Amongst the Representatives there were several Constituents, and at their head Bastide.  Bastide, in 1848, had been Minister for Foreign Affairs.  During the second night, meeting in the Rue Popincourt, they reproached him with several of his actions.  “Let me first get myself killed,” he answered, “and then you can reproach me with what you like.”  And he added, “How can you distrust me, who am a Republican up to the hilt?” Bastide would not consent to call our resistance the “insurrection,” he called it the “counter-insurrection.” he said, “Victor Hugo is right.  The insurgent is at the Elysee.”  It was my opinion, as we have seen, that we ought to bring the battle at once to an issue, to defer nothing, to reserve nothing; I said, “We must strike the coup d’etat while it is hot.”  Bastide supported me.  In the combat he was impassive, cold, gay beneath his coldness.  At the Saint Antoine barricade, at the moment when the guns of the coup d’etat were leveled at the Representatives of the people, he said smilingly to Madier de Montjau, “Ask Schoelcher what he thinks of the abolition of the penalty of death.” (Schoelcher, like myself, at this supreme moment, would have answered, “that it ought to be abolished”) In another barricade Bastide, compelled to absent himself for a moment, placed his pipe on a paving-stone.  They found Bastide’s pipe, and they thought him dead.  He came back, and it was hailing musket-balls; he said, “My pipe?” he relighted it and resumed the fight.  Two balls pierced his coat.

When the barricades were constructed, the Republican Representatives spread themselves abroad; and distributed themselves amongst them.  Nearly all the Representatives of the Left repaired to the barricades, assisting either to build them or to defend them.  Besides the great exploit at Saint Antoine barricade, where Schoelcher was so admirable, Esquiros went to the barricade of the Rue de Charonne, De Flotte to those of the Pantheon and of the Chapelle Saint Denis, Madier de Montjau to those of Belleville and the Rue Aumaire, Doutre and Pelletier to that of the Mairie of the Fifth Arrondissement, Brives to that of Rue Beaubourg, Arnauld de l’Ariege to that of Rue de Petit-Repisoir, Viguier to that of the Rue Pagevin, Versigny to that of the Rue Joigneaux; Dupont de Bussac to that of the Carre Saint Martin; Carlos Forel and Boysset to that of the Rue Rambuteau.  Doutre received a sword-cut on his head, which cleft his hat; Bourzat had four balls in his overcoat; Baudin was killed; Gaston Dussoubs was ill and could not come; his brother, Denis Dussoubs, replaced him.  Where?  In the tomb.

Baudin fell on the first barricade, Denis Dussoubs on the last.

I was less favored than Bourzat; I only had three balls in my overcoat, and it is impossible for me to say whence they came.  Probably from the boulevard.