Part 41

“How do you know?”

“I have just come from there. Not being known I was able to get over the barricades and make my way here. Your family first took refuge in the Mairie. I was there, too. Seeing that the danger was over I advised Mme. Victor Hugo to seek some other asylum. She found shelter with her children in the home of a chimney-sweep named Martignon who lives near your house, under the arcades.”

I knew that worthy Martignon family. This reassured me.

“And how about the riot?” I asked.

“It is a revolution,” replied M. Belley. “The insurgents are in control of Paris at this moment.”

I left M. Belley and hurriedly traversed the few rooms that separated the hall in which we held our sessions and the office occupied by the Executive Committee.

It was a small salon belonging to the presidency, and was reached through two rooms that were smaller still. In these ante-chambers was a buzzing crowd of distracted officers and National Guards. They made no attempt to prevent any one from entering.

I opened the door of the Executive Committee’s office. Ledru-Rollin, very red, was half seated on the table. M. Gamier-Pages, very pale, and half reclining in an armchair, formed an antithesis to him. The contrast was complete: Garnier-Pagès thin and bushy-haired, Ledru-Rollin stout and close-cropped. Two or three colonels, among them Representative Charras, were conversing in a corner. I only recall Arago vaguely. I do not remember whether M. Marie was there. The sun was shining brightly.

Lamartine, standing in a window recess on the left, was talking to a general in full uniform, whom I saw for the first and last time, and who was Négrier. Négrier was killed that same evening in front of a barricade.

I hurried to Lamartine, who advanced to meet me. He was wan and agitated, his beard was long, his clothes were dusty.

He held out his hand: “Ah! good morning, Hugo!”

Here is the dialogue that we engaged in, every word of which is still fresh in my memory:

“What is the situation, Lamartine?”

“We are done for!”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that in a quarter of an hour from now the Assembly will be invaded.”

(Even at that moment a column of insurgents was coming down the Rue de Lille. A timely charge of cavalry dispersed it.)

“Nonsense! What about the troops?”

“There are no troops!”

“But you said on Wednesday, and yesterday repeated, that you had sixty thousand men at your disposal.”

“So I thought.”

“Well, but you musn’t give up like this. It is not only you who are at stake, but the Assembly, and not only the Assembly, but France, and not only France, but the whole of civilization. Why did you not issue orders yesterday to have the garrisons of the towns for forty leagues round brought to Paris? That would have given you thirty thousand men at once.”

“We gave the orders--”

“Well?”

“The troops have not come!”

Lamartine took my hand and said;

“I am not Minister of War!”

At this moment a few representatives entered noisily. The Assembly had just voted a state of siege. They told Ledru-Rollin and Garnier-Pages so in a few words.