"To the prison Montaigu, place du Panthéon!"
So Charras and his troop started for that destination.
Revolutions have their mysterious winds which blow men to one point or another without any apparent reason; they are the waterspouts that blow up from under the ocean and they go south or north, east or west, how or why nobody knows. It is the breath of God which guides them. At the prison Montaigu, they found a hundred and fifty men under arms, ready to defend themselves. A brewer from the rue Saint-Antoine, named Maes, was there—another Santerre—with some sixty insurgents. He was on horseback and wore the old uniform of the National Guard. The struggle had threatened to become hot, and they were trying to come to terms.
"Hulloa! Captain," cried Charras, "will you come to me, or would you rather I came to you?"
"Come to me, monsieur," the captain replied.
"I have your parole?"
"Yes."
Charras then approached him, and there ensued a dialogue between them, the offspring of their peculiar situation, which could not have taken place under other circumstances—a dialogue in which Charras tried to prove to the captain that it would be far more advantageous and honourable and patriotic for him to join the people's side or, at the very least, to lend them guns. The captain did not seem to understand Charras's logic so well as the distributor of muskets in the rue de Tournon had understood that of Millotte. Charras redoubled his eloquence, but made no headway; yet if he failed to advance, his men did not: they came up nearer, little by little.
The reader knows the true Parisian, who never gives up his end but presses towards it out of curiosity or passion; he slips through the hands of police, sentries and squadrons, dragging one foot after the other, with honied tones and wooing gesture, part cat, part fox; then, if you want to keep him back, he is soon far away! When you want to stop him, he is already past you! And, as soon as he feels himself out of your reach, his sole answer to your reproaches is a mocking gesture or a sarcastic remark.