CHAPTER VII

The attack on the Hôtel de Ville--Rout--I take refuge at M. Lethière's--The news--My landlord becomes generous--General La Fayette--Taschereau--Béranger--The list of the Provisional Government--Honest mistake of the _Constitutionnel_

We kept strictly to the route agreed on. A quarter of an hour after our departure from the quai de l'Horloge, we issued forth by the little street of Glatigny. We arrived in the nick of time: they were going to make a decisive charge upon the Hôtel de Ville by the suspension bridge. Only, if we wished to join in the attack, we must hurry on. Our two drums beat the charge and we advanced at quick pace. We could see about a hundred men in the distance (who composed pretty nearly the whole of the insurgent army) boldly marching towards the bridge, a tricolour standard at their head, when, suddenly, a piece of cannon was pointed and fired in such a way as to rake the whole length of the bridge.

The cannon was charged with grapeshot and the effect of the discharge was terrible. The standard disappeared; some eight or ten men fell and a dozen to fifteen took flight. But the fugitives rallied again at the outcries of those who remained unmoved on the bridge. From the point where we were sheltered by the parapet, we fired on the place de Grève and upon the gunners at the cannon, two of whom fell. They were instantly replaced, and with indescribable rapidity the cannon was reloaded and fired a second time. There was frightful confusion on the bridge; many of the assailants must have been killed or wounded, to judge by the gaps in their ranks. One of us shouted--

"To the bridge! To the bridge!"

We soon sprang forward; but we had not cleared a third of the distance when the cannon thundered forth a third time, and at the same moment the troop advanced upon the bridge with fixed bayonets. Hardly twenty combatants survived that third discharge; forty or so lay dead or wounded on the bridge. Not only was there no longer any means of attacking, but, further, we could not dream of defending ourselves--four to five hundred men were charging us with fixed bayonets! By good fortune we only had to cross the quay in order to reach the network of little streets which were buried in the heart of the city. A fourth discharge of the cannon killed three or four more of our men and hastened our retreat, which, from that moment, might be more accurately described as a rout. This was the first time I had ever heard the whistling of grapeshot, and I confess I shall not believe anyone who tells me he has heard this sound for the first time unmoved. We did not even attempt to rally, and, with the exception of one of the drummers whom I met upon the square in front of Notre-Dame, my whole troop had vanished like smoke. But, five minutes later, we met each other again, some fifteen of us, who all arrived by different streets from the bridge. The news they brought was disastrous: the standard-bearer, whom they asserted was called Arcole, had been killed; Charras, they said, was mortally wounded; finally, the bridge was literally strewn with dead. I thought I had done enough for one day, considering I was a novice in my military career; also, cries round us announced the approach of soldiers: they were coming to take down the tricoloured flag from the tower and to stop the ringing of the great bell of Notre-Dame, which boomed on with admirable persistence, dominating all other sounds, even that of the cannon. I regained the quai des Orfèvres and the same street, rue Guénégaud, by which I had passed triumphantly at the head of my fifty men only an hour before; I went down the rue Mazarine and, by the same door from which the _monsieur_ had distributed powder, I entered the house of my friend, Lethière. I was received just as cordially as usual, even more so, perhaps: M. Lethière held strong Liberal views, Mademoiselle d'Hervilly was almost Republican. They gave me some of that famous rum-arrack which comes directly from la Guadeloupe, of which I was inordinately fond! Upon my word, it was good, after listening to the whistle of grapeshot and seeing fifty men mowed down, to find oneself among warm friends who embraced and shook hands with one and poured one out arrack!

It was almost three o'clock: M. Lethière declared that he had got me and did not mean to let me go again that day. I asked nothing better than to be kept back compulsorily, and remained to dinner. At five, Lethière's son came in, bringing news with him. Fighting was going on, or had gone on, in every quarter of Paris. The boulevards were on fire from the Madeleine to the Bastille; half the trees were cut down and had been used in the making of upwards of forty barricades. The Mairie of Petits-Pères had been taken by three patriots, whose names were already known--MM. Degousée, Higonnet and Laperche. In the faubourg and in the rue de Saint-Antoine the enthusiasm had been extraordinary: they had crushed the soldiers, who were coming from Vincennes, beneath furniture which was flung on them from the windows. Nothing had come amiss as arms: wood from bedsteads, cupboards, chests of drawers, marble, chairs, firedogs, screens, cisterns, bottles--even a piano had been thrown down! The troops were completely decimated. The attack in the Louvre district had advanced as far as the place Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. A column of twenty men had marched to battle headed by a violin which played _Ran tan plan tire lire!_ And, more than this: the members of the Chamber were beginning to rouse themselves. They met at the house of Audry de Puyraveau, and talked much but did little. That was better than nothing! Finally, they decided that five deputies should wait upon the Duc de Raguse to lay certain propositions before him, and to treat with him if necessary.

"Four millions," Casimir Périer said, "would, according to my thinking, be well spent in this matter."

The five deputies repaired to the headquarters in the square, where the marshal was: they were MM. Laffitte, Casimir Périer, Mauguin, Lobau and Gérard. They had been shown in at Marmont's house, where they found François Arago, who had preceded them on the same errand; but neither the one nor the other had had the slightest success whatever. While they were waiting at the marshal's, a lancer, with his chest horribly lacerated by a gunshot, had been carried into the next room to the one in which the conference was being held. They could not at first tell what kind of projectile the wound could have been made with: the surgeon thought it must have been shot used for killing hares. But it was with printer's type! The men whose presses had been broken were taking their revenge. This is only a detail, but it was one which indicated how each person used whatever means he had at hand in default of proper arms.

The news, as will be seen, was not bad, but there was nothing decisive about it yet. The people, the bourgeoisie, young lads, had flung themselves passionately into the insurrection; it was the financial circles and those in high places in the army and the aristocracy who hung back. M. Dumoulin had been seen in his plumed hat, with his great sword by his side, haranguing in the rue Montmartre; and Colonel Dufys, dressed as one of the people, with a scarf round his head, had been seen urging on the insurgents; but M. de Rémusat was still suffering from a feverish attack at the _Globe_ offices, and M. Thiers and M. Mignet were at Montmorency, at the house of Madame de Courchamp, whilst M. Cousin talked of the white flag as the only one that could save France; M. Charles Dupin, meeting Étienne Arago under one of the pavilions by the Institut, had exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, seeing him with a gun in his hand--

"Oh! monsieur, has it come to this, that soldiering is your work now?"

M. Dubois, chief editor of the _Globe_, had given up his editorship; M. Sébastiani was for keeping in orderly legal ways; M. Alexandre de Girardin protested that it suited France best to have the Bourbons without the Ultras; Carrel loudly condemned the folly of those citizens who attacked the military; then, finally, when the people and bourgeoisie and the youths from the colleges were shedding their blood freely and without stint, MM. Laffitte, Mauguin, Casimir Périer, Lobau and Gérard were satisfied with trying to draw up a measure of conciliation with the man who was firing grapeshot over Paris!

If, next day, things did not settle themselves more favourably, they would certainly become worse. There were not really more than from twelve to thirteen thousand men in Paris; but there were fifty thousand within a radius of twenty-five to thirty leagues, and the semaphores, which flourished their huge, mysterious arms in the eyes of all, showed that the Government had a thousand things to tell the provinces which it was particularly anxious that Paris should not know.

The upshot of all this was that it was quite possible that on the next day, the 29th, the heroes of the 27th and 28th would be obliged to clear out of the capital, if not out of France itself. With a view to this eventuality, M. Lethière inquired the state of my finances, and offered to help me in case of need (it was not the first time he had done me a similar service), but I was quite rich, for, when I was ready to start for Algiers, I had called in all my theatrical payments and was in possession of something like a thousand crowns. But M. Lethière, who knew my way of economising, declined to believe in this fortune and suspected me of boasting. It was true my fortune was under sequestration, on account of the orders my landlord had given forbidding me to enter my rooms. But this ban could not also include my friends. Therefore, as much to relieve the mind of the excellent man who offered to lend me money as to put myself in possession of my own fortune, I deputed M. Lethière's son to take a message to my servant; giving him the key of the place where I kept the purse containing my three thousand francs and my passport,--two things each equally necessary at that moment,--I begged my obliging commissionaire to effect an invasion of my premises, whether by fair means or foul, and to bring me back my purse. He was also to bring some forty bullets which he would find deposited in a cup on my bedroom mantelpiece, to replace those I had made use of during the day. He was also to be so obliging as to leave a letter at No. 7 rue de l'Université, as he passed: the letter told the person to whom it was addressed to be quite easy on my account; it also told her I was in safety, and I promised not to commit any follies. This pledged me to nothing, since it left me free to place my own limits as to what things were prudent and what were rash. Half an hour later, Lethière returned with all the commissions executed. He had not only not experienced any trouble at the hands of the concierge, but the landlord had relented--no doubt on account of the way he saw that things were turning out: he had given me permission to return on condition that I would give my word of honour not to fire from the windows of his rooms. The insurrection had wrought one great moral victory, at any rate.

I left my good, worthy friend Lethière at nine o'clock and returned home, first giving the concierge the requisite promise. He had run round the whole of the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the result of his exploration, ordered by the landlord himself, was that the whole quarter was in a state of insurrection. There was talk of a great meeting to be held next morning, in the place de l'Odéon, as a suitable centre from which they could set out to attack the various barracks or guard-houses, which usually play the same part in the midst of an insurrection that fortified places do during an invasion.

I returned, but not to go to bed, only to deposit my gun, powder and balls; I meant to spend a good part of the night in gleaning information. I felt it was urgently needful to implicate, by some means or other, those great leaders of the Opposition who had been waiting for fifteen years, and I desired to know if our friends were busy over this little piece of work. I dressed myself, therefore, for the occasion, and tried to cross the bridges. The sentries on duty at the gates of the Tuileries and the Carrousel were expressly forbidden to allow anyone whomsoever to enter without the password. Through the stone arcade could be seen the court of the Tuileries and the square of the Carrousel transformed into a vast, dark, dreary camp, silent and almost motionless. The soldiers looked more like phantoms than like men. I went along the quay, and by the place de la Révolution and the rue Saint-Honoré, as I had done in the morning. All the shops were shut, but there were lamps in most of the windows. Foot passengers were scarce and, as the noise of traffic had nearly ceased, on account of the obstruction caused by the barricades, the lugubrious, ceaseless ringing of the bell of Notre-Dame could be heard in the air, like the sound of a flight of bronze birds. As I went down the quay, I remembered Paul Fouché and his play, and I felt curious to know if he had read it to the Committee and if his drama had been received or rejected. I have already said that I knew General La Fayette. I attempted what Charras and the students of the École polytechnique had failed in--I went to call upon him. They told me he was out, which I doubted at first, and I went inside the porter's lodge and told him my name; but the honest man repeated there what he had already said to me through his little grating. I was going away very much disappointed when I saw three or four men walking in the darkness, and in the middle figure I thought I recognised that of the general. I went forward and it was he. He was leaning upon M. Carbonnel's arm; M. de Lasteyrie, I believe, came behind, talking to a servant.

"Ah! General," I exclaimed; "it is you!"

He recognised me.

"Good!" he said. "I am surprised that I have not seen you before now."

"It is not easy to gain access to you, General"; and I related all that Charras and his friends had gone through in their attempt.

"True," he said; "I found their names and ordered that they should be admitted if they returned."

"General, I cannot say whether the others will do so, but I doubt if Charras will."

"Why not?"

"Because I hear he was killed over in the direction of la Grève."

"Killed?" he exclaimed. "Ah! poor young fellow!"

"It is not surprising, General; ... there was warm work there!"

"Were you there?"

"Yes, indeed! but only for a short time."

"What are you intending to do to-morrow?"

"I confess, General, that was the very question I was going to put to you."

The general leant on my arm and took a few steps forward, as though to get out of sight of his two companions.

"I mean to leave the députies," he said; "there is nothing to be done with them."

"Then why not move without them?"

"Let people drive me to it and I am ready to act."

"Shall I repeat that to my friends?"

"You may."

"Adieu, General!"

He kept hold of my arm.

"Don't get yourself killed...."

"I will try not."

"In any case, no matter how things turn out, manage to let me see you again."

"I can't promise you that, General, unless...."

"Come, come," the general said; "_au revoir!_"

And he went into his house.

I ran off to Étienne Arago, No. 10 rue de Grammont. All the Revolutionary leaders were gathered at his house. The day had been a hard one, but, thanks to Joubert's library, to Charles Teste's _Petite-Jacobinière_ and to Coste, who had spent between three and four thousand francs in buying bread and wine to distribute among the fighters, the insurrection had spread to all parts of the town. I told Étienne I had seen the general and reported what he had said, word for word.

"Come, let us go to the _National_!" he said.

And to the _National_ we went.

Taschereau was busy preparing to make a sublime forgery: he and Charles Teste and Béranger concocted a Provisional Government composed of La Fayette, Gérard and the Duc de Choiseul. He did still more: he issued a proclamation which he signed with their three names. He had first chosen Laffey de Pompières as the third member of their Government, but Béranger had had this name erased in order to substitute that of the Duc de Choiseul in its stead. Thus, besides preparing the Revolution by his chansons, Béranger took an active part in it personally. We shall soon see that he was the principal agent in its denouement.

Next day, the list of the Provisional Government was to be stuck up on all the walls of Paris, and the first proclamation of this Government was to appear in the _Constitutionnel._ I need hardly say that the honest _Constitutionnel_ was sincere, and that it thought Taschereau's three calligraphic attempts were authentic and legal signatures. Thereupon, I entered my lodgings with an easier mind: as I was quite knocked up with my day's work, I slept as sound as a top through the tolling of Notre-Dame and the intermittent popping of belated stray shots.