Much was said concerning a banquet about to take place in the First Arrondissement of Paris, and of seditious cries already heard. We called them “cries of deliverance.” When we shook hands with one another every morning we murmured, in low tones: “Long live Reform! Down with Guizot!”
We knew, and kept saying among ourselves, that the people, the great people, “were stirring in their deep masses.”
And, lo! one day we heard that many of these inoffensive people had been massacred for making a purely legal demonstration; that King Louis Philippe, after trying twice to form a ministry, and that the Duchess of Orléans, after a semblance of regency, were in flight; then we heard, in quick succession, that the people had erected barricades, that the National Guard had behaved like heroes, and that the Republic was proclaimed!
The Republic! and what a grand Republic! My father’s and mine, one that began by recognizing the people and their right to work!
The Republic had just ratified this privilege, and the people’s delegates had said, in words worthy of ancient Greece:
“The people have three months of misery to give to the service of the Republic.”
“The people,” said the Democratie Pacifique, “have behaved admirably and have shown themselves worthy of every liberty. They have proved their moral maturity. Not a single robbery, nor a single attack on private property has been committed.” The ragged poor who guarded the Palace of the Tuileries had put placards along the corridors, reading: “Death to all thieves!” They had also protected the bank treasure.
France once again was at the head of nations, and gave a new example of her national grandeur.
My father arrived on the 26th of February. He could not stay quiet at Blérancourt, and felt that he must share his joy with me.
Grandmother did not appear over-anxious about the revolution.