"Agreed!"
"Besides," said Delanoue, "it is on the place de l'Odéon people are collecting."
"Ah! you will lend us your tricolour flag, Harel, won't you?"
"What tricolour flag do you mean?"
"The one under which they have been singing the Marseillaise at your theatre for the last three days."
"What am I to do, then?"
"You will make an announcement to the public, telling them that I carried it away to Rambouillet.... The public is good-natured enough, and will do without the flag for a day or two."
"Come along and get it ... you know very well the whole theatre is at your service."
Whenever Harel wanted to get a play out of me, he always made this remark. My gun had been washed and rubbed and dried in the sun; I took it, we got into the cab and set off for the Odéon. There were two or three thousand persons in the square and its vicinity. I had scarcely put my foot to the ground, leaving Delanoue inside the cab, before I was surrounded by a score of men, calling me by my name and asking me to put myself at their head. They were the scene-shifters belonging to the Odéon, who still had in warm remembrance the tips I had given them when Christine was being performed. I told one of them to go and find the flag, and whilst we left the cab under the protection of others (to whom I sent out seven or eight bottles of wine to keep up their patience) we went and had breakfast at Risbeck's. By the time we came out of the restaurant our troop was further augmented by a drummer. I have remarked before with what rapidity drummers multiply during times of revolution. We got into our cab, naturally taking the seat of honour; then everybody else crushed inside with us, or outside on the box with the driver, some behind, some on the shafts, and some on the imperial. The unlucky horses started, dragging nineteen people! Most of my men were only armed with pikes. At the corner of the rue du Bac and the quay, a man who seemed to be posted there on duty for this purpose shouted after us—