This police-van in truth contained, and was carrying away from Paris, the Questor Baze, and the Generals Lamoricière, Cavaignac, and Changarnier. In the other vehicle, which was placed foremost on the trucks, there were Colonel Charras, Generals Bedeau and Le Flô, and Count Roger (du Nord).
At midnight these eight Representative prisoners were sleeping in their cells at Mazas, when they heard a sudden knocking at their doors, and a voice cried out to them, "Dress, they are coming to fetch you." "Is it to shoot us?" cried Charras from the other side of the door. They did not answer him. It is worth remarking that this idea came simultaneously to all. And in truth, if we can believe what has since transpired through the quarrels of accomplices, it appears that in the event of a sudden attack being made by us upon Mazas to deliver them, a fusillade had been resolved upon, and that St. Arnaud had in his pocket the written order, signed "Louis Bonaparte."
The prisoners got up. Already on the preceding night a similar notice had been given to them. They had passed the night on their feet, and at six o'clock in the morning the jailer said to them, "You can go to bed." The hours passed by; they ended by thinking it would be the same as the preceding night, and many of them, hearing five o'clock strike from the clock tower inside the prison, were going to get back into bed, when the doors of their cells were opened. All the eight were taken downstairs one by one into the clerk's office in the Rotunda, and were then ushered into the police-van without having met or seen each other during the passage. A man dressed in black, with an impertinent bearing, seated at a table with pen in hand, stopped them on their way, and asked their names. "I am no more disposed to tell you my name than I am curious to learn yours," answered General Lamoricière, and he passed outside.
The aide-de-camp Fleury, concealing his uniform under his hooded cloak, stationed himself in the clerk's office. He was charged, to use his own words, to "embark" them, and to go and report their "embarkation" at the Elysée. The aide-de-camp Fleury had passed nearly the whole of his military career in Africa in General Lamoricière's division; and it was General Lamoricière who in 1848, then being Minister of War, had promoted him to the rank of major. While passing through the clerk's office, General Lamoricière looked fixedly at him.
When they entered the police-vans the generals were smoking cigars. They took them from them. General Lamoricière had kept his. A voice from outside cried three separate times, "Stop his smoking!" A sergent de ville who was standing by the door of the cell hesitated for some time, but however ended by saying to the general, "Throw away your cigar."
Thence later on ensued the exclamation which caused General Cavaignac to recognize General Lamoricière. The vehicles having been loaded they set off.
They did not know either with whom they were or where they were going. Each observed for himself in his box the turnings of the streets, and tried to speculate. Some believed that they were being taken to the Northern Railway Station; others thought to the Havre Railway Station. They heard the trot of the escort on the paving-stones.
On the railway the discomfort of the cells greatly increased. General Lamoricière, encumbered with a parcel and a cloak, was still more jammed in than the others. He could not move, the cold seized him, and he ended by the exclamation which put all four of them in communication with each other.
On hearing the names of the prisoners their keepers, who up to that time had been rough, became respectful. "I say there," said General Changarnier, "open our cells, and let us walk up and down the passage like yourselves." "General," said a sergent de ville, "we are forbidden to do so. The Commissary of Police is behind the carriage in a barouche, whence he sees everything that is taking place here." Nevertheless, a few moments afterwards, the keepers, under pretext of cold, pulled up the ground-glass window which closed the vehicle on the side of the Commissary, and having thus "blocked the police," as one of them remarked, they opened the cells of the prisoners.
It was with great delight that the four Representatives met again and shook hands. Each of these three generals at this demonstrative moment maintained the character of his temperament. Lamoricière, impetuous and witty, throwing himself with all his military energy upon "the Bonaparte;" Cavaignac, calm and cold; Changarnier, silent and looking out through the port-hole at the landscape. The sergents de ville ventured to put in a word here and there. One of them related to the prisoners that the ex-Prefect Carlier had spent the night of the First and Second at the Prefecture of Police. "As for me," said he, "I left the Prefecture at midnight, but I saw him up to that hour, and I can affirm that at midnight he was there still."