“I have invented a new machine,” whispered the Friend of humanity; “it would remove all at one blow—lion and lioness, whelp and jackals—and then the Revolution if you will! not this paltry tumult. The cause of the human race is being frittered away. I am disgusted with Lebeau. Thrones are not overturned by gamins.”
Before Rameau could answer, Monnier rejoined him. The artisan’s face was overcast—his lips compressed, yet quivering with indignation. “Brother,” he said to Rameau, “to-day the cause is betrayed”—(the word trahi was just then coming into vogue at Paris)—“the blouses I counted on are recreant. I have just learned that all is quiet in the other quartiers where the rising was to have been simultaneous with this. We are in a guet-apens—the soldiers will be down on us in a few minutes; hark! don’t you hear the distant tramp? Nothing for us but to die like men. Our blood will be avenged later. Here,” and he thrust a revolver into Rameau’s hand. Then with a lusty voice that rang through the crowd, he shouted “Vive le peuple!” The rioters caught and re-echoed the cry, mingled with other cries,’ “Vive la Republique!” “Vive le drapeau rouge!”
The shouts were yet at their full when a strong hand grasped Monnier’s arm, and a clear, deep, but low voice thrilled through his ear: “Obey! I warned you. No fight to-day. Time not ripe. All that is needed is done—do not undo it. Hist! the sergens de ville are force enough to disperse the swarm of those gnats. Behind the sergens come soldiers who will not fraternise. Lose not one life to-day. The morrow when we shall need every man—nay, every gamin—will dawn soon. Answer not. Obey!” The same strong hand quitting its hold on Monnier, then seized Rameau by the wrist, and the same deep voice said, “Come with me.” Rameau, turning in amaze, not unmixed with anger, saw beside him a tall man with sombrero hat pressed close over his head, and in the blouse of a labourer, but through such disguise he recognized the pale grey whiskers and green spectacles of Lebeau. He yielded passively to the grasp that led him away down the deserted street at the angle.
At the further end of that street, however, was heard the steady thud of hoofs.
“The soldiers are taking the mob at its rear,” said Lebeau, calmly; “we have not a moment to lose—this way,” and he plunged into a dismal court, then into a labyrinth of lanes, followed mechanically by Rameau. They issued at last on the Boulevards, in which the usual loungers were quietly sauntering, wholly unconscious of the riot elsewhere. “Now, take that fiacre and go home; write down your impressions of what you have seen, and take your MS. to M. de Mauleon.” Lebeau here quitted him.
Meanwhile all happened as Lebeau had predicted. The sergens de ville showed themselves in front of the barricades, a small troop of mounted soldiers appeared in the rear. The mob greeted the first with yells and a shower of stones; at the sight of the last they fled in all directions; and the sergens de ville, calmly scaling the barricades, carried off in triumph, as prisoners of war, 4 gamins, 3 women, and 1 Irishman loudly protesting innocence, and shrieking “Murther!” So ended the first inglorious rise against the plebiscite and the Empire, on the 14th of May, 1870.
From Isaura Cicogna to Madame de Grantmesnil. Saturday. May 21.
“I am still, dearest Eulalie, under the excitement of impressions wholly new to me. I have this day witnessed one of those scenes which take us out of our private life, not into the world of fiction, but of history, in which we live as in the life of a nation. You know how intimate I have become with Valerie Duplessis. She is in herself so charming in her combination of petulant wilfulness and guileless naivete, that she might sit as a model for one of your exquisite heroines. Her father, who is in great favour at Court, had tickets for the Salle des Etats of the Louvre today—when, as the journals will tell you, the results of the plebiscite were formally announced to the Emperor—and I accompanied him and Valerie. I felt, on entering the hall, as if I had been living for months in an atmosphere of false rumours, for those I chiefly meet in the circles of artists and men of letters, and the wits and flaneurs who haunt such circles, are nearly all hostile to the Emperor. They agree, at least, in asserting the decline of his popularity—the failure of his intellectual powers; in predicting his downfall—deriding the notion of a successor in his son. Well, I know not how to reconcile these statements with the spectacle I have beheld to-day.
“In the chorus of acclamation amidst which the Emperor entered the hall, it seemed as if one heard the voice of the France he had just appealed to. If the Fates are really weaving woe and shame in his woof, it is in hues which, to mortal eyes, seem brilliant with glory and joy.
“You will read the address of the President of the Corps Legislatif; I wonder how it will strike you! I own fairly that me it wholly carried away. At each sentiment I murmured to myself, ‘Is not this true? and, if true, are France and human nature ungrateful?’