After the battle was lost there was no general helter-skelter, no rout, no flight.  All remained hidden in Paris ready to reappear, Michel in the Rue d’Alger, myself in the Rue de Navarin.  The Committee held yet another sitting on Saturday, the 6th, at eleven o’clock at night.  Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges, and myself, we came during the night to the house of a generous and brave woman, Madame Didier.  Bastide came there and said to me, “If you are not killed here, you are going to enter upon exile.  For myself, I am going to remain in Paris.  Take me for your lieutenant.”  I have related this incident.

They hoped for the 9th (Tuesday) a resumption of arms, which did not take place.  Malarmet had announced it to Dupont de Bussac, but the blow of the 4th had prostrated Paris.  The populace no longer stirred.  The Representatives did not resolve to think of their safety, and to quit France through a thousand additional dangers until several days afterwards, when the last spark of resistance was extinguished in the heart of the people, and the last glimmer of hope in heaven.

Several Republican Representatives were workmen; they have again become workmen in exile.  Nadaud has resumed his trowel, and is a mason in London.  Faure (du Rhone), a cutler, and Bansept, a shoemaker, felt that their trade had become their duty, and practise it in England.  Faure makes knives, Bansept makes boots.  Greppo is a weaver, it was he who when a proscript made the coronation robe of Queen Victoria.  Gloomy smile of Destiny.  Noel Parfait is a proof-reader at Brussels; Agricol Perdiguier, called Avignonnais-la-Vertu, has girded on his leathern apron, and is a cabinet-maker at Antwerp.  Yesterday these men sat in the Sovereign Assembly.  Such things as these are seen in Plutarch.

The eloquent and courageous proscript, Emile Deschanel, has created at Brussels, with a rare talent of speech, a new form of public instruction, the Conferences.  To him is due the honor of this foundation, so fruitful and so useful.

Let us say in conclusion that the National Legislative Assembly lived badly but died well.

At this moment of the fall, irreparable for the cowards, the Right was worthy, the Left was great.

Never before has History seen a Parliament fall in this manner.

February had blown upon the Deputies of the legal country, and the Deputies had vanished.  M. Sauzet had sunk down behind the tribune, and had gone away without even taking his hat.

Bonaparte, the other, the first, the true Bonaparte, had made the “Five Hundred” step out of the windows of the Orangery of Saint Cloud, somewhat embarrassed with their large mantles.

Cromwell, the oldest of the Bonapartes, when he achieved his Eighteenth Brumaire, encountered scarcely any other resistance than a few imprecations from Milton and from Ludlaw, and was able to say in his boorishly gigantic language, “I have put the King in my knapsack and the Parliament in my pocket.”