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the laws, of the Constitution. What do they know about all this? What is a Constitution; what are the most holy laws, against three words which a corporal may murmur into the ear of a sentinel? Take a pair of scales, put in one side the Gospels, in the other the official instructions; now weigh them. The corporal turns the balance; the Deity kicks the beam.

God forms a portion of the order of the day of Saint Bartholomew. "Kill all. He will recognized his own."

This is what the priests accept, and at times glorify.

Saint Bartholomew has been blessed by the Pope and decorated with the Catholic medal.22

Meanwhile Ossian Dumas appeared determined. The captain made a last effort.

"You will ruin yourself," said he.

"I shall save my honor."

"It is precisely your honor that you are sacrificing."

"Because I am going away?"

"To go away is to desert."

This seemed to impress Ossian Dumas. The captain continued,—

"They are about to fight. In a few minutes the barricade will be attacked. Your comrades will fall, dead or wounded. You are a young officer—you have not yet been much under fire."

"At all events," warmly interrupted Ossian Dumas, "I shall not have fought against the Republic; they will not say I am a traitor."

"No, but they will say that you are a coward."

Ossian made no reply.

A moment afterwards the command was given to attack.

The regiment started at the double. The barricade fired.

Ossian Dumas was the first who fell.

He had not been able to bear that word "coward," and he had remained in his place in the first rank.

They took him to the ambulance, and from thence to the hospital.

Let us at once state the conclusion of this touching incident.

Both of his legs were broken. The doctors thought that it would be necessary to amputate them both.

General Saint-Arnaud sent him the Cross of Honor.

As is known, Louis Bonaparte hastened to discharge his debt to his praetorian accomplices. After having massacred, the sword voted.

The combat was still smoking when the army was brought to the ballot-box.

The garrison of Paris voted "Yes." It absolved itself.

With the rest of the army it was otherwise. Military honor was indignant, and roused the civic virtue. Notwithstanding the pressure which was exercised, although the regiments deposited their votes in the shakos of their colonels, the army voted "No" in many districts of France and Algeria.

The Polytechnic School voted "No" in a body. Nearly everywhere the artillery, of which the Polytechnic School is the cradle, voted to the same effect as the school.

Scipio Dumas, it may be remembered, was at Metz.

By some curious chance it happened that the feeling of the artillery, which everywhere else had pronounced against the coup d'état, hesitated at Metz, and seemed to lean towards Bonaparte.

Scipio Dumas, in presence of this indecision set an example. He voted in a loud voice, and with an open voting paper, "No."

Then he sent in his resignation. At the same time that the Minister at Paris received the resignation of Scipio Dumas, Scipio Dumas at Metz, received his dismissal, signed by the Minister.

After Scipio Dumas' vote, the same thought had come at the same time to both the Government and to the officer, to the Government that the officer was a dangerous man, and that they could no longer employ him, to the officer that the Government was an infamous one, and that he ought no longer to serve it.

The resignation and the dismissal crossed on the way. By this word "dismissal" must be understood the withdrawal of employment.

According to our existing military laws it is in this manner that they now "break" an officer. Withdrawal of employment, that is to say, no more service, no more pay; poverty.

Simultaneously with his dismissal, Scipio Dumas learnt the news of the attack on the barricade of the Rue Aumaire, and that his brother had both his legs broken. In the fever of events he had been a week without news of Ossian. Scipio had confined himself to writing to his brother to inform him of his vote and of his dismissal, and to induce him to do likewise.

His brother wounded! His brother at the Val-de. Grâce! He left immediately for Paris.

He hastened to the hospital. They took him to Ossian's bedside. The poor young fellow had had both his legs amputated on the preceding day.

At the moment when Scipio, stunned, appeared at his bedside, Ossian held in his hand the cross which General Saint-Arnaud had just sent him.

The wounded man turned towards the aide-de-camp who had brought it, and said to him,—

"I will not have this cross. On my breast it would be stained with the blood of the Republic."

And perceiving his brother, who had just entered, he held out the cross to him, exclaiming,—

"You take it. You have voted "No," and you have broken your sword! It is you who have deserved it!"

20 Died in exile in Guernsey. See the "Pendant l'Exil," under the heading Actes et Paroles, vol. ii.

21 Died in exile at Termonde.

22 Pro Hugonotorum strage. Medal struck at Rome in 1572.







CHAPTER XV. THE QUESTION PRESENTS ITSELF It was one o'clock in the afternoon.

Bonaparte had again become gloomy.

The gleams of sunshine on such countenances as these last very short time.

He had gone back to his private room, had seated himself before the fire, with his feet on the hobs, motionless, and no one any longer approached him except Roquet.

What was he thinking of?

The twistings of the viper cannot be foreseen.

What this man achieved on this infamous day I have told at length in another book. See "Napoleon the Little."

From time to time Roquet entered and informed him of what was going on. Bonaparte listened in silence, deep in thought, marble in which a torrent of lava boiled.

He received at the Elysée the same news that we received in the Rue Richelieu; bad for him, good for us. In one of the regiments which had just voted, there were 170 "Noes:" This regiment has since been dissolved, and scattered abroad in the African army.

They had counted on the 14th of the line which had fired on the people in February. The Colonel of the 14th of the line had refused to recommence; he had just broken his sword.

Our appeal had ended by being heard. Decidedly, as we have seen, Paris was rising. The fall of Bonaparte seemed to be foreshadowed. Two Representatives, Fabvier and Crestin, met in the Rue Royale, and Crestin, pointing to the Palace of the Assembly, said to Fabvier, "We shall be there to-morrow."

One noteworthy incident. Mazes became eccentric, the prison unbent itself; the interior experienced an undefinable reverberation from the outside. The warders, who the preceding evening had been insolent to the Representatives when going for their exercise in the courtyard, now saluted them to the ground. That very morning of Thursday, the 4th, the governor of the prison had paid a visit to the prisoners, and had said to them, "It is not my fault." He brought them books and writing-paper, a thing which up to that time he had refused. The Representative Valentin was in solitary confinement; on the morning of the 4th his warder suddenly became amiable, and offered to obtain for him news from outside, through his wife, who, he said, had been a servant in General Leflô's household. These were significant signs. When the jailer smiles it means that the jail is half opening.

We may add, what is not a contradiction, that at the same time the garrison at Mazas was being increased. 1200 more men were marched in, in detachments of 100 men each, spacing out their arrivals in "little doses" as an eye-witness remarked to us. Later on 400 men. 100 litres of brandy were distributed to them. One litre for every sixteen men. The prisoners could hear the movement of artillery round the prison.

The agitation spread to the most peaceable quarters. But the centre of Paris was above all threatening. The centre of Paris is a labyrinth of streets which appears to be made for the labyrinth of riots. The Ligue, the Fronde, the Revolution—we must unceasingly recall these useful facts—the 14th of July, the 10th of August, 1792, 1830, 1848, have come out from thence. These brave old streets were awakened. At eleven o'clock in the morning from Notre Dame to the Porte Saint Martin there were seventy-seven barricades. Three of them, one in the Rue Maubuée, another in the Rue Bertin-Poirée, another in the Rue Guérin-Boisseau, attained the height of the second stories; the barricade of the Porte Saint Denis was almost as bristling and as formidable as the barrier of the Faubourg Saint Antoine in June, 1848. The handful of the Representatives of the People had swooped down like a shower of sparks on these famous and inflammable crossroads. The beginning of the fire. The fire had caught. The old central market quarter, that city which is contained in the city, shouted, "Down with Bonaparte!" They hooted the police, they hissed the troops. Some regiments seemed stupefied. They cried, "Throw up your butt ends in the air!" From the windows above, women encouraged the construction of the barricades. There was powder there, there were muskets. Now, we were no longer alone. We saw rising up in the gloom behind us the enormous head of the people. Hope at the present time was on our side. The oscillation of uncertainty had at length become steady, and we were, I repeat, almost perfectly confident.

There had been a moment when, owing to the good news pouring in upon us, this confidence had become so great that we who had staked our lives on this great contest, seized with an irresistible joy in the presence of a success becoming hourly more certain, had risen from our seats, and had embraced each other. Michel de Bourges was particularly angered against Bonaparte, for he had believed his word, and had even gone so far as to say, "He is my man." Of the four of us, he was the most indignant. A gloomy flash of victory shone in him. He struck the table with his fist, and exclaimed, "Oh! the miserable wretch! To-morrow—" and he struck the table a second time, "to-morrow his head shall fall in the Place de Grève before the Hôtel de Ville."

I looked at him.

"No," said I, "this man's head shall not fall."

"What do you mean?"

"I do not wish it."

"Why?"

"Because," said I, "if after such a crime we allow Louis Bonaparte to live we shall abolish the penalty of death."

This generous Michel de Bourges remained thoughtful for a moment, then he pressed my hand.

Crime is an opportunity, and always gives us a choice, and it is better to extract from it progress than punishment. Michel de Bourges realized this.

Moreover this incident shows to what a pitch our hopes had been raised.

Appearances were on our side, actual facts not so. Saint-Arnaud had his orders. We shall see them.

Strange incidents took place.

Towards noon a general, deep in thought, was on horseback in the Place de la Madeleine, at the head of his wavering troops. He hesitated.

A carriage stopped, a woman stepped out and conversed in a low tone with the general. The crowd could see her. The Representative Raymond, who lived at No 4, Place de la Madeleine, saw her from his window. This woman was Madame K. The general stooping down on his horse, listened, and finally made the dejected gesture of a vanquished man. Madame K. got back into her carriage. This man, they said, loved that woman. She could, according to the side of her beauty which fascinated her victim, inspire either heroism or crime. This strange beauty was compounded of the whiteness of an angel, combined with the look of a spectre.

It was the look which conquered.

This man no longer hesitated. He entered gloomily into the enterprise.

From twelve to two o'clock there was in this enormous city given over to the unknown an indescribable and

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