In presence of the fact of the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine so heroically constructed by the Representatives, so sadly neglected by the populace, the last illusions, even mine, should have been dispersed.  Baudin killed, the Faubourg cold.  Such things spoke aloud.  It was a supreme, manifest, absolute demonstration of that fact, the inaction of the people, to which I could not resign myself—­a deplorable inaction, if they understood, a self-treason, if they did not understand, a fatal neutrality in every case, a calamity of which all the responsibility, we repeat, recoiled not upon the people but upon those who in June, 1848, after having promised them amnesty, had refused it, and who had unhinged the great soul of the people of Paris by breaking faith with them.  What the Constituent Assembly had sown the Legislative Assembly harvested.  We, innocent of the fault, had to submit to the consequence.

The spark which we had seen flash for an instant through the crowd—­Michel de Bourges from the height of Bonvalet’s balcony, myself from the Boulevard du Temple—­this spark seemed extinguished.  Maigne firstly, then Brillier, then Bruckner, later on Charmaule, Madier de Montjau, Bastide, and Dulac came to report to us what had passed at the barricade of St. Antoine, the motives which had decided the Representatives present not to await the hour appointed for the rendezvous, and Baudin’s death.  The report which I made myself of what I had seen, and which Cassal and Alexander Rey completed by adding new circumstances, enabled us to ascertain the situation.  The Committee could no longer hesitate:  I myself renounced the hopes which I had based upon a grand manifestation, upon a powerful reply to the coup d’etat, upon a sort of pitched battle waged by the guardians of the Republic against the banditti of the Elysee.  The Faubourgs failed us; we possessed the lever—­Right, but the mass to be raised, the People, we did not possess.  There was nothing more to hope for, as those two great orators, Michel de Bourges and Jules Favre, with their keen political perception, had declared from the first, save a slow long struggle, avoiding decisive engagements, changing quarters, keeping Paris on the alert, saying to each, It is not at an end; leaving time for the departments to prepare their resistance, wearying the troops out, and in which struggle the Parisian people, who do not long smell powder with impunity, would perhaps ultimately take fire.  Barricades raised everywhere, barely defended, re-made immediately, disappearing and multiplying themselves at the same time, such was the strategy indicated by the situation.  The Committee adopted it, and sent orders in every direction to this effect.  At that moment we were sitting at No. 15, Rue Richelieu, at the house of our colleague Grevy, who had been arrested in the Tenth Arrondissement on the preceding day, who was at Mazas.  His brother had offered us his house for our deliberations.