The Memoirs of Victor Hugo - Victor Hugo (free reads .txt) 📗

our ears. Insurgents in the Place du Carrousel are firing upon the court carriages leaving the stables. One of the coachmen has been killed on his box.

“It would be too stupid of us to stay here looking on and get ourselves killed,” says M. Ernest Moreau. “Let us cross the bridge.”

We skirt the Institute and the Quai de la Monnaie. At the Pont Neuf we pass a band of men armed with pikes, axes and rifles, headed by a drummer, and led by a man brandishing a sabre and wearing a long coat of the King’s livery. It is the coat of the coachman who has just been killed in the Rue Saint Thomas du Louvre.

When we arrive, M. Moreau and I, at the Place Royale we find it filled with an anxious crowd. We are immediately surrounded and questioned, and it is not without some difficulty that we reach the Mairie. The mass of people is too compact to admit of our addressing them in the Place. I ascend, with the Mayor, a few officers of the National Guard and two students of the Ecole Polytechnique, to the balcony of the Mairie. I raise my hand, the crowd becomes silent as though by magic, and I say:

“My friends, you are waiting for news. This is what we know: M. Thiers is no longer Minister and Marshal Bugeaud is no longer in command (applause). They have been replaced by Marshal Gerard and M. Odilon Barrot (applause, but less general). The Chamber has been dissolved. The King has abdicated (general cheering). The Duchess d’Orleans is Regent.” (A few isolated bravos, mingled with low murmurs.)

I continue:

“The name of Odilon Barrot is a guarantee that the widest and most open appeal will be made to the nation; and that you will have in all sincerity a representative government.”

My declaration is responded to with applause from several points, but it appears evident that the great bulk of the crowd is uncertain as to what view of the situation they ought to take, and are not satisfied.

We re-enter the hall of the Mairie.

“Now,” I say to M. Ernest Moreau, “I must go and proclaim the news in the Place de la Bastille.”

But the Mayor is discouraged.

“You can very well see that it is useless,” he says sadly. “The Regency is not accepted. And you have spoken here in a quarter where you are known and loved. At the Bastille your audience will be the revolutionary people of the faubourg, who will perhaps harm you.”

I will go,” I say, “I promised Odilon Barrot that I would.”

“I have changed my hat,” the Mayor goes on, “but remember my hat of this morning.”

“This morning the army and the people were face to face, and there was danger of a conflict; now, however, the people are alone, the people are the masters.”

“Masters—and hostile; have a care!”

“No matter, I have promised, and I will keep my promise.

I tell the Mayor that his place is at the Mairie and that he ought to stay there. But several National Guard officers present themselves spontaneously and offer to accompany me, among them the excellent M. Launaye, my former captain. I accept their friendly offer, and we form a little procession and proceed by the Rue du Pas de la Mule and the Boulevard Beaumarchais towards the Place de la Bastille.

 

Here are a restless, eager crowd in which workingmen predominate, many of them armed with rifles taken from the barracks or given up to them by the soldiers; shouts and the song of the Girondins: “Die for the fatherland!” numerous groups debating and disputing passionately. They turn round, they look at us, they interrogate us:

“What’s the news? What is going on?” And they follow us. I hear my name mentioned coupled with various sentiments: “Victor Hugo! It’s Victor Hugo!” A few salute me. When we reach the Column of July we are surrounded by a considerable gathering. In order that I may be heard I mount upon the base of the column.

I will only repeat the words which it was possible for me to make my turbulent audience hear. It was much less a speech than a dialogue, but the dialogue of one voice with ten, twenty, a hundred voices more or less hostile.

I began by announcing at once the abdication of Louis Philippe, and, as in the Place Royale, applause that was practically unanimous greeted the news. There were also, however, cries of “No! no abdication, deposition! deposition!” Decidedly, I was going to have my hands full.

When I announced the Regency violent protests arose:

“No! no! No Regency! Down with the Bourbons! Neither King nor Queen! No masters!”

I repeated: “No masters! I don’t want them any more than you do. I have defended liberty all my life.”

“Then why do you proclaim the Regency?”

“Because a Queen-Regent is not a master. Besides, I have no right whatever to proclaim the Regency; I merely announce it.”

“No! no! No Regency!”

A man in a blouse shouted: “Let the peer of France be silent. Down with the peer of France!” And he levelled his rifle at me. I gazed at him steadily, and raised my voice so loudly that the crowd became silent: “Yes, I am a peer of France, and I speak as a peer of France. I swore fidelity, not to a royal personage, but to the Constitutional Monarchy. As long as no other government is established it is my duty to be faithful to this one. And I have always thought that the people approved of a man who did his duty, whatever that duty might be.”

There was a murmur of approbation and here and there a few bravos. But when I endeavoured to continue: “If the Regency—” the protests redoubled. I was permitted to take up only one of these protests. A workman had shouted: “We will not be governed by a woman.” I retorted quickly:

“Well, neither will I be governed by a woman, nor even by a man. It was because Louis Philippe wanted to govern that his abdication is to-day necessary and just. But a woman who reigns in the name of a child! Is that not a guarantee against all thought of personal government? Look at Queen Victoria in England—”

“We are French, we are!” shouted several voices. “No Regency!”

“No Regency? Then, what? Nothing is ready, nothing! It means a total upheaval, ruin, distress, civil war, perhaps; in any case, it is the unknown.”

One voice, a single voice, cried: “Long live the Republic!”

No other voice echoed it. Poor, great people, irresponsible and blind! They know what they do not want, but they do not know what they do want.

From this moment the noise, the shouts, the menaces became such that I gave up the attempt to get myself heard. My brave Launaye said: “You have done what you wanted to, what you promised to do; the only thing that remains for us to do is to withdraw.”

The crowd opened before us, curious and inoffensive. But twenty paces from the column the man who had threatened me with his rifle came up with us and again levelled his weapon at me, shouting: “Down with the peer of France!” “No, respect the great man!” cried a young workman, who, with a quick movement, pushed the rifle downward. I thanked this unknown friend with a wave of the hand and passed on.

At the Mairie, M. Ernest Moreau, who it appears had been very anxious about us, received us with joy and cordially congratulated me. But I knew that even when their passions are aroused the people are just; and not the slightest credit was due to me, for I had not been uneasy in the least.

 

While these things were happening in the Place de la Bastille, this is what was taking place at the Palais Bourbon:

There is at this moment a man whose name is in everybody’s mouth and the thought of whom is in everybody’s mind; that man is Lamartine. His eloquent and vivid History of the Girondins has for the first time taught the Revolution to France. Hitherto he had only been illustrious; he has become popular and may be said to hold Paris in his hand.

In the universal confusion his influence could be decisive. This is what they said to themselves in the offices of the National, where the possible chances of the Republic had been weighed, and where a scheme for a provisional government had been sketched, from which Lamartine had been left out. In 1842, at the time of the debate over the Regency which resulted in the choice of the Duke de Nemours, Lamartine had pleaded warmly for the Duchess d’Orleans. Was he imbued with the same ideas to-day? What did he want? What would he do? It was necessary that this should be ascertained. M. Armand Marrast, the editor-in-chief of the National, took with him three notorious Republicans, M. Bastide, M. Hetzel, the publisher, and M. Bocage, the eminent comedian who created the role of Didier in “Marion de Lorme.” All four went to the Chamber of Deputies. They found Lamartine there and held a conference with him in one of the offices.

They all spoke in turn, and expressed their convictions and hopes. They would be happy to think that Lamartine was with them for the immediate realization of the Republic. If, however, he judged that the transition of the Regency was necessary they asked him to at least aid them in obtaining serious guarantees against any retrogression. They awaited with emotion his decision in this great matter.

Lamartine listened to their reasons in silence, then requested them to allow him a few minutes for reflection. He sat apart from them at a table, leaned his head upon his hands, and thought. His four visitors, standing and silent, gazed at him respectfully. It was a solemn moment. “We listened to history passing,” said Bocage to me.

Lamartine raised his head and said: “I will oppose the Regency.”

A quarter of an hour later the Duchess d’Orleans arrived at the Chamber holding by the hand her two sons, the Count de Paris and the Duke de Chartres. M. Odilon. Barrot was not with her. The Duke de Nemours accompanied her.

She was acclaimed by the deputies. But, the Chamber having been dissolved, were there any deputies?

M. Cr�mieux ascended the tribune and flatly proposed a provisional government. M. Odilon Barrot, who had been fetched from the Ministry of the Interior, made his appearance at last and pleaded for the Regency, but without �clat and without energy. Suddenly a mob of people and National Guards with arms and flags invaded the chamber. The Duchess d’Orleans, persuaded by her friends, withdrew with her children.

The Chamber of Deputies then vanished, submerged by a sort of revolutionary assembly. Ledru-Rollin harangued this crowd. Next came Lamartine, who was awaited and acclaimed. He opposed the Regency, as he had promised.

That settled it. The names for a provisional government were proposed to the people. And by shouts of “yes” or “no” the people elected successively: Lamartine, Dupont de l’Eure, Arago, and Ledru-Rollin unanimously, Cr�mieux, Gamier-Pages, and Marie by a majority.

The new ministers at once set out for the Hotel de Ville.

At the Chamber of Deputies not once was the word “Republic” uttered in any of the speeches of the orators, not even in that of Ledru-Rollin. But now, outside, in the street, the elect of the people heard this words this shout, everywhere. It flew from mouth to mouth and filled the air of Paris.

The seven men who, in these supreme and extreme days, held the destiny of France in their hands were themselves at once tools and playthings in the hands of the mob, which is not the