'Where are your passports?'
'We never carry them with us when we are out for a walk.'
He took up a manuscript book, looked through it for a long time, apparently found nothing, and asked one of our escort:
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'Why did you arrest them?'
'The officer gave the order; he says they are very suspicious characters.'
'Very well,' said the old gentleman; 'I will inquire into the case ; you may go.'
VVhen the escort had gone the old gentleman asked us to explain the cause of our arrest. I put the facts before him, adding that the officer might perhaps have seen me on the frfteenth of May at the Assembly; and then I told him of an incident of the previous day. I had been sitting in the Cafe Caurnartin when suddenly there was a false alarm, a squadron of dragoons rode by at full gallop and the National Guard began to form ranks.
Together with some five people who were in the cafe, I went up to a window; a National Guardsman standing below shouted rudely,
'Didn't you hear that windows were to be shut?'
His tone justified me in supposing that he was not addressing me, and I did not take the slightest notice of his words; besides, I was not alone, though I happened to be standing in front. Then the defender of order raised his rifle and, since this was taking place on the rez-de-chaussee, tried to thrust at me with his bayonet, but I saw his movement and stepped back and said to the others:
'Gentlemen, you are witnesses that I have done nothing to him-or is it the habit of the National Guard to bayonet foreigners?'
'lHais c'est indigne, mais cela n'a pas de nom!' my neighbours chimed in.
The frightened cafe-keeper rushed to shut the windows; a vilelooking sergeant appPared with an order to turn everyone out of the cafe-1 fancied he was the same gentleman who had ordered us to be stopped. Moreover, the Cafe Caumartin was a couple of steps from the :vladeleine.
'So that's how it is, gentlemen: you see what imprudence leads to. VVhy walk out at such a tirne?-rninds are exasperated, blood is flowing . . . .'
At that moment a National Guardsman brought in a maidservant, saying that an officer had caught her in the very act of trying to post a letter addressed to Berlin. The old gentleman took the envelope and told the soldier to go.
'You can go horne,' he said to us; 'only, please do not go by the same streets as before, and especially not by the cordon which arrested you. But stay, I'll send someone to escort you ! he'll take vou to the Champs- Uyscf's-you can g!'t through that \vay.'
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'And you,' he said, addressing the servant, giving her back the letter which he had not touched, 'post it in another letter-box, further away.'
And so the police gave protection from the armed bourgeois!
On the night of the 26th-27th of June, so Pierre Leroux relates, he went to Senart to beg him to do something for the prisoners who were being suffocated in the cellars of the Tuileries. Senart, a man well known as a desperate conservative, said to Pierre Leroux:
'And who will answer for their lives on the way? The National Guard will kill them. If you had come an hour earlier you would have found two colonels here: I had the greatest difficulty in bringing them to reason, and ended by telling them if these horrors went on I should give up the president's chair i n the Assembly and take my place behind the barricades.'
Two hours later, on our returning home, the concierge made his appearance accompanied by a stranger in a dress-coat and four men in workmen's blouses which badly disguised the moustaches of municipales and the deportment of gendarmes.
The stranger unbuttoned his coat and waistcoat and, pointing with dignity tu a tricoloured scarf, said that he was Barlet, the commissaire of police (the man who on the 2nd of December, in the National Assembly, took by the collar the man who in his time had taken Rome-General Oudinot) , and that he had orders to search my quarters. I gave him my key, and he set to work exactly as politsmeyster Miller had in 1 834.
My wife came in: the commissairc, like the officer of gendarmes who once carne to us from Dubelt, began apologising. My wife looked at him calmly and directly and, when at the end of his speech he begged her indulgence, said:
'It would be cruelty on my part not to imagine myself in your place; you are sufficiently punished already by being obliged to do what you are doing.'
The commissaire blushed, but did not say a word. Rummaging among the papers and laying aside a whole heap of them, he suddenly went up to the fireplace, sniffed, touched the ashes and, turning to me with an important air, asked:
'What was your object in burning papers?'
'I haven't been burning papers.'
'Upon my word, the ash is still warm.'
'No, it is not warm.'
'Monsieur, vous parlez a un magistral!'
'The ash is cold, all the same, tho.:.gh,' I said, flaring up and raising my voice.
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'Why, am I lying?'
'What right have you to doubt my word? . . . here are some honest workmen with you, let them test it. Besides, even if I had burnt papers: in the first place, I have a right to burn them; and in the second, what are you going to do?'
'Have you no other papers?'
'No.'
'I have a few letters besides, and very interesting ones; come into my room,' said my wife.
'Oh, your letters . . .'
'Please don't stand on ceremony . . . why, you are only doing your duty; come along.'
The commissaire \vent in, glanced very slightly at the letters, which were for the most part from Italy, and was about to go . . . .
'But you haven't seen what is underneath here-a letter from the Conciergerie, from a prisoner, you see; don't you want to take it with you?'
'Really, Madame,' answered the policeman of the republic,
'you are so prejudiced ; I don't want that letter at all.'
'What do you intend to do with the Russian papers?' I asked.
'They will be translated.'
'The point is, where you will take your translator from. If he is from the Russian Embassy, it will be as good as laying information ; you will destroy five or six people. You will greatly oblige me if you will mention at the proces-verbal that I beg most urgently that a Polish emigre shall be chosen as a translator.'
'I believe that can be done.'
'I thank you; and I have another request: do you know Italian at all?'
'A little.'
'I will show you two letters ; in them the word France is not mentioned. The man who wrote them is in the hands of the Sardinian police; you \vill see by the contents that it will go badly with him if they get hold of the letters.'
'i'liais, ah r;:a!' observed the commissairc, his dignity as a man beginning to be aroused ; 'you seem to imagine that we are connected with the police of all the despotic powers. We have nothing to do wi th other countries. We are unwillingly compelled to take measures at home when blood is flowing in the streets and when foreigners interfere in our affairs.'
'Very well : then you can leave the letters here.'
The commissaire had not lied ; he really did know a little
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