At this moment the private door opened, and three men entered the editorial sanctum.

Marrast quickly turned, and his friend was silent.

"Ha! Albert, Flocon, Rollin!" he cried. "Welcome, welcome! Our friend, Louis Blanc, was just about wasting on me a sermon upon patience, but now he'll have an audience worthy of the subject. Be seated and listen!"

"Patience!" exclaimed Flocon. "Well, I'm sure we need it."

"That we do, in our present low estate," echoed Rollin.

Albert said nothing, but smiled with sarcastic significance.

When the salutations were over and the party, all but Marrast, who restlessly paced the room, were seated, Louis Blanc looked around on his friends with a sad smile, and continued:

"Marrast is right, Messieurs. I was, indeed, preaching patience. I was endeavoring to soothe his irritation and chide his depression with a sermon; since we are all old friends and fellow-sufferers in the good cause and have a common interest in knowing the reasons of failure and the means of triumph, I will by your leave proceed."

"Aye, dear Louis, go on!" cried Marrast, kindly. "But you are the most youthful sage I ever listened to."

"Yes, Louis, proceed; you look like a curÉ," said Rollin, laughing.

"I subscribe to Louis Blanc's creed, be it what it may," added Flocon, briskly.

"And so do I," said Albert, gravely, in a deep tone.

Of the new visitors, Ledru Rollin was a man of medium stature, about thirty-five years of age and dressed in the extreme of the mode. His complexion and hair were light, his eyes large, blue and protruding, his mouth prominent, and his full cheeks covered with whiskers, which like those of Marrast, were closely trimmed and met beneath his chin. His head and shoulders were thrown back, and his air was bold and independent. He was a lawyer of talent, who had gained celebrity as advocate of the accused on many occasions of State prosecutions.

Flocon was an older man than Rollin, and his countenance bore the wary, vigilant and suspicious look which experience alone gives. He was low in stature, thick-set and close-knit in figure; his eyes seemed always half closed; his brow was broad and massive; his face was long; a moustache was on his lip, and his hair was closely cut. The outline of his head and the expression of his face seemed those rather of one born on the banks of the Rhine than on the banks of the Seine, so calm and passionless did they appear. His dress was plain but neat. Flocon was the chief editor of "La RÉforme," the name of which indicates its character. It was this man who, in February, 1833, repressed the violence of his partisans and saved the office of the "Gazette de France," yet the very next day published his celebrated letter to the Legitimists, which, for audacity, force and pungency was only equaled by the paralyzing effect it produced. The fines, imprisonments and civil incapacities to which this man had been subjected for assaults upon a government he deemed corrupt, for the ten years preceding, had been literally numberless.

Albert was a man of fifty or more, with a large head, square German face and forehead, a large hazel eye, fixed and unexcitable, hair closely cut, and beard upon his chin and lip. His dress was a long iron-gray frock coat, buttoned closely to his chin. His face was rather thin, and his complexion bronzed. His name had for years been identified with reform; and though a manufacturer himself, of the class of workmen, being proprietor and chief engineer of a large machine factory at Lyons, he had established and sustained in that city a paper to advocate his principles, named "La Glaneuse," the prosecution of which by the Government for libel and the fining and imprisonment of its editor formed an originating cause of the revolt in Lyons of April, 1834. For the part played by this man in the revolt thus arising, he was sentenced to transportation, a penalty afterwards commuted to fine and imprisonment. He was a man of few words, remarkably few, but of deep thought and prompt action, and, in moments of crisis and emergency, a man of unshaken and inflexible nerve. To the casual observer, he seemed only a silent man, or a sullen one, astute or stolid; in times of peril he was a man of iron, but a man of action and passion, too, moving with resistless might. To rouse his powers, mental or physical, demanded, indeed, circumstances of unusual import, but once roused they were irresistible.

Such were the personages now assembled in the office of "Le National;" and, of those five men, all were connected with the press, directly, as editor or proprietor, save only Ledru Rollin, and he was a writer for "La RÉforme," as well as an advocate.

The name of Louis Blanc's paper was, as has been said, "Le Bon Sens."

But to return to the narrative.

"And you really wish a sermon from me, old comrades, with patience as the text?"

"Aye—aye—aye!" exclaimed all.

"Suppose I add to it this line I find on the paper before me on the table, that our good Marrast had just written as the text for a paragraph which would probably have cost him another fine and imprisonment, had the paragraph been completed and published?"

"Read! read!" cried Rollin.

"With your permission, Armand?"

"Certainly," replied the editor, still continuing his promenade.

"'Again the House of OrlÉans triumphs!'" read Louis Blanc, aloud.

"And is it not true—the accursed tyrants?" vociferated Rollin.

"Aye, true!" was the mild answer; "alas, too true! That perfidious House does triumph, and for that very reason the fact should never be acknowledged by its opponents."

Rollin shook his head, and, throwing himself back in his capacious chair, folded his arms, sunk his chin upon his breast and closed his eyes.

Marrast continued his walk.

Flocon remained silent and thoughtful.

Albert gave a significant smile.

"Oppose ceaselessly, but quietly, every act of despotism this Bourgeois Government may attempt; but, be the result what it may, never admit yourselves discouraged, depressed, dismayed, defeated. From every fall rise like Antaeus, with renewed vigor. Nor is it wise or prudent in those engaged in a great and glorious cause to provoke danger, to brave penalty, when nothing of good to that cause can reasonably be expected. Prudence, policy, patience and perseverance accomplish more than rashness, yet are not inconsistent with intrepidity, boldness, patriotism and philanthropy the most exalted. Comrades, what says the past, the past ten years, in whose events we have all so intimately mingled? Shall I tell you?"

"Aye! 'L'Histoire de Dix Ans,'" said Flocon.

"We are all sure of being immortal there, in that same book of yours! Eh! Louis?" cried Rollin, opening his large blue eyes.

Louis Blanc smiled and continued:

"Shall I convince you, comrades, by the history of the past ten years, the scenes we have all witnessed, the events we have all deplored, the defeats we have all sustained, the insulting ovations we have all been forced to behold and the unceasing triumphs and tyranny of the House of OrlÉans that, had patience and prudence been our motto, these defeats and triumphs would never have been witnessed, because these premature revolts would never have been made?"

Albert bowed and gave his peculiar smile.

"Our friend Albert smiles, and well he may. He has had a sad experience in this error of premature outbreaks. In April, 1834, he exerted every energy to restrain the revolt in Lyons, as chief of the SociÉtÉ des Droits de l'Homme, and as the undoubted friend of the operatives. But his efforts were futile. Exasperated, urged on by less experienced leaders, they were in full tide of revolution, and could no more be restrained in their unwise rising than could the mountain cataract in mad career be dammed. The result was, of course, defeat—most disastrous defeat. Hundreds of the people perished, and our friend was imprisoned and fined for taking part in a movement, which he had in vain attempted to quell, and then, with the certainty of defeat, had joined, rather than desert the people who trusted and relied on him."

"A noble act!" cried Marrast, as he paced the room.

Albert quietly smiled, but otherwise his countenance remained unmoved.

"And was it not a most noble and a most wise act," continued the author of "The Ten Years," "when our friend Flocon, by an energetic and eloquent harangue, restrained the indignant people from razing to the ground the office of the 'Gazette de France,' the organ of the Duchess of Berri, and his bitter foe? Terribly would that rash act have recoiled on us, and yet, at the same time, with this most patriotic and prudent deed before us, a wilder measure than even that was adopted, and it was quelled only by force. You all remember the events. In February, '33, EugÈne Brifault, in his 'Corsair,' alluded jestingly to the mysterious pregnancy of the mother of Henry V., Duke of Bordeaux, as did every one, she then being imprisoned at Baye because of her prior conspiracy to place her son on the throne, and her secret marriage in Italy being unrevealed. The Legitimists of 'Le Revenant' challenged; the allusion was repeated, and a second trial and a death ensued. 'Le National' and 'La Tribune,' regarding these repeated challenges as a menace to the Republicans, hurled defiance at the Legitimists, and demanded twelve distinct rencontres in behalf of as many names of our friends posted at their offices, among which those of Armand Carrel, Godefroi Cavaignac and Armand Marrast were conspicuous. The challenge is accepted—the names of twelve Legitimists are furnished—Armand Carrel selects Roux Laborie—they fight, and Carrel is dangerously wounded—the police then interfere—the affair ends with Flocon's terrific and audacious defiance flung down at the whole Legitimist and OrlÉans parties in the columns of 'La RÉforme.' Now, what to Republicans were the quarrels of Legitimists and OrlÉanists? If we were to be ruled by a king, what cared we whether that king were Henry V. or Louis Philippe? How would the sacrifice of Carrel, Marrast, Cavaignac, or of any of those twelve brave men have been repaid, or made up? And afterwards, alas! in July of '36, when Armand Carrel, causelessly assuming a quarrel not his own, because of a fancied attempt to degrade the press, by rendering its issues accessible, by cheapness, to the masses, was slain in the Bois de Vincennes by the vulgar bullet of Émile de Girardin, of 'La Presse.' What reparation to our cause was it that our champion had died like a hero, and ChÂteaubriand, Arago, Cormenin and BÉranger wept around his grave? Alas! that inestimable life belonged to his country and his race, and not to himself, to fling away in an obscure quarrel."

"But we are not all of us Armand Carrels," said Rollin.

"And yet, to the great cause of human liberty, and the amelioration of man's condition, to which each of us stands sworn, are pledged our lives. To hazard that cause, by the sacrifice of those lives, or by rashly and unwisely attempting its advancement, makes us violators of our vows, quite as much in reality as if we had become traitors."

"But the instances you cite are those only of individual rashness, Louis, and not of the people, or of their leaders acting in concert," remarked Marrast.

"True, concert of action has been chiefly needed, but I have only to recall the dates and places of our repeated attempts and defeats, for the past ten years, to convince you all that those attempts were premature, and had they not been so, they might have been successful—that they have frittered away energies which, properly concentrated and directed, might have achieved a revolution; and that while they have betrayed our designs and depressed our friends, have enabled our foes insultingly to triumph and caused them to be on the constant qui vive to anticipate our movements. What but premature and undigested uprisings were the conspiracy of the bell-tower of NÔtre Dame, in January of '32, when 'Le National' was seized—or the disturbances in La VendÉe—or those in Grenoble—or those in Marseilles—or those in the Rue des Prouvaires—or those in April, during the cholera, when Casimir Perier died—or those of the 5th and 6th of June, on the occasion of General Lamarque's funeral, on pretence of avenging upon the Government the affront offered during the obsequies of Casimir Perier, the victim-Premier of the cholera? For the part taken by 'La Tribune,' then conducted by Marrast, in this revolt, its press was seized and sealed. The same was the fate of 'La Quotidienne,' and the same would have been the fate of 'Le National,' but for its barricades. Well do I remember the meeting of our friends in this very apartment on the night after General Lamarque's funeral. The great shade of the venerable warrior seemed among us, repeating for our counsel and imitation his last impressive words, 'I die but the cause lives!' But, alas! we observed it not. Doubt, dissension, dismay and despair were in our midst. All was dark—all was defiance and denunciation, crimination and recrimination—brother's hand raised against brother. Armand Carrel that night sat in this chair, but he was not the man to command his own will or opinions; how could he then bring to obedience and concert the conflicting impulses of others? Armand Carrel was a wonderful man. His motto, like that of Danton, was this: 'Audacity, audacity, always audacity!' Yet with all the audacity of Danton, he had little of his firmness. An officer under the Restoration, a conspirator at Bifort, in arms in Spain against the white flag, three times a prisoner before a council of war—in 1830 he was with Thiers, the founder of this journal; but everywhere he carried the exactitude of the camp; even in dress, manner and bearing he was a soldier—lofty, haughty, seemingly overbearing, yet, at heart, noble and generous, and to his friends accessible in the extreme. To his military notions, nothing could be accomplished without soldiers, and for the people to carry a revolution against soldiers seemed to him absurd."

"Armand Carrel would have been, nevertheless, a good revolutionist, Louis," said Marrast; "but he was a bad conspirator. He had no faith in the people, no confidence in the efforts of undisciplined and unarmed masses."

"And therein," said Rollin, "he greatly erred."

"Although we can as yet boast of having accomplished but very little by them, Ledru," added Flocon, with a meaning smile. "The masses are easily roused, but they don't stay roused, and then they often get unmanageable, even by those by whose summons they were stirred up. They fight well, but, somehow or other, they always get beaten; they succumb at last, and bow their necks to the yoke lower than ever."

"It is not the people," said Louis Blanc, "it is we the leaders, who are to be blamed. We rouse them before we are ready for them—before we have prepared them or anything else for a result; and then it is not strange that they only rush bravely on to death and defeat. We seize on the occasion of a funeral for an outbreak without organization, and the cuirassiers of the military escort trample our ranks beneath their horses' hoofs. But for unusual efforts, such would have been the case at the funeral of Dulong, the Deputy who fell in a duel with General Bugeaud, in January of '34."

"What were the circumstances?" asked Rollin.

"Armand recollects them better than I," replied Louis Blanc.

"The circumstances were these, as I remember them," said Marrast. "General Bugeaud remarked in the course of a speech in the Chamber that 'obedience is always a soldier's duty.' 'What if the order be to become a turnkey?' asked Dulong, in allusion to the General's position in relation to the Duchess of Berri, during her pregnancy and confinement at Baye. Armand Carrel endeavored to pacificate, but the effort failed. They met in the Bois de Boulogne at ten o' clock in the morning; the weapons were pistols; the distance forty paces. Bugeaud fired almost as soon as he turned, advancing only a few steps; his ball entered above Dulong's right eye, and at six o'clock that evening he was dead."

"There was a splendid ball at the Tuileries that night, was there not?" asked Flocon.

"There was, and this, with other things, excited in the masses the idea that their champion was the victim of a Royalist conspiracy, which all the influence of Armand Carrel and Dulong's uncle, Dupont de l'Eure was hardly sufficient to suppress. But Dupont immediately resigned his seat in the Chamber. He would sit no longer in a body one man of which he deemed the murderer of a beloved nephew. The obsequies were grand. Armand Carrel pronounced the eulogy, and two hundred and thirty-four deputies wet the grave with their tears. The people were greatly excited, and, as has been said, were with great difficulty restrained by Carrel and Dupont. Had they been suffered to revolt, the only result which could have followed would have been a terrific outpouring of their blood, furnishing another instance, I suppose, of the evil of impatience; is it not so, Louis?"

"Undoubtedly," was the reply; "and only two months after that other instance actually occurred, for our warning, in the revolt at Lyons, with which we are all familiar, and in which we were all actors, most of us to our sorrow. This was in April. Albert's journal, 'La Glaneuse,' had been seized for libel on the Government, and the editor fined and imprisoned. Next a reform banquet of the operatives was forbidden, although but a year before Garnier Pages had been suffered to banquet the Lyonnese to the number of two thousand, and although at no period had so many gorgeous festivities and public balls been given by the rich Royalists, as if in premeditated scorn of the banquet prohibited to the poor Republicans. The result was so prompt as to seem inevitable; there was a strike of the operatives, an insurrection of the people. Albert was sent to Paris as an envoy, to find a man to lead the revolt. MM. Cabet and Pages were deemed too moderate. Cavaignac would go only with Cabet. Lafayette was too feeble, but gave his name and letters. Carrel and Marrast were not members of the SociÉtÉ des Droits de l'Homme, and Albert had been cautioned that Carrel was too moderate. Thiers had denounced 'La Tribune,' and Marrast's friends were hiding him from the police. In despair concerning his mission, the envoy was about returning home, when he was sent for to Armand Carrel's house, and Carrel offered to go to Lyons and lead the revolt, provided Godefroi Cavaignac would accompany him. Now these friends had long been at feud, but all private grievances were forgotten in this crisis of the cause, and Albert is just about preceding them in the post-chaise, to announce their coming, when, lo! the telegraph says, 'Order reigns in Lyons!' Here, then, after a terrific slaughter, was recorded another fruitless revolt, because a premature one. Nay, it was infinitely worse than fruitless. Not only did the Republicans utterly fail in their attempts, not only were they cruelly crushed by the Royal mercenaries, but they were openly derided in their defeat, and the cause was gloomier than ever. The slaughter of women and children in the streets of Lyons, and on their own hearthstones, in the course of this insurrection, was hideous, and is graphically portrayed in the memorial of our friend Ledru Rollin, as advocate in the matter. But, as if all this were not enough for our persecuted cause, the decease of the great and good Lafayette, the idol of freemen all the world over, took place in the following May. Alas! his sun went down in clouds. His end was dark. Bitter maledictions quivered on his dying lips. He had lived to mourn that July day, only three years before, when, on the steps of the HÔtel de Ville, he had, with his own hands, been called to invest a cold-blooded, perfidious, selfish, and most ungrateful tyrant with Royal robes. Alas! there was order in Lyons—Lafayette was in his grave—peace reigned in Paris—the House of OrlÉans triumphed!"

"Those were dark days," said Marrast, sadly.

"They were, dear Armand, dark, indeed, for you and your friends, for your journal had been suppressed, and you were an inmate, with Cavaignac, of SaintÉ-PÉlagie."

"Whence you both, bravely and boldly effected your escape more than a year afterwards and fled to England, to the most glorious discomfiture of the knaves who put you there!" cried Rollin. "Vive la RÉpublique! yet, Messieurs! We've all seen dark days, and the present is none of the brightest; and we've all come together at these old headquarters of liberty just to be unhappy together, just to help each other be miserable, which, in fact, is vastly happier unhappiness than being miserable alone. At all events, that's what I want. But it can't always be right. I predict a revolution before another ten years shall have rolled round, which shall make immortals of us all—that revolution for which we have been waiting, watching, toiling and writing, lo! now these thirteen years and upward, for the which waiting, watching, toiling and writing we have some of us been fined, who had money enough to pay a fine, and others imprisoned and hunted about and persecuted. Why, there's Albert and Flocon haven't been able to get a franc cleverly warm in their pockets these ten years, before forth it was drawn in the form of a fine; while as for Marrast, he has the perfect air and bearing of a bandit, so often has he seen the inside of a dungeon; and our friend Albert isn't much better looking. As for Louis and myself, why, we never knew what it was to have a franc get warm in our pockets, so we escaped having any drawn forth by Ministers, and they have never thought us worth prosecuting or imprisoning. But they may change their minds when Louis' book, that is to make us all immortal, comes out. Eh, Louis?"

Louis Blanc smiled, but made no answer.

"Well, it is only meet, I suppose, that I should receive my share of the blows," said Marrast. "I'm sure I'm not very delicate or very ceremonious in bestowing them. Besides, every one of my predecessors has endured the same—Carrel, Thomas, Bastide; while poor Rouen, the proprietor, would have been ruined, indeed, a dozen times with fines, but for his enormous profits. Why, this old office has been a perfect butt for Ministers to fire at—it has received a dozen fusillades, at least; but it stands yet, and, strange as may have been the scenes it has witnessed, it will witness yet other and stranger ones, and we shall all be witnesses thereof, and actors in them, too, or greatly do I err."

"So be it, with all our hearts!" was the general shout.

"Apropos of State prosecutions against 'Le National,'" said Louis Blanc, "that was a most exciting time when Rouen was brought by Thiers before the Court of Peers, for a libel on that most august and erudite body."

"Aye! and a most, liberal, honest and honorable conclave—the thrice-sodden and most solemn knaves and mules!" cried Rollin.

"Rouen at the bar demanded Armand Carrel for his defence," continued Louis Blanc. "To refuse was impossible, but a bitter pill must it have been to Thiers and Mignet to consent. They must have foreseen what came. Both, now in the Ministry, only four years before both had been in 'Le National'—Thiers as the colleague of Carrel, and Mignet as a collaborateur. The files of the journal were produced, and, lo! there stood paragraphs proven to have emanated from the pens of the prosecutors far more libelous and venomous on the august peers than anything Rouen had published. You all remember the scene that ensued and won't forget it soon."

"No; nor shall we soon forget that noble passage in Armand Carrel's defence," said Flocon, "in which he evoked the shade of Marshal Ney, and from the wild excitement that followed, one would suppose that it had really risen in the hall, bleeding and ghastly, and pointing to its wounds, like the ghost of Banquo, to blast his hoary, jeweled and noble assassin, who, seated on those very seats, had sentenced him to an infamous doom. Carrel was instantly stopped, but General Excelmens rose in his seat and pronounced the charge true. It was then reiterated with tremendous applause from the galleries. How Carrel escaped punishment for contempt is not known. Rouen was convicted of libel on the peers, of course; his sentence was a fine of ten thousand francs and imprisonment for two years."

"But of what words did this famous libel actually consist?" asked Ledru Rollin.

"Louis can tell you better than I," said Flocon.

"Why, the words were severe enough, no doubt," replied Louis Blanc, "but Thiers and Mignet had themselves expressed the same ideas a hundred times, though in less powerful and pointed language. The passage which seems particularly to have given offence was this, that in the eyes of eternal justice and those of posterity, as well as in the testimony of their own consciences, these renegades from the Revolution, these returned emigrants, these men of Ghent, these military and civil parvenus, these old Senators and spoiled Marshals of Bonaparte, these Procureur Generals, these new-made nobles of the Restoration, these three or four generations of Ministers sunk in public hatred and contempt, and stained with blood—all these, seasoned with a few notabilities, thrown in by the Royalty of the 7th of August, on condition they should never open their lips save to approve their master's commands—all this farrago of servilities was not competent to pronounce on the culpability of men seeking to enforce the results of the Revolution of July!"

"It was not until the commencement of 1835, I think," said Marrast, "that Ministers opened a general onslaught upon the Parisian press. 'Le RÉpublicain' was interdicted that year. It was then, too, that the laws against public criers and newspaper hawkers were instituted. As far back as '33, however, Rodde had braved all such prohibitions by selling and with impunity, too, his own paper in the streets. In May of '35 came on the general prosecution of the press. Rollin was advocate in the defence. There were warm words between Armand Carrel and his friend Dupont, the lawyer, and there was at one time apprehension of a duel."

"The position of Armand Carrel with Thiers, his former colleague, was, at that time, a singular one," remarked Rollin. "Each seemed to be on the constant search for opportunities to exasperate the other. The editor assailed the Minister in his columns, and the Minister retaliated by an arrest. Carrel censured and ridiculed Thiers, though he respected his abilities, and Thiers feared and hated Carrel, though he admired his talents."

"It was about this time that Fieschi exploded his infernal machine at the King, was it not?" asked Flocon. "Thiers arrested Carrel then, I know."

"It was on the 28th of July of '35, at ten in the morning, on the Boulevard du Temple. This was the second attempt on the King's life, the first having been that of Bergeron, in November of '33. Carrel was arrested as an accomplice, it was pretended, for every one of these attempts has been attributed to the whole body of the Republicans, while they were utterly ignorant of them until they took place, and then bitterly denounced them. But the Government has made capital out of all these insane attempts, and against the opposition, too."

"I've heard it asserted," said Rollin, "that the Government got up some of those little exhibitions of fireworks for that very purpose. They are quite harmless, so far as the old man is concerned—wonderfully so—and Fieschi was made a perfect fool of, so ridiculously lionized was he by King, Court and Ministers. Our friend Marie was advocate for that wretched old man, PÉpin, Fieschi's accomplice, more a ghost than a living creature."

"You are entirely right, friend Rollin," said Louis Blanc, "in the idea that every one of these attempts strengthens the Government and recoils on the opposition. No one should so vigilantly and vigorously watch for and suppress such attempts as we. Heaven defend the old despot from the assassin's weapon, as it seems well inclined to do, or the deed will surely be attributed to us. Every unsuccessful attempt at assassination is viewed like an unsuccessful attempt at revolt on the part of the opposition, and injures our cause accordingly. Better never to attempt than never to succeed."

"Do you think it true, Louis, as was reported," asked Marrast, "that as soon as the smoke of Fieschi's explosion swept off, and the old man found himself standing unharmed amid a heap of slain and mangled, Marshal Mortier and Colonel Rieussec being among the killed, his first exclamation was this, with, ill-concealed gratification, 'Now I shall get my appanages and the dotations for the boys.'"

"Nothing is more probable," said Louis Blanc. "That old man has but one impulse—selfishness, and but one attachment—to his family—his family, because it is his. His purse and family have for years been his sole objects of love. To aggrandize his own has been for years his sole end and aim. He parcels out the thrones and kingdoms of Europe among his children as if it were but a family estate."

"What thoughtful selfishness!" exclaimed Flocon; "and at a moment, too, when he had but just escaped an awful death, and all around him flowed the blood and lay scattered the lacerated limbs of his faithful servants, either dead or dying with groans and shrieks of most agonizing torture, and all because of himself; how disgraceful that, at such a terrible moment, his first thought should have been of the few more francs his trembling hand was striving to tear from a people by whom he had already been made the richest man in Europe, and which the occurrence of this dreadful event might serve to win for him."

"Well," said Rollin, "whether this event aided to win the appanages and dotations, and was so designed, or not, it is very sure the aforesaid appanages and dotations were secured. No wonder that such attempts succeed each other so rapidly—one every year, at the least! When was the next, Louis—that of Alibaud, I think?"

"That took place about sunset on the 25th of June, '36," was the reply. "Alibaud discharged a walking-stick-gun at the King, as he left the Tuileries, on his way to Neuilly, at the corner of the Porte Royale. That Alibaud was a mere boy, and a very interesting and intelligent boy, too; but for some mysterious cause he did not find favor with the court, as did Fieschi. He evidently attempted the assassination from conviction, from a feeling of manifest destiny. After his failure, he only wished to die, and to die at once. All who have succeeded Alibaud have been but vulgar cut-throats."

"In what year was the insurrection of Armand Barbes and Martin Bernard?" asked Flocon. "That proved most disastrous to our cause."

"That was in '39, May, I think," answered Rollin. "Barbes, Blanqui and Bernard were arraigned as leaders. Marie and myself were advocates for Barbes. Blanqui was sentenced to death and Barbes to the galleys for life. But we obtained commutation of penalty for both."

"And where is to be the end of all these things?" asked Marrast, gloomily, as he continued pacing the chamber with folded arms, his head resting on his bosom. "Are the ten years on which we have now entered to be characterized by the fruitless efforts of the past? Are the people of France again, and again, and again to strike for freedom, only to be stricken into the dust and trampled beneath the armed heel of a despot's myrmidons? Are the streets of Lyons, Paris and Marseilles again to be drenched with the life-blood of their dwellers, poured out as freely as water and as fruitlessly? Are we all again, for full ten years, to toil, strive, struggle and suffer; to be hunted down like the vilest criminals, and, like criminals, plunged into the most pestilential dungeons; to be stripped like slaves of our hard-won earnings, and to be deprived of the most humble franchises of men claiming at all to be free; to be treated with scorn and contumely, and to be debarred the exercise of those common rights, which, like air and water, belong to all; I say, brothers, are all these scenes to be repeated during the ten years on which we have now entered, as they have been witnessed during the ten years now past?"

"You speak sadly, Armand," observed Rollin.

"Not so sadly as I feel. I have listened with attention to the recapitulation of the political events of the past ten years in France; and most plainly, and as sadly as plainly, does the result prove that every movement in our cause has been as premature as it has been unsuccessful."

"May we not gather wisdom, which shall conduct us to success in the future, from the very errors and disasters of the past?" remarked Flocon.

"Alas!" despondingly replied Marrast, "what is there in our present to promise a bright future more than was in our past to promise us a bright present? Our great leaders of another generation have all left us, one after another—all have dropped into their graves. The cold marble has closed over their venerable brows, and they rest well. Yet they died and made no sign of hope. On us, young, inexperienced and rash, has devolved their task; but the mantle of their power and virtue has not, alas! descended with that task to aid in its momentous accomplishment. General Lamarque's sun went down in clouds. Midnight, deeper than Egyptian darkness, brooded over the delirious deathbed of Lafayette. Armand Carrel fell without hope; and are we wiser than they? How often, oh! how often have I listened to the words of wisdom that fell from those eloquent lips, even as a boy reverently listens to a parent—for such was Armand Carrel to me. Upon this very spot have I stood, in that very chair has he sat, that chair, which, with mingled shame and pride, I reflect is now filled by me—shame, that it is filled in a manner so unworthy of him—pride, that I should have been deemed fit, after him to fill it at all—in that very chair, I say, has his noble form reclined, when he for hours, even from night till the next day's dawn, dwelt with sorrowful eloquence upon his country's present, and looked forward with gloomy foreboding and prediction for the future. It almost seems to me that this mighty shade is with us now!"

"And why was all this despondency, my dear Armand?" remarked Louis Blanc, mildly. "Was it not because our noble and gifted friend was essentially a soldier, not a civilian, not a statesman, not a revolutionist? Had Armand Carrel gone to Algeria, he would have died—if died he had not in an unknown duel, with an unknown bravo—he would have died a Marshal of France—a Bugeaud, a Chaugarnier, a Bedeau, a Cavaignac, a Clausel, a LamoriciÈre. Carrel had no faith in the masses to achieve a revolution. He never believed that they could even withstand a single charge of regular troops, much less repel and overcome it."

"Not even with barricades?" asked Rollin.

"Not even in defence of barricades," continued Louis Blanc.

"Regular troops have much to learn," added Rollin, with a significant smile. "They will see the day—aye! and we all shall see it and rejoice at its coming, despite all melancholy prognostications, when the people of Paris will dictate abdication to the king of the barricades, from the top of the barricades, the people's throne! Nor will that event tarry long!"

"I doubt it not, I doubt it not, Ledru!" exclaimed Louis Blanc, rejoiced that one of the youngest and least stable of their number appeared free from the apprehensions of one of the most influential and seemingly most reliable. "I accept the omen indicated by your enthusiasm. But I accounted for the vacillation and distrust of our lamented friend, Armand Carrel, by reverting to the fact that he relied entirely on regular troops, military skill, scientific tactics and severe subordination. Now, all of these belonged to our oppressors and none of them to us; and, inasmuch as he could not perceive that enthusiasm, passion for freedom, love of country and family, and the very wrath and rage of desperation itself sometimes not only supply the place of discipline, arms and the knowledge requisite to use them, but even enable vast masses to break down and crush beneath their heel the serried ranks of veteran troops, he could only despair at the prospects apparently before him. Besides, Armand Carrel, like all military men, was a man of action, not reflection—of execution, not contrivance—a soldier, not a conspirator. At the head of ten thousand veteran troops, he would have charged on thrice their number without discipline, with the confident assurance of sweeping them from his path as the chaff of the threshing floor is swept before the blast; but, with an undisciplined mob, as he contemptuously called the masses, he would have moved not a step. The larger the multitude, the less effective and the more impossible to manage he would have deemed it. A revolution accomplished by means of the three arms of the military service—artillery, cavalry and infantry—horse, foot and dragoons, he could readily conceive; but a revolution conducted to a successful issue only by means of pikes, axes, muskets and barricades, never, to the hour of his death, despite the victory of the Three Days, could Carrel comprehend."

"Besides," said Flocon, "it must not be forgotten that Armand Carrel, though a most devoted friend to Republicanism, was never a member of the SociÉtÉ des Droits de l'Homme—was never, as we all now are—a Communist, a Socialist, a Fourierist, a friend to the laborer. No wonder he hoped so little for the people, and trusted to accomplish so little through them."

"There can be no doubt that the social principle which Republicanism is now unconsciously assuming all over France," mildly remarked Louis Blanc, "is lending to the cause incalculable strength. How terribly impressed with a conviction of the justice of the cause in which they perished must have been the unhappy insurgents of Lyons, when, with this motto on their banner: 'To live toiling or die fighting,' they marched firmly up to the cannon's mouth and fought, and, thus fighting, fell. Yet this conviction is not peculiar to the workmen of Lyons. It pervades all Paris, all France, and needs only to be roused to act with an energy which no human power can resist. Social Republican will be the type of the next revolution in France—it must be. The French people have been dazzled by the mirage of liberty ever since '89,—but it has been only a mirage. On the last three days of July, '30, the people of Paris drove out one Bourbon to enthrone another. True, 'The State is myself,' was not the despotic motto he assumed, as did one of his successors, but it was 'Me and my family,' which has proved equally selfish, if not so absolute, and far more dangerous to freedom. With Lafayette and Benjamin Constant, the Citizen King they had made, quarreled as soon as on his throne, and Lafitte and Dupont de l'Eure, his supporters, were banished from the Court. Casimir Perier was called to crush the Liberals. Armand Carrel assailed the act, and urged a republic. 'Le National' was prosecuted, and insurrections followed. Thus was the Revolution of the Three Days won by the people to be seized and enjoyed by the Bourgeoisie. The next revolution will be won by the people, too, but the people will enjoy it!"

"And how progresses our principles, Louis, among the people?" asked Marrast, who had listened attentively to every word that had been uttered.

"Never so gloriously as now, Armand, never! Never has there been such a diffusion of information upon the subject of the rights of labor as now. Pagnerre tells me every day that volumes, tracts and pamphlets on this topic disappear like magic from his shelves."

"Has not the Minister a hand in this mysterious disappearance of Communist literature?" asked Rollin. "We all know he is quite frantic on the topic of popular education."

"Oh! yes, we all understand Guizot's love for the people! His system of education promulgated in 1833 was so very beautiful that it was almost a pity it was utterly impracticable. But Guizot has very little to do with Pagnerre's book-shelves, or with Pagnerre in any way, except to prosecute him from time to time for publishing Cormenin's withering tracts designed for the Minister himself, and yet it would almost seem there was a design to exhaust the market of the publications of our friends; only the great mass of them go to the provinces and large quantities abroad. My own little brochure, 'The Organization of Work,' after having fallen stillborn from the press, died a natural death and been laid out in state for a year or two on Pagnerre's shelves, all at once is resurrected, runs through half a dozen large editions, and is translated into half a dozen languages. The same is true of Lamartine's 'Vision of the Future,' and the same of Cormenin's tracts, and of the ten thousand brochures on this same subject of Communism in all its different shades and phrases, and in every variety of size, form and style of writing and appearance. These publications are adapted to every taste and comprehension. The workman is suited as well as the savant. All this savors of magic. Even my most sanguine anticipations are surpassed by reality. There will never long lack a supply for a demand, be that demand what it may. A demand for Fourier literature has turned all the pens in Paris hard at work upon it—novelists, essayists, pamphleteers—while the Porte St. Antoine, the Porte St. Martin and all the minor theatres, where are found the masses, swarm with melodramas, farces and vaudevilles on the same subject, and none of you have forgotten the powerful play, entitled 'The Laborer of Lyons,' attributed to M. DantÈs, recently produced with such success on the boards of the FranÇais itself."

"And who is this M. DantÈs," asked Ledru Rollin, "if you will suffer me to interrupt?"

"Decidedly the most remarkable man in the French Chamber of Deputies," replied Marrast. "In powers of natural eloquence I never saw his rival."

"Nor is that all," added Louis Blanc. "Unlike most men noted as mere orators, he is a sound logician, as well as a polished rhetorician. As a political economist he has few equals. To that subject he seems to have devoted much study, while his familiarity with the political history of France and of the times generally all over Christendom seems boundless. In debate, you observe he is never at a loss for fact or argument, let the discussion take what direction it may."

"And he has celebrity also as a writer, has he not?" asked Ledru Rollin.

"The author of 'The Laborer of Lyons' must be a man of distinguished literary genius," was the reply.

"Better than all," said Flocon, "he is devoted heart and soul to the good cause."

"Such devotedness to a cause I never witnessed," said Marrast. "He puts us all to the blush. With him it appears a matter of direct individual interest. He is perfectly untiring. He is like one impelled by his fate. Love or vengeance could not force onward a man to the attainment of an object more irresistibly than he seems forced, and that, too, without the slightest apparent stain of personal interest or ambition. That man appears to me a miracle—a pure philanthropist. He strives, struggles, suffers, sacrifices, and all with the sole object of ameliorating the condition of his race."

"It is, indeed, wonderful," said Rollin, thoughtfully. "Do you know, Marrast, anything of his past history?"

"Little, if anything. Of himself he never speaks, and I can gather nothing from others. Even his constituents had known nothing of him but a few months before he became their representative in the Chamber. His popularity with them he owes to his efforts to ameliorate their condition. At his own expense he established among them a Phalanstrie, which is now in most successful operation."

"He is rich, then?" asked Flocon.

"Seemingly not, to judge from his habits of life," replied Marrast. "Not a man in the Chamber is more Republican in garb, manner, equipage or residence than he, and yet he may be rich."

"Is he married?" asked Rollin.

"He has been, I am told," said Marrast. "But we interrupt you, Louis. You were alluding to the unusual influences now at work for our cause."

"I was about speaking of the newspaper press," said Louis Blanc. "Never has there been known such a revolution in favor of Reform and Communist journals, and to none is this better known than to some of ourselves. There's Flocon's new journal, 'La RÉforme,' that has leaped at once into a circulation never before achieved but by long years of toil and enterprise. The old 'National,' we need but to look around us to be sure, was never more prosperous than now, while I am free to confess that my journal, 'Le Bon Sens,' which has been a sickly child ever since its birth, has, within three months, tripled its number of readers, or, at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier FranÇais,' by Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives a marked increase in its patronage since it commenced that course, which sudden popularity naturally excites it to increase of zeal in the same path. Besides all this, an army of new papers, aiming to aid the great cause, have not only sprung up of late, like mushrooms, in Paris, but all over France, and even all over Europe; and so far appear they from interfering with each other's prospects that the more there are the better they seem sustained and the more ably conducted. A swarm of new and unknown writers for the press on this great subject seems all at once to have appeared from unseen hiding-places."

"This is very strange, Louis," said Marrast, "and yet it is, doubtless, very true. I had observed what you remark myself, although I have viewed the movement less hopefully for the cause of the Republic than you."

"Depend upon it, Armand," said Louis Blanc, smiling, "that Republicanism and Socialism are identical terms, as much so as Communism and despotism are antagonistic terms."

"But how do you account for this wonderful change, this unprecedented fever for Fourierism?" asked Flocon.

"I don't pretend to account for it at all. The merits of the cause have, perhaps, begun to be properly appreciated. Unusual efforts have been made by our friends of late. Whole nations and epochs are sometimes seized with a contagious mania for peculiar species of literature, as for everything else. But I will hint to you a suspicion which I have recently entertained, namely, that, after all, the rapid sale and ready market for every species of Fourier literature is not an unerring indication of the amount of reading of such literature, or the demand that actually exists of buyers as well as readers—individual ones at least. As for the journalistic literature, that I have learned is, without doubt, gratuitously distributed, to a great extent, among the masses."

"But can the masses read the papers?" asked Marrast.

"Each family, house, neighborhood, cafÉ or cabaret, at any rate, has, at least one reader," said Rollin; "and all the men, women and children have ears to hear, if not power to comprehend. But some of these papers, which I have seen, come down in style to the very humblest comprehension."

"Can it be," asked Flocon, "that there is such a club as a society for the diffusion of social knowledge in Paris, after the form of that in London, instituted by Lord Henry Brougham and his Whig coadjutors, for the diffusion of general information, and so opposed by the Tories."

"If there be such an association," said Louis Blanc, "it has managed to elude all my vigilance thus far, and that of the Government, too, for Guizot can perceive, if no one else can, the inevitable effect of all this, and he has no idea that the dear people of France shall be educated by any one save himself. But, actually, there seems to me to exist too much unity of purpose and action in this enterprise for it to be the work of an association. I should rather suppose one powerful and philanthropic mind at the head of the movement, were there not two things so plainly opposed to it as to forbid the idea—the first being that there is no one man in Europe who is rich enough to expend such immense sums upon such an enterprise, if he would, and the second that there is no man who has the subject sufficiently at heart to do it, if he could."