The Cafe Roysin had just opened.  It may be remembered that the large hall of this cafe had served for the meeting of a famous club in 1848.  It was there, it may also be remembered, that the rendezvous had been settled.

The Cafe Roysin is entered by a passage opening out upon the street, a lobby of some yards in length is next crossed, and then comes a large hall, with high windows, and looking-glasses on the walls, containing in the centre several billiard-tables, some small marble-topped tables, chairs, and velvet-covered benches.  It was this hall, badly arranged, however, for a meeting where we could have deliberated, which had been the hall of the Roysin Club.  Cournet, Aubry, and Malardier installed themselves there.  On entering they did not disguise who they were; they were welcomed, and shown an exit through the garden in case of necessity.

De Flotte had just joined them.

Eight o’clock was striking when the Representatives began to arrive.  Bruckner, Maigne, and Brillier first, and then successively Charamaule, Cassal, Dulac, Bourzat, Madier de Montjau, and Baudin.  Bourzat, on account of the mud, as was his custom, wore wooden shoes.  Whoever thought Bourzat a peasant would be mistaken.  He rather resembled a Benedictine monk.  Bourzat, with his southern imagination, his quick intelligence, keen, lettered, refined, possesses an encyclopedia in his head, and wooden shoes on his feet.  Why not?  He is Mind and People.  The ex-Constituent Bastide came in with Madier de Montjau.  Baudin shook the hands of all with warmth, but he did not speak.  He was pensive.  “What is the matter with you, Baudin?” asked Aubry (du Nord).  “Are you mournful?” “I?” said Baudin, raising his head, “I have never been more happy.”

Did he feel himself already chosen?  When we are so near death, all radiant with glory, which smiles upon us through the gloom, perhaps we are conscious of it.

A certain number of men, strangers to the Assembly, all as determined as the Representatives themselves, accompanied them and surrounded them.

Cournet was the leader.  Amongst them there were workmen, but no blouses.  In order not to alarm the middle classes the workmen had been requested, notably those employed by Derosne and Cail, to come in coats.

Baudin had with him a copy of the Proclamation which I had dictated to him on the previous day.  Cournet unfolded it and read it.  “Let us at once post it up in the Faubourg,” said he.  “The People must know that Louis Bonaparte is outlawed.”  A lithographic workman who was there offered to print it without delay.  All the Representatives present signed it, and they added my name to their signatures.  Aubry (du Nord) headed it with these words, “National Assembly.”  The workman carried off the Proclamation, and kept his word.  Some hours afterwards Aubry (du Nord), and later on a friend of Cournet’s named Gay, met him in the Faubourg du Temple paste-pot