"Nothing yet.... Barricades are being erected ... and women killed and theatres closed, as you see."
"Where shall I find you again?"
"To-morrow morning at my house, No. 10 rue de Grammont."
Then, turning to the men who were with him—
"To the Variétés, my friends!" he said; "to close the theatres is to hoist the black flag over Paris!"
And the little crowd disappeared with him down the rue de Montmorency. It had passed before the sentinel and the barracks without producing any sign. And this was how the movement had begun and from whence the firing had come that Carrel and I had heard.
Étienne Arago (I hope I may be pardoned for always quoting the same name, but I will engage to prove, beyond exception, that Étienne Arago was the mainspring of the insurrectional movement), Étienne Arago, I say, had just been dining with Desvergers and Varin and had returned with them to the Vaudeville theatre, which was then in the rue de Chartres, when a mob barred their way in the rue Saint-Honoré, in front of the Delorme passage. They were saying that a man had been killed in the rue du Lycée. A cart, loaded with rubble, was waiting to pass, as soon as the mob had dispersed; four or five carriages, stopped by the same obstruction, were waiting too, in file.
"Excuse me, my friend," Étienne said to the driver, unharnessing the horse from the shafts; "we require your cart."
"What for?"