With that he tore off the signatures and delivered the names of a dozen candidates for immortality to a holocaust in the candle, and the text he sent to the printer.
It "·as daybreak when we left the office ; groups of ragged boys and wretched, poorly dressed \vomen \Yere standing, sitting, and lying on the pavement near the various newspaper offices, waiting for the piles of newspapers-some to fold them, and others to run \vith them all over Paris. We walked out on to the boulevard: there was absolute stillness; now and then one came upon 1 0 The Jacohins were cal led Montag nards in I i93 h(•cause they occupied the highest seats in the Parlinment. In H H·S-9 the name was given to the supporters of Ledru-Rollin in the Constituent Assembly. ( A.S.)
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a patrol of National Guards, and police-sergeants strolled about looking slyly at us.
'How free from care the city sleeps,' said my comrade, 'with no foreboding of the storm that will wake it up to-morrow! '
'Here are those who keep vigil for u s all,' I said t o him, pointing upwards-that is, to a lighted window of the Maison d'Or.
'And very appropriately, too. Let us go in and have some absinthe; my stomach is a bit upset.'
'And I feel empty; it wouldn't be amiss to have some supper too. How they eat in the Capitole I don't know, but in the Conciergerie the food is abominable.'
From the bones left after our meal of cold turkey no one could have guessed either that cholera was raging in Paris, or that in two hours' time we were going to change the destinies of Europe.
We ate at the Maison d'Or as Napoleon slept before Austerlitz.
Between eight and nine o'clock, when we reached the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, numerous groups of people were already standing there, evidently impatient to know what they were to do; their faces showed perplexity, but at the same time something in the peculiar look of the groups manifested great exasperation. Had those people found real leaders the day would not have ended in a farce.
There was a minute when it seemed to me that something was really going to happen. A gentleman rode on horseback rather slowly down the boulevard. He was recognised as one of the ministers (Lacroix), who probably was having a ride so early not for the sake of fresh air alone. He was surrounded by a shouting crowd, \vho pulled him off his horse, tore his coat and then let him go-that is, another group rescued him and escorted him away. The crowd grew; by ten o'clock there may have been twenty-five thousand people. No one we spoke to, no one we questioned, knew anything. Chersosi, a carbonaro of old days assured us that the banlicuc was coming to the Arc de Triomphe with a shout of 'Vivc la Republiquc!'
'Above all,' the elders of the democracy repeated again, 'be unarmed, or you will spoil the character of the affair-the sovereign people must show the National Assembly its will peacefully and solemnly in order to give the enemy no occasiOn for calumny.'
At last columns were formed; we foreigners made up an honorary phalanx immediately behind thP leaders, among whom were E. Arago in the uniform of a colonel, Bastide, a former minister, and other celebrities of 1 848. We moved down the
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boulevard, voicing various cries and singing the Marseillaise.
One who has not heard the Marseillaise, sung by thousands of voices in that state of nervous excitement and irresolution which is inevitable before certain conflict, can hardly realise the overwhelming effect of the revolutionary hymn.
At that minute there was really something grand about the demonstration. As we slowly moved down the boulevards all the windows were thrown open; ladies and children crowded a t them and came out o n t o the balconies; the gloomy, alarmed faces of their husbands, the fathers and proprietors, looked out from behind them, not observing that in the fourth storeys and attics other heads, those of poor seamstresses and working girls, were thrust out-they waved handkerchiefs, nodded and greeted us. From time to time, as we passed by the houses of well known people, various shouts were uttered.
In this way we rE'ached the point where the Rue de Ia Paix joins the boulevards; it was closed by a squad of the Vincennes Chasseurs, and when our column came up to it the chasseurs suddenly moved apart like the scenery in a theatre, and Changarnier,11 mounted upon a small horse, galloped up at the head of a squadron of dragoons. With no summons to the crowd to disperse, with no beat of drum or other formalities prescribed by law, he threw the foremost ranks into confusion, cut them off from the others and, deploying the dragoons in two directions ordered them to clear the street in quick time. The dragoons in a frenzy fell to riding down people, striking them with the flat of their swords and using the edge at the slightest resistance. I hardly had time to take in what was happening when I found myself nose to nose with a horse which was almost snorting in my face, and a dragoon swearing likewise in my face and threatening to give me one with the flat if I did not move aside. I retreated to the right, and in an instant was carried away by the crowd and squeezed against the railings of the Rue Basse des Remparts. Of our rank the only one left beside me was Mi.iller
Stri.ibing. Meanwhile the dragoons were pressing back the foremost ranks with their horses, and people who had no room to get away were thrust back upon us. Arago leaped down into the Rue Basse des Remparts, slipped and dislocated his leg; Stri.ibing and I jumped down after him. We looked at each other in a frenzy of indignation; Stri.ibing turned round and shouted loudly: 'Aux 11 Changarnier, Nicolas ( 1 793-1 877), a prominent politician and general, was exiled at the coup d'etat of 1 85 1 , but lived to serve in the Franco
Prussian ·war of 1 870. ( Tr.)
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armes! Auz armes/' A man in a workman's blouse caught him by the collar, shoved him out of the way and said:
'Have you gone mad? Look there! '
Thickly bristling bayonets were moving down the street-the Chaussee d'Antin it must have been.
'Get away before they hear you and cut off all escape. All is lost, all ! ' he added, clenching his fist; he hummed a tune as though there was nothing the matter, and walked rapidly away.
'We made our way to the Place de la Concorde. In the Champs
Elysees there was not a single squad from the banlieue; why, Chersosi must have knO\vn that there was not. It had been a diplomatic lie to save the situation, and i t would perhaps have been the destruction of anyone who had believed i t.
The shamelessness of attacking unarmed people aroused great resentment. If anything really had been prepared, had there been leaders, nothing would have been easier than for fighting to have begun in earnest. Instead of showing itself in its full strength the Montagne, on hearing how ludicrously the sovereign people had been dispersed by horses, hid itself behind a cloud. Ledru-Rollin carried on negotiations with Guinard.12
Guinard, the artillery commander of the National Guard, wanted to join the movement, wanted to give men, agreed to give cannon, but would not on any consideration give ammunition-he seems to have wished to act by the moral influence of the guns; Forestier13 was doing the same with his legion.