One morning he saw Buchez, the ex-President of the Constituent Assembly, coming into his cell “Ah!” said David, “good! you have come to visit the prisoners?”—­“I am a prisoner,” said Buchez.

They wished to insist on David leaving for America.  He refused.  They contented themselves with Belgium.  On the 19th December he reached Brussels.  He came to see me, and said to me, “I am lodging at the Grand Monarque, 89, Rue des Fripiers."[31]

And he added laughing, “The Great Monarch—­the King.  The old clothesmen—­the Royalists, ’89.  The Revolution.”  Chance occasionally furnishes some wit.

[31] Anglice, “old clothes men.”

CHAPTER IX.

OUR LAST MEETING

On the 3d of December everything was coming in in our favor.  On the 5th everything was receding from us.  It was like a mighty sea which was going out.  The tide had come in gloriously, it went out disastrously.  Gloomy ebb and flow of the people.

And who was the power who said to this ocean, “Thou shalt go no farther?” Alas! a pigmy.

These hiding-places of the abyss are fathomless.

The abyss is afraid.  Of what?

Of something deeper than itself.  Of the Crime.

The people drew back.  They drew back on the 5th; on the 6th they disappeared.

On the horizon there could be seen nothing but the beginning of a species of vast night.

This night has been the Empire.

We found ourselves on the 5th what we were on the 2d.  Alone.

But we persevered.  Our mental condition was this—­desperate, yes; discouraged, no.

Items of bad news came to us as good news had come to us on the evening of the 3d, one after another.  Aubry du Nord was at the Conciergerie.  Our dear and eloquent Cremieux was at Mazas.  Louis Blanc, who, although banished, was coming to the assistance of France, and was bringing to us the great power of his name and of his mind, had been compelled, like Ledru Rollin, to halt before the catastrophe of the 4th.  He had not been able to get beyond Tournay.

As for General Neumayer, he had not “marched upon Paris,” but he had come there.  For what purpose?  To give in his submission.

We no longer possessed a refuge.  No. 15, Rue Richelieu, was watched, No. 11, Rue Monthabor, had been denounced.  We wandered about Paris, meeting each other here and there, and exchanging a few words in a whisper, not knowing where we should sleep, or whether we should get a meal; and amongst those heads which did not know what pillow they should have at night there was at least one upon which a price was set.

They accosted each other, and this is the sort of conversation they held:—­

“What has became of So-and-So?”

“He is arrested.”

“And So-and-So?”

“Dead.”

“And So-and-So?”

“Disappeared.”