We reproduce this Proclamation exactly, even to the punctuation. The words "Will be shot" were in capital letters in the placards signed "De Saint-Arnaud."
The Boulevards were thronged with an excited crowd. The agitation increasing in the centre reached three Arrondissements, the 6th, 7th, and the 12th. The district of the schools began to disorderly. The Students of Law and of Medicine cheered De Flotte on the Place de Panthéon. Madier de Montjau, ardent and eloquent, went through and aroused Belleville. The troops, growing more numerous every moment, took possession of all the strategical points of Paris.
At one o'clock, a young man was brought to us by the legal adviser of the Workmen's Societies, the ex-Constituent Leblond, at whose house the Committee had deliberated that morning. We were sitting in permanence, Carnot, Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges, and myself. This young man, who had an earnest mode of speaking and an intelligent countenance, was named King. He had been sent to us by the Committee of the Workmen's Society, from whom he was delegated. "The Workmen's Societies," he said to us, "place themselves at the disposal of the Committee of Legal Insurrection appointed by the Left. They can throw into the struggle five or six thousand resolute men. They will manufacture powder; as for guns, they will be found." The Workmen's Society requested from us an order to fight signed by us. Jules Favre took a pen and wrote,—"The undersigned Representatives authorize Citizen King and his friends to defend with them, and with arms in their hands, Universal Suffrage, the Republic, the Laws." He dated it, and we all four signed it. "That is enough," said the delegate to us, "you will hear of us."
Two hours afterwards it was reported to us that the conflict had begun. They were fighting in the Rue Aumaire.
[10] A typographical error—it should read "Article LXVIII." On the subject of this placard the author of this book received the following letter. It does honor to those who wrote it:—
"CITIZEN VICTOR HUGO,—We know that you have made an appeal to arms. We
have not been able to obtain it. We replace it by these bills which we
sign with your name. You will not disown us. When France is in danger
your name belongs to all; your name is a Public Power.
"FELIX BONY.
"DABAT."
CHAPTER V. BAUDINS'S CORPSE
With regard to the Faubourg St. Antoine, we had, as I said, lost nearly all hope, but the men of the coup d'état had not lost all uneasiness. Since the attempts at rising and the barricades of the morning a rigorous supervision had been organized. Any one who entered the Faubourg ran the risk of being examined, followed, and upon the slightest suspicion, arrested. The supervision was nevertheless sometimes at fault. About two o'clock a short man, with an earnest and attentive air, crossed the Faubourg. A sergent de ville and a police agent in plain clothes barred his passage. "Who are you?" "You seem a passenger." "Where are you going?" "Over there, close by, to Bartholomé's, the overseer of the sugar manufactory.—" They search him. He himself opened his pocket-book; the police agents turned out the pockets of his waistcoat and unbuttoned his shirt over his breast; finally the sergent de ville said gruffly, "Yet I seem to have seen you here before this morning. Be off!" It was the Representative Gindrier. If they had not stopped at the pockets of his waistcoat—and if they had searched his great-coat, they would have found his sash there—Gindrier would have been shot.