CHAPTER IV

Doctor Thibaut--The Government of Gérard and Mortemart--Étienne Arago and Mazue, the Superintendent of Police--The café Gobillard--Fire at the guard-house in the place de la Bourse--The first barricades--The night

We went back to the boulevards again from the office of the _National._ At the top of the rue Montmartre we heard what sounded like firing, in the direction of the Palais-Royal. It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening.

"Hah! What is that?" I asked Carrel.

"By Jove!" he answered, "it was a volley being fired."

"Well, will you come along and see?"

"Good gracious no!" he replied. "I shall turn in home."

"I mean to go," I said.

"Go, then; but don't be fool enough to get drawn into things!"

"No fear. Adieu!"

"Adieu!"

Carrel walked away with his calm and measured step, along the faubourg Montmartre, whilst I dashed off at a run for the place de la Bourse. I had not gone fifty yards before I met Dr. Thibaut. He looked very important.

"Ah! it is you, dear friend?" I said. "What is the news?"

Thibaut, who had adopted great gravity of expression, claiming that no doctor could make his way in the world without it, was, on this occasion, more than grave: he was gloomy.

"Bad news!" he replied; "things are getting horribly complicated."

"But are they fighting?" I said,

"Yes; one man has been killed in the rue du Lycée and three more in the rue Saint-Honoré.... The Lancers charged in the rue de Richelieu and upon the place du Palais-Royal.... A barricade was being run up in the rue de Richelieu, but it was taken before it was finished."

"Where are you bound for?"

"You will hear that to-morrow, if I am successful," he said.

"Upon my word, my dear fellow, you assume the airs of a diplomatist."

"Who knows?--I may be going to form a new Government!"

"In your calling as a doctor, my dear friend, I would invite you to give your whole attention to the old Ministry, for it seems to me deuced ill!"

Two young people passed us by rapidly at this moment.

"A tricoloured flag?" said one. "Surely it is not possible!"

"I tell you I saw it myself," the other replied.

"Where?"

"On the quai de l'École."

"When?"

"Half an hour ago."

"What did they do to the man who was bearing it?"

"Nothing ... they just let him pass."

"Let us go there, then."

"All right."

And they ran off down the rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.

"You see, my dear fellow," I said to Thibaut, "things are getting warm! Go off to your Ministry, my friend."

"I am going."

He went away in the direction of the boulevard des Capucines.

Thibaut had not deceived me. He was actually engaged in forming a Ministry; only, his Ministry was not destined to die of longevity. It was the Ministry of Gérard and Mortemart, which had its counterpart in the Thiers and Odilon Barrot Ministry of the Revolution of 1848. But, it will be urged, how could Dr. Thibaut form a Ministry? As for that--well, I will tell you.

It will be remembered that, in 1827 or 1828, Madame de Celles, daughter of General Gérard, who was suffering from a chest complaint, had asked Madame de Leuven to tell her of a young medical man who could accompany her to Italy, and that Thibaut's name had been given her. He had made the journey with the beautiful invalid, and the combined results of travel and doctor worked wonders in her health. On their return, the general was so grateful for the care Thibaut had bestowed upon his daughter that he admitted him into personal intimacy in his household. Thibaut, when I met him, was on his way to call upon M. le Baron de Vitrolles, on behalf of General Gérard, to try and persuade him to urge conciliatory measures upon M. de Polignac and, if that failed, upon the king himself. Serious-minded people were evidently beginning to realise the gravity of the situation. This was the information which Thibaut could not tell me when we met, but which he divulged to me later.

Eight o'clock chimed out from the Bourse clock; I wanted to get back to my faubourg Saint Germain; but, as I entered one end of the rue Vivienne, I saw bayonets at the other. I could have gone by the rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas, but curiosity kept me back. I beat a retreat as far as the café of the théâtre des Nouveautés. As far as I can recollect, it was kept by a man named Gobillard, an excellent fellow, a favourite with us all. The troop advanced with regular step, taking up the whole width of the street, pushing men, women and children before them. The people, driven by the soldiers, gave way and walked backwards, shouting--

"Vive la ligne!"

Women waved their handkerchiefs from the open windows, crying--

"Do not fire on the people!"

There was a certain type among the men whom the soldiers were driving aside which is only to be seen at special hours of the day--the kind of men who start riots and revolutions, men whom one might style the pioneers of disorder. When the troops reached the place de la Bourse they deployed, but, as they could not cover the whole width of the square, a portion of those who were being pushed along by the soldiers overflowed on both sides and swept back after them. Now, there was near the Bourse a rickety old wooden shanty which was used as a guard-house. The regiment left about a dozen soldiers there as in a block-house and disappeared down the rue Neuve-Vivienne in the direction of the Bastille. The regiment was scarcely out of sight when some boys from the crowd came up to the soldiers who were left in the guard-house, shouting--

"Vive la Charte!"

Whilst these lads did no more than shout, the soldiers kept their patience, but stones soon followed the shoutings. A soldier, hit by a stone, fired, and a woman fell--a woman of about thirty. Cries of "Murder!" went up and, in a second, the square was emptied, lights were extinguished and shops closed. The théâtre des Nouveautés alone remained lighted and open,--they were playing _la Chatte blanche_,--and those inside the house had no idea what was going on outside. A small troop of about twelve men appeared, at that moment, from the rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas. It was headed by Étienne Arago and was shouting--

"Stop the play! Close the theatres! They are killing people in the streets of Paris!..."

It stumbled against the body of the woman who had been killed.

"Carry this corpse to the steps of the peristyle, so that everybody can see it," said Étienne; "I am going to have the theatre emptied."

And, as a matter of fact, the place was emptied an instant later, the stream of spectators, on coming out, spreading apart as a torrent does before a rock, so as to avoid trampling upon the body. I ran to Arago.

"What are they doing," I asked. "What has been decided?"

"Nothing yet.... Barricades are being erected ... and women killed and theatres closed, as you see."

"Where shall I find you again?"

"To-morrow morning at my house, No. 10 rue de Grammont."

Then, turning to the men who were with him--

"To the Variétés, my friends!" he said; "to close the theatres is to hoist the black flag over Paris!"

And the little crowd disappeared with him down the rue de Montmorency. It had passed before the sentinel and the barracks without producing any sign. And this was how the movement had begun and from whence the firing had come that Carrel and I had heard.

Étienne Arago (I hope I may be pardoned for always quoting the same name, but I will engage to prove, beyond exception, that Étienne Arago was the mainspring of the insurrectional movement), Étienne Arago, I say, had just been dining with Desvergers and Varin and had returned with them to the Vaudeville theatre, which was then in the rue de Chartres, when a mob barred their way in the rue Saint-Honoré, in front of the Delorme passage. They were saying that a man had been killed in the rue du Lycée. A cart, loaded with rubble, was waiting to pass, as soon as the mob had dispersed; four or five carriages, stopped by the same obstruction, were waiting too, in file.

"Excuse me, my friend," Étienne said to the driver, unharnessing the horse from the shafts; "we require your cart."

"What for?"

"To make a barricade with, to be sure!"

"Yes, yes, barricades--let us have barricades!" exclaimed several voices.

And, in the twinkling of an eye, the horses were detached, the cart thrown on its side and the contents piled up across the street.

"Good!" said Arago. "Now you won't need me any more; I am wanted elsewhere."

And, leaving the barricade to be guarded by those who had helped in its construction, he crossed the Delorme passage, went along the rue de Rivoli and reached the Vaudeville. People were just going in.

"There shall be no play while fighting is going on!" he said; "give the people back their money!"

Then, to those who persisted in going in--

"Pardon, messieurs," he said--"there shall be no laughing at the Vaudeville whilst Paris is in tears."

And he began trying to shut the gate.

"Monsieur," a voice asked, "why are you closing the Vaudeville?"

"Why? ... Because I am the manager of the theatre and choose to close it."

"Yes, but the Government does not choose to do so: in the name of the Government I order you to leave it open!"

"Who are you?"

"Heavens! you know me well enough."

"Possibly, but I want those who are listening and taking part in this debate to know who you are too."

"I am M. Mazue, Superintendent of Police."

"Well, then, Monsieur Mazue, Police Superintendent, look out for yourself!" replied Arago, pushing against the grating; "those who do not go will soon be crushed."

"Monsieur Arago, to-morrow you will be no longer manager of the Vaudeville!"

"Monsieur Mazue, to-morrow you will no longer be the Superintendent of Police."

"We shall see about that, Monsieur Arago!"

"I hope so, Monsieur Mazue!"

With the help of two scene-shifters, Étienne closed the grille, in spite of the efforts of the police officers; then, leaving by the stage door, he began the work of closing the other theatres--an act that had an immense influence upon that evening's proceedings and upon those of the next day.

All these details were related to us behind the carefully closed doors of the café Gobillard. We were there to the number of three or four and, as we had been rushing about the whole day, we were dying with hunger. We ordered supper. The topic of our conversation can easily be guessed. Some said that the agitation of the hour was of not more significance than that of 1827, and that the riot had not strength to rise to the proportions of a revolution, but would fail in like manner. Others, and I among them, believed, on the contrary, that we were but at the prologue of the comedy and that the morrow would show a different state of things altogether. We were in the full flow of this discussion when the sound of firing startled us and made us shudder. It was fired in the square. Almost immediately there was a cry of "To arms!" followed by a noise like that of a hand-to-hand combat.

"You see," I said, "the drama begins!"

It was now twenty minutes to ten by the café clock. We ran upstairs to the first floor to look out of the windows. The guard-house had been surprised, surrounded and attacked by a score of men. A struggle was proceeding in the darkness, of which we could not make out any details--nothing beyond a confused mass. The soldiers were defeated and disarmed. Their guns, cartridge-pouches and swords had been taken from them and they were sent away by the rue Joquelet; then some fifteen were detached from the main body and picked up the corpse of the woman, which still lay on the theatre steps, placed it on a litter and went away down the rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas crying, "Vengeance!" Three or four who were provided with a torch remained behind the rest and, with this torch, lighted a bonfire of straw in the middle of the guard-house; then they kicked down and broke up the planks it was made of and let them fall into the bonfire. Of course, the planks ignited very rapidly, and instantly the barrack was one vast blazing mass; the three or four laggards left it to its fate and rejoined their companions. The fire threw a lurid illumination over the square and burned half the night without anyone attempting to extinguish it. We went down and finished our supper, our thoughts very full of what we had just witnessed. We separated towards midnight, and I took the rue Vivienne; the Perron passage being closed, I went along the rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs and the rue de Richelieu. In the rue de l'Échelle, moving about through the darkness, were shadows which, when I approached, cried, "Qui vive?" I replied, "A friend!" and walked straight on. It was a barricade that was being silently raised, as though built by some spirits of the night. I shook hands with several of these nocturnal workmen and gained the Carrousel. Behind the château gates I could see two or three hundred men camped in the court of the Tuileries. I thought it must have been almost the same as this on the night of the 9th to 10th of August 1790. I tried to peep through the gates, but a sentinel cried "Keep off!" and I went on my way. On the quays everything was resuming its normal appearance. I reached the rue de l'Université without having met a single person either upon the Pont Royal or in the rue du Bac. As soon as I reached my lodgings, I opened my window and listened: Paris seemed silent and deserted; but this tranquillity was but superficial, one felt that the solitude was peopled and the silence alive!