.'

"Jeanty Sarre is grumbling at Charpentier; the ammunition is failing.

Jeanty Sarre, having at his house in the Rue Saint Honoré a pound of

fowling-powder and twenty army cartridges, sent Charpentier to get them.

Charpentier went there, and brought back the fowling-powder and the

cartridges, but distributed them to the combatants on the barricades

whom he met on the way. 'They were as though famished,' said he.

Charpentier had never in his life touched a fire-arm. Jeanty Sarre

showed him how to load a gun.

"They take their meals at a wine-seller's at the corner, and they warm

themselves there. It is very cold. The wine-seller says, 'Those who are

hungry, go and eat.' A combatant asked him, 'Who pays?' 'Death,' was the

answer. And in truth some hours afterwards he had received seventeen

bayonet thrusts.

"They have not broken the gas-pipes--always for the sake of not doing

unnecessary damage. They confine themselves to requisitioning the

gasmen's keys, and the lamplighters' winches in order to open the pipes.

In this manner they control the lighting or extinguishing.

"This group of barricades is strong, and will play an important part. I

had hoped at one moment that they would attack it while I was there. The

bugle had approached, and then had gone away again. Jeanty Sarre tells

me 'it will be for this evening.'

"His intention is to extinguish the gas in the Rue du Petit-Carreau and

all the adjoining streets, and to leave only one jet lighted in the Rue

du Cadran. He has placed sentinels as far as the corner of the Rue Saint

Denis; at that point there is an open side, without barricades, but

little accessible to the troops, on account of the narrowness of the

streets, which they can only enter one by one. Thence little danger

exists, an advantage of narrow streets; the troops are worth nothing

unless massed together. The soldier does not like isolated action; in

war the feeling of elbow to elbow constitutes half the bravery. Jeanty

Sarre has a reactionary uncle with whom he is not on good terms, and who

lives close by at No. 1, Rue du Petit-Carreau.--'What a fright we shall

give him presently!' said Jeanty Sarre to me, laughing. This morning

Jeanty Sarre has inspected the Montorgueil barricade. There was only one

man on it, who was drunk, and who put the barrel of his gun against his

breast, saying, 'No thoroughfare.' Jeanty Sarre disarmed him.

"I go to the Rue Pagevin. There at the corner of the Place des Victoires

there is a well-constructed barricade. In the adjoining barricade in the

Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, the troops this morning made no prisoners.

The soldiers had killed every one. There are corpses as far as the Place

des Victoires. The Pagevin barricade held its own. There are fifty men

there, well armed. I enter. 'Is all going on well?' 'Yes.' 'Courage.' I

press all these brave hands; they make a report to me. They had seen a

Municipal Guard smash in the head of a dying man with the butt end of

his musket. A pretty young girl, wishing to go home, took refuge in the

barricade. There, terrified, she remained for an hour. When all danger

was over, the chef of the barricade caused her to be reconducted home by

the eldest of his men.