In various parts of the city there were excited gatherings, adopting all sorts of revolutionary resolutions, and sending delegations to the Hôtel de Ville with instructions, petitions, and threats. The students of the Polytechnic School—who had distinguished themselves in the bloodiest scenes of the street-fight with the troops of Charles X.—sent a committee to the Hôtel de Ville with a military order, to which they demanded an official signature. The appropriate officer, M. Lobau, refused to sign it. "You recoil, do you?" said the determined young man who presented the ordinance. "Nothing is so dangerous, in revolutions, as to recoil: I will order you to be shot!"
"To be shot!" was the indignant reply. "Shoot a member of the Provisional Government!"
The young man drew him to the window, pointed to a well-armed band of a hundred men, who had fought desperately the day before: "There," said he, "are men who would shoot God Almighty, were I to order them to do so." The order was signed in silence.
Increasing anxiety and peril.
Such occurrences gave new impulse to the inclinations of Lafayette and the more moderate of the Republican party towards the Orleanists, who were deliberating in the salons of M. Lafitte. Charles X., who had fled from St. Cloud with his family and with some of the most devoted of his followers, while these scenes were transpiring, was still in France, at but a few leagues from Paris, at the head of twelve thousand veteran troops. Should the Duke of Orleans escape and join him, and rally the rural portion of the people in defense of Legitimacy, and in support of the Duke of Bordeaux, results might ensue appalling to the boldest imagination. As hour after hour passed away, and the duke did not appear in Paris, the anxiety in the crowded salons of M. Lafitte was terrible. Orleanists and Republicans were alike imperilled. The re-establishment of the old régime would inevitably consign the leaders of both these parties, as traitors, to the scaffold. Democratic cries were resounding, more and more loudly, through the streets. Power was fast passing into the hands of the mob. Should the Duke of Orleans fail his party, there was no one else around whom they could rally, and their disastrous defeat was inevitable.
The panic.
The hours were fast darkening into despair. Messengers were anxiously sent to the Palais Royal, the sumptuous city residence of the duke, to ascertain if he had arrived. No tidings could be heard from him. The domestics seemed to be packing up the valuables in preparation for removal. The utter failure of Béranger and his associates to gain the co-operation of the Democrats was reported. The decisive resolution adopted at the Hôtel de Ville was known. All seemed lost. There was nothing before the eye but a frightful vision of anarchy and bloodshed. A general panic seized all those assembled in the apartments of Lafitte, and there was a sudden dispersion. It was near midnight; but three persons were left—Lafitte, Adolphe Thibodeaux, and Benjamin Constant. A few moments of anxious conversation ensued.
"What will become of us to-morrow?" sadly inquired Lafitte.
"We shall all be hanged," replied Benjamin Constant, in the calm aspect of despair.