During the morning everything at and in the neighbourhood of the Mairie of the Eighth Arrondissement was relatively calm, and the steps to maintain order taken the previous day with the approval of M. Ernest Moreau appeared to have assured the security of the quarter.* I thought I might leave the Place Royale and repair towards the centre of the city with my son Victor. The restlessness and agitation of a people (of the people of Paris!) on the morrow of a revolution was a spectacle that had an irresistible attraction for me.

* On the evening of the 24th, there had been reason to apprehend disturbances in the Eighth Arrondissement, disturbances particularly serious in that they would not have been of a political character. The prowlers and evil-doers with hang-dog mien who seem to issue from the earth in times of trouble were very much in evidence in the streets. At the Prison of La Force, in the Rue Saint Antoine, the common law criminals had begun a revolt by locking up their keepers. To what public force could appeal be made? The Municipal Guard had been disbanded, the army was confined to barracks; as to the police, no one would have known where to find them. Victor Hugo, in a speech which this time was cheered, confided life and property to the protection and devotedness of the people. A civic guard in blouses was improvised. Empty shops that were to let were transformed into guard houses, patrols were organized and sentries posted. The rebellious prisoners at La Force, terrified by the assertion that cannon (which did not exist) had been brought to bear upon the prison and that unless they surrendered promptly and unconditionally they would be blown sky-high, submitted quietly and returned to work.

The weather was cloudy, but mild, and the rain held off. The streets were thrilling with a noisy, joyous crowd. The people continued with incredible ardour to fortify the barricades that had already been constructed, and even to build new ones. Bands of them with flags flying and drums beating marched about shouting “Long live the Republic!” and singing the “Marseillaise and Die for the Fatherland!” The cafÉs were crowded to overflowing, but many of the shops were closed, as on holidays; and, indeed, the city did present a holiday appearance.

I made my way along the quays to the Pont Neuf. There, at the bottom of a proclamation I read the name of Lamartine, and having seen the people, I experienced the desire to see my great friend. I therefore turned back with Victor towards the Hotel de Ville.

As on the previous day, the square in front of the building was filled with a crowd, and the crowd was so compact that it immobilized itself. It was impossible to approach the steps of the front entrance. After several attempts to get somewhere near to them, I was about to force my way back out of the crowd when I was perceived by M. Froment-Meurice, the artist-goldsmith, brother of my young friend, Paul Meurice. He was a major of the National Guard, and on duty with his battalion at the Hotel de Ville. “Make way!” he shouted authoritatively. “Make way for Victor Hugo!” And the human wall opened, how I do not know, before his epaulettes.

The entrance once passed, M. Froment-Meurice guided us up all sorts of stairways, and through corridors and rooms encumbered with people. As we were passing a man came from a group, and planting himself in front of me, said: “Citizen Victor Hugo, shout ‘Long live the Republic!’”

“I will shout nothing by order,” said I. “Do you understand what liberty is? For my part, I practise it. I will shout to-day ‘Long live the people!’ because it pleases me to do so. The day when I shout ‘Long live the Republic!’ it will be because I want to.”

“Hear! hear! He is right,” murmured several voices.

And we passed on.

After many detours M. Froment-Meurice ushered us into a small room where he left us while he went to inform Lamartine that I wished to see him.

The glass door of the room gave on to a gallery, passing along which I saw my friend David d’Angers, the great statuary. I called to him. David, who was an old-time Republican, was beaming. “Ah! my friend, what a glorious day!” he exclaimed. He told me that the Provisional Government had appointed him Mayor of the Eleventh Arrondissement. “They have sent for you for something of the same kind, I suppose?” he said. “No,” I answered, “I have not been sent for. I came of my own accord just to shake Lamartine’s hand.”

M. Froment-Meurice returned and announced that Lamartine awaited me. I left Victor in the room, telling him to wait there till I came back, and once more followed my obliging guide through more corridors that led to a vestibule that was crowded with people. “They are all office seekers!” explained M. Froment-Meurice. The Provisional Government was holding a session in the adjoining room. The door was guarded by two armed grenadiers of the National Guard, who were impassible, and deaf alike to entreaties and menaces. I had to force my way through this crowd. One of the grenadiers, on the lookout for me, opened the door a little way to let me in. The crowd immediately made a rush and tried to push past the sentries, who, however, aided by M. Froment-Meurice, forced them back and closed the door behind me.

I was in a spacious hall that formed the angle of one of the pavilions of the Hotel de Ville, and was lighted on two sides by long windows. I would have preferred to find Lamartine alone, but there were with him, dispersed about the room and talking to friends or writing, three or four of his colleagues in the Provisional Government, Arago, Marie, and Armand Marrast. Lamartine rose as I entered. On his frock-coat, which was buttoned up as usual, he wore an ample tri-colour sash, slung across his shoulder. He advanced to meet me, and stretching out his hand, exclaimed: “Ah! you have come over to us! Victor Hugo is a strong recruit indeed for the Republic.”

“Not so fast, my friend,” said I with a laugh. “I have come simply to see my friend Lamartine. Perhaps you are not aware of the fact that yesterday while you were opposing the Regency in the Chamber, I was defending it in the Place de la Bastille.”

“Yesterday, that was all right; but to-day? There is now neither Regency nor Royalty. It is impossible that Victor Hugo is not at heart Republican.”

“In principle, yes, I am. The Republic is, in my opinion, the only rational form of government, the only one worthy of the nations. The universal Republic is inevitable in the natural course of progress. But has its hour struck in France? It is because I want the Republic that I want it to be durable and definitive. You are going to consult the nation, are you not?—the whole nation?”

“The whole nation, assuredly. We of the Provisional Government are all for universal suffrage.”

At this moment Arago came up to us with M. Armand Marrast, who held a folded paper in his hand.

“My dear friend,” said Lamartine, “know that this morning we selected you for Mayor of your arrondissement.”

“And here is the patent signed by us all,” said Armand Marrast.

“I thank you,” said I, “but I cannot accept it.”

“Why?” continued Arago. “These are non-political and purely gratuitous functions.”

“We were informed just now about the attempted revolt at La Force,” added Lamartine. “You did better than suppress it, you forestalled it. You are loved and respected in your arrondissement.”

“My authority is wholly moral,” I rejoined; “it could but lose weight in becoming official. Besides, on no account would I dispossess M. Ernest Moreau, who has borne himself loyally and valiantly throughout this trouble.”

Lamartine and Arago insisted: “Do not refuse our brevet.”

“Very well,” said I, “I will take it—for the sake of the autographs; but it is understood that I keep it in my pocket.”

“Yes, keep it,” said Armand Marrast laughingly, “so that you can say that one day you were pair and the next day maire.”

Lamartine took me aside into the recess of a window.

“It is not a mairie I would like you to have, but a ministry. Victor Hugo, the Republic’s Minister of Instruction! Come now, since you say that you are Republican!”

“Republican—in principle. But in fact, I was yesterday peer of France, I was yesterday for the Regency, and, believing the Republic to be premature, I should be also for the Regency to-day.”

“Nations are above dynasties,” went on Lamartine. “I, too, have been a Royalist.”

“Yes, but you were a deputy, elected by the nation; I was a peer, appointed by the King.”

“The King in choosing you, under the terms of the Constitution, in one of the categories from which the Upper House was recruited, but honoured the peerage and also honoured himself.”

“I thank you,” said I, “but you look at things from the outside; I consider them in my conscience.”

We were interrupted by the noise of a prolonged fusillade which broke out suddenly on the square. A bullet smashed a window-pane above our heads.

“What is the matter now?” exclaimed Lamartine in sorrowful tones.

M. Armand Marrast and M. Marie went out to see what was going on.

“Ah! my friend,” continued Lamartine, “how heavy is this revolutionary power to bear! One has to assume such weighty and such sudden responsibilities before one’s conscience and in presence of history! I do not know how I have been living during the past ten days. Yesterday I had a few grey hairs; to-morrow they will be white.”

“Yes, but you are doing your duty as a man of genius grandly,” I commented.

In a few minutes M. Armand Marrast returned.

“It was not against us,” he said. “How the lamentable affray came about could not be explained to me. There was a collision, the rifles went off, why? Was it a misunderstanding, was it a quarrel between Socialists and Republicans? No one knows.”

“Are there any wounded?”

“Yes, and dead, too.”

A gloomy silence followed. I rose. “You have no doubt some measures to take?” I said.

“What measures?” answered Lamartine. “This morning we resolved to decree what you have already been able to do on a small scale in your quarter: the organization of the citizen’s National Guard—every Frenchman a soldier as well as a voter. But time is required, and meanwhile—” he pointed to the waves and eddies of heads surging on the square outside—“look, it is the sea!”

A boy wearing an apron entered and spoke to him in low tones.

“Ah! very good!” said Lamartine, “it is my luncheon. Will you share it with me, Hugo?”

“Thanks, I have already lunched.”

“I haven’t and I am dying of hunger. At least come and look on at the feast; I will let you go, afterwards.”

He showed me into a room that gave on to an interior court-yard. A gentle faced young man who was writing at a table rose and was about to withdraw. He was the young workman whom Louis Blanc had had attached to the Provisional Government.

“Stay where you are, Albert,” said Lamartine, “I have nothing of a private nature to say to Victor Hugo.”

We saluted each other, M. Albert and I.

The little waiter showed Lamartine a table upon which were some mutton cutlets in an earthenware dish, some bread, a bottle of wine and a glass. The whole came from a wine-shop in the neighbourhood.

“Well,” exclaimed Lamartine, “what about a knife and fork?”

“I thought you had knives and forks here,” returned the boy. “I had trouble enough to bring the luncheon, and if I have got to go and fetch knives and forks—”

“Pshaw!” said Lamartine, “one must take things as they come!”

He broke the bread, took a cutlet by the bone and tore the meat with his teeth. When he had finished he threw the bone into the fireplace. In this manner he disposed of three cutlets, and drank two glasses of wine.

“You will agree with me that this is a primitive repast!” he said. “But it is an improvement on our supper last night. We had only bread and cheese among us, and we all drank water from the same chipped sugar-bowl. Which didn’t, it appears, prevent a newspaper this morning from denouncing the great orgy of the Provisional Government!”

I did not find Victor in the room where he was to have waited for me. I supposed that, having become tired of waiting, he had returned home alone.

When I issued on to the Place de GrÈve the crowd was still excited and in a state of consternation at the inexplicable collision that had occurred an hour before. The body of a wounded man who had just expired was carried past me. They told me that it was the fifth. It was taken, as the other bodies had been taken, to the Salle Saint Jean, where the dead of the previous day to the number of over a hundred had been exposed.

Before returning to the Place Royale I made a tour for the purpose of visiting our guard-houses. Outside the Minimes Barracks a boy of about fifteen years, armed with the rifle of a soldier of the line, was proudly mounting guard. It seemed to me that I had seen him there in the morning or the day before.

“What!” I said, “are you doing sentry duty again?”

“No, not again; I haven’t yet been relieved.”

“You don’t say so. Why, how long have you been here?”

“Oh, about seventeen hours!”

“What! haven’t you slept? Haven’t you eaten?”

“Yes, I have had something to eat.”

“You went to get it, of course?”

“No, I didn’t, a sentry does not quit his post! This morning I shouted to the people in the shop across the way that I was hungry, and they brought me some bread.”

I hastened to have the brave child relieved from duty.

On arriving in the Place Royale I inquired for Victor. He had not returned. I was seized with a shudder of fear. I do not know why the vision of the dead who had been transported to the Salle Saint Jean should have come into my mind. What if my Victor had been caught in that bloody affray? I gave some pretext for going out again. Vacquerie was there; I told him of my anguish in a whisper, and he offered to accompany me.

First of all we called upon M. Froment-Meurice, whose establishment was in the Rue Lobau, next to the Hotel de Ville, and I asked him to have me admitted to the Salle Saint Jean. At first he sought to dissuade me from seeing the hideous sight; he had seen it the previous day and was still under the impression of the horror it inspired. I fancied his reluctance was a bad sign, that he was trying to keep something from me. This made me insist the more, and we went.

In the large Salle Saint Jean, transformed into a vast morgue, lay the long line of corpses upon camp bedsteads. For the most part they were unrecognisable. And I held the dreadful review, quaking in my shoes when one of the dead was young and slim with chestnut hair. Yes, the spectacle of the poor blood-stained dead was horrible indeed! But I could not describe it; all that I saw of each body was that it was not that of my child. At length I reached the last one, and breathed freely once more.

As I issued from the lugubrious place I saw Victor, very much alive, running towards me. When he heard the firing he had left the room where he was waiting for me, and not being able to find his way back, had been to see a friend.