CHAPTER II. THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMITTEE
As soon as it was daylight we had assembled in the house of our imprisoned colleague, M. Grévy. We had been installed in his private room. Michel de Bourges and myself were seated near the fireplace; Jules Favre and Carnot were writing, the one at a table near the window, the other at a high desk. The Left had invested us with discretionary powers. It became more and more impossible at every moment to meet together again in session. We drew up in its name and remitted to Hingray, so that he might print it immediately, the following decree, compiled on the spur of the moment by Jules Favre:—
"FRENCH REPUBLIC.
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
"The undersigned Representatives of the People who still remain at
liberty, having met together in an Extraordinary Permanent Session,
considering the arrest of the majority of their colleagues, considering
the urgency of the moment;
"Seeing that the crime of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in violently
abolishing the operations of the Public Powers has reinstated the
Nation in the direct exercise of its sovereignty, and that all which
fetters that sovereignty at the present time should he annulled;
"Seeing that all the prosecutions commenced, all the sentences
pronounced, by what right soever, on account of political crimes or
offences are quashed by the imprescriptible right of the People;
"DECREE:
"ARTICLE I. All prosecutions which have begun, and all sentences which
have been pronounced, for political crimes or offences are annulled as
regards all their civil or criminal effects.
"ARTICLE II. Consequently, all directors of jails or of houses of
detention are enjoined immediately to set at liberty all persons
detained in prison for the reasons above indicated.
"ARTICLE III. All magistrates' officers and officers of the judiciary
police are similarly enjoined, under penalty of treason, to annul all
the prosecutions which have been begun for the same causes.
"ARTICLE IV. The police functionaries and agents are charged with the
execution of the present decree.
"Given at Paris, in Permanent Session, on the 4th December, 1851."
Jules Favre, as he passed me the decree for my signature, said to me, smiling, "Let us set your sons and your friends at liberty." "Yes," said I, "four combatants the more on the barricades." The Representative Duputz, a few hours later, received from our hands a duplicate of the decree, with the charge to take it himself to the Concièrgerie as soon as the surprise which we premeditated upon the Prefecture of Police and the Hôtel de Ville should have succeeded. Unhappily this surprise failed.
Landrin came in. His duties in Paris in 1848 had enabled him to know the whole body of the political and municipal police. He warned us that he had seen suspicious figures roving about the neighborhood. We were in the Rue Richelieu, almost opposite the Théâtre Français, one of the points where passers-by are most numerous, and in consequence one of the points most carefully watched. The goings and comings of the Representatives who were communicating with the Committee, and who came in and out unceasingly, would be inevitably noticed, and would bring about a visit from the Police. The porters and the neighbors already manifested an evil-boding surprise. We ran, so Landrin declared and assured us, the greatest danger. "You will be taken and shot," said he to us.
He entreated us to go elsewhere. M. Grévy's brother, consulted by us, stated that he could not answer for the people of his house.
But what was to be done? Hunted now for two days, we had exhausted the goodwill of nearly everybody, one refuge had been refused on the preceding evening, and at this moment no house was offered to us. Since the night of the 2d we had changed our refuge seventeen times, at times going from one extremity of Paris to the other. We began to experience some weariness. Besides, as I have already said, the house where we were had this signal advantage—a back outlet upon the Rue Fontaine-Molière. We decided to remain. Only we thought we ought to take precautionary measures.
Every species of devotion burst forth from the ranks of the Left around us. A noteworthy member of the Assembly—a man of rare mind and of rare courage—Durand-Savoyat—who from the preceding evening until the last day constituted himself our doorkeeper, and even more than this, our usher and our attendant, himself had placed a bell on our table, and had said to us, "When you want me, ring, and I will come in." Wherever we went, there was he. He remained in the ante-chamber, calm, impassive, silent, with his grave and noble countenance, his buttoned frock coat, and his broad-brimmed hat, which gave him the appearance of an Anglican clergyman. He himself opened the entrance door, scanned the faces of those who came, and kept away the importunate and the useless. Besides, he was always cheerful, and ready to say unceasingly, "Things are looking well." We were lost, yet he smiled. Optimism in Despair.