They had counted on the 14th of the line which had fired on the people in February.  The Colonel of the 14th of the line had refused to recommence; he had just broken his sword.

Our appeal had ended by being heard.  Decidedly, as we have seen, Paris was rising.  The fall of Bonaparte seemed to be foreshadowed.  Two Representatives, Fabvier and Crestin, met in the Rue Royale, and Crestin, pointing to the Palace of the Assembly, said to Fabvier, “We shall be there to-morrow.”

One noteworthy incident.  Mazes became eccentric, the prison unbent itself; the interior experienced an undefinable reverberation from the outside.  The warders, who the preceding evening had been insolent to the Representatives when going for their exercise in the courtyard, now saluted them to the ground.  That very morning of Thursday, the 4th, the governor of the prison had paid a visit to the prisoners, and had said to them, “It is not my fault.”  He brought them books and writing-paper, a thing which up to that time he had refused.  The Representative Valentin was in solitary confinement; on the morning of the 4th his warder suddenly became amiable, and offered to obtain for him news from outside, through his wife, who, he said, had been a servant in General Leflo’s household.  These were significant signs.  When the jailer smiles it means that the jail is half opening.

We may add, what is not a contradiction, that at the same time the garrison at Mazas was being increased. 1200 more men were marched in, in detachments of 100 men each, spacing out their arrivals in “little doses” as an eye-witness remarked to us.  Later on 400 men. 100 litres of brandy were distributed to them.  One litre for every sixteen men.  The prisoners could hear the movement of artillery round the prison.

The agitation spread to the most peaceable quarters.  But the centre of Paris was above all threatening.  The centre of Paris is a labyrinth of streets which appears to be made for the labyrinth of riots.  The Ligue, the Fronde, the Revolution—­we must unceasingly recall these useful facts—­the 14th of July, the 10th of August, 1792, 1830, 1848, have come out from thence.  These brave old streets were awakened.  At eleven o’clock in the morning from Notre Dame to the Porte Saint Martin there were seventy-seven barricades.  Three of them, one in the Rue Maubuee, another in the Rue Bertin-Poiree, another in the Rue Guerin-Boisseau, attained the height of the second stories; the barricade of the Porte Saint Denis was almost as bristling and as formidable as the barrier of the Faubourg Saint Antoine in June, 1848.  The handful of the Representatives of the People had swooped down like a shower of sparks on these famous and inflammable crossroads.  The beginning of the fire.  The fire had caught.  The old central market quarter, that city which is contained in the city, shouted, “Down with Bonaparte!” They hooted the police, they hissed the troops.