“CITIZEN VICTOR HUGO,—­We know that you have made an appeal to arms.  We have not been able to obtain it.  We replace it by these bills which we sign with your name.  You will not disown us.  When France is in danger your name belongs to all; your name is a Public Power.

  “FELIX BONY.

  “DABAT.”

CHAPTER V.

BAUDINS’S CORPSE

With regard to the Faubourg St. Antoine, we had, as I said, lost nearly all hope, but the men of the coup d’etat had not lost all uneasiness.  Since the attempts at rising and the barricades of the morning a rigorous supervision had been organized.  Any one who entered the Faubourg ran the risk of being examined, followed, and upon the slightest suspicion, arrested.  The supervision was nevertheless sometimes at fault.  About two o’clock a short man, with an earnest and attentive air, crossed the Faubourg.  A sergent de ville and a police agent in plain clothes barred his passage.  “Who are you?” “You seem a passenger.”  “Where are you going?” “Over there, close by, to Bartholome’s, the overseer of the sugar manufactory.—­” They search him.  He himself opened his pocket-book; the police agents turned out the pockets of his waistcoat and unbuttoned his shirt over his breast; finally the sergent de ville said gruffly, “Yet I seem to have seen you here before this morning.  Be off!” It was the Representative Gindrier.  If they had not stopped at the pockets of his waistcoat—­and if they had searched his great-coat, they would have found his sash there—­Gindrier would have been shot.

Not to allow themselves to be arrested, to keep their freedom for the combat—­such was the watchword of the members of the Left.  That is why we had our sashes upon us, but not outwardly visible.

Gindrier had had no food that day; he thought he would go home, and returned to the new district of the Havre Railway Station, where he resided.  In the Rue de Calais, which is a lonely street running from Rue Blanche to the Rue de Clichy, a fiacre passed him.  Gindrier heard his name called out.  He turned round and saw two persons in a fiacre, relations of Baudin, and a man whom he did not know.  One of the relations of Baudin, Madame L——­, said to him, “Baudin is wounded!” She added, “They have taken him to the St. Antoine Hospital.  We are going to fetch him.  Come with us.”  Gindrier got into the fiacre.  The stranger, however, was an emissary of the Commissary of Police of the Rue Ste. Marguerite St. Antoine.  He had been charged by the commissary of Police to go to Baudin’s house, No, 88, Rue de Clichy, to inform the family.  Having only found the women at home he had confined himself to telling them that Representative Baudin was wounded.  He offered to accompany them, and went with them in the fiacre.  They had uttered the name of Gindrier before him.  This might have been imprudent.  They spoke to him; he declared that he would not betray the Representative, and it was settled that before the Commissary of Police Gindrier should assume to be a relation, and be called Baudin.