God forms a portion of the order of the day of Saint Bartholomew.  “Kill all.  He will recognized his own.”

This is what the priests accept, and at times glorify.

Saint Bartholomew has been blessed by the Pope and decorated with the
Catholic medal.[22]

Meanwhile Ossian Dumas appeared determined.  The captain made a last effort.

“You will ruin yourself,” said he.

“I shall save my honor.”

“It is precisely your honor that you are sacrificing.”

“Because I am going away?”

“To go away is to desert.”

This seemed to impress Ossian Dumas.  The captain continued,—­

“They are about to fight.  In a few minutes the barricade will be attacked.  Your comrades will fall, dead or wounded.  You are a young officer—­you have not yet been much under fire.”

“At all events,” warmly interrupted Ossian Dumas, “I shall not have fought against the Republic; they will not say I am a traitor.”

“No, but they will say that you are a coward.”

Ossian made no reply.

A moment afterwards the command was given to attack.

The regiment started at the double.  The barricade fired.

Ossian Dumas was the first who fell.

He had not been able to bear that word “coward,” and he had remained in his place in the first rank.

They took him to the ambulance, and from thence to the hospital.

Let us at once state the conclusion of this touching incident.

Both of his legs were broken.  The doctors thought that it would be necessary to amputate them both.

General Saint-Arnaud sent him the Cross of Honor.

As is known, Louis Bonaparte hastened to discharge his debt to his praetorian accomplices.  After having massacred, the sword voted.

The combat was still smoking when the army was brought to the ballot-box.

The garrison of Paris voted “Yes.”  It absolved itself.

With the rest of the army it was otherwise.  Military honor was indignant, and roused the civic virtue.  Notwithstanding the pressure which was exercised, although the regiments deposited their votes in the shakos of their colonels, the army voted “No” in many districts of France and Algeria.

The Polytechnic School voted “No” in a body.  Nearly everywhere the artillery, of which the Polytechnic School is the cradle, voted to the same effect as the school.

Scipio Dumas, it may be remembered, was at Metz.

By some curious chance it happened that the feeling of the artillery, which everywhere else had pronounced against the coup d’etat, hesitated at Metz, and seemed to lean towards Bonaparte.

Scipio Dumas, in presence of this indecision set an example.  He voted in a loud voice, and with an open voting paper, “No.”

Then he sent in his resignation.  At the same time that the Minister at Paris received the resignation of Scipio Dumas, Scipio Dumas at Metz, received his dismissal, signed by the Minister.