Signs of good omen grew more numerous.  An old hotbed of insurrection, the Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts, was becoming agitated.  The association called La Presse du Travail gave signs of life.  Some brave workmen, at the house of one of their colleagues, Netre No. 13, Rue du Jardinet, had organized a little printing-press in a garret, a few steps from the barracks of the Gendarmerie Mobile.  They had spent the night first in compiling, and then in printing “A Manifesto to Working Men,” which called the people to arms.  They were five skilful and determined men; they had procured paper, they had perfectly new type; some of them moistened the paper, while the others composed; towards two o’clock in the morning they began to print.  It was essential that they should not be heard by the neighbors; they had succeeded in muffling the hollow blows of the ink-rollers, alternating with the rapid sound of the printing blankets.  In a few hours fifteen hundred copies were pulled, and at daybreak they were placarded at the corners of the streets.  The leader of these intrepid workmen, A. Desmoulins, who belonged to that sturdy race of men who are both cultured and who can fight, had been greatly disheartened on the preceding day; he now had become hopeful.

On the preceding day he wrote:—­“Where are the Representatives?  The communications are cut.  The quays and the boulevards can no longer be crossed.  It has become impossible to reunite the popular Assembly.  The people need direction.  De Flotte in one district, Victor Hugo in another, Schoelcher in a third, are actively urging on the combat, and expose their lives a score of times, but none feel themselves supported by any organized body:  and moreover the attempt of the Royalists in the Tenth Arrondissement has roused apprehension.  People dread lest they should see them reappear when all is accomplished.”

Now, this man so intelligent and so courageous recovered confidence, and he wrote,—­

“Decidedly, Louis Napoleon is afraid.  The police reports are alarming for him.  The resistance of the Republican Representatives is bearing fruit.  Paris is arming.  Certain regiments appear ready to turn back.  The Gendarmerie itself is not to be depended upon, and this morning an entire regiment refused to march.  Disorder is beginning to show itself in the services.  Two batteries fired upon each other for a long time without recognition.  One would say that the coup d’etat is about to fail.”

The symptoms, as may be seen, were growing more reassuring.

Had Maupas become unequal to the task?  Had they resorted to a more skilful man?  An incident seemed to point to this.  On the preceding evening a tall man had been seen, between five and seven o’clock, walking up and down before the cafe of the Place Saint-Michel; he had been joined by two of the Commissaries of the Police who had effected the arrests of the 2d of December, and had talked to them for a long time.  This man was Carlier.  Was he about to supplant Maupas?