XLIII
For the honest citizen Charles Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte had been duly returned in June for the Department of the Seine and two other Departments. The end of the month saw the streets up again: barricades rising one after the other; saw the military called out, saw cannon and howitzer battering down the crazy strongholds of insurrection; saw men in top-hats and frock-coats, armed with revolvers, and men in blouses armed with muskets, defending these works with desperation, as long as cartridges held out.
It was borne in upon Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris, that he should go forth and speak to the insurgents of St. Antoine. He hesitated but an instant. No doubt of the Voice that urged. So he went, preceded by the Crucifix, accompanied by his Vicars-General; and a man in a blouse walked before the Cross-bearer carrying a green branch in his hand. No one knew who the man was, or ever saw him afterwards. Catholics have whispered that the bearer of the green branch was no other than St. Antoine himself.
They shot the Archbishop from an upper window as he exhorted his flock to lay down their muskets, in the Name of Him Who bled upon the Tree. He sank down, mortally wounded, raised himself with a great effort, made the sign of absolution over a dying insurgent who was being carried past him, and fell back upon the bloody stones.... There was a great cry of horror from those who saw: the Archbishop was carried back to his palace, and passed to God upon the day following. But the green branch had triumphed: the servant of Christ had not died for nothing. The insurrection was virtually at an end.
Paris was sick of the reek of gunpowder and bloodshed. She longed for peace, and quiet, and a stable form of government—just the thing that seemed hardest to attain.
In the caricatures of Gavarni you may see the bemused and worried citizen torn by doubts as to which form of Republic, of all the countless varieties pressed upon the French nation by political quacks and nostrum-mongers, might be the most agreeable to take, and the most efficacious in its method of working. M. Prud’homme of the National Guard, no less than Jerome Paturôt of the Gardes Mobiles, and Jacques Bonhomme, his country cousin, were propitiated and soothed by the mildness of Representative Bonaparte’s drugs, and the good sense and moderation of his views; while the feasibility and simplicity of the measures he advocated enchanted everyone who heard.
Candidate for the Presidency, with what modesty and good sense he expressed himself. What noble enthusiasm glowed in him, for instance, when he said:
“The Democratic Republic shall be my religion, and I will be its High Priest.”
Meaning:
“The Empire shall be the religion of the French people, the Tuileries its Temple, and I will be the god, enthroned and worshiped there!”