Madame Guyet-Desfontaines' cup of chocolate and bottle of Bordeaux wine were now things of the past, and I felt as pressing a desire for a piece of bread to eat as had General Dubourg when he reached the Hôtel de Ville. I went to a wine merchant's at the corner of la place de Grève and the quai Pelletier and asked for some dinner. His house was riddled with bullets and he had become the possessor of a fine selection of grapeshot. He meant to set them up above his door as a future sign, with the following words inscribed above them:—
AUX PRUNES DE MONSIEUR
You know that the Comte d'Artois, as in the case of all the younger brothers of the kings of France, was styled "Monsieur" before he became Charles X. I approved the happy notion of the wine merchant, and flattered him so cleverly that I wheedled him out of a bottle of wine, a piece of bread and a sausage.
I was fully determined not to lose sight of the Hôtel de Ville and to take note of all that passed there. I found that Revolutions had an extremely amusing side. Pray excuse me, it was the first I had seen. Now that I have lived to see a third I do not find them quite so funny.
But, as we have many incidents to relate in these humble Memoirs which that arch-prude History leaves untold and as we have, therefore, no time to lose, let us say, on the one hand, what was happening at Saint-Cloud and, on the other, what was being plotted at M. Laffitte's, whilst I was drinking my bottle of wine and eating my bread and sausage at the sign of the Prunes de Monsieur, and whilst General La Fayette was busy installing himself in his dictatorial chair in the Hôtel de Ville, embracing Charras and sending his men to bed, since he thought they must badly need to rest.
Let us begin at the Hôtel Laffitte. La Fayette had scarcely left the salon to take up the dictatorship of Paris, when they began to be afraid of leaving the hero of the battle of the Federation twenty-four hours alone at the head of affairs, and set to work to discover some efficacious method of counterbalancing his power. They appointed General Gérard Director of active operations (an unknown office which they had invented for the occasion); and he was to be backed up by a Municipal Commission composed of MM. Casimir Périer, Laffitte, Odier, Lobau, Audry de Puyraveau and Mauguin. But, to form a part of a Municipal Commission was much too bold a step for M. Odier; and he refused. M. de Schonen was appointed in his stead. M. Laffitte's sprained foot was made the pretext for establishing the Commission at his house. Thus, everything was organised to combat General La Fayette's revolutionary sway. This was how the bourgeoisie began its reactionary work the very same day that popular enthusiasm and triumph was at its height.
Make friends again, rejoice, approach one another with shouts of joy, embrace, you men of the faubourgs, young people from the colleges, students, poets and artists! Raise your hands to heaven, thank God, and cry hosannahs! Your dead are not yet buried, your wounds not yet healed; your lips are yet black with powder, your hearts still beat joyfully at the thought of liberty, and already intriguing men, financial men and those in uniforms who went and hid trembling and praying whilst you were fighting, are shamelessly approaching to snatch victory and liberty out of your hands, to wrest the palms from the one, and to clip the wings of the other; to ravish your two chaste goddesses. Whilst you are shooting a man in the place du Louvre, for having stolen a silver-gilt vase, whilst you are shooting a man under the Pont d'Arcole for stealing some silver plate, you are insulted and slandered out there in that big fine mansion, which you will some day buy back by a national subscription (you short-memoried children with hearts of gold!), and give it back to its owner when he is ruined and has only an income left of four hundred thousand francs! Audite et intelligite! Listen and learn! Here is the first Act of that Municipal Commission which had just been self-elected:—
"The deputies present in Paris have had to assemble in order to remedy the grave dangers which are threatening the security of persons and property. A Municipal Commission has been formed to watch over the interests of all in the absence of regular organisation.".
Royalists, beware! there is an edict of good King Saint-Louis giving power to pierce the tongue of blasphemers with a red-hot iron! This Commission had to have a secretary at the Hôtel de Ville and Odilon Barrot was appointed. It happened that, at the same time as the Commission was signing this insulting decree, they came and announced to it that half the combatants were dying of hunger in the public squares and were asking for bread. They turned towards M. Casimir Périer with one accord—the man who had offered the Duc de Raguse four millions the previous day.