Half an hour afterwards the Adjutant-Major returned.  “Well,” asked the Commandant, “what did the Colonel want with you?” “Nothing,” answered the Adjutant, “he wished to give me the orders for to-morrow’s duties.”  The night became further advanced.  Towards four o’clock the Adjutant-Major came again to the Major.  “Major,” he said, “the Colonel has asked for me.”  “Again!” exclaimed the Commandant.  “This is becoming strange; nevertheless, go.”

The Adjutant-Major had amongst other duties that of giving out the instructions to the sentries, and consequently had the power of rescinding them.

As soon as the Adjutant-Major had gone out, the Major, becoming uneasy, thought that it was his duty to communicate with the Military Commandant of the Palace.  He went upstairs to the apartment of the Commandant—­ Lieutenant Colonel Niols.  Colonel Niols had gone to bed and the attendants had retired to their rooms in the attics.  The Major, new to the Palace, groped about the corridors, and, knowing little about the various rooms, rang at a door which seemed to him that of the Military Commandant.  Nobody answered, the door was not opened, and the Major returned downstairs, without having been able to speak to anybody.

On his part the Adjutant-Major re-entered the Palace, but the Major did not see him again.  The Adjutant remained near the grated door of the Place Bourgogne, shrouded in his cloak, and walking up and down the courtyard as though expecting some one.

At the instant that five o’clock sounded from the great clock of the dome, the soldiers who slept in the hut-camp before the Invalides were suddenly awakened.  Orders were given in a low voice in the huts to take up arms, in silence.  Shortly afterwards two regiments, knapsack on back were marching upon the Palace of the Assembly; they were the 6th and the 42d.

At this same stroke of five, simultaneously in all the quarters of Paris, infantry soldiers filed out noiselessly from every barrack, with their colonels at their head.  The aides-de-camp and orderly officers of Louis Bonaparte, who had been distributed in all the barracks, superintended this taking up of arms.  The cavalry were not set in motion until three-quarters of an hour after the infantry, for fear that the ring of the horses’ hoofs on the stones should wake slumbering Paris too soon.

M. de Persigny, who had brought from the Elysee to the camp of the Invalides the order to take up arms, marched at the head of the 42d, by the side of Colonel Espinasse.  A story is current in the army, for at the present day, wearied as people are with dishonorable incidents, these occurrences are yet told with a species of gloomy indifference—­the story is current that at the moment of setting out with his regiment one of the colonels who could be named hesitated, and that the emissary from the Elysee, taking a sealed packet from his pocket, said to him, “Colonel, I admit that we are running a great risk.  Here in this envelope, which I have been charged to hand to you, are a hundred thousand francs in banknotes for contingencies.”  The envelope was accepted, and the regiment set out.  On the evening of the 2d of December the colonel said to a lady, “This morning I earned a hundred thousand francs and my General’s epaulets.”  The lady showed him the door.