On meeting together at Mazas, Nadaud grasped the hand of Greppo, and Lagrange grasped the hand of Lamoricière. This made the police gentry laugh. A colonel, named Thirion, wearing a commander's cross round his neck, helped to put the Generals and the Representatives into jail. "Look me in the face," said Charras to him. Thirion moved away.
Thus, without counting other arrests which took place later on, there were imprisoned during the night of the 2d of December, sixteen Representatives and seventy-eight citizens. The two agents of the crime furnished a report of it to Louis Bonaparte. Morny wrote "Boxed up;" Maupas wrote "Quadded." The one in drawing-room slang, the other in the slang of the galleys. Subtle gradations of language.
CHAPTER V. THE DARKNESS OF THE CRIME
Versigny had just left me.
While I dressed hastily there came in a man in whom I had every confidence. He was a poor cabinet-maker out of work, named Girard, to whom I had given shelter in a room of my house, a carver of wood, and not illiterate. He came in from the street; he was trembling.
"Well," I asked, "what do the people say?"
Girard answered me—
"People are dazed. The blow has been struck in such a manner that it is not realized. Workmen read the placards, say nothing, and go to their work. Only one in a hundred speaks. It is to say, 'Good!' This is how it appears to them. The law of the 31st May is abrogated—'Well done!' Universal suffrage is re-established—'Also well done!' The reactionary majority has been driven away—'Admirable!' Thiers is arrested—'Capital!' Changarnier is seized—'Bravo!' Round each placard there are claqueurs. Ratapoil explains his coup d'état to Jacques Bonhomme, Jacques Bonhomme takes it all in. Briefly, it is my impression that the people give their consent."
"Let it be so," said I.
"But," asked Girard of me, "what will you do, Monsieur Victor Hugo?"
I took my scarf of office from a cupboard, and showed it to him.
He understood.
We shook hands.
As he went out Carini entered.
Colonel Carini is an intrepid man. He had commanded the cavalry under Mieroslawsky in the Sicilian insurrection. He has, in a few moving and enthusiastic pages, told the story of that noble revolt. Carini is one of those Italians who love France as we Frenchmen love Italy. Every warm-hearted man in this century has two fatherlands—the Rome of yesterday and the Paris of to-day.
"Thank God," said Carini to me, "you are still free," and he added, "The blow has been struck in a formidable manner. The Assembly is invested. I have come from thence. The Place de la Révolution, the Quays, the Tuileries, the boulevards, are crowded with troops. The soldiers have their knapsacks. The batteries are harnessed. If fighting takes place it will be desperate work."
I answered him, "There will be fighting."
And I added, laughing, "You have proved that the colonels write like poets; now it is the turn of the poets to fight like colonels."
I entered my wife's room; she knew nothing, and was quietly reading her paper in bed.
I had taken about me five hundred francs in gold. I put on my wife's bed a box containing nine hundred francs, all the money which remained to me, and I told her what had happened.
She turned pale, and said to me, "What are you going to do?"
"My duty."
She embraced me, and only said two words:—
"Do it."
My breakfast was ready. I ate a cutlet in two mouthfuls. As I finished, my daughter came in. She was startled by the manner in which I kissed her, and asked me, "What is the matter?"
"Your mother will explain to you."
And I left them.
The Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne was as quiet and deserted as usual. Four workmen were, however, chatting near my door; they wished me "Good morning."
I cried out to them, "You know what is going on?"
"Yes," said they.
"Well. It is treason! Louis Bonaparte is strangling the Republic. The people are attacked. The people must defend themselves."
"They will defend themselves."
"You promise me that?"
"Yes," they answered.
One of them added, "We swear it."
They kept their word. Barricades were constructed in my street (Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne), in the Rue des Martyrs, in the Cité Rodier, in the Rue Coquenard, and at Notre-Dame de Lorette.
CHAPTER VI. "PLACARDS"
On leaving these brave men I could read at the corner of the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne and the Rue des Martyrs, the three infamous placards which had been posted on the walls of Paris during the night.
Here they are.
"PROCLAMATION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC.
"Appeal to the People. "FRENCHMEN! The present situation can last no longer. Every day which passes enhances the dangers of the country. The Assembly, which ought to be the firmest support of order, has become a focus of conspiracies. The patriotism of three hundred of its members has been unable to check its fatal tendencies. Instead of making laws in the public interest it forges arms for civil war; it attacks the power which I hold directly from the People, it encourages all bad passions, it compromises the tranquillity of France; I have dissolved it, and I constitute the whole People a judge between it and me. "The Constitution, as you know, was constructed with the object of weakening beforehand the power which you were about to confide to me. Six millions of votes formed an emphatic protest against it, and yet I have faithfully respected it. Provocations, calumnies, outrages, have found me unmoved. Now, however, that the fundamental compact is no longer respected by those very men who incessantly invoke it, and that the men who have ruined two monarchies wish to tie my hands in order to overthrow the Republic, my duty is to frustrate their treacherous schemes, to maintain the Republic, and to save the Country by appealing to the solemn judgment of the only Sovereign whom I recognize in France—the People. "I therefore make a loyal appeal to the whole nation, and I say to you: If you wish to continue this condition of uneasiness which degrades us and compromises our future, choose another in my place, for I will no longer retain a power which is impotent to do good, which renders me responsible for actions which I cannot prevent, and which binds me to the helm when I see the vessel driving towards the abyss. "If on the other hand you still place confidence in me, give me the means of accomplishing the great mission which I hold from you. "This mission consists in closing the era of revolutions, by satisfying the legitimate needs of the People, and by protecting them from subversive passions. It consists, above all, in creating institutions which survive men, and which shall in fact form the foundations on which something durable may be established. "Persuaded that the instability of power, that the preponderance of a single Assembly, are the permanent causes of trouble and discord, I submit to your suffrage the following fundamental bases of a Constitution