What Happened During the Night — The Market Quarter
I came back to my lodging, 19, Rue Richelieu.
The massacre seemed to be at an end; the fusillades were heard no longer. As I was about to knock at the door I hesitated for a moment; a man was there who seemed to be waiting. I went straight up to this man, and I said to him,—
“You seem to be waiting for somebody?”
He answered,—
“Yes.”
“For whom?”
“For you.”
And he added, lowering his voice, “I have come to speak to you.”
I looked at this man. A street-lamp shone on him. He did not avoid the light.
He was a young man with a fair beard, wearing a blue blouse, and who had the gentle bearing of a thinker and the robust hands of a workman.
“Who are you?” I asked him.
He answered,—“I belong to the Society of the Last-makers. I know you very well, Citizen Victor Hugo.”
“From whom do you come?” I resumed.
He answered still in a whisper,—
“From Citizen King.”
“Very good,” said I.
He then told me his name. As he has survived the events of the night of the 4th, and as he since escaped the denunciations, it can be understood that we will not mention his name here, and that we shall confine ourselves to terming him throughout the course of this story by his trade, calling him the “last-maker.”27
“What do you want to say to me?” I asked him.
He explained that matters were not hopeless, that he and his friends meant to continue the resistance, that the meeting-places of the Societies had not yet been settled, but that they would be during the evening, that my presence was desired, and that if I would be under the Colbert Arcade at nine o’clock, either himself or another of their men would be there, and would serve me as guide. We decided that in order to make himself known, the messenger, when accosting me, should give the password, “What is Joseph doing?”
I do not know whether he thought he noticed any doubt or mistrust on my part. He suddenly interrupted himself, and said,—
“After all, you are not bound to believe me. One does not think of everything: I ought to have asked them to give me a word in writing. At a time like this one distrusts everybody.”
“On the contrary,” I said to him, “one trusts everybody. I will be in the Colbert Arcade at nine o’clock.”
And I left him.
I re-entered my asylum. I was tired, I was hungry, I had recourse to Charamaule’s chocolate and to a small piece of bread which I had still left. I sank down into an arm-chair, I ate and I slept. Some slumbers are gloomy. I had one of those slumbers, full of spectres; I again saw the dead child and the two red holes in his forehead, these formed two mouths: one said “Morny,” and the other “Saint-Arnaud.” History is not made, however, to recount dreams. I will abridge. Suddenly I awoke. I started: “If only it is not past nine o’clock!” I had forgotten to wind up my watch. It had stopped. I went out hastily. The street was lonely, the shops were shut. In the Place Louvos I heard the hour striking (probably from Saint Roch); I listened. I counted nine strokes. In a few moments I was under the Colbert Arcade. I peered into the darkness. No one was under the Arcade.
I felt that it was impossible to remain there, and have the appearance of waiting about; near the Colbert Arcade there is a police-station, and the patrols were passing every moment. I plunged into the street. I found no one there. I went as far as the Rue Vivienne. At the corner of the Rue Vivienne a man was stopping before a placard and was trying to deface it or to tear it down. I drew near this man, who probably took me for a police agent, and who fled at the top of his speed. I retraced my steps. Near the Colbert Arcade, and just as I reached the point in the street where they post the theatrical bills, a workman passed me, and said quickly, “What is Joseph doing?”
I recognized the last-maker.
“Come,” he said to me.
We set out without speaking and without appearing to know each other, he walking some steps before me.
We first went to two addresses, which I cannot mention here without pointing out victims for the proscription. In these two houses we got no news; no one had come there on the part of the societies.
“Let us go to the third place,” said the last-maker, and he explained to me that they had settled among them three successive meeting-places, in case of need, so as to be always sure of finding each other if, perchance, the police discovered the first or even the second meeting-place, a precaution which for our part we adopted as much as possible with regard to our meetings of the Left end of the Committee.
We had reached the market quarter. Fighting had been going on there throughout the day. There were no longer any gas-lamps in the streets. We stopped from time to time, and listened so as not to run headlong into the arms of a patrol. We got over a paling of planks almost completely destroyed, and of which barricades had probably been made, and we crossed the extensive area of half-demolished houses which at that epoch encumbered the lower portions of the Rue Montmartre and Rue Montorgueil. On the peaks of the high dismantled gables could be seen a flickering red glow, doubtless the reflection of the bivouac-fires of the soldiers encamped in the markets and in the neighborhood of Saint Eustache. This reflection lighted our way. The last-maker, however, narrowly escaped falling into a deep hole, which was no less than the cellar of a demolished house. On coming out of this region, covered with ruins, amongst which here and there a few trees might be perceived, the remains of gardens which had now disappeared, we entered into narrow, winding, and completely dark streets, where it was impossible to recognize one’s whereabouts. Nevertheless the last-maker walked on as much at his ease as in broad daylight, and like a man who is going straight to his destination. Once he turned round to me, and said to me,—
“The whole of this quarter is barricaded; and if, as I hope, our friends come down, I will answer that they will hold it for a long time.”
Suddenly he stopped. “Here is one,” said he. In truth, seven or eight paces before us was a barricade entirely constructed of paving-stones, not exceeding a man’s height, and which in the darkness appeared like a ruined wall. A narrow passage had been formed at one end. We passed through it. There was no one behind the barricade.
“There has already been fighting here a short time ago,” said the last-maker in a low voice; and he added, after a pause, “We are getting near.”
The unpaving had left holes, of which we had to be careful. We strode, and sometimes jumped, from paving-stone to paving-stone. Notwithstanding the intense darkness, there yet hovered about an indefinable glimmer; on our way we noticed before us on the ground, close to the foot-pavement, something which looked like a stretched-out form. “The devil!” muttered my guide, “we were just going to walk upon it.” He took a little wax match from his pocket and struck it on his sleeve; the flame flashed out. The light fell upon a pallid face, which looked at us with fixed eyes. It was a corpse lying there; it was an old man. The last-maker rapidly waved the match from his head to his feet. The dead man was almost in the attitude of a crucified man; his two arms were stretched out; his white hair, red at the ends, was soaking in the mud; a pool of blood was beneath him; a large blackish patch on his waistcoat marked the place where the ball had pierced his breast; one of his braces was undone; he had thick laced boots on his feet. The last-maker lifted up one of his arms, and said, “His collar-bone is broken.” The movement shook the head, and the open mouth turned towards us as though about to speak to us. I gazed at this vision; I almost listened. Suddenly it disappeared.
This face re-entered the gloom; the match had just gone out.
We went away in silence. After walking about twenty paces, the last-maker, as though talking to himself, said in a whisper, “Don’t know him.”
We still pushed forward. From the cellars to the roofs, from the ground-floors to the garrets, there was not a light in the house. We appeared to be groping in an immense tomb.
A man’s voice, firm and sonorous, suddenly issued out of the darkness, and shouted to us, “Who goes there?”
“Ah, there they are!” said the last-maker, and he uttered a peculiar whistle.
“Come on,” resumed the voice.
It was another barricade. This one, a little higher than the first, and separated from it by a distance of about a hundred paces, was, as far as could be seen, constructed of barrels filled with paving-stones. On the top could be seen the wheels of a truck entangled between the barrels; planks and beams were intermingled. A passage had been contrived still narrower than the gangway of the other barricade.
“Citizens,” said the last-maker, as he went into the barricade, “how many of you are there here?”
The voice which had shouted, “Who goes there?” answered,—
“There are two of us.”
“Is that all?”
“That is all.”
They were in truth two,— two men who alone during that night, in that solitary street, behind that heap of paving-stones, awaited the onslaught of a regiment.
Both wore blouses; they were two workmen; with a few cartridges in their pockets, and a musket upon each of their shoulders.
“So then,” resumed the last-maker, in an impatient tone, “our friends have not yet come!”
“Well, then,” I said to him, “let us wait for them.”
The last-maker spoke for a short time in a low tone, and probably told my name to one of the two defenders of the barricade, who came up to me and saluted me. “Citizen Representative,” said he, “it will be very warm here shortly.”
“In the meantime,” answered I laughingly, “it is cold.”
It was very cold, in truth. The street which was completely unpaved behind the barricade, was nothing better than a sewer, ankle deep in water.
“I say that it will be warm,” resumed the workman, “and that you would do well to go farther off.”
The last-maker put his hand on his shoulder: “Comrade, it is necessary that we should remain here. The meeting-place is close by, in the ambulance.”
“All the same,” resumed the other workman, who was very short, and who stood up on a paving-stone; “the Citizen Representative would do well to go farther off.”
“I can very well be where you are,” said I to him.
The street was quite dark, nothing could be seen of the sky. Inside the barricade on the left, on the side where the passage was, could be seen a high paling of badly joined planks, through which shone in places a feeble light. Above the paling rose out, lost in the darkness, a house of six or seven storys; the ground floor, which was being repaired, and which was under-pinned, being closed in by these planks. A ray of light issuing from between the planks fell on the opposite wall, and lighted up an old torn placard, on which could be read, “Asnières. Water tournaments. Grand ball.”
“Have you another gun?” asked the last-maker of the taller of the two workmen.
“If we had three guns we should be three men,” answered the workman.
The little one added, “Do you think that the good will is wanting? There are plenty of musicians, but there are no clarionets.”
By the side of the wooden paling could be seen a little, narrow and low door, which looked more like the door of a stall than the door of a shop. The shop to which this door belonged was hermetically sealed. The door seemed to be equally closed. The last-maker went up to it and pushed it gently. It was open.
“Let us go in,” he said.
I went in first, he followed me, and shut the door behind me. We were in a room on the ground floor. At the end, on the left, a half-opened door emitted the reflection of a light. The room was only lighted by this reflection. A counter and a species of stove, painted in black and white, could be dimly distinguished.
A short, half-suffocated, intermittent gurgling could be heard, which seemed to come from an adjoining room on the same side as the light. The last-maker walked quickly to the half-opened door. I crossed the room after him, and we found ourselves in a sort of vast shed, lighted by one candle. We were on the other side of the plank paling. There was only the plank paling between ourselves and the barricade.
This species of shed was the ground floor in course of demolition. Iron columns, painted red, and fixed into stone sockets at short distances apart, supported the joists of the ceiling; facing the street, a huge framework standing erect, and denoting the centre of the surrounding paling, supported the great cross-beam of the first story, that is to say, supported the whole house. In a corner were lying some masons’ tools, a heap of rubbish, and a large double ladder. A few straw-bottomed chairs were scattered here and there. The damp ground served for the flooring. By the side of a table, on which stood a candle in the midst of medicine bottles, an old woman and a young girl of about eight years old — the woman seated, the child squatting before a great basketful of old linen — were making lint. The end of the room, which was lost in the darkness, was carpeted with a litter of straw, on which three mattresses had been thrown. The gurgling noise came from there.
“It is the ambulance,” said the last-maker.
The old woman turned her head, and seeing us, shuddered convulsively, and then, reassured probably by the blouse of the last-maker, she got up and came towards us.
The last-maker whispered a few words in her ear. She answered, “I have seen nobody.”
Then she added, “But what makes me uneasy is that my husband has not yet come back. They have done nothing but fire muskets the whole evening.”
Two men were lying on two of the mattresses at the end of the room. A third mattress was unoccupied and was waiting.
The wounded man nearest to me had received a musket ball in his stomach. He it was who was gurgling. The old woman came towards the mattress with a candle, and whispered to us, showing us her fist, “If you could only see the hole that that has made! We have stuffed lint as large as this into his stomach.”
She resumed, “He is not above twenty-five years old. He will be dead to-morrow morning.”
The other was still younger. He was hardly eighteen. “He has a handsome black overcoat,” said the woman. “He is most likely a student.” The young man had the whole of the lower part of his face swathed in blood-stained linen. She explained to us that he had received a ball in the mouth, which had broken his jaw. He was in a high fever, and gazed at us with lustrous eyes. From time to time he stretched his right arm towards a basin full of water in which a sponge was soaking; he took the sponge, carried it to his face, and himself moistened his bandages.
It seemed to me that his gaze fastened upon me in a singular manner. I went up to him, I stooped down, and I gave him my hand, which he took in his own. “Do you know me?” I asked him. He answered “Yes,” by a pressure of the hand which went to my heart.
The last-maker said to me, “Wait a minute for me here, I shall be back directly; I want to see in this neighborhood, if there is any means of getting a gun.”
He added,—
“Would you like one for yourself?”
“No,” answered I. “I shall remain here without a gun. I only take a half share in the civil war; I am willing to die, I am not willing to kill.”
I asked him if he thought his friends were going to come. He declared that he could not understand it, that the men from the societies ought to have arrived already, that instead of two men in the barricade there should be twenty, that instead of two barricades in the street there should have been ten, and that something must have happened; he added,—
“However, I will go and see; promise to wait for me here.”
“I promise you,” I answered, “I will wait all night if necessary.”
He left me.
The old woman had reseated herself near the little girl, who did not seem to understand much of what was passing round her, and who from time to time raised great calm eyes towards me. Both were poorly clad, and it seemed to me that the child had stockingless feet. “My man has not yet come back,” said the old woman, “my poor man has not yet come back. I hope nothing has happened to him!” With many heart-rending “My God’s,” and all the while quickly picking her lint, she wept. I could not help thinking with anguish of the old man we had seen stretched on the pavement at a few paces distant.
A newspaper was lying on the table. I took it up, and I unfolded it. It was the P——, the rest of the title had been torn off. A blood-stained hand was plainly imprinted on it. A wounded man on entering had probably placed his hand on the table on the spot where the newspaper lay. My eyes fell upon these lines:—
“M. Victor Hugo has just published an appeal to pillage and assassination.”
In these terms the journal of the Elysée described the proclamation which I had dictated to Baudin, and which may be read in page 103 of this History.
As I threw back the paper on the table one of the two defenders of the barricade entered. It was the short man.
“A glass of water,” said he. By the side of the medicine bottles there was a decanter and a glass. He drank, greedily. He held in his hand a morsel of bread and a sausage, which he was biting.
Suddenly we heard several successive explosions, following one after another, and which seemed but a short distance off. In the silence of this dark night it resembled the sound of a load of wood being shot on to the pavement.
The calm and serious voice of the other combatant shouted from outside, “It is beginning.”
“Have I time to finish my bread?” asked the little one.
“Yes,” said the other.
The little one then turned to me.
“Citizen Representative,” said he to me, “those are volleys. They are attacking the barricades over there. Really you must go away.”
I answered him, “But you yourselves are going to stay here.”
“As for us, we are armed,” resumed he; “as for you, you are not. You will only get yourself killed without benefiting any one. If you had a gun, I should say nothing. But you have not. You must go away.”
“I cannot,” I answered him. “I am waiting for some one.”
He wished to continue and to urge me. I pressed his hand.
“Let me do as I like,” said I.
He understood that my duty was to remain, and no longer persisted.
There was a pause. He again began to bite his bread. The gurgling of the dying man alone was audible. At that moment a sort of deep and hollow booming reached us. The old woman started from her chair, muttering, “It is the cannon!”
“No,” said the little man, “it is the slamming of a street-door.” Then he resumed, “There now! I have finished my bread,” and he dusted one hand against the other, and went out.
In the meantime the explosions continued, and seemed to come nearer. A noise sounded in the shop. It was the last-maker who was coming back. He appeared on the threshold of the ambulance. He was pale.
“Here I am,” said he, “I have come to fetch you. We must go home. Let us be off at once.”
I arose from the chair where I had seated myself. “What does this mean? Will they not come?”
“No,” he answered, “no one will come. All is at an end.”
Then he hastily explained that he had gone through the whole of the quarter in order to find a gun, that it was labor lost, that he had spoken to “two or three,” that we must abandon all hope of the societies, that they would not come down, that what had been done during the day had appalled every one, that the best men were terrified, that the boulevards were “full of corpses,” that the soldiers had committed “horrors,” that the barricade was about to be attacked, that on his arrival he had heard the noise of footsteps in the direction of the crossway, that it was the soldiers who were advancing, that we could do nothing further there, that we must be off, that this house was “stupidly chosen,” that there was no outlet in the rear, that perhaps we should already find it difficult to get out of the street, and that we had only just time.
He told this all panting, briefly, jerkily, and interrupted at every moment with this ejaculation, “And to think that they have no arms, and to think that I have no gun!”
As he finished we heard from the barricade a shout of “Attention!” and almost immediately a shot was fired.
A violent discharge replied to this shot.
Several balls struck the paling of the ambulance, but they were too obliquely aimed, and none pierced it. We heard the glass of several broken windows falling noisily into the street.
“There is no longer time,” said the last-maker calmly; “the barricade is attacked.”
He took a chair and sat down. The two workmen were evidently excellent marksmen. Two volleys assailed the barricade, one after the other. The barricade answered with animation. Then the fire ceased. There was a pause.
“Now they are coming at us with the bayonet! They are coming at the double!” said a voice in the barricade.
The other voice said, “Let us be off.” A last musket-shot was fired. Then a violent blow which we interpreted as a warning shook our wooden wall. It was in reality one of the workmen who had thrown down his gun when going away; the gun in falling had struck the paling of the ambulance. We heard the rapid steps of the two combatants, as they ran off.
Almost at the same moment a tumult of voices, and of butt ends of muskets striking the paving-stones, filled the barricade.
“It is taken,” said the last-maker, and he blew out the candle.
To the silence which enveloped this street a moment before succeeded a sort of ill-omened tumult. The soldiers knocked at the doors of the houses with the butt-ends of their muskets. It was by a miracle that the shop-door escaped them. If they had merely pushed against it, they would have seen that it was not shut, and would have entered.
A voice, probably the voice of an officer, cried out, “Light up the windows!” The soldiers swore. We heard them say, “Where are those blackguard Reds? Let us search the houses.” The ambulance was plunged in darkness. Not a word was spoken, not a breath could be heard; even the dying man, as though he divined the danger, had ceased to gurgle. I felt the little girl pressing herself against my legs.
A soldier struck the barrels, and said laughingly,—
“Here is something to make a fire with to-night.”
Another resumed,—
“Which way have they gone? They were at least thirty. Let us search the houses.”
We heard one raising objections to this,—
“Nonsense! What do you want to do on a night like this? Enter the houses of the ‘middle classes’ indeed! There is some waste ground over yonder. They have taken refuge there.”
“All the same,” repeated the others, “let us search the houses.”
At this moment a musket-shot was fired from the end of the street.
This shot saved us.
In fact, it was probably one of the two workmen who had fired in order to draw off their attention from us.
“That comes from over there,” cried the soldiers, “They are over there!” and all starting off at once in the direction from which the shot had been fired, they left the barricade and ran down the street at the top of their speed.
The last-maker and myself got up.
“They are no longer there,” whispered he. “Quick! let us be off.”
“But this poor woman,” said I. “Are we going to leave her here?”
“Oh,” she said, “do not be afraid, I have nothing to fear; as for me, I am an ambulance. I am taking care of the wounded. I shall even relight my candle when you are gone. What troubles me is that my poor husband has not yet come back!”
We crossed the shop on tiptoe. The last-maker gently opened the door and glanced out into the street. Some inhabitants had obeyed the order to light up their windows, and four or five lighted candles here and there flickered in the wind upon the sills of the windows. The street was no longer completely dark.
“There is no one about now,” said the last-maker; “but let us make haste, for they will probably come back.”
We went out: the old woman closed the door behind us, and we found ourselves in the street. We got over the barricade and hurried away as quickly as possible. We passed by the dead old man. He was still there, lying on the pavement indistinctly revealed by the flickering glimmer from the windows; he looked as though he was sleeping. As we reached the second barricade we heard behind us the soldiers, who were returning.
We succeeded in regaining the streets in course of demolition. There we were in safety. The sound of musketry still reached us. The last-maker said, “They are fighting in the direction of the Rue de Cléry.” Leaving the streets in course of demolition, we went round the markets, not without risk of falling into the hands of the patrols, by a number of zigzags, and from one little street to another little street. We reached the Rue Saint Honoré.
At the corner of the Rue de l’Arbre Sec the last-maker and I separated, “For in truth,” said he to me, “two run more danger than one.” And I regained No. 19, Rue Richelieu.
While crossing the rue des Bourdonnais we had noticed the bivouac of the Place Saint Eustache. The troops who had been dispatched for the attack had not yet come back. Only a few companies were guarding it. We could hear shouts of laughter. The soldiers were warming themselves at large fires lighted here and there. In the fire which was nearest to us we could distinguish in the middle of the brazier the wheels of the vehicles which had served for the barricades. Of some there only remained a great hoop of red-hot iron.
What Happened During the Night.— The Petit Carreau
On the same night, almost at the same moment, at a few paces distant, a villainous deed was being perpetrated.
After the taking of the barricade, where Pierre Tissié was killed, seventy or eighty combatants had retired in good order by the Rue Saint Sauveur. They had reached the Rue Montorgueil, and had rejoined each other at the junction of the Rue du Petit Carreau and the Rue du Cadran. At this point the street rises. At the corner of the Rue du Petit Carreau and the Rue de Cléry there was a deserted barricade, fairly high and well built. There had been fighting there during the morning. The soldiers had taken it, but had not demolished it. Why? As we have said, there were several riddles of this nature during this day.
The armed band which came from the Rue Saint Denis had halted there and had waited. These men were astonished at not being pursued. Had the soldiers feared to follow them into the little narrow streets, where each corner of the houses might conceal an ambuscade? Had a counter order been given? They hazarded various conjectures. Moreover they heard close by, evidently on the boulevard, a terrific noise of musketry, and a cannonade which resembled continuous thunder. Having no more ammunition, they were reduced to listen. If they had known what was taking place there, they would have understood why they were not pursued. The butchery of the boulevard was beginning. The generals employed in the massacre had suspended fighting for awhile.
The fugitives of the boulevard streamed in their direction, but when they perceived the barricade they turned back. Some, however, joined them indignant, and crying out for vengeance. One who lived in the neighborhood ran home and brought back a little tin barrel full of cartridges.
These were sufficient for an hour’s fighting. They began to construct a 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.’”
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 survivors28 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.
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 Fran?ois 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 one30 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 Lefl?‘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.
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-D?me).
Bertrand (of the Yonne).
Bidault (of the Cher).
Bigrel (of the C?tes-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 D?me).
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-D?me).
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 C?tes-du-Nord).
Dabeaux (of the Haute-Garonne).
Dariste (of the Basses-Pyrénées).
Daviel, ex-Minister.
Delacoste, ex-Commissary-General (of the Rh?ne).
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’Hérou?l (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-Sa?ne).
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 C?tes-du-Nord).
Lefebvre-Duruflé, Minister of Commerce (of the Eure).
Lélut (of the Haute-Sa?ne).
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-D?me).
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-D?me).
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 C?tes-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.
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 Rh?ne). 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.
No?l Parfait. Lafon.
Emile Péan. Lamarque.
Pelletier. Pierre Lafranc.
Raspail. Jules Leroux.
Théodore Bac. Francisque Maigne.
Bancel. Malardier.
Belin (Dr?me). Mathieu (de la Dr?me).
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 Fran?ais; 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.
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.
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.
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 Lawo?styne 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 Lawo?styne 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 Lawo?styne, 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.
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.