Lest my readers should be surprised at my giving here all the forty-five names, I would point out that they were the names of forty-five men all of whom risked their heads by signing. While I, who risked nothing at all, but would have asked nothing better than to run some such risk, simply returned to my rooms at eleven o'clock, after first taking care to go and give news of myself at No. 7 rue de l'Université. They thought I had left for Algiers!
[CHAPTER III]
The morning of July 27—Visit to my mother—Paul Foucher—Amy Robsart—Armand Carrel—The office of the Temps—Baude—The Commissary of Police—The three locksmiths—The office of the National—Cadet Gassicourt—Colonel Gourgaud—M. de Rémusat—Physiognomy of the passers-by
I returned home in order to keep my entire freedom of action for the morrow. I meant to visit my mother first thing in the morning: I had not seen her for two days and feared she would be uneasy, especially if she had heard what was happening outside. My poor mother, at that time, was living in the rue de l'Ouest. I think I have previously stated that we chose this new home for her so that she could be nearer to the Villenave family, who had left the rue de Vaugirard, and were living next door to her. But, unluckily, just when my mother had needed neighbourly help the most, Madame Villenave and Madame Waldor and Élisa (my mother's most faithful companion, with her cat, Mysouf) had gone to la Vendée, where they owned a little country place called la Jarrie, three leagues from Clisson. I found my mother in the most perfect state of tranquillity of mind and body; no rumour of passing events had yet penetrated into that Thébaïd called the quartier du Luxembourg. I breakfasted with her, kissed her and left her in her sweet, undisturbed quiet.
As I went away, I ran across Paul Foucher. He was returning from his brother-in-law, Victor Hugo's, who lived in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and to whom he had been to announce that he had to give a reading the following day, of what play or at what particular theatre, I know not. Paul Foucher was then the same short-sighted, absent-minded fellow that he still is, knocking indifferently into passers-by, posts and trees, on which he always seemed to be looking for the bills of the theatres where his pieces were being played; absorbed in the train of thought that preoccupied him at the moment you met him, and incapable of entering into yours, or of coming out of his own, into which he would lead you back again and again. His dominant thought when I met him that morning was the reading he was to give next day. Paul Foucher, young though he was, had made quite a sensational entry into the dramatic life. The year before, a piece of which he was said to be the author had been played at the Odéon, but its great beauty, a beauty of an eccentric character and ill adapted to the stage, had hastened its failure, and the failure, though great, was glorious, the kind of failure that brings to light a man's qualities, just as certain defeats reveal the character of a nation. Paul Foucher had had his Poitiers, his Agincourt and his Crécy, and could take his stand accordingly. The play was called Amy Robsart, and was taken from, or, rather, inspired by, Walter Scott's romance of Kenilworth. The day after its failure, Hugo proclaimed himself its author; but the honour of the only representation it had was none the less inseparably associated with Paul Foucher. The play was never printed. Hugo made me a present of the manuscript later; I daresay I have it still in my possession. I tried in vain to get any information out of Paul: he knew but one piece of news, and did not consider either the political or literary world needed to know any other. This news was that next day he was to read a play in five acts. I saw the moment coming when he was about to anticipate the right of the Committee and read me his play. But the reading of the finest drama the world ever saw would not have consoled me for losing the smallest detail of the play which Paris was at that moment putting on the stage. I leapt into a cab and escaped from the reading. I gave the driver Carrel's address.
Since the present crisis had arisen, Carrel was looked upon by the younger members of the Opposition as their leader, elected, if not publicly, at least by tacit consent. I had become acquainted with Armand Carrel at M. de Leuven's, who, since the return to France of the young political exile, after the coronation of Charles X., had placed him on the editorial staff of the Courrier; he lived, if I remember rightly, in the rue Monsigny or near by. As he died in 1836, he is already, to the young generation of between twenty and twenty-five years of age, but a historical figure. At the time of which we are now speaking, he was a man of twenty-eight, of medium height, with a calm and retreating forehead, dark hair, small, lively, flashing eyes, a long sharp nose, thin and rather pale lips, with white teeth and a bilious complexion. Although Carrel professed the most advanced of Liberal opinions, as is often the case with men of great intellect and of refined organisation, he had the most aristocratic habits imaginable, and this made the contrast between his words and his appearance very strange. He almost invariably wore patent leather boots, a black cravat tied tight round his neck, a black frock-coat buttoned up all but the last button, a waistcoat of white piqué or of chamois leather and grey trousers. His whole get-up revealed the military style of the former officer. This warlike quality had, to some extent, passed from Carrel's body into his mind. Charlemagne signed his treaties with the pommel of his sword and enforced them with its point; and so with Carrel: his articles always seemed to have been written with a steel point, similar to those used by the ancients, which left deep traces of sharpness on their tablets of wax. But Carrel's polemical style of writing was very fine, noble and frank; he boldly showed his front to his enemies: it was in some way similar both to Pascal's and Paul-Louis Courier's. He had received but little historical education, except about our neighbours across the Channel; he was secretary to Augustin Thierry while he wrote his fine book on the Conquest of England by the Normans (Conquête de l'Angleterre par les Normands). Carrel, with his usual earnestness, had picked up the crumbs that fell from that sumptuous table, and had compiled an abridged History of England. We were good enough friends, although, perhaps, we were not quite just to one another; he looked upon me as too much of a poet, and I looked upon him as too much of a soldier. I found him quietly engaged eating his breakfast. He had signed the protest as a duty; risking his head as coolly at the point of the pen as he had already done several times at the point of the sword, though believing in nothing but lawful methods of resistance. As for armed resistance, he would have nothing to do with it. He had meant to stay at home all day to work; but, upon my entreaties, and, owing to my telling him I thought I had seen some rising excitement in the streets, he decided to go out with me. He put a pair of small pistols in his pocket, of the kind called pocket pistols, took a little whalebone cane in his hand as flexible as a horsewhip, and we went down together towards the boulevards. Doubtless cooled by his action at Béfort and Bidassoa, he hesitated to put himself forward when so many people were seen to hang back. We tramped the boulevards from the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin to the rue Neuve-Vivienne, and then we went along the Place de la Bourse. People were rushing in the direction of the rue de Richelieu. They reported that the offices of the Temps were invaded, and being sacked by a detachment of mounted police.
Of course, needless to relate, we, too, followed the crowd; there was, as usual, but a portion of truth in the rumour. A score of police were drawn up in line in front of the building where the printing was carried on, which stood at the bottom of a very large courtyard. The street door was closed and, before they could invade the workshops, they were waiting for the arrival of the Commissaire de Police. When he arrived, Baude, one of the editors of the Temps, and signers of the protest, gave orders to close the workshop door and to open the one on the street. The Commissaire, wearing his white scarf of office, knocked at the door exactly as it was being opened, and Baude and he stood face to face. The Commissaire stepped back before the formidable apparition. Baude was a magnificent figure of a man, not only in general appearance but in every detail of his person. He was a giant of five feet eight or ten inches, with thick black hair which floated round his head like a mane; his eyes were brown and deeply set beneath dark eyebrows: they seemed, at certain moments, to shoot out lightning; he had a rough, tremendous voice which, heard amid the noise of a revolution, sounded like thunder in a storm. Baude was followed by other editors and by employés and workmen, who formed up behind him in a body of thirty persons. When they saw the bare-headed, pale-faced leader and the set faces of the workmen, they guessed that, beneath the legal resistance which Baude had called to his aid, lay a very real and material resistance, namely, one that meant resistance with arms. I squeezed Carrel's arm; he was very pale and seemed greatly moved, but he kept quite mute and shook his head in sign of disapproval. There was such a dead silence throughout the street, filled with, perhaps, a couple of thousand people, that a child's breathing could have been heard. Baude was the first to speak and to question the Commissaire.