Two more weeks went by, and Maurice no longer knew how he was living during this long wait for the indeterminate, monstrous something whose approach he could divine. Peace was now definitely concluded, the Assembly was to take up its quarters at Versailles on March 20; but to Maurice it seemed that nothing was yet ended, that some frightful revanche was at hand. Whilst he was dressing on the morning of March 18, he received a letter from Henriette, in which she again begged him to join her at Remilly, affectionately threatening to go to fetch him if he should delay his coming much longer. And then she referred to Jean, and related how, after leaving her at the end of December to join the Army of the North, he had fallen ill of a low fever and had been nursed in a Belgian hospital; and he had written to her, only the previous week, to say that in spite of his weakness he was about to start for Paris with the intention of seeking active service again. Henriette concluded by asking her brother to give her full particulars concerning Jean as soon as he had seen him. Then Maurice, with this letter lying open before his eyes, fell into a tender reverie. Henriette, Jean, his fondly loved sister, his brother bound to him by ties of mutual misery and succour; ah! how far those dear ones were from his daily thoughts, now that the tempest was ever raging within him!

However, as his sister informed him that she had been unable to give Jean his address in the Rue des Orties, he determined to try and find his friend that same day, by applying at the War Office. But he was barely out of the house, just crossing the Rue St. Honoré in fact, when two comrades of his battalion acquainted him with what had happened during the night and early morning at Montmartre. And all three then started off thither at the double-quick, half out of their senses.

Ah! that 18th of March, with what fatal excitement did it inflame Maurice! Later on he could not clearly remember what he had done or said that day. Looking backward, he first beheld himself galloping along in a state of fury—fury at thought of the surprise which the troops had attempted that morning before daybreak, with the view of recapturing the guns of Montmartre, and thus disarming Paris. Evidently enough, Thiers, who had recently arrived from Bordeaux, had for two days past been planning this stroke, the object of which was to enable the Assembly to proclaim the monarchy at Versailles. Next Maurice beheld himself at Montmartre at about nine o'clock, fired by the narratives of victory which were recounted to him—how the troops had come stealing up in the darkness; how the arrival of the teams which were to have removed the guns had been delayed; how the National Guards had thereupon rushed to arms; and how the soldiers, loth to fire on women and children, had eventually hoisted the butt-ends of their chassepots and fraternised with the people. Then he beheld himself roaming through Paris at random, already realising by midday that the city belonged to the Commune, although there had been no battle. Thiers and the ministers, however, had fled from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they had been assembled in council, the Government rushed helter-skelter to Versailles, and the thirty thousand troops of the garrison were led away in all haste, though not without leaving over five thousand deserters on the road. Then Maurice beheld himself at about half-past five at a corner on the outer Boulevards, loitering among a group of ruffians and listening without any feeling of indignation to the abominable story of the murder of Generals Lecomte and Clément Thomas. Generals, indeed! He remembered those of Sedan, incapable humbugs who only thought of taking all the blanket to themselves! One the more or one the less, verily, that was a matter of little consequence! And he had spent the remainder of the day in the same wildly excited state, no longer capable of seeing things as they really were, transported by this insurrection which the very paving stones seemed to have favoured, which, in the unforeseen fatality of its triumph, had spread and at one stroke secured power, placing the Hôtel-de-Ville, at ten o'clock that same night, in the hands of the members of the Central Committee, who were amazed to find themselves assembled there.

Confused as were these memories in Maurice's mind, he retained a precise recollection of one incident—his unexpected meeting with Jean. The latter had reached Paris three days previously, penniless, still wan and enfeebled by the fever which during two long months had kept him in a hospital at Brussels; and meeting a former captain of his old regiment, Captain Ravaud, he had at once joined the company which this officer now commanded in the 124th of the Line. He had secured his old rank of corporal, and on the evening of the insurrection he had just left the Prince-Eugène barracks with his squad, the last of the regiment, in view of reaching the left bank of the Seine, where the entire army had received orders to concentrate, when he and his men were suddenly stopped by the crowd assembled on the Boulevard St. Martin. Shouts were raised, and there was a talk of disarming the soldiers. With perfect coolness, however, Jean requested the mob to let him alone; all this business did not concern him, said he; he simply wished to carry out his orders without hurting anyone. But all at once a glad cry of surprise rang out, and Maurice, who was among the crowd and had drawn near, threw himself on his friend's neck, embracing him fraternally.

'What! is it you?' said the young fellow, 'My sister wrote to me about you, and I wished to go to the Ministry this morning to inquire after you.'

Big tears of joy had gathered in Jean's eyes. 'Ah! my poor youngster; how pleased I am to see you!' he replied. 'I myself have been wanting to find you, but where could I go and look for you in this confounded big place?'

The crowd, meantime, was still growling angrily, and Maurice turned round to appease it. 'Let me talk to them, citizens!' said he. 'They are good fellows and I'll answer for them.' Then, grasping his friend's hands, he added in a lower voice: 'You will stay with us, won't you?'

Jean's face assumed an expression of deep surprise. 'Stay with you—what do you mean?'

Then for a moment he listened to Maurice while the latter railed against the Government and the army, recalled all that they had suffered together in past times, and explained that the people was at last about to become the master and would punish both traitors and cowards and save the Republic. And by degrees, as Jean strove to understand it all, his calm peasant's face darkened with increasing sorrow: 'Ah! no, no, youngster, I can't stay, if it's for such fine work as that—besides, my captain ordered me to take my men to Vaugirard, and I am going there. If thunderbolts were falling, there I should go all the same. It's only natural, you know it is, yourself.' He had begun to laugh in his simple way, and added: 'It's you that must come with us.'

But with a gesture of furious dissent Maurice released his hold on Jean's hands. And for a few seconds they stood there face to face—one a prey to all the exasperation born of that fit of insanity which had taken possession of Paris, that malady of distant origin, sprung from the bad leaven of the late reign; the other, strong in his practical common-sense and ignorance, still healthy because he had grown apart in the soil of labour and thrift. Yet they were brothers, a strong tie bound them together, and they felt as though they were being wrenched asunder when a swaying of the crowd suddenly parted them.