A porter with a red collar, wearing the livery of the Assembly, stood by the little door of the grated gate.  From time to time Representatives arrived.  The porter said, “Gentlemen, are you Representatives?” and opened the door.  Sometimes he asked their names.

M. Dupin’s quarters could be entered without hindrance.  In the great gallery, in the dining-room, in the salon d’honneur of the Presidency, liveried attendants silently opened the doors as usual.

Before daylight, immediately after the arrest of the Questors MM.  Baze and Leflo, M. de Panat, the only Questor who remained free, having been spared or disdained as a Legitimist, awoke M. Dupin and begged him to summon immediately the Representatives from their own homes.  M. Dupin returned this unprecedented answer, “I do not see any urgency.”

Almost at the same time as M. Panat, the Representative Jerome Bonaparte had hastened thither.  He had summoned M. Dupin to place himself at the head of the Assembly.  M. Dupin had answered, “I cannot, I am guarded.”  Jerome Bonaparte burst out laughing.  In fact, no one had deigned to place a sentinel at M. Dupin’s door; they knew that it was guarded by his meanness.

It was only later on, towards noon, that they took pity on him.  They felt that the contempt was too great, and allotted him two sentinels.

At half-past seven, fifteen or twenty Representatives, among whom were MM.  Eugene Sue, Joret, de Resseguier, and de Talhouet, met together in M. Dupin’s room.  They also had vainly argued with M. Dupin.  In the recess of a window a clever member of the Majority, M. Desmousseaux de Givre, who was a little deaf and exceedingly exasperated, almost quarrelled with a Representative of the Right like himself whom he wrongly supposed to be favorable to the coup d’etat.

M. Dupin, apart from the group of Representatives, alone dressed in black, his hands behind his back, his head sunk on his breast, walked up and down before the fire-place, where a large fire was burning.  In his own room, and in his very presence, they were talking loudly about himself, yet he seemed not to hear.

Two members of the Left came in, Benoit (du Rhone), and Crestin.  Crestin entered the room, went straight up to M. Dupin, and said to him, “President, you know what is going on?  How is it that the Assembly has not yet been convened?”

M. Dupin halted, and answered, with a shrug which was habitual with him,—­

“There is nothing to be done.”

And he resumed his walk.

“It is enough,” said M. de Resseguier.

“It is too much,” said Eugene Sue.

All the Representatives left the room.