The crowds form into ranks. They go to the Piedmontese ambassador to find out whether war has been declared.
'Fall in, fall in with us,' shout dozens of voices.
2 This refers to the successful rising in Milan on 1 8th March, 1848
against the A ustrian dominion in LombaHly. Clwrlcs Albert, King of Piedmont, also declared war on A ustria. (A.S. )
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'We are foreigners.'
'All the better; Santo Dio, you are our guests.'
We joined the ranks.
'The front place for the guests, the front place for the ladies, le donne forestiere!'
And with passionate shouts of approval the crowd parted to make way. Ciceruacchio and with him a young Russian poet, a poet of popular songs, pushed their way forward with a flag, the tribune shook hands with the ladies and with them stood at the head of ten or twelve thousand people-and all moved forward in that majestic and harmonious order which is peculiar to the Roman people.
The leaders went into the Palazzo, and a few minutes later the drawing-room doors opened on the balcony. The ambassador came out to appease the people and to confirm the news of war ; his words were received with frantic joy. Ciceruacchio was o n the balcony in the glaring light o f torches and candelabra, and beside him under the Italian flag stood four young women, all four Russians-was it not strange? I can see them now on that stone platform, and below them the swaying, innumerable multitude, mingling with shouts for war and curses for the Jesuits, loud cries of 'Evviva le donne forestiere!'
In England they and we should have been greeted with hisses, abuse, and perhaps stones. In France we should have been taken for venal agents. But here the aristocratic proletariat, the descendants of Marius and the ancient tribunes, gave us a warm and genuine welcome. We were received by them into the European struggle . . . and with Italy alone the bond of love, or at least of warm memory, is still unbroken.
And was all that . . . intoxication, delirium? Perhaps-but I do not envy those who were not carried away by that exquisite dream. The sleep could not last long in any case: the inexorable Macbeth of real life had already raised his hand to murder sleep and . . .
My dream was past-it has no further change.
2. T H E R E A L I T Y
ON THE EVENING of the 24th of June [ 1 848 ] coming back from the Place Maubert, I went into a cafe on the Quai d'Orsay. A few minutes later I heard discordant shouting, which came nearer and nearer. I went to the window: a grotesque comic banlieue was coming in from the surrounding districts to the support of
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order; clumsy, rascally fellows, half peasants, half shopkeepers, somewhat drunk, in wretched uniforms and old-fashioned shakos, they moved rapidly but in disorder, with shouts of 'Vive Louis-Napoleon!'
That ominous shout I now heard for the first time. I could not restrain myself, and when they reached the cafe I shouted at the top of my voice: 'Vive Ia Republique!' Those who were near the
\vindows shook their fists at me and an officer muttered some abuse, threatening mP with his sword ; and for a long time afterwards I could hear their shouts of greeting to the man who had come to destroy half the revolution, to kill half the republic, to inflict himself upon France, as a punishment for forgetting in her arrogance both other nations and her own proletariat.
At eight o'clock in the morning of the 2"ith or 26th of June Annenkov and I went out to the Champs-Elysees. The cannonade we had heard in the night was now silent ; only from time to time there was the crackle of rifle-fire and the beating of drums.
The streets were empty, but the National Guards stood on either side of them. On the Place de la Concorde there was a detachment of the Garde mobile; near them were standing several poor women with brooms and some ragpickers and concierges from the houses near by. All their faces were gloomy and shocked. A lad of seventeen was leaning on a rifle and telling them something; we went up to them. He and all his comrades, boys like himself, were half drunk, their faces l;lackened with gunpowder and their eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights and drink ; many
\vere dozing with their chins resting on the muzzles of their rifles.
'And what happened then can't be described.' He paused, and then went on: 'Yes, and they fought well, too, but we paid them out for our romrades! A lot of them really caught it! I stuck my bayonPt right up to the hilt in live or six of them ; they'll remember us,' he added, trying to assume the air of a hardened malefactor. The women were pale and silent ; a man who looked like a concierge observed: 'Serve them right, the blackguards!'
. . . but this savage comment evoked not the slightest response.
They were all of too ignorant a class to sympathise with the massacre and with the unfortunate boy who had been made into a murderer.
Silent and sad, we went to the Madeleine. Here we were stopped by a cordon of the National Guard. At first, after searching our pockets, they asked where we were going, and let us through ; but the next cordon, beyond the Madeleine, refused to
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let us through and sent us back; when we went back to the first cordon we were stopped once more.
'But you saw us pass here just now! '
'Don't let them pass,' shouted an officer.
'Arc you making fools of us, or what? ' I asked.
'It's no use talking,' a shopman in uniform answered rudely.
'Take them up-and to the police: I kno\v one of them' (he pointed at me) ; 'I have seen him more than once at meetings.
The other must be the same sort too; they arc neither of them Frenchmen. I'll answer for everything-march.'
We were taken away by two soldiers with rifles in front, two behind, and one on each side. The first man we mPt was a representant du peuple with a silly badge in his button-hole; it was Tocqueville, who had written about America. I addressed myself to him and told him what had happened: it was not a joking matter; they kept people in prison without any sort of trial, threw them into the cellars of the Tuileries, and shot them .
Tocqueville did not even ask who we were; he very politely bowed himself off, delivering himself of the following banality:
'The legislative authority has no right to interfere with the executive.' How could he have helped being a minister under Napoleon III!
The 'executive authority' led us along the boulevard to the Chaussee d'Antin to the commissaire de police. By the way, it will do no harm to mention that neither when we wPre arrested, nor when we were searched, nor when we were on our way, did I see a single policeman; all was done by the bourgeois-warriors.
The boulevard was completely empty, all the shops were closed and the inmates rushed to their doors and windows when they heard our footsteps, and kept asking who we were: 'Des emeutiers etrangers,' answered our escort, and the worthy bourgeois looked at us and gnashed their teeth.
From the police station we were sent to the Hotel des Capucines; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had its quarters there, but at that time there was some temporary police committee there.
We went with our escort into a large study. A bald old gentleman in spectacles, dressed entirely in black, was sitting alone at a table; he asked us over again all the questions that the commissaire had asked us.