The History of a Crime. Victor Hugo

of a priest; he caused the mind to hesitate between the sword and the taper; he had in his eyes a sort of "Amen!"

      He had the best intentions in the world, but what could he do? Alone, without prestige, without true glory, without personal authority, and dragging Rome after him! He felt all this himself, and he was as it were paralyzed by it. As soon as they had appointed him he got upon a chair and thanked the Assembly, doubtless with a firm heart, but with hesitating speech. When the little fair-haired officer dared to look him in the face and insult him, he, holding the sword of the people, he, General of the sovereign Assembly, he only knew how to stammer out such wretched phrases as these, "I have just declared to you that we are unable, 'unless compelled and constrained,' to obey the order which prohibits us from remaining assembled together." He spoke of obeying, he who ought to command. They had girded him with his scarf, and it seemed to make him uncomfortable. He inclined his head alternately first to one shoulder and then to the other; he held his hat and cane in his hand, he had a benevolent aspect. A Legitimist member muttered in a low voice to his neighbor, "One might imagine he was a bailiff speechifying at a wedding." And his neighbor, a Legitimist also, replied, "He reminds me of the Duc d'Angoulême."

      What a contrast to Tamisier! Tamisier, frank, earnest confident, although a mere Captain of Artillery, had the bearing of a General. Had Tamisier, with his grave and gentle countenance, high intelligence, and dauntless heart, a species of soldier-philosopher, been better known, he could have rendered decisive services. No one can tell what would have happened if Providence had given the soul of Tamisier to Oudinot, or the epaulets of Oudinot to Tamisier.

      In this bloody enterprise of December we failed to find a General's uniform becomingly worn. A book might be written on the part which gold lace plays in the destiny of nations.

      Tamisier, appointed Chief of the Staff some instants before the invasion of the hall, placed himself at the disposal of the Assembly. He was standing on a table. He spoke with a resonant and hearty voice. The most downcast became reassured by this modest, honest, devoted attitude. Suddenly he drew himself up, and looking all that Royalist majority in the face, exclaimed, "Yes, I accept the charge you offer me. I accept the charge of defending the Republic! Nothing but the Republic! Do you perfectly understand?"

      A unanimous shout answered him. "Long live the Republic!"

      "Ah!" said Beslay, "the voice comes back to you as on the Fourth of May."

      "Long live the Republic! Nothing but the Republic!" repeated the men of the Right, Oudinot louder than the others. All arms were stretched towards Tamisier, every hand pressed his. Oh Danger! irresistible converter! In his last hour the Atheist invokes God, and the Royalist the Republic. They cling to that which they have repudiated.

      The official historians of the coup d'état have stated that at the beginning of the sitting two Representatives had been sent by the Assembly to the Ministry of the Interior to "negotiate." What is certain is that these two Representatives had no authority. They presented themselves, not on behalf of the Assembly, but in their own name. They offered themselves as intermediaries to procure a peaceable termination of the catastrophe which had begun. With an honesty which bordered on simplicity they summoned Morny to yield himself a prisoner, and to return within the law, declaring that in case of refusal the Assembly would do its duty, and call the people to the defence of the Constitution and of the Republic. Marny answered them with a smile, accompanied by these plain words, "If you appeal to arms, and if I find any Representatives on the barricades, I will have them all shot to the last man."

      The meeting in the Tenth Arrondissement yielded to force. President Vitet insisted that they should forcibly arrest him. A police agent who seized him turned pale and trembled. In certain circumstances, to lay violent hands upon a man is to lay them upon Right, and those who dare to do so are made to tremble by outraged Law. The exodus from the Mairie was long and beset with obstructions. Half-an-hour elapsed while the soldiers were forming a line, and while the Commissaries of Police, all the time appearing solely occupied with the care of driving back the crowd in the street, sent for orders to the Ministry of the Interior. During that time some of the Representatives, seated round a table in the great Hall, wrote to their families, to their wives, to their friends. They snatched up the last leaves of paper; the pens failed; M. de Luynes wrote to his wife a letter in pencil. There were no wafers; they were forced to send the letters unsealed; some soldiers offered to post them. M. Chambolle's son, who had accompanied his father thus far, undertook to take the letters addressed to Mesdames de Luynes, de Lasteyrie, and Duvergier de Hauranne. General Forey—the same who had refused a battalion to the President of the Constituent Assembly, Marrast, who had promoted him from a colonel to a general—General Forey, in the centre of the courtyard of the Mairie, his face inflamed, half drunk, coming out, they said, from breakfast at the Elysée, superintended the outrage. A member, whose name we regret we do not know, dipped his boot into the gutter and wiped it along the gold stripe of the regimental trousers of General Forey. Representative Lherbette came up to General Forey, and said to him, "General, you are a coward." Then turning to his colleagues, he exclaimed, "Do you hear? I tell this general that he is a coward." General Forey did not stir. He kept the mud on his uniform and the epithet on his cheek.