In the Place de la Concorde the cavalry continued to charge. An attempt
to erect two barricades had been made in the Rue Saint Honoré. The
paving-stones in the Marché Saint Honoré were being torn up. The
overturned omni-buses, of which the barricades had been made, had
been righted by the troops. In the Rue Saint Honoré the crowd let the
Municipal Guards go by, and then stoned them in the back. A multitude
was swarming along the quays like irritated ants. A very pretty woman in
a green velvet hat and a large cashmere shawl passed by amid a group of
men wearing blouses and with bared arms. She had raised her skirt very
high on account of the mud, with which she was much spattered; for it
was raining every minute. The Tuileries were closed. At the Carrousel
gates the crowd had stopped and was gazing through the arcades at the
cavalry lined up in battle array in front of the palace.
Near the Carrousel Bridge I met M. Jules Sandeau. “What do you think of
all this?” he queried.
“That the riot will be suppressed, but that the revolution will
triumph.”
On the Quai de la Ferraille I happened upon somebody else I knew. Coming
towards me was a man covered with mud to the neck, his cravat hanging
down, and his hat battered. I recognized my excellent friend Antony
Thouret. Thouret is an ardent Republican. He had been walking and
speech-making since early morning, going from quarter to quarter and
from group to group.
“Tell me, now, what you really want?” said I. “Is it the Republic?”
“Oh! no, not this time, not yet,” he answered. “What we want is
reform--no half measures, oh! dear no, that won’t do at all. We want
complete reform, do you hear? And why not universal suffrage?”
“That’s the style!” I said as we shook hands.
Patrols were marching up and down the quay, while the crowd shouted
“Hurrah for the line!” The shops were closed and the windows of the
houses open.
In the Place du Châtelet I heard a man say to a group:
“It is 1830 over again!”
I passed by the Hotel de Ville and along the Rue Saint Avoye. At the
Hotel de Ville all was quiet. Two National Guards were walking to and
fro in front of the gate, and there were no barricades in the Rue Saint
Avoye. In the Rue Rambuteau a few National Guards, in uniform, and
wearing their side arms, came and went. In the Temple quarter they were
beating to arms.
Up to the present the powers that be have made a show of doing without
the National Guard. This is perhaps prudent. A force of National Guards
was to have taken a hand. This morning the guard on duty at the Chamber
refused to obey orders. It is said that a National Guardsman of the 7th
Legion was killed just now while interposing between the people and the
troops.
The Mole Ministry assuredly is not a Reform one, but the Guizot Ministry
had been for so long an obstacle to reform! Its resistance was broken;
this was sufficient to pacify and content the child-like heart of the
generous people. In the evening Paris gave itself up to rejoicing. The
population turned out into the streets; everywhere was heard the popular
refrain _Des lampioms! des larnpioms!_ In the twinkling of an eye the
town was illuminated as though for a fête.
In the Place Royale, in front of the Mairie, a few yards from my house,
a crowd had gathered that every moment was becoming denser and noisier.
The officers and National Guards in the guard-house there, in order
to get them away from the Maine, shouted: “On to the Bastille!” and,
marching arm-in-arm, placed themselves at the head of a column, which
fell in joyously behind them and started off shouting: “On to the
Bastille!” The procession marched hat in hand round the Column of July,
to the shout of “Hurrah for Reform!” saluted the troops massed in the
Place with the cry of “Hurrah for the line!” and went off down the
Faubourg Saint Antoine. An hour later the procession returned with its
ranks greatly swelled, and bearing torches and flags, and made its way
to the grand boulevards with the intention of going home by way of
the quays, so that the whole town might witness the celebration of its
victory.
Midnight is striking. The appearance of the streets has changed. The
Marais quarter is lugubrious. I have just returned from a stroll there.
The street lamps are broken and extinguished on the Boulevard Bourdon,
so well named the “dark boulevard.” The only shops open to-night were
those in the Rue Saint Antoine. The Beaumarchais Theatre was closed. The
Place Royale is guarded like a place of arms. Troops are in ambush in
the arcades. In the Rue Saint Louis, a battalion is leaning silently
against the walls in the shadow.
Just now, as the clock struck the hour, we went on to the balcony
listening and saying: “It is the tocsin!”
I could not have slept in a bed. I passed the night in my drawing-room,
writing, thinking and listening. Now and then I went out on the balcony
and strained my ears to listen, then I entered the room again and paced
to and fro, or dropped into an arm-chair and dozed. But my slumber was
agitated by feverish dreams. I dreamed that I could hear the murmur of
angry crowds, and the report of distant firing; the tocsin was clanging
from the church towers. I awoke. It was the tocsin.
The reality was more horrible than the dream.
This crowd that I had seen marching and singing so gaily on the
boulevards had at first continued its pacific way without let or
hindrance. The infantry regiments, the artillery and cuirassiers had
everywhere opened their ranks to let the procession pass through. But on
the Boulevard des Capucines a mass of troops, infantry and cavalry,
who were guarding the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its unpopular
Minister, M. Guizot, blocked the thoroughfare. In front of this
insurmountable obstacle the head of the column tried to stop and turn;
but the irresistible pressure of the enormous crowd behind pushed the
front ranks on. At this juncture a shot was fired, on which side is
not known. A panic ensued, followed by a volley. Eighty fell dead or
wounded. Then arose a general cry of horror and fury: “Vengeance!” The
bodies of the victims were placed in a tumbril lighted by torches. The
crowd faced about and, amid imprecations, resumed its march, which had
now assumed the character of a funeral procession. In a few hours Paris
was bristling with barricades.