“Thank God,” said Carini to me, “you are still free,” and he added, “The blow has been struck in a formidable manner.  The Assembly is invested.  I have come from thence.  The Place de la Revolution, the Quays, the Tuileries, the boulevards, are crowded with troops.  The soldiers have their knapsacks.  The batteries are harnessed.  If fighting takes place it will be desperate work.”

I answered him, “There will be fighting.”

And I added, laughing, “You have proved that the colonels write like poets; now it is the turn of the poets to fight like colonels.”

I entered my wife’s room; she knew nothing, and was quietly reading her paper in bed.

I had taken about me five hundred francs in gold.  I put on my wife’s bed a box containing nine hundred francs, all the money which remained to me, and I told her what had happened.

She turned pale, and said to me, “What are you going to do?”

“My duty.”

She embraced me, and only said two words:—­

“Do it.”

My breakfast was ready.  I ate a cutlet in two mouthfuls.  As I finished, my daughter came in.  She was startled by the manner in which I kissed her, and asked me, “What is the matter?”

“Your mother will explain to you.”

And I left them.

The Rue de la Tour d’Auvergne was as quiet and deserted as usual.  Four workmen were, however, chatting near my door; they wished me “Good morning.”

I cried out to them, “You know what is going on?”

“Yes,” said they.

“Well.  It is treason!  Louis Bonaparte is strangling the Republic.  The people are attacked.  The people must defend themselves.”

“They will defend themselves.”

“You promise me that?”

“Yes,” they answered.

One of them added, “We swear it.”

They kept their word.  Barricades were constructed in my street (Rue de la
Tour d’Auvergne), in the Rue des Martyrs, in the Cite Rodier, in the Rue
Coquenard, and at Notre-Dame de Lorette.

CHAPTER VI.

“PLACARDS”

On leaving these brave men I could read at the corner of the Rue de la Tour d’Auvergne and the Rue des Martyrs, the three infamous placards which had been posted on the walls of Paris during the night.

Here they are.

  “PROCLAMATION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC.

  “Appeal to the People.

“FRENCHMEN!  The present situation can last no longer.  Every day which passes enhances the dangers of the country.  The Assembly, which ought to be the firmest support of order, has become a focus of conspiracies.  The patriotism of three hundred of its members has been unable to check its fatal tendencies.  Instead of making laws in the public interest it forges arms for civil war; it attacks the power which I hold directly from the People, it encourages all bad passions, it compromises