The ex-constituent Leblond and the delegate King being consulted by the Committee, seconded my advice.  The Committee decided that the societies should be requested in our name to come down into the streets immediately, and to call out their forces.  “But we are keeping nothing for to-morrow,” objected a member of the Committee, “what ally shall we have to-morrow?” “Victory,” said Jules Favre.  Carnot and Michel de Bourges remarked that it would be advisable for those members of the association who belonged to the National Guard to wear their uniforms.  This was accordingly settled.

The delegate King rose,—­“Citizen Representatives,” said he, “these orders will be immediately transmitted, our friends are ready, in a few hours they will assemble.  To-night barricades and the combat!”

I asked him, “Would it be useful to you if a Representative, a member of the Committee, were with you to-night with his sash girded?”

“Doubtless,” he answered.

“Well, then,” resumed I, “here I am!  Take me.”

“We will all go,” exclaimed Jules Favre.

The delegate observed that it would suffice for one of us to be there at the moment when the societies should make their appearance, and that he could then notify the other members of the Committee to come and join him.  It was settled that as soon as the places of meeting and the rallying-points should be agreed upon, he would send some one to let me know, and to take me wherever the societies might be.  “Before an hour’s time you shall hear from me,” said he on leaving us.

As the delegates were going away Mathieu de la Drome arrived.  On coming in he halted on the threshold of the door, he was pale, he cried out to us, “You are no longer in Paris, you are no longer under the Republic; you are in Naples and under King Bomba.”

He had come from the boulevards.

Later on I again saw Mathieu de la Drome.  I said to him, “Worse than
Bomba,—­Satan.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE VERIFICATION OF MORAL LAWS

The carnage of the Boulevard Montmartre constitutes the originality of the coup d’etat.  Without this butchery the 2d of December would only be an 18th Brumaire.  Owing to the massacre Louis Bonaparte escapes the charge of plagiarism.

Up to that time he had only been an imitator.  The little hat at Boulogne, the gray overcoat, the tame eagle appeared grotesque.  What did this parody mean? people asked.  He made them laugh; suddenly he made them tremble.

He who becomes detestable ceases to be ridiculous.

Louis Bonaparte was more than detestable, he was execrable.

He envied the hugeness of great crimes; he wished to equal the worst.  This striving after the horrible has given him a special place to himself in the menagerie of tyrants.  Petty rascality trying to emulate deep villainy, a little Nero swelling himself to a huge Lacenaire; such is this phenomenon.  Art for art, assassination for assassination.