My experience of the 24th of February, 1848, told me that the Chamber would be invaded before long. In 1848 there was no more danger for a foreigner to mix with the rabble than for a Frenchman. I felt not quite so sure about my safety on the 4th of September. My adventure in the Avenue de Clichy, which I will relate anon, had not happened then, and I was not as careful as I became afterwards, still I remembered in time the advice of the prudent Frenchman—"When in doubt, abstain;" and I prepared to retrace my steps to the Boulevards, where, I knew, there would be no mistake about my identity. At the same time, I am bound to say that no such accident as I dreaded, occurred during that day, as far as I am aware. There may or may not have been at that hour half a hundred spies of Bismarck in the city, but no one was molested. The Parisians were so evidently overjoyed at getting rid of the Empire, that for four and twenty hours, at any rate, they forgot all about the hated Germans and their march upon the capital. They were shaking hands with, and congratulating one another, as if some great piece of good fortune had befallen them. Years before that, I had seen my wife behave in a similarly joyous manner after having dismissed at a moment's notice a cook who had shamefully robbed us: the wife knew very well that, on the morrow, the tradesmen, the amount of whose bills the dishonest servant had pocketed for months, would be sending in their claims upon us. "Perhaps they will take into consideration that we dismissed her," she said, "and not hold us responsible." The Latin race, and especially the French, are the females of the human race.
I noticed that the gates of the Tuileries gardens on the Place de la Concorde were still open, and that the gardens themselves were black with people. It must have been about half-past ten or eleven. I did not go back by the Rue Royale, but by the Rue de Rivoli. The people were absolutely streaming down the street. There was not a single threatening gesture on their part; they merely looked at the flag still floating over the Tuileries, and passed on. When I got back to the Boulevards, I sat down outside the Café de la Paix determined not to stir if possible. I knew that whatever happened the news of it would soon be brought thither. I was not mistaken.
The first news we had was that the National Guards had replaced the regulars inside and around the Palais-Bourbon, which was either a sign that the latter could be no longer depended upon, or that the Republicans in the Chamber had carried that measure in their own interest. I am bound to admit that I would always sooner take the word of a French officer than that of a deputy, of no matter what shade; and I heard afterwards that the troops at the Napoléon barracks and elsewhere had begun to fraternize with the people as early as eight in the morning, by shouting, from the windows of their rooms, "Vive la République!" The Chamber was invaded, nevertheless; it is as well to state that this invasion gave Jules Favre & Co. a chance of repairing in hot haste to the Hôtel de Ville, where the Government of the National Defence was proclaimed.
To return to my vantage-post at the Café de la Paix. The crowds on the Place de la Concorde, apparently stationed there since early morning, did not seem to me to have been brought thither at the instance of a leader or in obedience to a watchword. I except, of course, the groups of which I have already spoken, and which jeered at the republican deputies. The streams of people I met on my return in the Rue de Rivoli seemed impelled by their own curiosity to the Chamber of Deputies. Not so the procession which hove in sight almost the moment I had sat down at the Café. It wheeled to the left when reaching the Rue de la Paix. It was composed of National Guards with and without their muskets, each company preceded by its own officers,—the armed ones infinitely more numerous than the unarmed, but all marching in good order and in utter silence; in fact, so silently as to bode mischief. Behind and before there strode large contingents of ordinary citizens, and I noticed two things: that few of them wore blouses, and that a good many wore kepis, apparently quite new. The wearers, though equally undemonstrative, gave one the impression of being the leaders. Most of those around me shook their heads ominously as they passed; their silence did not impose upon them. I am free to confess that I did not share their opinion. To me, the whole looked like stern determined manifestors; not like turbulent revolutionaries. I had seen nothing like them in '48. Nevertheless, it was I who was mistaken, for, according to M. Sampierro Gavini, who, unlike his brother Denis, belonged to the opposition during the Empire, it was they who invaded the Chamber. I may add that M. Sampierro Gavini, though in the opposition, had little or no sympathy with those who overthrew the Empire or established the Commune. He had an almost idealistic faith in constitutional means, and a somewhat exaggerated reverence for the name of Bonaparte. He was a Corsican.
For several hours nothing occurred worthy of record. The accounts brought to us by eye-witnesses of events going on simultaneously at the Tuileries and the Palais-Bourbon showed plainly that there was no intention on the mob's part to exalt the Empress into a Marie-Antoinette. Our friend who had given us the news of the Chamber on the previous night, and who was a relative of the celebrated Dr. Yvan, an habitué of the Café de la Paix, had made up his mind in the morning that "it would be more interesting to watch the" last heroic struggles of an Empress against iron fortune than the "crownless coronation of a half-score of 'rois Pétauds.'"[81] As such, he had taken up his station in the gardens of the Tuileries, close to the gate dividing the private from the public gardens. It was he who gave us the particulars of the scenes preceding and succeeding the Empress's flight, the exact moment of which no one seemed to know. The account of these scenes was so exceedingly graphic, that I have no difficulty whatsoever in remembering them. Moreover, I put down at the time several of his own expressions. I do not know what has become of him. He went to New-Zealand on account of some unhappy love-affair, and was never heard of any more. Though scarcely thirty then, he was a promising young doctor. His name was Ramail, but I do not know in what relation he stood to Dr. Yvan; who, however, always called him cousin.
Young Ramail had been in the Tuileries gardens since noon. The crowd was already very large at that hour, but it seemed altogether engrossed in the doings of an individual who was knocking down a gilded eagle on the top of the gate. "Mind," said Ramail, "that was at twelve o'clock, or somewhere thereabouts; and I do not think that the sitting at the Chamber began until at least an hour later. If the Republicans say, in days to come, that the Empire was virtually condemned before they voted its overthrow, they will, at any rate, have the semblance of truth on their side, because there were at least two thousand persons looking on without trying to prevent the destruction of the eagles by word or deed; and two thousand persons, if they happen to agree with them, are to the Republicans the whole of France; while two millions, if they happen to differ from them, are only a corrupt and unintelligent majority.
"But I was wondering," he went on, "at the utter ingratitude of the lower and lower-middle classes. I feel certain that among those who stood staring there, half owned their prosperous condition to the eighteen years of Imperialism; yet I heard not a single expression of regret at the brutal sweeping away of it.
"I may have stood there for about an hour, a score of steps away from the gate before the swing bridge, when, all at once, I felt myself carried forward with the crowd; and before I had time to look round, I found myself inside that other gate. There were about five hundred persons who had entered with me, but in what manner the gate gave way or was opened I have not the vaguest idea. We went no further; we stopped as suddenly as we had advanced. I turned round with difficulty, and looked over the heads of those behind me; sure enough, the gates were wide open and the crowd at the rear was much denser than it had been ten minutes before. Still they stood perfectly still, without bringing any pressure to bear upon us. Then I turned round again, and saw the cause of their reluctance to move. The Imperial Guard was being massed in front of the principal door leading from the private gardens into the palace. 'My dear Ramail,' I said to myself, 'you stand a very good chance of having a bullet through your head before you are ten minutes older; because, at the slightest move of the crowd among which you now stand, the guard will fire.' I own that I was scarcely prepared to face death for such a trivial cause as this; and I was quietly edging my way out of the crowd, which was beginning to utter low ominous growls, when a voice, ringing clear upon the air, shouted, 'Citoyens!' I stopped, turned round once more, and stood on tiptoe.
"The speaker was a tall, handsome fellow, young to all appearance, and with a voice like a bell. He looked a gentleman, but I have never seen him before to my knowledge. His companion I knew at once; it was Victorien Sardou. There is no mistaking that face. I have heard some people say that it is not a bit like that of the great Napoléon, while others maintain that, placing the living man and the portrait of the dead one side by side, one could not tell the difference. I'll undertake to say this, that if M. Sardou had donned a uniform, such as the lieutenant of artillery wore at Arcola, for instance, he might have taken the Empress by the hand and led her out safely among the people, who would have believed in some miraculous resurrection.
"To come back to my story. 'Citoyens,' repeated M. Sardou's companion, 'I do not wonder at your surprise that the garden should not be open to you and its ingress forbidden by soldiers. The Tuileries belong to the people, now that the Empire is gone; for gone it is by this time, in spite of the Imperial Guard massed before yonder door. Consequently, my friend and I propose to go and ask for the withdrawal of these soldiers. But, in order to do this, you must give us your promise not to budge; for the slightest attempt on your part to do so before our return may lead to bloodshed, and I am convinced that you are as anxious as we are to avoid such a calamity.'