CHAPTER III

The morning of July 27--Visit to my mother--Paul Foucher-_Amy Robsart_--Armand Carrel--The office of the _Temps_--Baude--The Commissary of Police--The three locksmiths--The office of the _National_--Cadet Gassicourt--Colonel Gourgaud--M. de Rémusat--Physiognomy of the passers-by

I returned home in order to keep my entire freedom of action for the morrow. I meant to visit my mother first thing in the morning: I had not seen her for two days and feared she would be uneasy, especially if she had heard what was happening outside. My poor mother, at that time, was living in the rue de l'Ouest. I think I have previously stated that we chose this new home for her so that she could be nearer to the Villenave family, who had left the rue de Vaugirard, and were living next door to her. But, unluckily, just when my mother had needed neighbourly help the most, Madame Villenave and Madame Waldor and Élisa (my mother's most faithful companion, with her cat, Mysouf) had gone to la Vendée, where they owned a little country place called la Jarrie, three leagues from Clisson. I found my mother in the most perfect state of tranquillity of mind and body; no rumour of passing events had yet penetrated into that Thébaïd called the quartier du Luxembourg. I breakfasted with her, kissed her and left her in her sweet, undisturbed quiet.

As I went away, I ran across Paul Foucher. He was returning from his brother-in-law, Victor Hugo's, who lived in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and to whom he had been to announce that he had to give a reading the following day, of what play or at what particular theatre, I know not. Paul Foucher was then the same short-sighted, absent-minded fellow that he still is, knocking indifferently into passers-by, posts and trees, on which he always seemed to be looking for the bills of the theatres where his pieces were being played; absorbed in the train of thought that preoccupied him at the moment you met him, and incapable of entering into yours, or of coming out of his own, into which he would lead you back again and again. His dominant thought when I met him that morning was the reading he was to give next day. Paul Foucher, young though he was, had made quite a sensational entry into the dramatic life. The year before, a piece of which he was said to be the author had been played at the Odéon, but its great beauty, a beauty of an eccentric character and ill adapted to the stage, had hastened its failure, and the failure, though great, was glorious, the kind of failure that brings to light a man's qualities, just as certain defeats reveal the character of a nation. Paul Foucher had had his Poitiers, his Agincourt and his Crécy, and could take his stand accordingly. The play was called _Amy Robsart_, and was taken from, or, rather, inspired by, Walter Scott's romance of _Kenilworth_. The day after its failure, Hugo proclaimed himself its author; but the honour of the only representation it had was none the less inseparably associated with Paul Foucher. The play was never printed. Hugo made me a present of the manuscript later; I daresay I have it still in my possession. I tried in vain to get any information out of Paul: he knew but one piece of news, and did not consider either the political or literary world needed to know any other. This news was that next day he was to read a play in five acts. I saw the moment coming when he was about to anticipate the right of the Committee and read me his play. But the reading of the finest drama the world ever saw would not have consoled me for losing the smallest detail of the play which Paris was at that moment putting on the stage. I leapt into a cab and escaped from the reading. I gave the driver Carrel's address.

Since the present crisis had arisen, Carrel was looked upon by the younger members of the Opposition as their leader, elected, if not publicly, at least by tacit consent. I had become acquainted with Armand Carrel at M. de Leuven's, who, since the return to France of the young political exile, after the coronation of Charles X., had placed him on the editorial staff of the _Courrier_; he lived, if I remember rightly, in the rue Monsigny or near by. As he died in 1836, he is already, to the young generation of between twenty and twenty-five years of age, but a historical figure. At the time of which we are now speaking, he was a man of twenty-eight, of medium height, with a calm and retreating forehead, dark hair, small, lively, flashing eyes, a long sharp nose, thin and rather pale lips, with white teeth and a bilious complexion. Although Carrel professed the most advanced of Liberal opinions, as is often the case with men of great intellect and of refined organisation, he had the most aristocratic habits imaginable, and this made the contrast between his words and his appearance very strange. He almost invariably wore patent leather boots, a black cravat tied tight round his neck, a black frock-coat buttoned up all but the last button, a waistcoat of white piqué or of chamois leather and grey trousers. His whole get-up revealed the military style of the former officer. This warlike quality had, to some extent, passed from Carrel's body into his mind. Charlemagne signed his treaties with the pommel of his sword and enforced them with its point; and so with Carrel: his articles always seemed to have been written with a steel point, similar to those used by the ancients, which left deep traces of sharpness on their tablets of wax. But Carrel's polemical style of writing was very fine, noble and frank; he boldly showed his front to his enemies: it was in some way similar both to Pascal's and Paul-Louis Courier's. He had received but little historical education, except about our neighbours across the Channel; he was secretary to Augustin Thierry while he wrote his fine book on the Conquest of England by the Normans (_Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands_). Carrel, with his usual earnestness, had picked up the crumbs that fell from that sumptuous table, and had compiled an abridged History of England. We were good enough friends, although, perhaps, we were not quite just to one another; he looked upon me as too much of a poet, and I looked upon him as too much of a soldier. I found him quietly engaged eating his breakfast. He had signed the protest as a duty; risking his head as coolly at the point of the pen as he had already done several times at the point of the sword, though believing in nothing but lawful methods of resistance. As for armed resistance, he would have nothing to do with it. He had meant to stay at home all day to work; but, upon my entreaties, and, owing to my telling him I thought I had seen some rising excitement in the streets, he decided to go out with me. He put a pair of small pistols in his pocket, of the kind called pocket pistols, took a little whalebone cane in his hand as flexible as a horsewhip, and we went down together towards the boulevards. Doubtless cooled by his action at Béfort and Bidassoa, he hesitated to put himself forward when so many people were seen to hang back. We tramped the boulevards from the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin to the rue Neuve-Vivienne, and then we went along the Place de la Bourse. People were rushing in the direction of the rue de Richelieu. They reported that the offices of the _Temps_ were invaded, and being sacked by a detachment of mounted police.

Of course, needless to relate, we, too, followed the crowd; there was, as usual, but a portion of truth in the rumour. A score of police were drawn up in line in front of the building where the printing was carried on, which stood at the bottom of a very large courtyard. The street door was closed and, before they could invade the workshops, they were waiting for the arrival of the Commissaire de Police. When he arrived, Baude, one of the editors of the _Temps_, and signers of the protest, gave orders to close the workshop door and to open the one on the street. The Commissaire, wearing his white scarf of office, knocked at the door exactly as it was being opened, and Baude and he stood face to face. The Commissaire stepped back before the formidable apparition. Baude was a magnificent figure of a man, not only in general appearance but in every detail of his person. He was a giant of five feet eight or ten inches, with thick black hair which floated round his head like a mane; his eyes were brown and deeply set beneath dark eyebrows: they seemed, at certain moments, to shoot out lightning; he had a rough, tremendous voice which, heard amid the noise of a revolution, sounded like thunder in a storm. Baude was followed by other editors and by employés and workmen, who formed up behind him in a body of thirty persons. When they saw the bare-headed, pale-faced leader and the set faces of the workmen, they guessed that, beneath the legal resistance which Baude had called to his aid, lay a very real and material resistance, namely, one that meant resistance with arms. I squeezed Carrel's arm; he was very pale and seemed greatly moved, but he kept quite mute and shook his head in sign of disapproval. There was such a dead silence throughout the street, filled with, perhaps, a couple of thousand people, that a child's breathing could have been heard. Baude was the first to speak and to question the Commissaire.

"What do you want, monsieur? and why have you presented yourselves before our printing house?"

"Monsieur," stammered the Superintendent of Police, "I have come in consequence of the Ordinances...."

"To break up our presses, I suppose?" Baude questioned. "Well, then, in the name of the Code, which is both anterior and superior to your Ordinance, I call upon you to respect them!"

And Baude stretched forth a copy of the Code opened at the article on _Effraction_ (Housebreaking). This weapon was, certainly, of a more alarming and terrible nature than the presenting of pistols or swords, but the Superintendent's orders had been perfectly clear.

"Monsieur," he said, "I am obliged to do my duty"; and, turning to one of his men, he said, "Send somebody to find a locksmith."

"All right! I will wait till he comes," said Baude.

A murmur ran through the crowd. They began to understand that there, in the open street, before the eyes of the crowd, under the gaze of Providence, was going to take place one of the grandest spectacles that it is given to human sight to behold--the resistance of law to arbitrary force, of the individual to the crowd, of conscience to tyranny.

Not a man among the spectators had said to Baude, "You can count on my support"; but it was apparent that he felt he could reckon on all.

The locksmith arrived; and, at the order of the Superintendent, he was just going to cross the threshold of the street door, in order to go and open the doors of the printing house with his tools, when Baude, stopping him, by gently taking hold of his arm, said--

"My friend, you probably do not know what risks you are running by obeying the orders of the Superintendent of Police? You are running the risk of being sent to the galleys." And he read in a loud voice the following lines:--

"Any person will be punished with penal servitude who is guilty of, or accomplice in, theft committed by means of breaking into a house or room or lodging dwelt in or serving as a dwelling-house by means of breaking in from without by scaling or by using false keys, whether he assume the rank of a public functionary or of a civil or military officer, or after having put on the uniform or dress of a public functionary or officer, or alleging a false order of the civil or military authorities."

As Baude read on, the locksmith raised his hand to his cap and, by the end of the article, he was listening to the reader with bared head. At this token of respect shown to the law by a man of the people the crowd broke out into immense applause. The Commissaire insisted, and the locksmith, obeying his authoritative commands, made an attempt at entrance. Baude drew back and made way for him.

"Do it!" he said, "but you know that it will mean the galleys for you."

The locksmith again stopped and the cheering redoubled. The Superintendent renewed his orders to pick the locks of the doors.

"Messieurs," Baude cried in a loud voice, "I appeal against M. le Commissaire to a jury, and from the Ordinances to the Assizes.... Who will give me their names as witnesses of the outrage offered to me?"

Five hundred voices simultaneously responded. Pencils and papers were instantly circulated among the crowd with wonderful eagerness and unanimity; each took the pencil in turn and wrote down his name and address on the paper. Then all were handed in to Baude.

"You see for yourself, monsieur," he said to the Superintendent of Police, "I have plenty of witnesses."

"Upon my word, Monsieur le Commissaire," the locksmith finally said to that officer of the law, "get somebody else to do your job, I back out of it."

And, putting his cap on his head, he withdrew. He was accompanied by vivats and more applause.

"Force, however, still must rest with the law!" retorted the Superintendent.

"I am beginning to believe, indeed, that it will," Baude replied ironically.

"Oh, I know my business," the officer replied. "Call another locksmith."

An official in black appeared from the crowd as before, and returned with a locksmith carrying a bunch of picklocks at his waist. The applause that had accompanied the retreat of the other man changed quickly to groans as this fresh one appeared. The locksmith was frightened.

As he made his way through the crowd he slipped his bunch of picklocks into the hand of one of the spectators, who passed it on to the next man, and so on through the crowd. When he had reached the door, the order previously given to his colleague was renewed.

"Monsieur le Commissaire," he said, pointing to his empty girdle, "I cannot do it: my tools have been stolen from me."

"You lie!" exclaimed the Commissaire, "and I will have you arrested!"

The hand of one of his men was stretched out to seize him, but the crowd opened a way for him and then closed up after him, wrapped him in its folds and engulfed him completely in its stream. He disappeared literally as though he had been devoured!

They then summoned the blacksmith whose duty it was to rivet the convict's fetters. But, as the opposition of the crowd began to assume a grave character, and looked dark and threatening, the street was cleared with the help of the police.

The crowd withdrew by way of the place Louvois and the arcade Colbert, and by the rue de Ménars, shouting--

"Vive la Charte!"

Men climbed upon posts, waved their hats and cried out to Baude--

"You may rely on us--you have our addresses. We will be witnesses for you. _Au revoir! au revoir!_"

A reinforcement of police seen coming from the direction of the Palais-Royal completed the clearing of the street. But what did that matter? The moral victory remained with the Opposition, and Baude had played as great a part as any ghostly Revolutionist of 1789.

Carrel and I left the rue de Richelieu and went to the _National_ offices. The _National_ had scarcely been in existence a year then; it had been started by Thiers, Carrel and the Abbé Louis, at the château de Rochecottes, at the feet of Madame de Dino, under the eye of M. de Talleyrand. The Duc d'Orléans, who had lent the necessary funds, paid, as it were, for the nursing of this infant Hercules, which, eighteen years later, was to seize him round his waist and suffocate him. These offices were situated in the rue Neuve-Saint-Marc, at the corner of the place des Italiens. We found it a hotbed of news. The evening before one of the editors had come in, out of spirits and broken down: he had been scouring the poorest quarters, which are always the easiest to stir up, and, shaking his head, he had pronounced these discouraging words:--

"The people will not be moved!"

And when we entered the _National_ offices at two o'clock the people were still quiet; but one could feel that kind of shiver of excitement in the air which made people hurry in their walk and grow paler, they knew not why; like the deep, instinctive terror felt by animals at the approach of an earthquake.

From whence arose this shuddering, which was but yet, as it were, upon the surface of society? It is easy to make a guess. The motion of M. Thiers, which had borne forty-five signatures at the foot of the journalists' protest (it had been published in the _Globe_, the _National_, and the _Temps_, and a hundred thousand copies had, perhaps, been printed and distributed in the streets), this motion, we say, had compromised forty-five persons. Now, these forty-five individuals made up a compact body working upon the masses, and each also was a separate force, working upon individual members of society. Each signature was the centre of a more or less wide circumference of friends, employés, clerks, workmen, compositors, journeymen and printers' devils. Each one stirred up his own particular circle, and each individual member of this circle, however humble, was himself an agent and used his influence on his subordinates; therefore, as soon as the impulse was given, it was communicated from great centres to small, the wheels began to turn, and one felt society tremble under the throbbing of an invisible machine, almost as one feels a windmill quiver from the revolution of its sails or a steamboat from the beating of its paddles. Carrel was invited to three different meetings, all for the purpose of organising opposition. One was purely of a Liberal character, bordering on Republicanism, and was held in the rue Saint-Honoré in the house of the chemist Cadet de Gassicourt; the principal members were Thiers, Charles Teste, Anfous, Chevalier, Bastide, Cauchois-Lemaire and Dupont; at this one they discussed a motion as to creating a committee of resistance in every arrondissement (ward), with power to put itself into direct communication with the deputies. The second was Bonapartist, and was held at the house of Colonel Gourgaud. It was chiefly composed, first and foremost, of the master of the house, then of Colonels Dumoulin, Dufays and Plavet-Gaubet, and of Commandant Bacheville. Their object was to try and promote the affairs of Napoleon II., but, as all these men were more men of action than of thought, nothing was settled, and they fixed another meeting for the next day at the place des Petits-Pères. The third meeting took place in the _Globe_ offices and was composed of Pierre Leroux, Guizard, Dejean, Paulin and Rémusat, and of several persons who had nothing to do with the staff of the paper. Here, the most conflicting counsels were put forth: some wanted to appeal to arms on the morrow, others were horrified at the pace at which, as soon as any movement is started, it descends, in spite of everything, down the path that leads to revolution.

M. de Rémusat was one of the scared.

He exclaimed, in despairing tones, "Where are you going? Where are you urging us? It must on no account lead us to revolution--that is not what we desire: legal resistance, well and good--but nothing beyond."

Of course, this meeting did not decide on a course of action any more than the others, unless it drove M. de Rémusat to his bed with the fever which seized him afterwards.

Carrel did not attend any of these three meetings. He was in favour of lawful resistance stretched to its widest limits, but of lawful resistance only. He did not believe in any good arising out of any conflict between citizens and soldiers: he understood the meaning of pretorian revolutions and demanded of those who talked of resorting to arms--

"Have you any regiment you can safely count on?"

No one had regiments ready, seeing that no plot had been prepared. But there was, none the less, a great and formidable general conspiracy afoot, namely public opinion, which accused the Bourbons of being responsible for the defeat of 1815 and wanted to avenge Waterloo in the streets of Paris.

This conspiracy was visible in the eyes, gestures, words and even in the very silence of the people whom one passed, the groups one met, the solitary individuals who stopped, hesitating whether to go to the right or left, as though saying to themselves, "Where is anything going on? Where are they doing anything? I must go and do just what the rest are doing."