barricade at the corner of the Rue du Cadran. In this manner the Rue du
Petit Carreau, closed by two barricades, one towards the Rue de Cléry,
the other at the corner of the Rue du Cadran, commanded the whole of the
Rue Montorgueil. The space between these two barricades formed a perfect
citadel. The second barricade was stronger than the first.
These men nearly all wore coats. Some of them rolled the paving-stones
with gloves on.
Few workmen were amongst them, but those who were there were intelligent
and energetic. These workmen were what might be termed the "pick of the
crowd."
Jeanty Sarre had rejoined them; he at once became their leader.
Charpentier accompanied him, too brave to abandon the enterprise, but
too much a dreamer to become a commander.
Two barricades, enclosing in the same manner some forty yards of the Rue
Montorgueil, had just been constructed at the top of the Rue Mauconseil.
Three other barricades, extremely feebly constructed, again intersected
the Rue Montorgueil in the space which separates the Rue Mauconseil from
Saint Eustache.
Evening was closing in. The fusillade was ceasing upon the boulevard. A
surprise was possible. They established a sentry-post at the corner of
the Rue du Cadran, and sent a main-guard in the direction of the Rue
Montmartre. Their scouts came in to report some items of information. A
regiment seemed to be preparing to bivouac in the Place des Victoires.
Their position, to all appearance strong, was not so in reality. There
were too few in number to defend at the same time the two barricades on
the Rue de Cléry and the Rue Montorgueil, and the soldiers arriving in
the rear hidden by the second barricade would have been upon them
without being even noticed. This determined them to establish a post in
the Rue de Cléry. They put themselves in communication with the
barricades of the Rue du Cadran and with the two Mauconseil barricades.
These two last barricades were only separated from them by a space of
about 150 paces. They were about six feet high, fairly solid, but only
guarded by six workmen who had built them.
Towards half-past four, in the twilight--the twilight begins early in
December--Jeanty Sarre took four men with him and went out to
reconnoitre. He thought also of raising an advanced barricade in one of
the little neighboring streets. On the way they found one which had been
abandoned, and which had been built with barrels. The barrels, however,
were empty, only one contained any paving-stones, and the barricade
could not have been held for two minutes. As they left this barricade
they were assailed by a sharp discharge of musketry. A company of
infantry, hardly visible in the dusk, was close upon them.
They fell back hastily; but one of them, who was a shoemaker of the
Faubourg du Temple, was hit, and had remained on the pavement. They went
back and brought him away. He had the thumb of the right hand smashed.
"Thank God!" said Jeanty Sarre, "they have not killed him." "No," said
the poor man, "it is my bread which they have killed."
And he added, "I can no longer work; who will maintain my children?"
They went back, carrying the wounded man. One of them, a medical
student, bound up his wound.
The sentries, whom it was necessary to post in every direction, and who
were chosen from the most trustworthy men, thinned and exhausted the
little central land. There were scarcely thirty in the barricade itself.
There, as in the Quarter of the Temple, all the streetlamps were
extinguished; the gas-pipes cut; the windows closed and unlighted; no
moon, not even stars. The night was profoundly dark.
They could hear distant fusillades. The soldiers were firing from around
Saint Eustache, and every three minutes sent a ball in their direction,
as much as to say, "We are here." Nevertheless they did not expect an
attack before the morning.
Dialogues like the following took place amongst them:--
"I wish I had a truss of straw," said Charpentier; "I have a notion that
we shall sleep here to-night."
"Will you be able to get to sleep?" asked Jeanty Sarre.
"I? Certainly I shall go to sleep."
He did go to sleep, in fact, a few moments later.
In this gloomy network of narrow streets, intersected with barricades,
and blockaded by soldiers, two wine-shops had remained open. They made
more lint there, however, than they drank wine; the orders of the chiefs
were only to drink reddened water.
The doorway of one of these wine-shops opened exactly between the two
barricades of the Petit Cancan. In it was a clock by which they
regulated the sentries' relief. In a back room they had locked up two
suspicious-looking persons who had intermingled with the combatants. One
of these men at the moment when he was arrested said, "I have come to
fight for Henri V." They kept them under lock and key, and placed a
sentry at the door.
An ambulance had been established in an adjoining room. There the
wounded shoemaker was lying upon a mattress thrown upon the ground.
They had established, in case of need, another ambulance in the Rue du
Cadran. An opening had been effected at the corner of the barricade on
this side, so that the wounded could be easily carried away.
Towards half-past nine in the evening a man came up to the barricade.
Jeanty Sarre recognized him.
"Good day, Denis," said he.
"Call me, Gaston," said the man.
"Why?"
"Because--"
"Are you your brother?"
"Yes, I am my brother. For to-day."
"Very well. Good-day, Gaston."
They heartily shook hands.
It was Denis Dussoubs.
He was pale, calm, and bleeding; he had already been fighting during the
morning. At the barricade of the Faubourg Saint Martin a ball had grazed
his breast, but had been turned off by some money in his pocket, and had
only broken the skin. He had had the rare good fortune of being
scratched by a ball. It was like the first touch from the claws of
death. He wore a cap, his hat having been left behind in the barricade
where he had fought: and he had replaced his bullet-pierced overcoat,
which was made of Belleisle cloth, by a pea-jacket bought at a
slop-shop.
How had he reached the barricade of the Petit Carreau? He could not say.
He had walked straight before him. He had glided from street to street.
Chance takes the predestined by the hand, and leads them straight to
their goal through the thick darkness.
At the moment when he entered the barricade they cried out to him, "Who
goes there?" He answered, "The Republic!"
They saw Jeanty Sarre shake him by the hand. They asked Jeanty Sarre,--
"Who is he?"
Jeanty Sarre answered,--
"It is some one."
And he added,--
"We were only sixty a short time since. We are a hundred now."
All pressed round the new-comer. Jeanty Sarre offered him the command.
"No," said he, "I do not understand the tactics of barricade fighting. I
should be a bad chief, but I am a good soldier. Give me a gun."
They seated themselves on the paving-stones. They exchanged their
experiences of what had been done. Denis described to them the fighting
on the Faubourg Saint Martin. Jeanty Sarre told Denis of the fighting in
the Rue Saint Denis.
During all this time the generals were preparing a final assault,--what
the Marquis of Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called the "Coup de Collier,"
and what, in 1789, the Prince of Lambese had called the "Coup de Bas."
Throughout all Paris there was now only this point which offered any
resistance. This knot of barricade, this labyrinth of streets, embattled
like a redoubt, was the last citadel of the People and of Right. The
generals invested it leisurely, step by step, and on all sides. They
concentrated their forces. They, the combatants of this fateful hour,
knew nothing of what was being done. Only from time to time they
interrupted their recital of events and they listened. From the right
and from the left, from the front, from the rear, from every side, at
the same time, an unmistakable murmur, growing every moment louder, and
more distinct, hoarse, piercing, fear-inspiring, reached them through
the darkness. It was the sound of the battalions marching and charging
at the trumpet-command in all the adjoining streets. They resumed their
gallant conversation, and then in another moment they stopped again and
listened to that species of ill-omened chant, chanted by Death, which
was approaching.
Nevertheless some still thought that they would not be attacked till the
next morning. Night combats are rare in street-warfare. They are more
"risky" than all the other conflicts. Few generals venture upon them.
But amongst the old hands of the barricade, from certain never-failing
signs, they believed that an assault was imminent.
In fact, at half-past ten at night, and not at eight o'clock as General
Magnan has said in the despicable document which he calls his report--a
special movement was heard in the direction of the markets. This was the
marching of the troops. Colonel de Lourmel had determined to make the
attack. The 51st of the Line, posted at Saint Eustache, entered the Rue
Montorgueil. The 2d battalion formed the advanced guard. The Grenadiers
and the Light Infantry, hurled forward at the double, quickly carried
the three little barricades which were on the other side of the vacant
space of the Rue Mauconseil, and the feebly defended barricades of the
adjoining streets. It was at that very moment that the barricade near
which I was happened to be carried.
From the barricade of the Petit Carreau they heard the night-strife draw
near through the darkness, with a fitful noise, strange and appalling.
First a great tumult, then volleys, then silence, and then all began
again. The flashing of the fusillades suddenly delineated in the darkness
the outlines of the houses, which appeared as though they themselves
were affrighted.
The decisive moment drew near.
The outpost had fallen back upon the barricades. The advanced posts of
the Rue de Cléry and the Rue du Cadran had come back. They called over
the roll. Not one of those of the morning was missing.
They were, as we have said, about sixty combatants, and not a hundred,
as the Magnan report has stated.
From the upper extremity of the street where they were stationed it was
difficult to ascertain what was happening. They did not exactly know how
many barricades they were in the Rue Montorgueil between them and Saint
Eustache, whence the troops were coming. They only knew that their
nearest point of resistance was the double Mauconseil barricade, and
that, when all was at an end there, it would be their turn.
Denis had posted himself on the inner side of the barricade in such a
manner that half his body was above the top, and from there he watched.
The glimmer which came from the doorway of the wine-shop rendered his
gestures visible.
Suddenly he made a sign. The attack on the Mauconseil redoubt was
beginning.
The soldiers, in fact, after having some time hesitated before this
double wall of paving-stones, lofty, well-built, and which they supposed
was well defended, had ended by rushing upon it, and attacking it with
blows of their guns.
They were not mistaken. It was well defended. We have already said that
there were only six men in this barricade, the six workmen who had built
it. Of the six one only had three cartridges, the others had only two
shots to fire. These six men heard the regiment advancing and the roll
of the battery which was followed on it, and did not stir. Each remained
silent at his post of battle, the barrel of his gun between two
paving-stones. When the soldiers were within range they fired, and the
battalion replied.
"That is right. Rage away, Red Breeches," said, laughingly, the man who
had three shots to fire.
Behind them, the men of the Petit Carreau were crowded round Denis and
Jeanty Sarre, and leaning on the crest of their barricade, stretching
their necks towards the Mauconseil redoubt, they watched them like the
gladiators of the next combat.
The six men of this Mauconseil redoubt resisted the onslaught of the
battalion for nearly a quarter of an hour. They did not fire together,
"in order," one of them said, "to make the pleasure last the longer."
The pleasure of being killed for duty; a noble sentence in this
workman's mouth. They did not fall back into the adjoining streets until
after having exhausted their ammunition. The last, he who had three
cartridges, did not leave until the soldiers were actually scaling the
summit of the barricade.
In the barricade of the Petit Carreau not a word was spoken; they
followed all the phases of this struggle, and they pressed each other's
hands.
Suddenly the noise ceased, the last musket-shot was fired. A moment
afterwards they saw the lighted candles being placed in all the windows
which looked on on the Mauconseil redoubt. The bayonets and the brass
ornaments on the shakos sparkled there. The barricade was taken.
The commander of the battalion, as is always the custom in similar
circumstances, had sent orders into the adjoining houses to light up all
the windows.
This was done at the Mauconseil redoubt.
Seeing that their hour had come, the sixty combatants of the barricade
of the Petit Carreau mounted their heap of paving-stones, and shouted
with one voice, in the midst of the darkness, this piercing cry, "Long
live the Republic!"
No one answered them.
They could only hear the battalion loading their guns.
This acted upon them as a species of signal for action. They were all
worn out with fatigue, having been on their feet since the preceding
day, carrying paving-stones or fighting, the greater part had neither
eaten nor slept.
Charpentier said to Jeanty Sarre,--
"We shall all be killed."
"Shall we really!" said Jeanty Sarre.
Jeanty Sarre ordered the door of the wine-shop to be closed, so that
their barricade, completely shrouded in darkness, would give them some
advantage over the barricade which was occupied by the soldiers and
lighted up.
In the meantime the 51st searched the streets, carried the wounded into
the ambulances, and took up their position in the double barricade of
the Rue Mauconseil. Half an hour thus elapsed.
Now, in order to clearly understand what is about to follow, the reader
must picture to himself in this silent street, in this darkness of the
night, at from sixty to eighty yards apart, within speaking distance,
these two redoubts facing each other, and able as in an Iliad to address
each other.
On one side the Army, on the other side the People, the darkness over
all.
The species of truce which always precedes decisive encounters drew to a
close. The preparations were completed on both sides. The soldiers could
be heard forming into order of battle, and the captains giving out their
commands. It was evident that the struggle was at hand.
"Let us begin," said Charpentier; and he raised his gun.
Denis held his arm back. "Wait," he said.
Then an epic incident was seen.
Denis slowly mounted the paving-stones of the barricade, ascended to the
top, and stood there erect, unarmed and bareheaded.
Thence he raised his voice, and, facing the soldiers, he shouted to
them, "Citizens!"
At this word a sort of electric shudder ensued which was felt from one
barricade to the other. Every sound was hushed, every voice was silent,
on both sides reigned a deep religious and solemn silence. By the
distant glimmer of a few lighted windows the soldiers could vaguely
distinguish a man standing above a mass of shadows, like a phantom who
was speaking to them in the night.
Denis continued,--
"Citizens of the Army! Listen to me!"
The silence grew still more profound.
He resumed,--
"What have you come to do here? You and ourselves, all of us who are in
this street, at this hour, with the sword or gun in hand, what are we
about to do? To kill each other! To kill each other, citizens! Why?
Because they have raised a misunderstanding between us! Because we
obey--you your discipline--we our Right! You believe that you are
carrying out your instructions; as for us, we know that we are doing our
duty. Yes! it is Universal Suffrage, it is the Right of the Republic, it
is our Right that we are defending, and our Right, soldiers, is your
Right. The Army is the People, as the People is the Army. We are the
same nation, the some country, the same men. My God! See, is there any
Russian blood in my veins, in me who am speaking to you? Is there any
Prussian blood in your veins, in you who are listening to me? No! Why
then should we fight? It is always an unfortunate thing for a man to
fire upon a man. Nevertheless, a gun-shot between a Frenchman and an
Englishman can be understood; but between a Frenchman and a Frenchman,
ah! that wounds Reason, that wounds France, that wounds our mother!"
All anxiously listened to him. At this moment from the opposite
barricade a voice shouted to him,--
"Go home, then!"
At this coarse interruption an angry murmur ran through Denis's
companions, and several guns could be heard being loaded. Denis
restrained them by a sign.
This sign possessed a strange authority.
"Who is this man?" the combatants behind the barricade asked each other.
Suddenly they cried out,--
"He is a Representative of the People!"
Denis had, in fact, suddenly assumed his brother Gaston's sash.
What he had premeditated was about to be accomplished; the hour of the
heroic falsehood had arrived. He cried out,--
"Soldiers, do you know what the man is who is speaking to you at this
moment? He is not only a citizen, he is a Legislator! He is a
Representative chosen by Universal Suffrage! My name is Dussoubs, and I
am a Representative of the People. It is in the name of the National
Assembly, it is in the name of the Sovereign Assembly, it is in the name
of the People, and in the name of the Law, that I summon you to hear me.
Soldiers, you are the armed force. Well, then, when the Law speaks, the
armed force listens."
This time the silence was not broken.
We reproduce these words almost literally; such as they are, and such as
they have remained graven on the memory of those who heard them; but
what we cannot reproduce, and what should be added to these words, in
order to realize the effect, is the attitude, the accent, the thrill of
emotion, the vibration of the words issuing from this noble breast, the
intense impression produced by the terrible hour and place.
Denis Dussoubs continued: "He spoke for some twenty minutes," an
eye-witness has told me. Another has said, "He spoke with a loud voice;
the whole street heard him." He was vehement, eloquent, earnest; a judge
for Bonaparte, a friend for the soldiers. He sought to rouse them by
everything which could still vibrate in them; he recalled to them their
true wars, their true victories, the national glory, the ancient
military honor, the flag. He told them that all this was about to be
slain by the bullets from their guns. He adjured them, he ordered them
to join themselves to the People and to the Law; and then suddenly
coming back to the first words which he had pronounced, carried away by
that fraternity with which his soul overflowed, he interrupted himself
in the middle of a half-completed sentence, and cried out:--
"But to what purpose are all these words? It is not all this that is
wanted, it is a shake of the hand between brothers! Soldiers, you are
there opposite us, at a hundred paces from us, in a barricade, with the
sword drawn, with guns pointed; you are aiming directly at me; well
then, all of us who are here love you! There is not one of us who would
not give his life for one of you. You are the peasants of the fields of
France; we are the workmen of Paris. What, then, is in question? Simply
to see each other, to speak to each other, and not to cut each other's
throats. Shall we try this? Say! Ah! as for myself in this frightful
battle-field of civil war, I would rather die than kill. Look now, I am
going to get off this barricade and come to you. I am unarmed; I only
know that you are my brothers. I am confident, I am calm; and if one of
you presents his bayonet at me, I will offer him my hand."
He finished speaking.
A voice cried out from the opposite barricade, "Advance in order!"
Then they saw him slowly descend the dimly-lighted crest of the
barricade, paving-stone by paving-stone, and plunge with head erect into
the dark street.
From the barricade all eyes followed him with an inexpressible anxiety.
Hearts ceased beating, mouths no longer breathed.
No one attempted to restrain Denis Dussoubs. Each felt that he was going
where he ought to go. Charpentier wished to accompany him. "Would you
like me to go with you?" he cried out to him. Dussoubs refused, with a
shake of the head.
Dussoubs, alone and grave, advanced towards the Mauconseil Barricade.
The night was so dark that they lost sight of him immediately. They
could distinguish only for a few seconds his peaceable and intrepid
bearing. Then he disappeared. They could no longer see anything. It was
an inauspicious moment. The night was dark and dumb. There could only be
heard in this thick darkness the sound of a measured and firm step dying
away in the distance.
After some time, how long no one could reckon, so completely did emotion
eclipse thought amongst the witnesses of this marvellous scene, a
glimmer of light appeared in the barricade of the soldiers; it was
probably a lantern which was being brought or taken away. By the flash
they again saw Dussoubs, he was close to the barricade, he had almost
reached it, he was walking towards it with his arms stretched out like
Christ.
Suddenly the word of command, "Fire!" was heard.
A fusillade burst forth.
They had fired upon Dussoubs when he was at the muzzles of their guns.
Dussoubs fell.
Then he raised himself and cried, "Long live the Republic!"
Another bullet struck him, he fell again. Then they saw him raise
himself once more, and heard him shout in a loud voice, "I die with the
Republic."
These were his last words.
In this manner died Denis Dussoubs.
It was not vainly that he had said to his brother, "Your sash will be
there."
He was anxious that this sash should do its duty. He determined in the
depths of his great soul that this sash should triumph either through
the law or through death.
That is to say, in the first case it would save Right, in the second
save Honor.
Dying, he could say, "I have succeeded."
Of the two possible triumphs of which he had dreamed, the gloomy triumph
was not the less splendid.
The insurgent of the Elysée thought that he had killed a Representative
of the People, and boasted of it. The sole journal published by the
_coup d'état_ under these different titles _Patrie_, _Univers_,
_Moniteur_, _Parisien_, etc., announced on the next day, Friday, the
5th, "that the ex-Representative Dussoubs (Gaston) had been killed at
the barricade of the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache, and that he bore 'a red
flag in his hand.'"
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT WAS DONE DURING THE NIGHT--THE PASSAGE DU SAUMON
When those on the barricade of the Petit Carreau saw Dussoubs fall, so
gloriously for his friends, so shamefully for his murderers, a moment of
stupor ensued. Was it possible? Did they really see this before them?
Such a crime committed by our soldiers? Horror filled every soul.
This moment of surprise did not last long. "Long live the Republic!"
shouted the barricade with one voice, and it replied to the ambuscade by
a formidable fire.
The conflict began. A mad conflict on the part of the _coup d'état_, a
struggle of despair on the side of the Republic. On the side of the
soldiers an appalling and cold blooded resolution, a passive and
ferocious obedience, numbers, good arms, absolute chiefs, pouches filled
with cartridges. On the side of the People no ammunition, disorder,
weariness, exhaustion, no discipline, indignation serving for a leader.
It appears that while Dussoubs was speaking, fifteen grenadiers,
commanded by a sergeant named Pitrois, had succeeded in gliding in the
darkness along the houses, and, unperceived and unheard, had taken up
their position close to the barricade. These fifteen men suddenly formed
themselves together with lowered bayonets at twenty paces from the
barricade ready to scale it. A volley received them. They fell back,
leaving several corpses in the gutter. Major Jeannin cried out, "Finish
them off." The entire battalion which occupied the Mauconseil barricade,
then appeared with raised bayonets upon the uneven crest of this
barricade, and from there without breaking their line, with a sudden,
but regulated and inexorable movement, sprang into the street. The four
companies, in close order, and as though mingled and hardly visible,
seemed like a wave precipitating itself with a great noise from the
height of the barricade.
At the barricade of the Petit Carreau they noted the manoeuvre, and had
paused in their fire. "Present," cried Jeanty Sarre, "but do not fire;
wait for the order."
Each put his gun to his shoulder, then placed the barrels between the
paving-stones, ready to fire, and waited.
As soon as it had quitted the Mauconseil redoubt, the battalion rapidly
formed itself into an attacking column, and a moment afterwards they
heard the intermittent sound of an advance at the double. It was the
battalion which was coming upon them.
"Charpentier," said Jeanty Sarre, "you have good eyes. Are they midway?"
"Yes," said Charpentier.
"Fire," said Jeanty Sarre.
The barricade fired. The whole street was filled with smoke. Several
soldiers fell. They could hear the cries of the wounded. The battalion,
riddled with balls, halted and replied by platoon firing.
Seven or eight combatants whose bodies reached above the barricade,
which had been made hastily and was too low were hit. Three were killed
on the spot. One fell wounded by a ball in his stomach, between Jeanty
Sarre and Charpentier. He shrieked out with pain.
"Quick, to the ambulance:" said Jeanty Sarre.
"Where?"
"In the Rue du Cadran."
Jeanty Sarre and Charpentier picked up the wounded man, the one by the
feet, the other by the head, and carried him to the du Cadran
through the passage in the barricade.
During all this time there was continued file firing. There no longer
seemed anything in the street but smoke, the balls whistling and
crossing each other, the brief and repeated commands, some plaintive
cries, and the flash of the guns lighting up the darkness.
Suddenly a loud void died out, "Forwards!" The battalion resumed its
double-quick march and threw itself upon the barricade.
Then ensued a horrible scene. They fought hand to hand, four hundred on
the one side, fifty on the other. They seized each other by the collar,
by the throat, by the mouth, by the hair. There was no longer a
cartridge in the barricade, but there remained despair. A workman,
pierced through and through, snatched the bayonet from his belly, and
stabbed a soldier with it. They did not see each other, but they
devoured each other. It was a desperate scuffle in the dark.
The barricade did not hold out for two minutes. In several places, it
may be remembered, it was low. It was rather stridden over than scaled.
That was all the more heroic. One of the survivors[28] told the writer
of these lines, "The barricade defended itself very badly, but the men
died very well."
All this took place while Jeanty Sarre and Charpentier were carrying the
wounded man to the ambulance in the Rue du Cadran. His wounds having
been attended to, they came back to the barricade. They had just reached
it when they heard themselves called by name. A feeble voice close by
said to them, "Jeanty Sarre! Charpentier!" They turned round and saw one
of their men who was dying leaning against a wall, and his knees giving
way beneath him. He was a combatant who had left the barricade. He had
only been able to take a few steps down the street. He held his hand
over his breast, where he had received a ball fired at close quarters.
He said to them in a scarcely audible voice, "The barricade is taken,
save yourselves."
"No," said Jeanty Sarre, "I must unload my gun." Jeanty Sarre re-entered
the barricade, fired a last shot and went away.
Nothing could be more frightful than the interior of the captured
barricade.
The Republicans, overpowered by numbers, no longer offered any
resistance. The officers cried out, "No prisoners!" The soldiers billed
those who were standing, and despatched those who had fallen. Many
awaited their death with their heads erect. The dying raised themselves
up, and shouted, "Long live the Republic!" Some soldiers ground their
heels upon the faces of the dead, so that they should not be recognized.
There, stretched out amongst the corpses, in the middle of the
barricade, with his hair in the gutter, was seen the all-but namesake of
Charpentier, Carpentier, the delegate of the committee of the Tenth
Arrondissement, who had been killed, and had fallen backwards, with two
balls in his breast. A lighted candle which the soldiers had taken from
the wine-shop was placed on a paving stone.
The soldiers were infuriated. One would say that they were revenging
themselves. On whom? A workman, named Paturel, received three balls and
six bayonet-thrusts, four of which were in the head. They thought that
he was dead, and they did not renew the attack. He felt them search him.
They took ten francs which he had about him. He did not die till six
days later, and he was able to relate the details which are given here.
We may note, by the way, that the name of Paturel does not figure upon
any of the lists of the corpses published by M. Bonaparte.
Sixty Republicans were shut up in this redoubt of the Petit Carreau.
Forty-six were killed there. These men had come there that morning free,
proud to fight, and joyous to die. At midnight all was at an end. The
night wagons carried away on the next day nine corpses to the hospital
cemetery, and thirty-seven to Montmartre.
Jeanty Sarre escaped by a miracle, as well as Charpentier, and a third
whose name we have not been able to ascertain. They glided along the
houses and reached the Passage du Saumon. The grated doors which closed
the Passage during the night only reached to the centre of the archway.
They climbed it and got over the spikes, at the risk of tearing
themselves. Jeanty Sarre was the first to climb it; having reached the
summit, one of the spikes pierced his trousers, hooked them, and Jeanty
Sarre fell headforemost upon the pavement. He got up again, he was only
stunned. The other two followed him, and gliding along the bars, all
three found themselves in the Passage. It was dimly lighted by a lamp
which shone at one end. In the meanwhile, they heard the soldiers, who
were pursuing them, coming up. In order to escape by the Rue Montmartre,
they would have to climb the grated gateway at the other end of the
Passage; their hands were grazed, their knees were bleeding; they were
dying of weariness; they were in no condition to recommence a similar
ascent.
Jeanty Sarre knew where the keeper of the Passage lived. He knocked at
his window, and begged him to open. The keeper refused.
At this moment the detachment which had been sent in pursuit of them
reached the grated gateway which they had just climbed. The soldiers,
hearing a noise in the Passage, passed the barrels of their guns through
the bars. Jeanty Sarre squeezed himself against the wall behind one of
those projecting columns which decorate the Passage; but the column was
very thin, and only half covered him. The soldiers fired, and smoke
filled the Passage. When it cleared away, Jeanty Sarre saw Charpentier
stretched on the stones, with his face to the ground. He had been shot
through the heart. Their other companion lay a few paces from him,
mortally wounded.
The soldiers did not scale the grated gateway, but they posted a
sentinel before it. Jeanty Sarre heard them going away by the Rue
Montmartre. They would doubtless come back.
No means of flight. He felt all the doors round his prison successively.
One of them at length opened. This appeared to him like a miracle.
Whoever could have forgotten to shut the door? Providence, doubtless. He
hid himself behind it, and remained there for more than an hour,
standing motionless, scarcely breathing. He no longer heard any sound;
he ventured out. The sentinel was no longer there. The detachment had
rejoined the battalion.
One of his old friends, a man to whom he had rendered services such as
are not forgotten, lived in this very Passage du Saumon. Jeanty Sarre
looked for the number, woke the porter, told him the name of his friend,
was admitted, went up the stairs, and knocked at the door. The door was
opened, his friend appeared in his nightshirt, with a candle in his
hand.
He recognized Jeanty Sarre, and cried out, "You here! What a state you
are in! Where hove you come from? From what riot? from what madness? And
then you come to compromise us all here? To have us murdered? To have us
shot? Now then, what do you want with me?"
"I want you to give me a brush down," said Jeanty Sarre.
His friend took a brush and brushed him, and Jeanty Sarre went away.
While going down the stairs, Jeanty Sarre cried out to his friend,
"Thanks!"
Such is the kind of hospitality which we have since received in Belgium,
in Switzerland, and even in England.
The next day, when they took up the bodies they found on Charpentier a
note-book and a pencil, and upon Denis Dussoubs a letter. A letter to a
woman. Even these stoic souls love.
On the 1st of December, Denis Dussoubs began this letter. He did not
finish it. Here it is:--
"MY DEAR MARIE,
"Have you experienced that sweet pain of feeling regret for him who
regrets you? For myself since I left you I have known no other
affliction than that of thinking of you. Even in my affliction itself
there was something sweet and tender, and although I was troubled, I
was nevertheless happy to feel in the depths of my heart how greatly
I loved you by the regret which you cost me. Why are we separated?
Why have I been forced to fly from you? For we were so happy! When I
think of our little evenings so free from constraint, of our gay
country chats with your sisters, I feel myself seized with a bitter
regret. Did we not love each other clearly, my darling? We had no
secret from each other because we had no need to have one, and our
lips uttered the thoughts of our hearts without our thinking to keep
anything back.
"God has snatched away from us all these blessings, and nothing will
console me for having lost them; do you not lament with me the evils
of absence?
"How seldom we see those whom we love! Circumstances take us far from
them, and our soul tormented and attracted out of ourselves lives in
a perpetual anguish. I feel this sickness of absence. I imagine
myself wherever you are. I follow your work with my eyes, or I listen
to your words, seated beside you and seeking to divine the word which
you are about to utter; your sisters sew by our side. Empty
dreams--illusions of a moment--my hand seeks yours; where are you, my
beloved one?
"My life is an exile. Far from those whom I love and by whom I am
loved, my heart calls them and consumes away in its grief. No, I do
not love the great cities and their noise, towns peopled with
strangers where no one knows you and where you know no one, where
each one jostles and elbows the other without ever exchanging a
smile. But I love our quiet fields, the peace of home, and the voice
of friends who greet you. Up to the present I have always lived in
contradiction with my nature; my fiery blood, my nature so hostile to
injustice, the spectacle of unmerited miseries have thrown me into a
struggle of which I do not foresee the issue, a struggle in which
will remain to the end without fear and without reproach, that which
daily breaks me down and consumes my life.
"I tell you, my much-loved darling, the secret miseries of my heart;
no, I do not blush for what my hand has just written, but my heart is
sick and suffering, and I tell it to you. I suffer... I wish to blot
out these lines, but why? Could they offend you? What do they contain
that could wound my darling? Do I not know your affection, and do I
not know that you love me? Yes, you have not deceived me, I did not
kiss a lying mouth; when seated on my knees you lulled me with the
charm of your words, I believed you. I wished to bind myself to a
burning iron bar; weariness preys upon me and devours me. I feel a
maddening desire to recover life. Is it Paris that produces this
effect upon me? I always yearn to be in places where I am not. I live
here to a complete solitude. I believe you, Marie...."
Charpentier's note-book only contained this line, which he had written
in the darkness at the foot of the barricade while Denis Dussoubs was
speaking:--
Admonet et magna testatur voce per umbras.
[28] February 18. Louvain.
CHAPTER V.
OTHER DEEDS OF DARKNESS
Yvan had again seen Conneau. He corroborated the information given in
the letter of Alexandre Dumas to Bocage; with the fact we had the names.
On the 3d of December at M. Abbatucci's house, 31, Rue Caumartin, in the
presence of Dr. Conneau and of Piétri, a Corsican, born at Vezzani,
named Jacques François Criscelli,[29] a man attached to the secret and
personal service of Louis Bonaparte, had received from Piétri's own
mouth the offer of 25,000 francs "to take or kill Victor Hugo." He had
accepted, and said, "That is all very well if I am alone. But suppose
there are two of us?"
Piétri had answered,--
"Then there will be 50,000 francs."
This communication, accompanied by urgent prayers, had been made to me
by Yvan in the Rue de Monthabor, while we were still at Dupont White's.
This said, I continue my story.
The massacre of the 4th did not produce the whole of its effect until
the next day, the 5th. The impulse given by us to the resistance still
lasted for some hours, and at nightfall, in the labyrinth of houses
ranging from the Rue du Petit Carreau to the Rue du Temple, there was
fighting. The Pagevin, Neuve Saint Eustache, Montorgueil, Rambuteau,
Beaubourg, and Transnonain barricades were gallantly defended. There,
there was an impenetrable network of streets and crossways barricaded by
the People, surrounded by the Army.
The assault was merciless and furious.
The barricade of the Rue Montorgueil was one of those which held out the
longest. A battalion and artillery was needed to carry it. At the last
moment it was only defended by three men, two shop-clerks and a
lemonade-seller of an adjoining street. When the assault began the night
was densely dark, and the three combatants escaped. But they were
surrounded. No outlets. Not one door was open. They climbed the grated
gateway of the Passage Verdeau as Jeanty Sarre and Charpentier had
scaled the Passage du Saumon, had jumped over, and had fled down the
Passage. But the other grated gateway was closed, and like Jeanty Sarre
and Charpentier they had no time to climb it. Besides, they heard the
soldiers corning on both sides. In a corner at the entrance of the
Passage there were a few planks which had served to close a stall, and
which the stall-keeper was in the habit of putting there. They hid
themselves beneath these planks.
The soldiers who had taken the barricade, after having searched the
streets, bethought themselves of searching the Passage. They also
climbed over the grated gateway, looked about everywhere with lanterns,
and found nothing They were going away, when one of them perceived the
foot of one of these three unfortunate men which was projecting from
beneath the planks.
They killed all three of them on the spot with bayonet-thrusts. They
cried out, "Kill us at once! Shoot us! Do not prolong our misery."
The neighboring shop-keepers heard these cries, but dared not open their
doors or their windows, for fear, as one of them said the next day,
"that they should do the same to them."
The execution at an end, the executioners left the three victims lying
in a pool of blood on the pavement of the Passage. One of those
unfortunate men did not die until eight o'clock next morning.
No one had dared to ask for mercy; no one had dared to bring any help.
They left them to die there.
One of the combatants of the Rue Beaubourg was more fortunate. They were
pursuing him. He rushed up a staircase, reached a roof, and from there a
passage, which proved to be the top corridor of an hotel. A key was in
the door. He opened it boldly, and found himself face to face with a man
who was going to bed. It was a tired-out traveller who had arrived at
the hotel that very evening. The fugitive said to the traveller, "I am
lost, save me!" and explained him the situation in three words.
The traveller said to him, "Undress yourself, and get into my bed." And
then he lit a cigar, and began quietly to smoke. Just as the man of the
barricade had got into bed a knock came at the door. It was the solders
who were searching the house. To the questions which they asked him the
traveller answered, pointing to the bed, "We are only two here. We have
just arrived here. I am smoking my cigar, and my brother is asleep." The
waiter was questioned, and confirmed the traveller's statement. The
soldiers went away, and no one was shot.
We will say this, that the victorious soldiers killed less than on the
preceding day. They did not massacre in all the captured barricades. The
order had been given on that day to make prisoners. It might also be
believed that a certain humanity existed. What was this humanity? We
shall see.
At eleven o'clock at night all was at an end.
They arrested all those whom they found in the streets which had been
surrounded, whether combatants or not, they had all the wine-shops and
the _cafés_ opened, they closely searched the houses, they seized all
the men whom they could find, only leaving the women and the children.
Two regiments formed in a square carried away all these prisoners
huddled together. They took them to the Tuileries, and shut them up in
the vast cellar situated beneath the terrace at the waterside.
On entering this cellar the prisoners felt reassured. They called to
mind that in June, 1848, a great number of insurgents had been shut up
there, and later on had been transported. They said to themselves that
doubtless they also would be transported, or brought before the Councils
of War, and that they had plenty of time before them.
They were thirsty. Many of them had been fighting since that morning,
and nothing parches tire mouth so much as biting cartridges. They asked
for drink. Three pitchers of water were brought to them.
A sort of security suddenly fell upon them. Amongst them were several
who had been transported in June, 1848, and who had already been in that
cellar, and who said, "In June they were not so humane. They left us for
three days without food or drink." Some of them wrapped themselves up in
their overcoats or cloaks, lay down, and slept. At one o'clock in the
morning a great noise was heard outside. Soldiers, carrying torches,
appeared in the cellars, the prisoners who were sleeping woke with a
start, an officer ordered them to get up.
They made them go out anyhow as they had come in. As they went out they
coupled them two by two at random, and a sergeant counted them in a loud
voice. They asked neither their names, nor their professions, nor their
families, nor who they were, nor whence they came; they contented
themselves with the numbers. The numbers sufficed for what they were
about to do.
In this manner they counted 337. The counting having come to an end,
they ranged them in close columns, still two by two and arm-in-arm. They
were not tied together, but on each side of the column, on the right and
on the left, there were three files of soldiers keeping them within
their ranks, with guns loaded; a battalion was at their head, a
battalion in their rear. They began to march, pressed together and
enclosed in this moving frame of bayonets.
At the moment when the column set forward, a young law-student, a fair
pale Alsatian, of some twenty years, who was in their ranks, asked a
captain, who was marching by him with his sword drawn,--
"Where are we going?"
The officer made no reply.
Having left the Tuileries, they turned to the right, and followed the
quay as far as the Pont de la Concorde. They crossed the Pont de la
Concorde, and again turned to the right. In this manner they passed
before the esplanade of the Invalides, and reached the lonely quay of
Gros-Caillou.
As we have just said, they numbered 337, and as they walked two by two,
there was one, the last, who walked alone. He was one of the most daring
combatants of the Rue Pagevin, a friend of Lecomte the younger. By
chance the sergeant, who was posted in the inner file by his side, was a
native of the same province. On passing under a street-lamp they
recognized each other. They exchanged quickly a few words in a whisper.
"Where are we going?" asked the prisoner.
"To the military school," answered the sergeant. And he added, "Ah! my
poor lad!"
And then he kept at a distance from the prisoner.
As this was the end of the column, there was a certain space between the
last rank of the soldiers who formed the line, and the first rank of the
company which closed the procession.
As they reached the lonely boulevard of Gros-Caillon, of which we have
just spoken, the sergeant drew near to the prisoner, and said to him in
a rapid and low tone,--
"One can hardly see here. It is a dark spot. On the left there are
trees. Be off!"
"But," said the prisoner, "they will fire at me."
"They will miss you."
"But suppose they kill me?"
"It will be no worse than what awaits you."
The prisoner understood, shook the sergeant's hand, and taking advantage
of the space between the line of soldiers and rear-ground, rushed with a
single bound outside the column, and disappeared in the darkness beneath
the trees.
"A man is escaping!" cried out the officer who commanded the last
company. "Halt! Fire!"
The column halted. The rear-guard company fired at random in the
direction taken by the fugitive, and, as the sergeant had foreseen,
missed him. In a few moments the fugitive had reached the streets
adjoining the tobacco manufactory, and had plunged into them. They did
not pursue him. They had more pressing work on hand.
Besides, confusion might have arisen in their ranks, and to recapture
one they risked letting the 336 escape.
The column continued its march. Having reached the Pont d'Iéna, they
turned to the left, and entered into the Champ de Mars.
There they shot them all.
These 336 corpses were amongst those which were carried to Montmartre
Cemetery, and which were buried there with their heads exposed.
In this manner their families were enabled to recognize them. The
Government learned who they were after killing them.
Amongst these 336 victims were a large number of the combatants of the
Rue Pagevin and the Rue Rambuteau, of the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache and
the Porte Saint Denis. There were also 100 passers-by, whom they had
arrested because they happened to be there, and without any particular
reason.
Besides, we will at once mention that the wholesale executions from the
3d inst. were renewed nearly every night. Sometimes at the Champ de
Mars, sometimes at the Prefecture of Police, sometimes at both places at
once.
When the prisons were full, M. de Maupas said "Shoot!" The fusillades at
the Prefecture took place sometimes in the courtyard, sometimes in the
Rue de Jérusalem. The unfortunate people whom they shot were placed
against the wall which bears the theatrical notices. They had chosen
this spot because it is close by the sewer-grating of the gutter, so
that the blood would run down at once, and would leave fewer traces. On
Friday, the 5th, they shot near this gutter of the Rue de Jérusalem 150
prisoners. Some one[30] said to me, "On the next day I passed by there,
they showed the spot; I dug between the paving-stones with the toe of my
boot, and I stirred up the mud. I found blood."
This expression forms the whole history of the _coup d'état_, and will
form the whole history of Louis Bonaparte. Stir up this mud, you will
find blood.
Let this then be known to History:--
The massacre of the boulevard had this infamous continuation, the secret
executions. The _coup d'état_ after having been ferocious became
mysterious. It passed from impudent murder in broad day to hidden murder
at night.
Evidence abounds.
Esquiros, hidden in the Gros-Caillou, heard the fusillades on the Champ
de Mars every night.
At Mazas, Chambolle, on the second night of his incarceration, heard
from midnight till five o'clock in the morning, such volleys that he
thought the prison was attacked.
Like Montferrier, Desmoulins bore evidence to blood between the
paving-stones of the Rue de Jérusalem.
Lieutenant-Colonel Cailland, of the ex-Republican Guard, is crossing the
Pont Neuf; he sees some _sergents de ville_ with muskets to their
shoulders, aiming at the passers-by; he says to them, "You dishonor the
uniform." They arrest him. They search him. A _sergent de ville_ says to
him, "If we find a cartridge upon you, we shall shoot you." They find
nothing. They take him to the Prefecture of Police, they shut him up in
the station-house. The director of the station-house comes and says to
him, "Colonel, I know you well. Do not complain of being here. You are
confided to my care. Congratulate yourself on it. Look here, I am one of
the family, I go and I come, I see, I listen; I know what is going on; I
know what is said; I divine what is not said. I hear certain noises
during the night; I see contain traces in the morning. As for myself I
am not a bad fellow. I am taking care of you. I am keeping you out of
the way. At the present moment be contented to remain with me. If you
were not here you would be underground."
An ex-magistrate, General Leflô's brother-in-law, is conversing on the
Pont de la Concorde with some officers before the steps of the Chamber;
some policemen come up to him: "You are tampering with the army." He
protests, they throw him into a vehicle, and they take him to the
Prefecture of Police. As he arrives there he sees a young man, in a
blouse and a cap, passing on the quay, who is being shoved along by
three municipal guards with the butt-ends of their muskets. At an
opening of the parapet, a guard shouts to him, "Go in there." The man
goes in. Two guards shoot him in the back. He falls. The third guard
despatches him with a shot in his ear.
On the 13th the massacres were not yet at an end. On the morning of that
day, in the dim light of the dawn, a solitary passer-by, going along the
Rue Saint Honoré, saw, between two lines of horse-soldiers, three wagons
wending their way, heavily loaded. These wagons could be traced by the
stains of blood which dripped from them. They came from the Champ de
Mars, and were going to the Montmartre Cemetery. They were full of
corpses.
[29] It was this same Criscelli, who later on at Vaugirard in the Rue du
Trancy, killed by special order of the Prefect of Police a man named
Kech, "suspected of plotting the assassination of the Emperor."
[30] The Marquis Sarrazin de Montferrier, a relative of my eldest
brother. I can now mention his name.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE
Al danger being over, all scruples vanished. Prudent and wise people
could now give their adherence to the _coup d'état_, they allowed their
names to be posted up.
Here is the placard:
"FRENCH REPUBLIC.
"_In the name of the French People_.
"The President of the Republic,
"Wishing, until the reorganization of the Legislative Body and the
Council of State, to be surrounded by men who justly possess the esteem
and the confidence of the country,
"Has created a Consultative committee, which is composed of MM.--
"Abbatucci, ex-Councillor of the Court of Cassation (of the Loiret).
General Achard (of the Moselle).
André, Ernest (of the Seine).
André (of the Charente).
D'Argout, Governor of the Bank, ex-Minister.
General Arrighi of Padua (of Corsica).
General de Bar (of the Seine).
General Baraguay-d'Hilliers (of Doubs).
Barbaroux, ex-Procureur-General (of the Réunion).
Baroche, ex-Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs,
Vice-President of the Committee (of the Charente-Inférieure).
Barret (Ferdinand), ex-Minister (of the Seine).
Barthe, ex-Minister, first President (of the Cour de Comptes).
Bataille (of the Haute-Vienne).
Bavoux (Evariste) (of the Seine-et-Marne).
De Beaumont (of the Somme).
Bérard (of the Lot-et-Garonne).
Berger, Prefect of the Seine (of Puy-de-Dôme).
Bertrand (of the Yonne).
Bidault (of the Cher).
Bigrel (of the Côtes-du-Nord).
Billault, barrister.
Bineau, ex-Minister (of the Maine-et-Loire).
Boinvilliers, ex-President of the body of barristers (of the Seine).
Bonjean, Attorney-General of the Court of Cassation (of the Drome).
Boulatignier.
Bourbousson (of Vaucluse).
Bréhier (of the Manche).
De Cambacérès (Hubert).
De Cambacérès (of the Aisne).
Carlier, ex-Prefect of Police.
De Casabianca, ex-Minister (of Corsica).
General de Castellane, Commander-in-Chief at Lyons.
De Caulaincourt (of Calvados).
Vice-Admiral Cécile (of the Seine-Inférieure).
Chadenet (of the Meuse).
Charlemagne (of the Indre).
Chassaigne-Goyon (of Puy de Dôme).
General de Chasseloup-Laubat (of the Seine-Inférieure).
Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat (Charente-Inférieure).
Chaix d'Est-Ange, Barrister of Paris (of the Marne).
De Chazelles, Mayor of Clermont-Ferrand (of Puy-de-Dôme).
Collas (of the Gironde).
De Crouseilhes, ex-Councillor of the Court of Cassation, ex-Minister
(of the Basses-Pyrénées).
Curial (of the Orne).
De Cuverville (of the Côtes-du-Nord).
Dabeaux (of the Haute-Garonne).
Dariste (of the Basses-Pyrénées).
Daviel, ex-Minister.
Delacoste, ex-Commissary-General (of the Rhône).
Delajus (of the Charente-Inférieure).
Delavau (of the Indre).
Deltheil (of the Lot).
Denjoy (of the Gironde).
Desjobert (of the Seine-Inférieure).
Desmaroux (of the Allier).
Drouyn de Lhuys, ex-Minister (of the Seine-et-Marne).
Théodore Ducos, Minister of the Marine and of the Colonies (of the
Seine).
Dumas (of the Institut) ex-Minister (of the Nord).
Charles Dupin, of the Institut (of the Seine-Inférieure).
General Durrieu (of the Landes).
Maurice Duval, ex-Prefect.
Eschassériaux (of the Charente-Inférieure).
Marshal Excelmans, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor.
Ferdinand Favre (of the Loire-Inférieure) General de Flahaut,
ex-Ambassador.
Fortoul, Minister of Public Instruction (of the Basses-Alpes).
Achille Fould, Minister of Finance (of the Seine).
De Fourment (of the Somme).
Fouquier-d'Hérouël (of the Aisne).
Fremy (of the Yonne).
Furtado (of the Seine).
Gasc (of the Haute Garonne).
Gaslonde (of the Manche).
De Gasparin (ex-Minister).
Ernest de Girardin (of the Charente).
Augustin Giraud (of Maine-et-Loire).
Charles Giraud, of the Institut, member of the Court of Public
Instruction, ex-Minister.
Godelle (of the Aisne).
Goulhot de Saint-Germain (of the Manche).
General de Grammont (of the Loire).
De Grammont (of the Haute-Saône).
De Greslan (of the Réunion).
General de Grouchy (of the Gironde).
Kallez Claparède (of the Bas-Rhin).
General d'Hautpoul, ex-Minister (of the Aude).
Hébert (of the Aisne).
De Heeckeren (of the Haut-Rhin).
D'Hérembault (of the Pas-de-Calais).
Hermann.
Heurtier (of the Loire).
General Husson (of the Aube).
Janvier (of the Tarn-et-Garonne).
Lacaze (of the Hautes-Pyrénées).
Lacrosse, ex-Minister (of Finistère).
Ladoucette (of the Moselle).
Frédéric de Lagrange (of the Gers).
De Lagrange (of the Gironde).
General de La Hitte, ex-Minister.
Delangle, ex-Attorney-General.
Lanquetin, President of the Municipal Commission.
De la Riboissière (of Ille-et-Vilaine).
General Lawoestine.
Lebeuf (of the Seine-et-Marne).
Genéral Lebreton (of the Eure-et-Loir).
Le Comte (of the Yonne).
Le Conte (of the Côtes-du-Nord).
Lefebvre-Duruflé, Minister of Commerce (of the Eure).
Lélut (of the Haute-Saône).
Lemarois (of the Manche).
Lemercier (of the Charente). Lequien (of the Pas-de-Calais).
Lestiboudois (of the Nord).
Levavasseur (of the Seine-Inférieure).
Le Verrier (of the Manche).
Lezay de Marnésia (of Loir-et-Cher).
General Magnan, Commander-in-chief of the Army of Paris.
Magne, Minister of Public Works (of the Dordogne).
Edmond Maigne (of the Dordogne).
Marchant (of the Nord).
Mathieu Bodet, Barrister at the Court of Cassation.
De Maupas, Prefect of Police.
De Mérode (of the Nord).
Mesnard, President of the Chamber of the Court of Cassation.
Meynadier, ex-Prefect (of the Lozère).
De Montalembert (of the Doubs).
De Morny (of the Puy-de-Dôme).
De Mortemart (of the Seine-Inférieure).
De Mouchy (of the Oise).
De Moustiers (of the Doubs).
Lucien Murat (of the Lot).
General d'Ornano (of the Indre-et-Loire).
Pepin Lehalleur (of the Seine-et-Marne).
Joseph Périer, Governor of the Bank.
De Persigny (of the Nord).
Pichon, Mayor of Arras (of the Pas de Calais).
Portalis, First President of the Court of Cassation.
Pongerard, Mayor of Pennes (of the Ille-et-Vilaine).
General de Préval.
De Rancé (of Algeria).
General Randon, ex-Minister, Governor-General of Algeria.
General Regnauld de Saint-Jean-d'Angély, ex-Minister (of the
Charente-Inférieure).
Renouard de Bussière (of the Bas-Rhin).
Renouard (of the Lozère).
General Rogé.
Rouher, Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice (of the Puy-de-Dôme).
De Royer, ex-Minister, Attorney-General at the Court of Appeal of
Paris.
General de Saint-Arnaud, Minister of War.
De Saint-Arnaud, Barrister at the Court of Appeal of Paris.
De Salis (of the Moselle).
Sapey (of the Isère).
Schneider, ex-Minister.
De Ségur d'Aguesseau (of the Hautes-Pyréneés).
Seydoux (of the Nord).
Amédée Thayer.
Thieullen (of the Côtes-du-Nord).
De Thorigny, ex-Minister.
Toupot de Béveaux (of the Haute-Marne).
Tourangin, ex-Prefect. Troplong, First President of the Court of
Appeal.
De Turgot, Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Vaillant, Marshal of France.
Vaisse, ex-Minister (of the Nord).
De Vandeul (of the Haute-Marne).
General Vast-Vimeux (of the Charente-Inférieure).
Vauchelle, Mayor of Versailles.
Viard (of the Meurthe).
Vieillard (of the Manche).
Vuillefroy.
Vuitry, Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Finance De Wagram.
"The President of the Republic,
"LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
"Minister of the Interior, DE MORNY."
The name of Bourbousson is found on this list.
It would be a pity if this name were lost.
At the same time as this placard appeared the protest of M. Daru, as
follows:--
"I approve of the proceedings of the National Assembly at the Mairie
of the Tenth Arrondissement on the 2d of December, 1851, in which I was
hindered from participating by force.
"DARU."
Some of these members of the Consultative Committee came from Mazas or
from Mount Valerien. They had been detained in a cell for four-and-twenty
hours, and then released. It may be seen that these legislators bore
little malice to the man who had made them undergo this disagreeable
taste of the law.
Many of the personages comprised in this menagerie possessed no other
renown but the outcry caused by their debts, clamoring around them.
Such a one had been twice declared bankrupt, but this extenuating
circumstance was added, "not under his own name:" Another who belonged
to a literary or scientific circle was reputed to have sold his vote. A
third, who was handsome, elegant, fashionable, dandified, polished,
gilded, embroidered, owed his prosperity to a connection which indicated
a filthiness of soul.
Such people as these gave their adherence with little hesitation to the
deed which "saved society."
Some others, amongst those who composed this mosaic, possessed no
political enthusiasm, and merely consented to figure in this list in
order to keep their situations and their salaries; they were under the
Empire what they had been before the Empire, neuters, and during the
nineteen years of the reign, they continued to exercise their military,
judicial, or administrative functions unobtrusively, surrounded with the
right and proper respect due to inoffensive idiots.
Others were genuine politicians, belonging to that learned school which
begins with Guizot, and does not finish with Parieu, grave physicians of
social order, who reassure the frightened middle-classes, and who
preserve dead things.
"Shall I lose my eye?" asked Messer Pancrace.
"Not at all, my friend, I hold it in my hand."
In this quasi Council of State there were a goodly number of men of the
Police, a race of beings then held in esteem, Carlier, Piétri, Maupas,
etc.
Shortly after the 2d of December under the title of Mixed Commissions,
the police substituted itself for justice, drew up judgments, pronounced
sentences, violated every law judicially without the regular magistracy
interposing the slightest obstacle to this irregular magistracy: Justice
allowed the police to do what it liked with the satisfied look of a team
of horses which had just been relieved.
Some of the men inscribed on the list of this commission refused: Léon
Faucher Goulard, Mortemart, Frédéric Granier, Marchand, Maillard
Paravay, Beugnot. The newspapers received orders not to publish these
refusals.
M. Beugnot inscribed on his card: "Count Beugnot, who does not belong to
the Consultative Committee."
M. Joseph Périer went from corner to corner of the streets, pencil in
hand, scratching out his name from all the placards, saying, "I shall
take back my name wherever I find it."
General Baraguay d'Hilliers did not refuse. A brave soldier nevertheless;
he had lost an arm in the Russian war. Later on, he has been Marshall of
France; he deserved better than to have been created a Marshal by Louis
Bonaparte. It did not appear likely that he would have come to this.
During the last days of November General Baraguay d'Hilliers, seated in a
large arm-chair before the high fireplace of the Conference Hall of the
National Assembly, was warming himself; some one, one of his colleagues,
he who is writing these lines, sat down near him on the other side of the
fireplace. They did not speak to each other, one belonging to the Right,
the other to the Left; but M. Piscatory came in, who belonged a little to
the Right and a little to the Left. He addressed himself to Baraguay
d'Hilliers: "Well, general, do you know what they are saying?"
"What?"
"That one of these days the President will shut the door in our faces."
General Baraguay d'Hilliers answered, and I heard the answer,--"If M.
Bonaparte should close the door of the Assembly against us, France will
fling it wide open again."
Louis Bonaparte at one moment thought of entitling this committee the
"Executive Commission." "No," said Morny to him, "that would be to
credit them with courage. They will willingly be supporters; they will
not be proscribers."
General Rulhière was dismissed for having blamed the passive obedience
of the army.
Let us here mention an incident. Some days after the 4th of December,
Emmanuel Arago met M. Dupin, who was going up the Faubourg Saint Honoré.
"What!" said Arago, "are you going to the Elysée?"
M. Dupin answered, "I never go to disreputable houses."
Yet he went there.
M. Dupin, it may be remembered, was appointed Attorney-General at the
Court of Cessation.
CHAPTER VII.
THE OTHER LIST
Opposite to the list of adherents should be placed the list of the
proscribed. In this manner the two sides of the _coup d'état_ can be
seen at a glance.
"DECREE.
"ARTICLE I.--The ex-Representatives of the Assembly, whose names are
found beneath, are expelled from French territory, from Algeria, and
from the Colonies, for the sake of public safety:--
"Edmond Valentine. Charrassin.
Paul Racouchot. Bandsept.
Agricol Perdiguier. Savoye.
Eugène Cholat. Joly.
Louis Latrade. Combier.
Michel Renaud. Boysset.
Joseph Benoist (du Rhône). Duché.
Joseph Burgard. Ennery.
Jean Colfavru. Guilgot.
Joseph Faure (du Rhone). Hochstuhl.
Pierre-Charles Gambon. Michot Boutet.
Charles Lagrange. Baune.
Martin Nadaud. Bertholon.
Barthélemy Terrier. Schoelcher.
Victor Hugo. De Flotte.
Cassal. Joigneaux.
Signard. Laboulaye.
Viguier. Bruys.
Esquiros. Gaston Dussoubs.
Madier de Montjau. Guiter.
Noël Parfait. Lafon.
Emile Péan. Lamarque.
Pelletier. Pierre Lafranc.
Raspail. Jules Leroux.
Théodore Bac. Francisque Maigne.
Bancel. Malardier.
Belin (Drôme). Mathieu (de la Drôme).
Bosse. Millotte.
Bourzat. Roselli-Mollet.
Brive. Charras.
Chavoix. Saint-Ferreol.
Clément Dulac. Sommier.
Dupout (de Bussac). Testelin (Nord).
"ARTICLE II.--In the event, contrary to the present decree, of one of
the persons named in Article I. re-entering the prohibited limits, he
may be transported for the sake of public safety.
"Given at the Palace of the Tuileries, at the Cabinet Council assembled,
January 9th, 1852.
"LOUIS BONAPARTE.
"DE MORNY, Minister of the Interior."
There was besides a list of the "provisionally exiled," on which figured
Edward Quinet, Victor Chauffour, General Laidet, Pascal Duprat, Versigny,
Antony Thouret, Thiers, Girardin, and Rémusat. Four Representatives,
Mathé, Greppo, Marc-Dufraisse, and Richardet, were added to the list of
the "expelled." Representative Miot was reserved for the tortures of the
casemates of Africa. Thus in addition to the massacres, the victory of
the _coup d'état_ was paid for by these figures: eighty-eight
Representatives proscribed, one killed.
I usually dined at Brussels in a café, called the Café des Mille
Colonnes, which was frequented by the exiles. On the 10th of January I
had invited Michel de Bourges to lunch, and we were sitting at the same
table. The waiter brought me the _Moniteur Français_; I glanced over it.
"Ah," said I, "here is the list of the proscribed." I ran my eye over it,
and I said to Michel de Bourges, "I have a piece of bad news to tell
you." Michel de Bourges turned pale. I added, "You are not on the list."
His face brightened.
Michel de Bourges, so dauntless in the face of death, was faint-hearted
in the face of exile.
CHAPTER VIII.
DAVID D'ANGERS
Brutalities and ferocities were mingled together. The great sculptor,
David d'Angers, was arrested in his own house, 16, Rue d'Assas; the
Commissary of Police on entering, said to him,--
"Have you any arms in your house?"
"Yes," Said David, "for my defence."
And he added,--
"If I had to deal with civilized people."
"Where are these arms?" rejoined the Commissary. "Let us see them."
David showed him his studio full of masterpieces.
They placed him in a _fiacre_, and drove him to the station-house of the
Prefecture of Police.
Although there was only space for 120 prisoners, there were 700 there.
David was the twelfth in a dungeon intended for two. No light nor air. A
narrow ventilation hole above their heads. A dreadful tub in a corner,
common to all, covered but not closed by a wooden lid. At noon they
brought them soup, a sort of warm and stinking water, David told me. They
stood leaning against the wall, and trampled upon the mattresses which
had been thrown on the floor, not having room to lie down on them. At
length, however, they pressed so closely to each other, that they
succeeded in lying down at full length. Their jailers had thrown them
some blankets. Some of them slept. At day break the bolts creaked, the
door was half-opened and the jailers cried out to them, "Get up!" They
went into the adjoining corridor, the jailer took up the mattresses,
threw a few buckets of water on the floor, wiped it up anyhow, replaced
the mattresses on the damp stones, and said to them, "Go back again."
They locked them up until the next morning. From time to time they
brought in 100 new prisoners, and they fetched away 100 old ones (those
who had been there for two or three days). What became of them?--At night
the prisoners could hear from their dungeon the sound of explosions, and
in the morning passers-by could see, as we have stated, pools of blood in
the courtyard of the Prefecture.
The calling over of those who went out was conducted in alphabetical
order.
One day they called David d'Angers. David took up his packet, and was
getting ready to leave, when the governor of the jail, who seemed to be
keeping watch over him, suddenly came up and said quickly, "Stay, M.
David, stay."
One morning he saw Buchez, the ex-President of the Constituent Assembly,
coming into his cell "Ah!" said David, "good! you have come to visit the
prisoners?"--"I am a prisoner," said Buchez.
They wished to insist on David leaving for America. He refused. They
contented themselves with Belgium. On the 19th December he reached
Brussels. He came to see me, and said to me, "I am lodging at the Grand
Monarque, 89, Rue des Fripiers."[31]
And he added laughing, "The Great Monarch--the King. The old
clothesmen--the Royalists, '89. The Revolution." Chance occasionally
furnishes some wit.
[31] _Anglice_, "old clothes men."
CHAPTER IX.
OUR LAST MEETING
On the 3d of December everything was coming in in our favor. On the 5th
everything was receding from us. It was like a mighty sea which was going
out. The tide had come in gloriously, it went out disastrously. Gloomy
ebb and flow of the people.
And who was the power who said to this ocean, "Thou shalt go no farther?"
Alas! a pigmy.
These hiding-places of the abyss are fathomless.
The abyss is afraid. Of what?
Of something deeper than itself. Of the Crime.
The people drew back. They drew back on the 5th; on the 6th they
disappeared.
On the horizon there could be seen nothing but the beginning of a species
of vast night.
This night has been the Empire.
We found ourselves on the 5th what we were on the 2d. Alone.
But we persevered. Our mental condition was this--desperate, yes;
discouraged, no.
Items of bad news came to us as good news had come to us on the evening
of the 3d, one after another. Aubry du Nord was at the Concièrgerie. Our
dear and eloquent Crémieux was at Mazas. Louis Blanc, who, although
banished, was coming to the assistance of France, and was bringing to us
the great power of his name and of his mind, had been compelled, like
Ledru Rollin, to halt before the catastrophe of the 4th. He had not been
able to get beyond Tournay.
As for General Neumayer, he had not "marched upon Paris," but he had come
there. For what purpose? To give in his submission.
We no longer possessed a refuge. No. 15, Rue Richelieu, was watched, No.
11, Rue Monthabor, had been denounced. We wandered about Paris, meeting
each other here and there, and exchanging a few words in a whisper, not
knowing where we should sleep, or whether we should get a meal; and
amongst those heads which did not know what pillow they should have at
night there was at least one upon which a price was set.
They accosted each other, and this is the sort of conversation they
held:--
"What has became of So-and-So?"
"He is arrested."
"And So-and-So?"
"Dead."
"And So-and-So?"
"Disappeared."
We held, however, one other meeting. This was on the 6th, at the house of
the Representative Raymond, in the Place de la Madeleine. Nearly all of
us met there. I was enabled to shake the hands of Edgar Quinet, of
Chauffour, of Clément Dulac, of Bancel, of Versigny, of Emile Péan, and I
again met our energetic and honest host of the Rue Blanche, Coppens, and
our courageous colleague, Pons Stande, whom we had lost sight of in the
smoke of the battle. From the windows of the room where we were
deliberating we could see the Place de la Madeleine and the Boulevards
militarily occupied, and covered with a fierce and deep mass of soldiers
drawn up in battle order, and which still seemed to face a possible
combat. Charamaule came in.
He drew two pistols from his great cloak, placed them on the table, and
said, "All is at an end. Nothing feasible and sensible remains, except a
deed of rashness. I propose it. Are you of my opinion, Victor Hugo?"
"Yes," I answered.
I did not know what he was going to say, but I knew that he would only
say that which was noble.
This was his proposition.
"We number," resumed he, "about fifty Representatives of the People,
still standing and assembled together. We are all that remains of the
National Assembly, of Universal Suffrage, of the Law, of Right.
To-morrow, where shall we be? We do not know. Scattered or dead. The hour
of to-day is ours; this hour gone and past, we have nothing left but the
shadow. The opportunity is unique. Let us profit by it."
He stopped, looked at us fixedly with his steadfast gaze, and resumed,--
"Let us take the advantage of this chance of being alive and the good
fortune of being together. The group which is here is the whole of the
Republic. Well, then; let us offer in our persons all the Republic to the
army, and let us make the army fall back before the Republic, and Might
fall back before Right. In that supreme moment one of the two must
tremble, Might or Right, and if Right does not tremble Might will
tremble. If we do not tremble the soldiers will tremble. Let us march
upon the Crime. If the Law advances, the Crime will draw back. In either
case we shall have done our duty. Living, we shall be preservers, dead,
we shall be heroes. This is what I propose."
A profound silence ensued.
"Let us put on our sashes, and let us all go down in a procession, two by
two, into the Place de la Madeleine. You can see that Colonel before that
large flight of steps, with his regiment in battle array; we will go to
him, and there, before his soldiers, I will summon him to come over to
the side of duty, and to restore his regiment to the Republic. If he
refuses ..."
Charamaule took his two pistols in his hands.
"... I will blow out his brains."
"Charamaule," said I, "I will be by your side."
"I knew that well," Charamaule said to me.
He added,--
"This explosion will awaken the people."
"But," several cried out, "suppose it does not awaken them?"
"We shall die."
"I am on your side," said I to him.
We each pressed the other's hand. But objections burst forth.
No one trembled, but all criticised the proposal. Would it not be
madness? And useless madness? Would it not be to play the last card of
the Republic without any possible chance of success? What good fortune
for Bonaparte! To crush with one blow all that remained of those who were
resisting and of those who were combating! To finish with them once for
all! We were beaten, granted, but was it necessary to add annihilation to
defeat? No possible chance of success. The brains of an army cannot be
blown out. To do what Charamaule advised would be to open the tomb,
nothing more. It would be a magnificent suicide, but it would be a
suicide. Under certain circumstances it is selfish to be merely a hero. A
man accomplishes it at once, he becomes illustrious, he enters into
history, all that is very easy. He leaves to others behind him the
laborious work of a long protest, the immovable resistance of the exile,
the bitter, hard life of the conquered who continues to combat the
victory. Some degree of patience forms a part of politics. To know how
to await revenge is sometimes more difficult than to hurry on its
catastrophe. There are two kinds of courage--bravery and perseverance;
the first belongs to the soldier, the second belongs to the citizen. A
hap-hazard end, however dauntless, does not suffice. To extricate oneself
from the difficulty by death, it is only too easily done: what is
required, what is the reverse of easy, is to extricate one's country from
the difficulty. No, said those high-minded men, who opposed Charamaule
and myself, this to-day which you propose to us is the suppression of
to-morrow; take care, there is a certain amount of desertion in
suicide....
The word "desertion" grievously wounded Charamaule. "Very well," said he,
"I abandon the idea."
This scene was exceedingly grand, and Quinet later on, when in exile,
spoke to me of it with deep emotion.
We separated. We did not meet again.
I wandered about the streets. Where should I sleep? That was the question.
I thought that No. 19, Rue Richelieu would probably be as much watched as
No. 15. But the night was cold, and I decided at all hazards to re-enter
this refuge, although perhaps a hazardous one. I was right to trust myself
to it. I supped on a morsel of bread, and I passed a very good night. The
next morning at daybreak on waking I thought of the duties which awaited
me. I thought that I was abut to go out, and that I should probably not
come back to the room; I took a little bread which remained, and I
crumbled it on the window-sill for the birds.
CHAPTER X.
DUTY CAN HAVE TWO ASPECTS
Had it been in the power of the Left at any moment to prevent the _coup
d'état_?
We do not think so.
Nevertheless here is a fact which we believe we ought not to pass by in
silence. On the 16th November, 1851, I was in my study at home at 37, Rue
de la Tour d'Auvergne; it was about midnight. I was working. My servant
opened the door.
"Will you see M. ----, sir?"
And he mentioned a name.
"Yes," I said.
Some one came in.
I shall only speak reservedly of this eminent and distinguished man. Let
it suffice to state that he had the right to say when mentioning the
Bonapartes "my family."
It is known that the Bonaparte family is divided into two branches, the
Imperial family and the private family. The Imperial family had the
tradition of Napoleon, the private family had the tradition of Lucien: a
shade of difference which, however, had no reality about it.
My midnight visitor took the other corner of the fireplace.
He began by speaking to me of the memoirs of a very highminded and
virtuous woman, the Princess ----, his mother, the manuscript of which he
had confided to me, asking my advice as to the utility or the suitability
of their publication; this manuscript, besides being full of interest,
possessed for me a special charm, because the handwriting of the Princess
resembled my mother's handwriting. My visitor, to whom I gave it back,
turned over the leaves for a few moments, and then suddenly interrupting
himself, he turned to me and said,--
"The Republic is lost."
I answered,--
"Almost."
He resumed,--
"Unless you save it."
"I?"
"You."
"How so?"
"Listen to me."
Then he set forth with that clearness, complicated at times with
paradoxes, which is one of the resources of his remarkable mind, the
situation, at the same time desperate and strong, in which we were
placed.
This situation, which moreover I realized as well as he himself, was
this:--
The Right of the Assembly was composed of about 400 members, and the Left
of about 180. The four hundred of the majority belonged by thirds to
three parties, the Legitimist party, the Orleanist party, the Bonapartist
party, and in a body to the Clerical party. The 180 of the minority
belonged to the Republic. The Right mistrusted the Left, and had taken a
precaution against the minority.
A Vigilance Committee, composed of sixteen members of the Right, charged
with impressing unity upon this trinity of parties, and charged with the
task of carefully watching the Left, such was this precaution. The Left
at first had confined itself to irony, and borrowing from me a word to
which people then attached, though wrongly, the idea of decrepitude, had
called the sixteen Commissioners the "Burgraves." The irony subsequently
turning into suspicion, the Left had on its side ended by creating a
committee of sixteen members to direct the Left, and observe the Right;
these the Right had hastened to name the "Red Burgraves." A harmless
rejoinder. The result was that the Right watched the Left, and that the
Left watched the Right, but that no one watched Bonaparte. They were two
flocks of sheep so distrustful of one another that they forgot the wolf.
During that time, in his den at the Elysée, Bonaparte was working. He was
busily employing the time which the Assembly, the majority and the
minority, was losing in mistrusting itself. As people feel the loosening
of the avalanche, so they felt the catastrophe tottering in the gloom.
They kept watch upon the enemy, but they did not turn their attention in
the true direction. To know where to fix one's mistrust is the secret of
a great politician. The Assembly of 1851 did not possess this shrewd
certainty of eyesight, their perspective was bad, each saw the future
after his own fashion, and a sort of political short-sightedness blinded
the Left as well as the Right; they were afraid, but not where fear was
advisable; they were in the presence of a mystery, they had an ambuscade
before them, but they sought it where it did not exist, and they did not
perceive where it really lay. Thus it was that these two flocks of sheep,
the majority, and the minority faced each other affrightedly, and while
the leaders on one side and the guides on the other, grave and attentive,
asked themselves anxiously what could be the mewing of the grumbling, of
the Left on the one side, of the bleatings of the Right on the other,
they ran the risk of suddenly feeling the four claws of the _coup d'état_
fastened in their shoulders.
My visitor said to me,-
"You are one of the Sixteen!"
"Yes," answered I, smiling; "a 'Red Burgrave.'"
"Like me, a 'Red Prince.'"
And his smile responded to mine.
He resumed,--
"You have full powers?"
"Yes. Like the others."
And I added,--
"Not more than the others. The Left has no leaders."
He continued,--
"Yon, the Commissary of Police, is a Republican?'
"Yes."
"He would obey an order signed by you?"
"Possibly."
"_I_ say, without doubt."
He looked at me fixedly.
"Well, then, have the President arrested this night."
It was now my turn to look at him.
"What do you mean?"
"What I say."
I ought to state that his language was frank, resolute, and
self-convinced, and that during the whole of this conversation, and now,
and always, it has given me the impression of honesty.
"Arrest the President!" I cried.
Then he set forth that this extraordinary enterprise was an easy matter;
that the Army was undecided; that in the Army the African Generals
counterpoised the President; that the National Guard favored the
Assembly, and in the Assembly the Left; that Colonel Forestier answered
for the 8th Legion; Colonel Gressier for the 6th, and Colonel Howyne for
the 5th; that at the order of the Sixteen of the Left there would be an
immediate taking up of arms; that my signature would suffice; that,
nevertheless, if I preferred to call together the Committee, in Secret
Session, we could wait till the next day; that on the order from the
Sixteen, a battalion would march upon the Elysée; that the Elysée
apprehended nothing, thought only of offensive, and not of defensive
measures, and accordingly would be taken by surprise; that the soldiers
would not resist the National Guard; that the thing would be done without
striking a blow; that Vincennes would open and close while Paris slept;
that the President would finish his night there, and that France, on
awakening, would learn the twofold good tidings: that Bonaparte was out
of the fight, and France out of danger.
He added,--
"You can count on two Generals: Neumayer at Lyons, and Lawoëstyne at
Paris."
He got up and leaned against the chimney-piece; I can still see him
there, standing thoughtfully; and he continued:
"I do not feel myself strong enough to begin exile all over again, but I
feel the wish to save my family and my country."
He probably thought he noticed a movement of surprise in me, for he
accentuated and italicized these words.
"I will explain myself. Yes; I wish to save my family and my country. I
bear the name of Napoleon; but as you know without fanaticism. I am a
Bonaparte, but not a Bonapartist. I respect the name, but I judge it. It
already has one stain. The Eighteenth Brumaire. Is it about to have
another? The old stain disappeared beneath the glory; Austerlitz covered
Brumaire. Napoleon was absolved by his genius. The people admired him so
greatly that it forgave him. Napoleon is upon the column, there is an end
of it, let them leave him there in peace. Let them not resuscitate him
through his bad qualities. Let them not compel France to remember too
much. This glory of Napoleon is vulnerable. It has a wound; closed, I
admit. Do not let them reopen it. Whatever apologists may say and do, it
is none the less true that by the Eighteenth of Brumaire Napoleon struck
himself a first blow."
"In truth," said I, "it is ever against ourselves that we commit a
crime."
"Well, then," he continued, "his glory has survived a first blow, a
second will kill it. I do not wish it. I hate the first Eighteenth
Brumaire; I fear the second. I wish to prevent it."
He paused again, and continued,--
"That is why I have come to you to-night. I wish to succor this great
wounded glory. By the advice which I am giving you, if you can carry it
out, if the Left carries it out, I save the first Napoleon; for if a
second crime is superposed upon his glory, this glory would disappear.
Yes, this name would founder, and history would no longer own it. I will
go farther and complete my idea. I also save the present Napoleon, for he
who as yet has no glory will only have come. I save his memory from an
eternal pillory. Therefore, arrest him."
He was truly and deeply moved. He resumed,--
"As to the Republic, the arrest of Louis Bonaparte is deliverance for
her. I am right, therefore, in saying that by what I am proposing to you
I am saving my family and my country."
"But," I said to him, "what you propose to me is a _coup d'état_."
"Do you think so?"
"Without doubt. We are the minority, and we should commit an act which
belongs to the majority. We are a part of the Assembly. We should be
acting as though we were the entire Assembly. We who condemn all
usurpation should ourselves become usurpers. We should put our hands upon
a functionary whom the Assembly alone has the right of arresting. We, the
defenders of the Constitution, we should break the Constitution. We, the
men of the Law, we should violate the Law. It is a _coup d'état_."
"Yes, but a _coup d'état_ for a good purpose."
"Evil committed for a good purpose remains evil."
"Even when it succeeds?"
"Above all when it succeeds."
"Why?"
"Because it then becomes an example."
"You do not then approve of the Eighteenth Fructidor?"
"No."
"But Eighteenth Fructidors prevent Eighteenth Brumaires."
"No. They prepare the way for them."
"But reasons of State exist?"
"No. What exists is the Law."
"The Eighteenth Fructidor has been accepted by exceedingly honest minds."
"I know that."
"Blanqui is in its favor, with Michelet."
"I am against it, with Barbès."
From the moral aspect I passed to the practical aspect.
"This said," resumed I, "let us examine your plan."
This plan bristled with difficulties. I pointed them out to him.
"Count on the National Guard! Why, General Lawoëstyne had not yet got
command of it. Count on the Army? Why, General Neumayer was at Lyons,
and not at Paris. Would he march to the assistance of the Assembly?
What did we know about this? As for Lawoëstyne, was he not double-faced?
Were they sure of him? Call to arms the 8th Legion? Forestier was no
longer Colonel. The 5th and 6th? But Gressier and Howyne were only
lieutenant-colonels, would these legions follow them? Order the
Commissary Yon? But would he obey the Left alone? He was the agent of
the Assembly, and consequently of the majority, but not of the minority.
These were so many questions. But these questions, supposing them
answered, and answered in the sense of success, was success itself the
question? The question is never Success, it is always Right. But here,
even if we had obtained success, we should not have Right. In order to
arrest the President an order of the Assembly was necessary; we should
replace the order of the Assembly by an act of violence of the Left. A
scaling and a burglary; an assault by scaling-ladders on the constituted
authority, a burglary on the Law. Now let us suppose resistance; we
should shed blood. The Law violated leads to the shedding of blood. What
is all this? It is a crime."
"No, indeed," he exclaimed, "it is the _salus populi_."
And he added,--
"_Suprema Lex_."
"Not for me," I said.
I continued,--
"I would not kill a child to save a people."
"Cato did so."
"Jesus did not do so."
And I added,--
"You have on your side all ancient history, you are acting according to
the uprightness of the Greeks, and according to the uprightness of the
Romans; for me, I am acting according to the uprightness of Humanity.
The new horizon is of wider range than the old."
There was a pause. He broke it.
"Then he will be the one to attack!"
"Let it be so."
"You are about to engage in a battle which is almost lost beforehand."
"I fear so."
"And this unequal combat can only end for you, Victor Hugo, in death or
exile."
"I believe it."
"Death is the affair of a moment, but exile is long."
"It is a habit to be learned."
He continued,--
"You will not only be proscribed. You will be calumniated."
"It is a habit already learned."
He continued,--
"Do you know what they are saying already?"
"What?"
"They say that you are irritated against him because he has refused to
make you a Minister."
"Why you know yourself that--"
"I know that it is just the reverse. It is he who has asked you, and it
is you who have refused."
"Well, then--"
"They lie."
"What does it matter?"
He exclaimed,--
"Thus, you will have caused the Bonapartes to re-enter France, and you
will be banished from France by a Bonaparte!"[32]
"Who knows," said I, "if I have not committed a fault? This injustice is
perhaps a justice."
We were both silent. He resumed,--
"Could you bear exile?"
"I will try."
"Could you live without Paris?"
"I should have the ocean."
"You would then go to the seaside?"
"I think so."
"It is sad."
"It is grand."
There was another pause. He broke it.
"You do not know what exile is. I do know it. It is terrible. Assuredly,
I would not begin it again. Death is a bourne whence no one comes back,
exile is a place whither no one returns."
"If necessary," I said to him, "I will go, and I will return to it."
"Better die. To quit life is nothing, but to quit one's country--"
"Alas!" said I, "that is every thing."
"Well, then, why accept exile when it is in your power to avoid it? What
do you place above your country?"
"Conscience."
This answer made him thoughtful. However, he resumed.
"But on reflection your conscience will approve of what you will have
done."
"No."
"Why?"
"I have told you. Because my conscience is so constituted that it puts
nothing above itself. I feel it upon me as the headland can feel the
lighthouse which is upon it. All life is an abyss, and conscience
illuminates it around me."
"And I also," he exclaimed--and I affirm that nothing could be more
sincere or more loyal than his tone--"and I also feel and see my
conscience. It approves of what I am doing. I appear to be betraying
Louis; but I am really doing him a service. To save him from a crime is
to save him. I have tried every means. There only remains this one, to
arrest him. In coming to you, in acting as I do, I conspire at the same
time against him and for him, against his power, and for his honor. What
I am doing is right."
"It is true," I said to him. "You have a generous and a lofty aim."
And I resumed,--
"But our two duties are different. I could not hinder Louis Bonaparte
from committing a crime unless I committed one myself. I wish neither for
an Eighteenth Brumaire for him, nor for an Eighteenth Fructidor for
myself. I would rather be proscribed than be a proscriber. I have the
choice between two crimes, my crime and the crime of Louis Bonaparte. I
will not choose my crime."
"But then you will have to endure his."
"I would rather endure a crime than commit one."
He remained thoughtful, and said to me,--
"Let it be so."
And he added,--
"Perhaps we are both in the right."
"I think so," I said.
And I pressed his hand.
He took his mother's manuscript and went away. It was three o'clock in
the morning. The conversation had lasted more than two hours. I did not
go to bed until I had written it out.
[32] 14th of June, 1847. Chamber of Peers. See the work "Avant l'Exile."
CHAPTER XI.
THE COMBAT FINISHED, THE ORDEAL BEGINS
I did not know where to go.
On the afternoon of the 7th I determined to go back once more to 19, Rue
Richelieu. Under the gateway some one seized my arm. It was Madame D.
She was waiting for me.
"Do not go in," she said to me.
"Am I discovered?"
"Yes."
"And taken."
"No."
She added,--
"Come."
We crossed the courtyard, and we went out by a backdoor into the Rue
Fontaine Molière; we reached the square of the Palais Royal. The
_fiacres_ were standing there as usual. We got into the first we came
to.
"Where are we to go?" asked the driver.
She looked at me.
I answered,--
"I do not know."
"I know," she said.
Women always know where Providence lies.
An hour later I was in safety.
From the 4th, every day which passed by consolidated the _coup d'état_.
Our defeat was complete, and we felt ourselves abandoned. Paris was like
a forest in which Louis Bonaparte was making a _battue_ of the
Representatives; the wild beast was hunting down the sportsmen. We heard
the indistinct baying of Maupas behind us. We were compelled to
disperse. The pursuit was energetic. We entered into the second phase of
duty--the catastrophe accepted and submitted to. The vanquished became
the proscribed. Each one of us had his own concluding adventures. Mine
was what it should have been--exile; death having missed me. I am not
going to relate it here, this book is not my biography, and I ought not
to divert to myself any of the attention which it may excite. Besides,
what concerns me personally is told in a narrative which is one of the
testaments of exile.[33]
Notwithstanding the relentless pursuit which was directed against us, I
did not think it my duty to leave Paris as long as a glimmer of hope
remained, and as long as an awakening of the people seemed possible.
Malarmet sent me word in my refuge that a movement would take place at
Belleville on Tuesday the 9th. I waited until the 12th. Nothing stirred.
The people were indeed dead. Happily such deaths as these, like the
deaths of the gods, are only for a time.
I had a last interview with Jules Favre and Michel de Bourges at Madame
Didier's in the Rue de la Ville-Lévêque. It was at night. Bastide came
there. This brave man said to me,--
"You are about to leave Paris; for myself, I remain here. Take me as
your lieutenant. Direct me from the depths of your exile. Make use of me
as an arm which you have in France."
"I will make use of you as of a heart," I said to him.
On the 14th, amidst the adventures which my son Charles relates in his
book, I succeeded in reaching Brussels.
The vanquished are like cinders, Destiny blows upon them and disperses
them. There was a gloomy vanishing of all the combatants for Right and
for Law. A tragical disappearance.
[33] "Les Hommes de l'Exile," by Charles Hugo.
CHAPTER XII.
THE EXILED
The Crime having succeeded, all hastened to join it. To persist was
possible, to resist was not possible. The situation became more and more
desperate. One would have said that an enormous wall was rising upon the
horizon ready to close in. The outlet: Exile.
The great souls, the glories of the people, emigrated. Thus there was
seen this dismal sight--France driven out from France.
But what the Present appears to lose, the Future gains, the hand which
scatters is also the hand which sows.
The Representatives of the Left, surrounded, tracked, pursued, hunted
down, wandered for several days from refuge to refuge. Those who escaped
found great difficulty in leaving Paris and France. Madier de Montjan
had very black and thick eyebrows, he shaved off half of them, cut his
hair, and let his beard grow. Yvan, Pelletier, Gindrier, and Doutre
shaved off their moustaches and beards. Versigny reached Brussels on the
14th with a passport in the name of Morin. Schoelcher dressed himself up
as a priest. This costume became him admirably, and suited his austere
countenance and grave voice. A worthy priest helped him to disguise
himself, and lent him his cassock and his band, made him shave off his
whiskers a few days previously, so that he should not be betrayed by the
white trace of his freshly-cut beard, gave him his own passport, and
only left him at the railway station.[34]
De Flotte disguised himself as a servant, and in this manner succeeded
in crossing the frontier at Mouscron. From there he reached Ghent, and
thence Brussels.
On the night of December 26th, I had returned to the little room,
without a fire, which I occupied (No. 9) on the second story of the
Hôtel de la Porte-Verte; it was midnight; I had just gone to bed and was
falling asleep, when a knock sounded at my door. I awoke. I always left
the key outside. "Come in," I said. A chambermaid entered with a light,
and brought two men whom I did not know. One was a lawyer, of Ghent,
M. ----; the other was De Flotte. He took my two hands and pressed them
tenderly. "What," I said to him, "is it you?"
At the Assembly De Flotte, with his prominent and thoughtful brow, his
deep-set eyes, his close-shorn head, and his long beard, slightly turned
back, looked like a creation of Sebastian del Piombo wandering out of
his picture of the "Raising of Lazarus;" and I had before my eyes a
short young man, thin and pallid, with spectacles. But what he had not
been able to change, and what I recognized immediately, was the great
heart, the lofty mind, the energetic character, the dauntless courage;
and if I did not recognize him by his features, I recognized him by the
grasp of his hand.
Edgar Quinet was brought away on the 10th by a noble-hearted Wallachian
woman, Princess Cantacuzène, who undertook to conduct him to the
frontier, and who kept her word. It was a troublesome task. Quinet had
a foreign passport in the name of Grubesko, he was to personate a
Wallachian, and it was arranged that he should not know how to speak
French, he who writes it as a master. The journey was perilous. They ask
for passports along all the line, beginning at the terminus. At Amiens
they were particularly suspicious. But at Lille the danger was great.
The gendarmes went from carriage to carriage; entered them lantern in
hand, and compared the written descriptions of the travellers with their
personal appearance. Several who appeared to be suspicious characters
were arrested, and were immediately thrown into prison. Edgar Quinet,
seated by the side of Madame Cantacuzène awaited the turn of his
carriage. At length it came. Madame Cantacuzène leaned quickly forward
towards the gendarmes, and hastened to present her passport, but the
corporal waved back Madame Cantacuzène's passport saying, "It is
useless, Madame. We have nothing to do with women's passports," and he
asked Quinet abruptly, "Your papers?" Quinet held out his passport
unfolded. The gendarmes said to him, "Come out of the carriage, so that
we can compare your description." It happened, however, that the
Wallachian passport contained no description. The corporal frowned, and
said to his subordinates, "An irregular passport! Go and fetch the
Commissary."
All seemed lost, but Madame Cantacuzène began to speak to Quinet in the
most Wallachian words in the world, with incredible assurance and
volubility, so much so that the gendarme, convinced that he had to deal
with all Wallachia in person, and seeing the train ready to start,
returned the passport to Quinet, saying to him, "There! be off with
you!"--a few hours afterwards Edgar Quinet was in Belgium.
Arnauld de l'Ariège also had his adventures. He was a marked man, he had
to hide himself. Arnauld being a Catholic, Madame Arnauld went to the
priest; the Abbé Deguerry slipped out of the way, the Abbé Maret
consented to conceal him; the Abbé Maret was honest and good. Arnauld
d'Ariège remained hidden for a fortnight at the house of this worthy
priest. He wrote from the Abbé Maret's a letter to the Archbishop of
Paris, urging him to refuse the Pantheon, which a decree of Louis
Bonaparte took away from France and gave to Rome. This letter angered
the Archbishop. Arnauld, proscribed, reached Brussels, and there, at the
age of eighteen months, died the "little Red," who on the 3d of December
had carried the workman's letter to the Archbishop--an angel sent by God
to the priest who had not understood the angel, and who no longer knew
God.
In this medley of incidents and adventures each one had his drama.
Cournet's drama was strange and terrible.
Cournet, it may be remembered, had been a naval officer. He was one of
those men of a prompt, decisive character, who magnetized other men, and
who on certain extraordinary occasions send an electric shock through a
multitude. He possessed an imposing air, broad shoulders, brawny arms,
powerful fists, a tall stature, all of which give confidence to the
masses, and the intelligent expression which gives confidence to the
thinkers. You saw him pass, and you recognized strength; you heard him
speak, and you felt the will, which is more than strength. When quite a
youth he had served in the navy. He combined in himself in a certain
degree--and it is this which made this energetic man, when well directed
and well employed, a means of enthusiasm and a support--he combined the
popular fire and the military coolness. He was one of those natures
created for the hurricane and for the crowd, who have begun their study
of the people by their study of the ocean, and who are at their ease in
revolutions as in tempests. As we have narrated, he took an important
part in the combat. He had been dauntless and indefatigable, he was one
of those who could yet rouse it to life. From Wednesday afternoon
several police agents were charged to seek him everywhere, to arrest him
wherever they might find him, and to take him to the Prefecture of the
Police, where orders had been given to shoot him immediately.
Cournet, however, with his habitual daring, came and went freely in
order to carry on the lawful resistance, even in the quarters occupied
by the troops, shaving off his moustaches as his sole precaution.
On the Thursday afternoon he was on the boulevards at a few paces from a
regiment of cavalry drawn up in order. He was quietly conversing with
two of his comrades of the fight, Huy and Lorrain. Suddenly, he
perceives himself and his companions surrounded by a company of
_sergents de ville_; a man touches his arm and says to him, "You are
Cournet; I arrest you."
"Bah!" answers Cournet; "My name is Lépine."
The man resumes,--
"You are Cournet. Do not you recognize me? Well, then, I recognize you;
I have been, like you, a member of the Socialist Electoral Committee."
Cournet looks him in the face, and finds this countenance in his memory.
The man was right. He had, in fact, formed part of the gathering in the
Rue Saint Spire. The police spy resumed, laughing,--
"I nominated Eugène Sue with you."
It was useless to deny it, and the moment was not favorable for
resistance. There were on the spot, as we have said, twenty _sergents de
ville_ and a regiment of Dragoons.
"I will follow you," said Cournet.
A _fiacre_ was called up.
"While I am about it," said the police spy, "come in all three of you."
He made Huy and Lorrain get in with Cournet, placed them on the front
seat, and seated himself on the back seat by Cournet, and then shouted
to the driver,--
"To the Prefecture!"
The _sergents de ville_ surrounded the _fiacre_. But whether by chance
or through confidence, or in the haste to obtain the payment for his
capture, the man who had arrested Cournet shouted to the coachman, "Look
sharp, look sharp!" and the _fiacre_ went off at a gallop.
In the meantime Cournet was well aware that on arriving he would be shot
in the very courtyard of the Prefecture. He had resolved not to go
there.
At a turning in the Rue St Antoine he glanced behind, and noticed that
the _sergents de ville_ only followed the _fiacre_ at a considerable
distance.
Not one of the four men which the _fiacre_ was bearing away had as yet
opened their lips.
Cournet threw a meaning look at his two companions seated in front of
him, as much as to say, "We are three; let us take advantage of this to
escape." Both answered by an imperceptible movement of the eyes, which
pointed out the street full of passers-by, and which said, "No."
A few moments afterwards the _fiacre_ emerged from the Rue St. Antoine,
and entered the Rue de Fourcy. The Rue de Fourcy is usually deserted, no
one was passing down it at that moment.
Cournet turned suddenly to the police spy, and asked him,--
"Have you a warrant for my arrest?"
"No; but I have my card."
And he drew his police agent's card out of his pocket, and showed it to
Cournet. Then the following dialogue ensued between these two men,--
"This is not regular."
"What does that matter to me?"
"You have no right to arrest me."
"All the same, I arrest you."
"Look here; is it money that you want? Do you wish for any? I have some
with me; let me escape."
"A gold nugget as big as your head would not tempt me. You are my finest
capture, Citizen Cournet."
"Where are you taking me to?"
"To the Prefecture."
"They will shoot me there?"
"Possibly."
"And my two comrades?"