"What!" I exclaimed, "you have come to this—you dare not speak, you dare not utter the name of 'Bonaparte' aloud; you barely mumble a few words in a whisper here, in this street, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where, from all the doors, from all the windows, from all the pavements, from all the very stones, ought to be heard the cry, 'To arms.'"
Auguste demonstrated to me what I already saw too clearly, and what Girard had shadowed forth in the morning—the moral situation of the Faubourg—that the people were "dazed"—that it seemed to all of them that universal suffrage was restored; that the downfall of the law of the 31st of May was a good thing.
Here I interrupted him.
"But this law of the 31st of May, it was Louis Bonaparte who instigated it, it was Rouher who made it, it was Baroche who proposed it, and the Bonapartists who voted it. You are dazzled by a thief who has taken your purse, and who restores it to you!"
"Not I," said Auguste, "but the others."
And he continued, "To tell the whole truth, people did not care much for the Constitution, they liked the Republic, but the Republic was maintained too much by force for their taste. In all this they could only see one thing clearly, the cannons ready to slaughter them—they remembered June, 1848—there were some poor people who had suffered greatly—Cavaignac had done much evil—women clung to the men's blouses to prevent them from going to the barricades—nevertheless, with all this, when seeing men like ourselves at their head, they would perhaps fight, but this hindered them, they did not know for what." He concluded by saying, "The upper part of the Faubourg is doing nothing, the lower end will do better. Round about here they will fight. The Rue de la Roquette is good, the Rue de Charonne is good; but on the side of Père la Chaise they ask, 'What good will that do us?' They only recognize the forty sous of their day's work. They will not bestir themselves; do not reckon upon the masons." He added, with a smile, "Here we do not say 'cold as a stone,' but 'cold as a mason'"—and he resumed, "As for me, if I am alive, it is to you that I owe my life. Dispose of me. I will lay down my life, and will do what you wish."
While he was speaking I saw the white curtain of the glazed partition behind him move a little. His young wife, uneasy, was peeping through at us.
"Ah! my God," said I to him, "what we want is not the life of one man but the efforts of all."
He was silent. I continued,—
"Listen to me, Auguste, you who are good and intelligent. So, then, the Faubourgs of Paris—which are heroes even when they err—the Faubourgs of Paris, for a misunderstanding, for a question of salary wrongly construed, for a bad definition of socialism, rose in June, 1848, against the Assembly elected by themselves, against universal suffrage, against their own vote; and yet they will not rise in December, 1851, for Right, for the Law, for the People, for Liberty, for the Republic. You say that there is perplexity, and that you do not understand; but, on the contrary, it was in June that all was obscure, and it is to-day that everything is clear!"