The History of a Crime, Victor Hugo [white hot kiss .TXT] 📗
- Author: Victor Hugo
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Suddenly a man who had entered the courtyard, and who had attentively watched him for some moments, came abruptly up to him,—
"What are you doing there?"
"What is that to you?" said Gindrier.
"You have come to fetch Baudin's body?"
"Yes."
"Is this your carriage?"
"Yes."
"Get in at once, and pull down the blinds."
"What do you mean?"
"You are the Representative Gindrier. I know you. You were this morning on the barricade. If any other than myself should see you, you are lost."
Gindrier followed his advice and got into the fiacre. While getting in he asked the man:
"Do you belong to the Police?"
The man did not answer. A moment after he came and said in a low voice, near the door of the fiacre in which Gindrier was enclosed,—
"Yes, I eat the bread, but I do not do the work."
The two men sent by the Commissary of Police took Baudin on his wooden bed and carried him to the fiacre. They placed him at the bottom of the fiacre with his face covered, and enveloped from head to foot in a shroud. A workman who was there lent his cloak, which was thrown over the corpse in order not to attract the notice of passers-by. Madame L—— took her place by the side of the body, Gindrier opposite, young Baudin next to Gindrier. A fiacre followed, in which were the other relative of Baudin and a medical student named Dutèche. They set off. During the journey the head of the corpse, shaken by the carriage, rolled from shoulder to shoulder; the blood began to flow from the wound and appeared in large red patches through the white sheet. Gindrier with his arms stretched out and his hand placed on its breast, prevented it from falling forwards; Madame L—— held it up by the side.
They had told the coachman to drive slowly; the journey lasted more than an hour.
When they reached No. 88, Rue de Clichy, the bringing out of the body attracted a curious crowd before the door. The neighbors flocked thither. Baudin's brother, assisted by Gindrier and Dutèche, carried up the corpse to the fourth floor, where Baudin resided. It was a new house, and he had only lived there a few months.
They carried him into his room, which was in order, and just as he had left it on the morning of the 2d. The bed, on which he had not slept the preceding night, had not been disturbed. A book which he had been reading had remained on the table, open at the page where he had left off. They unrolled the shroud, and Gindrier cut off his shirt and his flannel vest with a pair of scissors. They washed the body. The ball had entered through the corner of the arch of the right eye, and had gone out at the back of the head. The wound of the eye had not bled. A sort of swelling had formed there; the blood had flowed copiously through the hole at the back of the head. They put clean linen on him, and clean sheets on the bed, and laid him down with his head on the pillow, and his face uncovered. The women were weeping in the next room.
Gindrier had already rendered the same service to the ex-Constituent James Demontry. In 1850 James Demontry died in exile at Cologne. Gindrier started for Cologne, went to the cemetery, and had James Demontry exhumed. He had the heart extracted, embalmed it, and enclosed it in a silver vase, which he took to Paris. The party of the Mountain delegated him, with Chollet and Joigneux, to convey this heart to Dijon, Demontry's native place, and to give him a solemn funeral. This funeral was prohibited by an order of Louis Bonaparte, then President of the Republic. The burial of brave and faithful men was unpleasing to Louis Bonaparte—not so their death.
When Baudin had been laid out on the bed, the women came in, and all this family, seated round the corpse, wept. Gindrier, whom other duties called elsewhere, went downstairs with Dutèche. A crowd had formed before the door.
A man in a blouse, with his hat on his head, mounted on a kerbstone, was speechifying and glorifying the coup d'état. Universal Suffrage re-established, the Law of the 31st May abolished, the "Twenty-five francs" suppressed; Louis Bonaparte has done well, etc.—Gindrier, standing on the threshold of the door, raised his voice: "Citizens! above lies Baudin, a Representative of the People, killed while defending the People; Baudin the Representative of you all, mark that well! You are before his house; he is there bleeding on his bed, and here is a man who dares in this place to applaud his assassin! Citizens! shall I tell you the name of this man? He is called the Police! Shame and infamy to traitors and to cowards! Respect to the corpse of him who has died for you!"
And pushing aside the crowd, Gindrier took the man who had been speaking by the collar, and knocking his hat on to the ground with the back of his hand, he cried, "Hats off!"
CHAPTER VI. THE DECREES OF THE REPRESENTATIVES WHO REMAINED FREE
The text of the judgment which was believed to have been dawn up by the High Court of Justice had been brought to us by the ex-Constituent Martin (of Strasbourg), a lawyer at the Court of Cassation. At the same time we learned what was happening in the Rue Aumaire. The battle was beginning, it was important to sustain it, and to feed it; it was important ever to place the legal resistance by the side of the armed resistance. The members who had met together on the preceding day at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement had decreed the deposition of Louis Bonaparte; but this decree, drawn up by a meeting almost exclusively composed of the unpopular members of the majority, might have no effect on the masses; it was necessary that the Left should take it up, should adopt it, should imprint upon it a more energetic and more revolutionary accent, and also take possession of the judgment of the High Court, which was believed to be genuine, to lend assistance to this judgment, and put it into execution.
In our appeal to arms we had outlawed Louis Bonaparte. The decree of deposition taken up and counter-signed by us added weight to this outlawry, and completed the revolutionary act by the legal act.
The Committee of Resistance called together the Republican Representatives.
The apartments of M. Grévy, where we had been sitting, being too small, we appointed for our meeting-place No. 10. Rue des Moulins, although warned that the police had already made a raid upon this house. But we had no choice; in time of Revolution prudence is impossible, and it is speedily seen that it is useless. Confidence, always confidence; such is the law of those grand actions which at times determine great events. The perpetual improvisation of means, of policy, of expedients, of resources, nothing step by step, everything on the impulse of the moment, the ground never sounded, all risks taken as a whole, the good with the bad, everything chanced on all sides at the same time, the hour, the place, the opportunity, friends, family, liberty, fortune, life,—such is the revolutionary conflict.
Towards three o'clock about sixty Representatives were meeting at No. 10, Rue des Moulins, in the large drawing-room, out of which opened a little room where the Committee of Resistance was in session.
It was a gloomy December day, and darkness seemed already to have almost set in. The publisher Hetzel, who might also be called the poet Hetzel, is of a noble mind and of great courage. He has, as is known, shown unusual political qualities as Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Bastide; he came to offer himself to us, as the brave and patriotic Hingray had already done in the morning. Hetzel knew that we needed a printing-office above everything; we had not the faculty of speech, and Louis Bonaparte spoke alone. Hetzel had found a printer who had said to him, "Force me, put a pistol to my throat, and I will print whatever you wish." It was only a question, therefore, of getting a few friends together, of seizing this printing-office by main force, of barricading it, and, if necessary, of sustaining a siege, while our Proclamations and our decrees were being printed. Hetzel offered this to us. One incident of his arrival at our meeting-place deserves to be noted. As he drew near the doorway he saw in the twilight of this dreary December day a man standing motionless at a short distance, and who seemed to be lying in wait. He went up to this man, and recognized M. Yon, the former Commissary of Police of the Assembly.
"What are you doing there?" said Hetzel abruptly. "Are you there to arrest us? In that case, here is what I have got for you," and he took out two pistols from his pocket.
M. Yon answered smiling,—
"I am in truth watching, not against you, but for you; I am guarding you."
M. Yon, aware of our meeting at Landrin's house and fearing that we should be arrested, was, of his own accord, acting as police for us.
Hetzel had already revealed his scheme to Representative Labrousse, who was to accompany him and give him the moral support of the Assembly in his perilous expedition. A first rendezvous which had been agreed upon between them at the Café Cardinal having failed, Labrousse had left with the owner of the café for Hetzel a note couched in these terms:—
"Madame Elizabeth awaits M. Hetzel at No. 10, Rue des Moulins."
In accordance with this note Hetzel had come.
We accepted Hetzel's offer, and it was agreed that at nightfall Representative Versigny, who performed the duties of Secretary to the Committee, should take him our decrees, our Proclamation, such items of news as may have reached us, and all that we should judge proper to publish. It was settled that Hetzel should await Versigny on the pavement at the end of the Rue de Richelieu which runs alongside the Café Cardinal.
Meanwhile Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges and myself had drawn up a final decree, which was to combine the deposition voted by the Right with the outlawry voted by us. We came back into the large room to read it to the assembled Representatives, and for them to sign it.
At this moment the door opened, and Emile de Girardin appeared. We had not seen him since the previous evening.
Emile de Girardin—after dispersing from around him that mist which envelopes every combatant in party warfare, and which at a distance changes or obscures the appearance of a man—Emile de Girardin is an extraordinary thinker, an accurate writer, energetic, logical, skilful, hearty; a journalist in whom, as in all great journalists, can be seen the statesman. We owe to Emile de Girardin this great work of progress, the cheap Press. Emile de Girardin has this great gift, a clearheaded stubbornness. Emile de Girardin is a public watchman; his journal is his sentry-box; he waits, he watches, he spies out, he enlightens, he lies in wait, he cries "Who goes there?" at the slightest alarm, he fires volleys with his pen. He is ready for every form of combat, a sentinel to-day, a General to-morrow. Like all earnest minds he understands, he sees, he recognizes, he handles, so to speak, the great and magnificent identity embraced under these three words, "Revolution, Progress, Liberty;" he wishes for the Revolution, but above all through Progress; he wishes for progress, but solely through Liberty. One can, and according to our opinion sometimes rightly, differ from him as to the road to be taken, as to the attitude to be assumed, and
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