“WE, PREFECT OF THE POLICE,

  “Decree as follows:—­

  “ARTICLE I. All meetings are rigorously prohibited.  They will be
  immediately dispersed by force.

  “ARTICLE II.  All seditious shouts, all reading in public, all posting
  of political documents not emanating from a regularly constituted
  authority, are equally prohibited.

  “ARTICLE III.  The agents of the Public Police will enforce the execution
  of the present decree.

  “Given at the Prefecture of Police, December 3, 1851.

  “DE MAUPAS, Prefect of Police.

  “Seen and approved,

  “DE MORNY, Minister of the Interior.”

On another could be read,—­

  “THE MINISTER OF WAR,

  “By virtue of the Law on the State of Siege,

  “Decrees:—­

  “Every person taken constructing or defending a barricade, or carrying
  arms, WILL BE SHOT.

  “General of Division,

  “Minister of war,

  “DE SAINT-ARNAUD.”

We reproduce this Proclamation exactly, even to the punctuation.  The words “Will be shot” were in capital letters in the placards signed “De Saint-Arnaud.”

The Boulevards were thronged with an excited crowd.  The agitation increasing in the centre reached three Arrondissements, the 6th, 7th, and the 12th.  The district of the schools began to disorderly.  The Students of Law and of Medicine cheered De Flotte on the Place de Pantheon.  Madier de Montjau, ardent and eloquent, went through and aroused Belleville.  The troops, growing more numerous every moment, took possession of all the strategical points of Paris.

At one o’clock, a young man was brought to us by the legal adviser of the Workmen’s Societies, the ex-Constituent Leblond, at whose house the Committee had deliberated that morning.  We were sitting in permanence, Carnot, Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges, and myself.  This young man, who had an earnest mode of speaking and an intelligent countenance, was named King.  He had been sent to us by the Committee of the Workmen’s Society, from whom he was delegated.  “The Workmen’s Societies,” he said to us, “place themselves at the disposal of the Committee of Legal Insurrection appointed by the Left.  They can throw into the struggle five or six thousand resolute men.  They will manufacture powder; as for guns, they will be found.”  The Workmen’s Society requested from us an order to fight signed by us.  Jules Favre took a pen and wrote,—­“The undersigned Representatives authorize Citizen King and his friends to defend with them, and with arms in their hands, Universal Suffrage, the Republic, the Laws.”  He dated it, and we all four signed it.  “That is enough,” said the delegate to us, “you will hear of us.”

Two hours afterwards it was reported to us that the conflict had begun.  They were fighting in the Rue Aumaire.

[10] A typographical error—­it should read “Article LXVIII.”  On the subject of this placard the author of this book received the following letter.  It does honor to those who wrote it:—­