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advanced guard of humanity.

  "Become yourselves again, reflect; acknowledge your faults; rise up!
  Think of your Generals arrested, taken by the collar by galley
  sergeants and thrown handcuffed into robbers' cells! The malefactor,
  who is at the Elysée, thinks that the Army of France is a band of
  mercenaries; that if they are paid and intoxicated they will obey.
  He sets you an infamous task, he causes you to strangle, in this
  nineteenth century, and in Paris itself, Liberty, Progress, and
  Civilization. He makes you—you, the children of France—destroy all
  that France has so gloriously and laboriously built up during the
  three centuries of light and in sixty years of Revolution! Soldiers!
  you are the 'Grand Army!' respect the 'Grand Nation!'

  "We, citizens; we, Representatives of the People and of yourselves;
  we, your friends, your brothers; we, who are Law and Right; we, who
  rise up before you, holding out our arms to you, and whom you strike
  blindly with your swords—do you know what drives us to despair? It
  is not to see our blood which flows; it is to see your honor which
  vanishes.

  "Soldiers! one step more in the outrage, one day more with Louis
  Bonaparte, and you are lost before universal conscience. The men who
  command you are outlaws. They are not generals—they are criminals.
  The garb of the galley slave awaits them; see it already on their
  shoulders. Soldiers! there is yet time—Stop! Come back to the
  country! Come back to the Republic! If you continue, do you know
  what History will say of you? It will say, They have trampled under
  the feet of their horses and crushed beneath the wheels of their
  cannon all the laws of their country; they, French soldiers, they
  have dishonored the anniversary of Austerlitz, and by their fault,
  by their crime, the name of Napoléon sprinkles as much shame to-day
  upon France as in other times it has showered glory!

  "French soldiers! cease to render assistance to crime!"

My colleagues of the Committee having left, I could not consult them—time pressed—I signed:

  "For the Representatives of the People remaining at liberty, the
  Representative member of the Committee of Resistance,

  "VICTOR HUGO."

The man in the blouse took away the Proclamation saying, "You will see it again to-morrow morning." He kept his word. I found it the nest day placarded in the Rue Rambuteau, at the corner of the Rue de l'Homme-Armé and the Chapelle-Saint-Denis. To those who were not in the secret of the process it seemed to be written by hand in blue ink.

I thought of going home. When I reached the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne, opposite my door, it happened curiously and by some chance to be half open. I pushed it, and entered. I crossed the courtyard, and went upstairs without meeting any one.

My wife and my daughter were in the drawing-room round the fire with Madame Paul Meurice. I entered noiselessly; they were conversing in a low tone. They were talking of Pierre Dupont, the popular song-writer, who had come to me to ask for arms. Isidore, who had been a soldier, had some pistols by him, and had lent three to Pierre Dupont for the conflict.

Suddenly these ladies turned their heads and saw me close to them. My daughter screamed. "Oh, go away," cried my wife, throwing her arms round my neck, "you are lost if you remain here a moment. You will be arrested here!" Madame Paul Meurice added, "They are looking for you. The police were here a quarter of an hour ago." I could not succeed in reassuring them. They gave me a packet of letters offering me places of refuge for the night, some of them signed with names unknown to me. After some moments, seeing them more and more frightened, I went away. My wife said to me, "What you are doing, you are doing for justice. Go, continue!" I embraced my wife and my daughter; five months have elapsed at the time when I am writing these lines. When I went into exile they remained near my son Victor in prison; I have not seen them since that day.

I left as I had entered. In the porter's lodge there were only two or three little children seated round a lamp, laughing and looking at pictures in a book.

11 This list, which belongs to History, having served as the base of the proscription list, will be found complete in the sequel to this book to be published hereafter.







CHAPTER VII. THE ARCHBISHOP On this gloomy and tragical day an idea struck one of the people.

He was a workman belonging to the honest but almost imperceptible minority of Catholic Democrats. The double exaltation of his mind, revolutionary on one side, mystical on the other, caused him to be somewhat distrusted by the people, even by his comrades and his friends. Sufficiently devout to be called a Jesuit by the Socialists, sufficiently Republican to be called a Red by the Reactionists, he formed an exception in the workshops of the Faubourg. Now, what is needed in these supreme crises to seize and govern the masses are men of exceptional genius, not men of exceptional opinion. There is no revolutionary originality. In order to be something, in the time of regeneration and in the days of social combat, one must bathe fully in those powerful homogeneous mediums which are called parties. Great currents of men follow great currents of ideas, and the true revolutionary leader is he who knows how best to drive the former in accordance with the latter.

Now the Gospel is in accordance with the Revolution, but Catholicism is not. This is due to the fact that in the main the Papacy is not in accordance with the Gospel. One can easily understand a Christian Republican, one cannot understand a Catholic Democrat. It is a combination of two opposites. It is a mind in which the negative bars the way to the affirmative. It is a neuter.

Now in time revolution, whoever is neuter of is impotent. Nevertheless, during the first hours of resistance against the coup d'état the democratic Catholic workman, whose noble effort we are here relating, threw himself so resolutely into the cause of Justice and of Truth, that in a few moments he transformed distrust into confidence, and was hailed by the people. He showed such gallantry at the rising of the barricade of the Rue Aumaire that with an unanimous voice they appointed him their leader. At the moment of the attack he defended it as he had built it, with ardor. That was a sad but glorious battle-field; most of his companions were killed, and he escaped only by a miracle.

However, he succeeded in returning home, saying to himself bitterly, "All is lost."

It seemed evident to him that the great masses of the people would not rise. Thenceforward it appeared impossible to conquer the coup d'état by a revolution; it could be only combated by legality. What had been the risk at the beginning became the hope at the end, for he believed the end to be fatal, and at hand. In his opinion it was necessary, as the people were defaulters, to try now to arouse the middle classes. Let one legion of National Guards go out in arms, and the Elysée was lost. For this a decisive blow must be struck—the heart of the middle classes must be reached—the "bourgeois" must be inspired by a grand spectacle which should not be a terrifying spectacle.

It was then that this thought came to this workman, "Write to the Archbishop of Paris."

The workman took a pen, and from his humble garret he wrote to the Archbishop of Paris an enthusiastic and earnest letter in which he, a man of the people and a believer, said this to his Bishop; we give the substance of his letter:—

"This is a solemn hour, Civil War sets by the ears the Army and People, blood is being shed. When blood flows the Bishop goes forth. M. Sibour should follow in the path of M. Affre. The example is great, the opportunity is still greater.

"Let the Archbishop of Paris, followed by all his clergy, the Pontifical cross before him, his mitre on his head, go forth in procession through the streets. Let him summon to him the National Assembly and the High Court, the Legislators in their sashes, the Judges in their scarlet robes; let him summon to him the citizens, let him summon to him the soldiers, let him go straight to the Elysée. Let him raise his hand in the name of Justice against the man who is violating the laws, and in the name of Jesus against the man who is shedding blood. Simply with his raised hand he will crush the coup d'état.

"And he will place his statue by the side of M. Affre, and it will be said that twice two Archbishops of Paris have trampled Civil War beneath their feet."

"The Church is holy, but the Country is sacred. There are times when the Church should succor the Country."

The letter being finished, he signed it with his workman's signature.

But now a difficulty arose; how should it be conveyed to its destination?

Take it himself!

But would he, a mere workman in a blouse, be allowed to penetrate to the Archbishop!

And then, in order to reach the Archiepiscopal Palace, he would have to cross those very quarters in insurrection, and where, perhaps, the resistance was still active. He would have to pass through streets obstructed by troops, he would be arrested and searched; his hands smelt of powder, he would be shot; and the letter would not reach its destination.

What was to be done?

At the moment when he had almost despaired of a solution, the name of Arnauld de l'Ariége came to his mind.

Arnauld de l'Ariége was a Representative after his own heart. Arnauld de l'Ariége was a noble character. He was a Catholic Democrat like the workman. At the Assembly he raised aloft, but he bore nearly alone, that banner so little followed which aspires to ally the Democracy with the Church. Arnauld de l'Ariége, young, handsome, eloquent, enthusiastic, gentle, and firm, combined the attributes of the Tribune with the faith of the knight. His open nature, without wishing to detach itself from Rome, worshipped Liberty. He had two principles, but he had not two faces. On the whole the democratic spirit preponderated in him. He said to me one day, "I give my hand to Victor Hugo. I do not give it to Montalembert."

The workman knew him. He had often written to him, and had sometimes seen him.

Arnauld de l'Ariége lived in a district which had remained almost free.

The workman went there without delay.

Like the rest of us, as has been seen, Arnauld de l'Ariége had taken part in the conflict. Like most of the Representatives of the Left, he had not returned home since the morning of the 2d. Nevertheless, on the second day, he thought of his young wife whom he had left without knowing if he should see her again, of his baby of six months old which she was suckling, and which he had not kissed for so many hours, of that beloved hearth, of which at certain moments one feels an absolute need to obtain a fleeting glimpse, he could no longer resist; arrest, Mazas, the cell, the hulks, the firing party, all vanished, the idea of danger was obliterated, he went home.

It was precisely at that moment that the workman arrived there.

Arnauld de l'Ariége received him, read his letter, and approved of it.

Arnauld de l'Ariége knew the Archbishop of Paris personally.

M. Sibour, a Republican priest appointed Archbishop of Paris by General Cavaignac, was the true chief of the Church dreamed of by the liberal Catholicism of Arnauld de l'Ariége. On behalf of the Archbishop, Arnauld de l'Ariége represented in the Assembly that Catholicism which M. de Montalembert perverted. The democratic Representative and the

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