He was a conscript.  The ball had entered his side.  Through his gray overcoat buttoned to the collar, could be seen a hole stained with blood.  His head had sunk on his shoulder, his pale countenance, encircled by the chinstrap of his shako, had no longer any expression, the blood oozed out of his mouth.  He seemed barely eighteen years old.  Already a soldier and still a boy.  He was dead.

This poor soldier was the first victim of the coup d’etat.  Baudin was the second.

Before being a Republican Baudin had been a tutor.  He came from that intelligent and brave race of schoolmasters ever persecuted, who have fallen from the Guizot Law into the Falloux Law, and from the Falloux Law into the Dupanloup Law.  The crime of the schoolmaster is to hold a book open; that suffices, the Church condemns him.  There is now, in France, in each village, a lighted torch—­the schoolmaster—­and a mouth which blows upon it—­the cure.  The schoolmasters of France, who knew how to die of hunger for Truth and for Science, were worthy that one of their race should be killed for Liberty.

The first time that I saw Baudin was at the Assembly on January 13, 1850.  I wished to speak against the Law of Instruction.  I had not put my name down; Baudin’s name stood second.  He offered me his turn.  I accepted, and I was able to speak two days afterwards, on the 15th.

Baudin was one of the targets of Sieur Dupin, for calls to order and official annoyances.  He shared this honor with the Representatives Miot and Valentin.

Baudin ascended the Tribune several times.  His mode of speaking, outwardly hesitating, was energetic in the main.  He sat on the crest of the Mountain.  He had a firm spirit and timid manners.  Thence there was in his constitution an indescribable embarrassment, mingled with decision.  He was a man of middle height.  His face ruddy and full, his broad chest, his wide shoulders announced the robust man, the laborer-schoolmaster, the peasant-thinker.  In this he resembled Bourzat.  Baudin leaned his head on his shoulder, listened with intelligence, and spoke with a gentle and grave voice.  He had the melancholy air and the bitter smile of the doomed.

On the evening of the Second of December I had asked him, “How old are you?” He had answered me, “Not quite thirty-three years.”

“And you?” said he.

“Forty-nine.”

And he replied,—­

“To-day we are of the same age.”

He thought in truth of that to-morrow which awaited us, and in which was hidden that “perhaps” which is the great leveller.

The first shots had been fired, a Representative had fallen, and the people did not rise!  What bandage had they on their eyes, what weight had they on their hearts?  Alas! the gloom which Louis Bonaparte had known how to cast over his crime, far from lifting, grew denser.  For the first time in the sixty years, that the Providential era of Revolutions had been open, Paris, the city of intelligence, seemed not to understand!