The History of a Crime Part 40

"Falloux despises Dupin.

"The first shots were fired at the Record Office. In the Markets in the Rue Rambuteau, in the Rue Beaubourg I heard firing.

"Fleury, the aide-de-camp, ventured to pa.s.s down the Rue Montmartre. A musket ball pierced his kepi. He galloped quickly off. At one o'clock the regiments were summoned to vote on the _coup d'etat_. All gave their adhesion. The students of law and medicine a.s.sembled together at the Ecole de Droit to protest. The Munic.i.p.al Guards dispersed them. There were a great many arrests. This evening, patrols are everywhere.

Sometimes an entire regiment forms a patrol.

"Representative Hespel, who is six feet high, was not able to find a cell long enough for him at Mazas, and he has been obliged to remain in the porter's lodge, where he is carefully watched.

"Mesdames Odilon Barrot and de Tocqueville do not know where their husbands are. They go from Mazas to Mont Valerien. The jailers are dumb.

It is the 19th Light Infantry which attacked the barricade when Baudin was killed. Fifty men of the _Gendarmerie Mobile_ have carried at the double the barricade of the Oratoire in the Rue St. Honore. Moreover, the conflict reveals itself. They sound the tocsin at the Chapelle Brea. One barricade overturned sets twenty barricades on their feet. There is the barricade of the Schools in the Rue St. Andre des Arts, the barricade of the Rue du Temple, the barricade of the Carrefour Phelippeaux defended by twenty young men who have all been killed; they are reconstructing it; the barricade of the Rue de Bretagne, which at this moment Courtigis is bombarding. There is the barricade of the Invalides, the barricade of the Barriere des Martyres, the barricade of the Chapelle St. Denis. The councils of war are sitting in permanence, and order all prisoners to be shot. The 30th of the Line have shot a woman. Oil upon fire.

"The colonel of the 49th of the Line has resigned. Louis Bonaparte has appointed in his place Lieutenant Colonel Negrier. M. Brun, Officer of the Police of the a.s.sembly, was arrested at the same time as the Questors.

"It is said that fifty members of the majority have signed a protest at M. Odilon Barrot's house.

"This evening there is an increasing uneasiness at the Elysee.

Incendiarism is feared. Two battalions of engineer-sappers have reinforced the Fire Brigade. Maupas has placed guards over the gasometers.

"Here are the military talons by which Paris has been grasped:--Bivouacs at all the strategical points. At the Pont Neuf and the Quai aux Fleurs, the Munic.i.p.al Guards; at the Place de la Bastille twelve pieces of cannon, three mortars, lighted matches; at the corner of the Faubourg the six-storied houses are occupied by soldiers from top to bottom; the Marulaz brigade at the Hotel de Ville; the Sauboul brigade at the Pantheon; the Courtigis brigade at the Faubourg St. Antoine; the Renaud division at the Faubourg St. Marceau. At the Legislative Palace the Cha.s.seurs de Vincennes, and a battalion of the 15th Light Infantry; in the Champs Elysees infantry and cavalry; in the Avenue Marigny artillery.

Inside the circus is an entire regiment; it has bivouacked there all night. A squadron of the Munic.i.p.al Guard is bivouacking in the Place Dauphine. A bivouac in the Council of State. A bivouac in the courtyard of the Tuileries. In addition, the garrisons of St. Germain and of Courbevoie. Two colonels killed, Loubeau, of the 75th, and Quilio. On all sides hospital attendants are pa.s.sing, bearing litters. Ambulances are everywhere; in the Bazar de l'Industry (Boulevard Poissioniere); in the Salle St. Jean at the Hotel de Ville; in the Rue du Pet.i.t Carreau. In this gloomy battle nine brigades are engaged. All have a battery of artillery; a squadron of cavalry maintains the communications between the brigades; forty thousand men are taking part in the struggle; with a reserve of sixty thousand men; a hundred thousand soldiers upon Paris.

Such is the Army of the Crime. The Reibell brigade, the first and second Lancers, protect the Elysee. The Ministers are all sleeping at the Ministry of the Interior, close by Morny. Morny watches, Magnan commands.

To-morrow will be a terrible day."

This page written, I went to bed, and fell asleep.

THE THIRD DAY--THE Ma.s.sACRE.

CHAPTER I.

THOSE WHO SLEEP AND HE WHO DOES NOT SLEEP

During this night of the 3d and 4th of December, while we who were overcome with fatigue and betrothed to calamity slept an honest slumber, not an eye was closed at the Elysee. An infamous sleeplessness reigned there. Towards two o'clock in the morning the Comte Roguet, after Morny the most intimate of the confidants of the Elysee, an ex-peer of France and a lieutenant-general, came out of Louis Bonaparte's private room; Roguet was accompanied by Saint-Arnaud. Saint-Arnaud, it may be remembered, was at that time Minister of War.

Two colonels were waiting in the little ante-room.

Saint-Arnaud was a general who had been a supernumerary at the Ambigu Theatre. He had made his first appearance as a comedian in the suburbs.

A tragedian later on. He may be described as follows:--tall, bony, thin, angular, with gray moustaches, lank air, a mean countenance. He was a cut-throat, and badly educated. Morny laughed at him for his p.r.o.nunciation of the "Sovereign People." "He p.r.o.nounces the word no better than he understands the thing," said he. The Elysee, which prides itself upon its refinement, only half-accepted Saint-Arnaud. His b.l.o.o.d.y side had caused his vulgar side to be condoned. Saint-Arnaud was brave, violent, and yet timid; he had the audacity of a gold-laced veteran and the awkwardness of a man who had formerly been "down upon his luck." We saw him one day in the tribune, pale, stammering, but daring. He had a long bony face, and a distrust-inspiring jaw. His theatrical name was Florivan. He was a strolling player transformed into a trooper. He died Marshal of France.

An ill-omened figure.

The two colonels who awaited Saint-Arnaud in the anteroom were two business-like men, both leaders of those decisive regiments which at critical times carry the other regiments with them, according to their instructions, into glory, as at Austerlitz, or into crime, as on the Eighteenth Brumaire. These two officers belonged to what Morny called "the cream of indebted and free-living colonels." We will not mention their names here; one is dead, the other is still living; he will recognize himself. Besides, we have caught a glimpse of them in the first pages of this book.

One, a man of thirty-eight, was cunning, dauntless, ungrateful, three qualifications for success. The Duc d'Aumale had saved his life in the Aures. He was then a young captain. A ball had pierced his body; he fell into a thicket; the Kabyles rushed up to cut off and carry away his head, when the Duc d'Aumale arriving with two officers, a soldier, and a bugler, charged the Kabyles and saved this captain. Having saved him, he loved him. One was grateful, the other was not. The one who was grateful was the deliverer. The Duc d'Aumale was pleased with this young captain for having given him an opportunity for a deed of gallantry. He made him a major; in 1849 this major became lieutenant-colonel, and commanded a storming column at the siege of Rome; he then came back to Africa, where Fleury bought him over at the same time as Saint-Arnaud. Louis Bonaparte made him colonel in July, 1851, and reckoned upon him. In November this colonel of Louis Bonaparte wrote to the Duc d'Aumale, "Nothing need be apprehended from this miserable adventurer." In December he commanded one of the ma.s.sacring regiments. Later on, in the Dobrudscha, an ill-used horse turned upon him and bit off his cheek, so that there was only room on his face for one slap.

The other man was growing gray, and was about forty-eight. He also was a man of pleasure and of murder. Despicable as a citizen; brave as a soldier. He was one of the first who had sprung into the breach at Constantine. Plenty of bravery and plenty of baseness. No chivalry but that of the green cloth. Louis Bonaparte had made him colonel in 1851.

His debts had been twice paid by two Princes; the first time by the Duc d'Orleans, the second time by the Duc de Nemours.

Such were these colonels.

Saint-Arnaud spoke to them for some time in a low tone.

CHAPTER II.

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE COMMITTEE

As soon as it was daylight we had a.s.sembled in the house of our imprisoned colleague, M. Grevy. 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 abolis.h.i.+ng 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Conciergerie as soon as the surprise which we premeditated upon the Prefecture of Police and the Hotel 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 munic.i.p.al police. He warned us that he had seen suspicious figures roving about the neighborhood. We were in the Rue Richelieu, almost opposite the Theatre Francais, one of the points where pa.s.sers-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 a.s.sured us, the greatest danger. "You will be taken and shot," said he to us.

He entreated us to go elsewhere. M. Grevy'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-Moliere.

We decided to remain. Only we thought we ought to take precautionary measures.