They did not sleep, they did not eat, they took what they could find, a glass of water from time to time, a morsel of bread here and there.  Madame Landrin gave us a basin of soup, Madame Grevy the remainder of a cold pie.  We dined one evening on a little chocolate which a chemist had distributed in a barricade.  At Jeunesse’s, in the Rue de Grammont, during the night of the 3rd, Michel de Bourges took a chair, and said, “This is my bed.”  Were they tired?  They did not feel it.  The old men, like Ronjat, the sick, like Boysset, all went forward.  The public peril, like a fever, sustained them.

Our venerable colleague, Lamennais, did not come, but he remained three days without going to bed, buttoned up in his old frock coat, his thick boots on his feet, ready to march.  He wrote to the author these three lines, which it is impossible not to quote:—­“You are heroes without me.  This pains me greatly.  I await your orders.  Try, then, to find me something to do, be it but to die.”

In these meetings each man preserved his usual demeanor.  At times one might have thought it an ordinary sitting in one of the bureaux of the Assembly.  There was the calm of every day, mingled with the firmness of decisive crises.  Edgar Quinet retained all his lofty judgment, Noel Parfait all his mental vivacity, Yvan all his vigorous and intelligent penetration, Labrousse all his animation.  In a corner Pierre Lefranc, pamphleteer and ballad-writer, but a pamphleteer like Courier, and a ballad-writer like Beranger smiled at the grave and stern words of Dupont de Bussac.  All that brilliant group of young orators of the Left, Baneel with his powerful ardor, Versigny and Victor Chauffour with their youthful daring.  Sain with his coolheadedness which reveals strength, Farconnet with his gentle voice and his energetic inspiration, lavishing his efforts in resisting the coup d’etat, sometimes taking part in the deliberations, at others amongst the people, proving that to be an orator one must possess all the qualifications of a combatant.  De Flotte, indefatigable, was ever ready to traverse all Paris.  Xavier Durrieu was courageous, Dulac dauntless, Charamaule fool-hardy.  Citizens and Paladins.  Courage! who would have dared to exhibit none amongst all these men, of whom not one trembled?  Untrimmed beards, torn coats, disordered hair, pale faces, pride glistening in every eye.  In the houses where they were received they installed themselves as best they could.  If there were no sofas or chairs, some, exhausted in strength, but not in heart, seated themselves on the floor.  All became copyists of the decrees and proclamations; one dictated, ten wrote.  They wrote on tables, on the corners of furniture, on their knees.  Frequently paper was lacking, pens were wanting.  These wretched trifles created obstacles at the most critical times.  At certain moments in the history of peoples an inkstand where the ink is dried up may prove a public calamity.