Towards half-past five the fiacres which were in waiting were called up, and all started, each with his instructions.

During this time, in another corner of Paris—­the old Rue du Temple—­in that ancient Soubise Mansion which had been transformed into a Royal Printing Office, and is to-day a National Printing Office, another section of the Crime was being organized.

Towards one in the morning a passer-by who had reached the old Rue du Temple by the Rue de Vieilles-Haudriettes, noticed at the junction of these two streets several long and high windows brilliantly lighted up, These were the windows of the work-rooms of the National Printing Office.  He turned to the right and entered the old Rue du Temple, and a moment afterwards paused before the crescent-shaped entrance of the front of the printing-office.  The principal door was shut, two sentinels guarded the side door.  Through this little door, which was ajar, he glanced into the courtyard of the printing-office, and saw it filled with soldiers.  The soldiers were silent, no sound could be heard, but the glistening of their bayonets could be seen.  The passer-by surprised, drew nearer.  One of the sentinels thrust him rudely back, crying out, “Be off.”

Like the sergents de ville at the Prefecture of Police, the workmen had been retained at the National Printing Office under plea of night-work.  At the same time that M. Hippolyte Prevost returned to the Legislative Palace, the manager of the National Printing Office re-entered his office, also returning from the Opera Comique, where he had been to see the new piece, which was by his brother, M. de St. Georges.  Immediately on his return the manager, to whom had come an order from the Elysee during the day, took up a pair of pocket pistols, and went down into the vestibule, which communicates by means of a few steps with the courtyard.  Shortly afterwards the door leading to the street opened, a fiacre entered, a man who carried a large portfolio alighted.  The manager went up to the man, and said to him, “Is that you, Monsieur de Beville?”

“Yes,” answered the man.

The fiacre was put up, the horses placed in a stable, and the coachman shut up in a parlor, where they gave him drink, and placed a purse in his hand.  Bottles of wine and louis d’or form the groundwork of this hind of politics.  The coachman drank and then went to sleep.  The door of the parlor was bolted.

The large door of the courtyard of the printing-office was hardly shut than it reopened, gave passage to armed men, who entered in silence, and then reclosed.  The arrivals were a company of the Gendarmerie Mobile, the fourth of the first battalion, commanded by a captain named La Roche d’Oisy.  As may be remarked by the result, for all delicate expeditions the men of the coup d’etat took care to employ the Gendarmerie Mobile and the Republican Guard, that it is to say the two corps almost entirely composed of former Municipal Guards, bearing at heart a revengeful remembrance of the events of February.