"To be sure he does, the old cut-throat!" cried Ledru Rollin. "The idea of being let loose with his mastiffs on the people of Paris, like sheep pent up in a fold, was to him a source of rapturous anticipation, and his rage at the disappointment is proportional!"
"Messieurs!" cried M. Dantès, "this last step of the Government was all that we required to insure our success. Thiers and Barrot mistake if they think there is sufficient magic in their names to quell a revolution. In fact, neither of them are trusted by the people. It is too late! Yesterday this might have been done; but now the demand is not reform, but a republic—not 'down with the Ministry,' but 'down with the dynasty!'"
The conspirators looked at each other and then at M. Dantès in amazement and doubt. It was apparent they were as yet unprepared for language so plain.
"M. Dantès is right!" cried Flocon. "To-morrow night when we meet we shall all admit it!"
It was now nearly three o'clock, and the Republicans repaired to their homes for a few hours' sleep before the exciting scenes anticipated for the morrow.
As Louis Blanc and M. Albert passed up the Rue Lepelletier, and came opposite the Hôtel of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which, but a few hours before, had been the scene of so much confusion and bloodshed, they paused and looked around. The pavement was still dark and wet with the gore of the slaughtered citizens, but the whole street was deserted and silent. Here and there a solitary light might be detected in the attic windows of the immense hôtel; but no other sign of life or human occupation was to be perceived. True, there was an ominous sound of rising barricades in the Boulevard beyond—the crash of trees, the click of steel on stone, the lumbering of wheels—and, at intervals, a distant shout. But this excepted, all was as quiet in Paris as if the old city had never known of insurrection.
"This spot will be noted in the future history of France," said Louis Blanc. "Do you know the exact facts of the case, M. Albert? There are so many rumors that we can with difficulty get near the truth."
"I was not present when the 14th delivered their fire," was the reply, "but I learned from M. de Courtais, who hastened to the spot, that the colonel of the regiment, now in prison, asserts that, at the moment of the arrival of the crowd, a ball from a musket which accidentally went off, broke the leg of his horse, and he, thinking this the signal for an attack, at once gave orders to fire. Another story is that one of our young blouses blew out an officer's brains with a pistol."
"Many of the troops must have fired in the air," said Louis Blanc, looking around him, "for there were two hundred of them in line, I understand, and their discharge was delivered across the whole breadth of the Boulevard swarming with people."