No, they had to resort to threats and to tell the man they should hold him responsible for the misfortunes that would attend his refusal. The valet de chambre was terrified and gave way under the heavy weight of such a responsibility. The king was asleep: they had to wake him and tell him that Paris was in a state of revolution, preparing to create a Republic; that it was up in arms and threateningly dangerous, but might yet be overcome; to-morrow Paris would be inexorable: all these arguments had to be used before the king made up his mind. The struggle continued from midnight until two in the morning and, at a few minutes after two, the king signed.
"Ah!" he murmured, as he laid the pen down, "King John or François I. would have yielded only on the field of battle!"
M. de Mortemart overheard this aside and was for returning and throwing the Ordinances upon the ungrateful monarch's bed, but MM. d'Argout and de Vitrolles led him away.
"Oh!" he muttered, "if it were not a question of saving the head of a king!..."
They entered a coach and set off, but were stopped when they reached the bois de Boulogne. The dauphin, as we said, had given strict orders to the sentinels not to let anyone coming from Saint-Cloud pass on to Paris. He had foreseen what would happen. M. de Mortemart was obliged to go round the bois de Boulogne on foot, to make a detour of three leagues and to enter Paris by means of a breach in a wall made for contraband purposes. When he entered Paris, he saw the Orléanist proclamations posted up on its walls. The Republicans had also seen them. Pierre Leroux was among the first to reach one that had only just been stuck to the wall; he pulled it down and carried it off to Joubert, in the passage Dauphine.
"If that is true," they exclaimed unanimously, "we must begin all over again; stir up the hotbeds afresh and start making new bullets."
Messengers were instantly sent off to rally the scattered Republicans and, within an hour, a meeting was held at Lointier's house. I took no part in that meeting. I was running from the Hôtel de Ville to Laffitte's at the time, trying to find that mysterious Provisional Government which everybody had heard of but no one had seen. I had just left the Hôtel de Ville as a Republican deputation arrived; it, too, had drawn up a proclamation. M. Hubert, a former lawyer and one of the most honourable men I ever met, who has recently died, leaving the whole of his fortune to hospitals and philanthropic institutions and to citizens persecuted for their democratic opinions, was deputed to present the following address to General La Fayette:—
"The people yesterday won back their sacred rights at the price of the shedding of their own blood; the most precious of these rights is that of a free choice of its own government; any-proclamation must be withheld that designates a head before a form of government has been determined upon. There already exists a provisional representation appointed by the nation, let this be maintained until the wishes of the majority of the French people be known."