“I was quite bewildered,” he owned later on, “by this idea of leaving prison.  I looked at my prison bed, to which I had grown so accustomed.  I looked at my blanket and at my pillow and at all my belongings, hung so carefully at the foot of my bed.”  He asked permission to stay there another day.  He had become accustomed to everything, and when once he was out again, and free, he was like a man who feels ill at ease.

He took part in the affair of the 15th of May, and this is what gives a tragic, and at the same time comic, character to the episode.  Under pretext of manifesting in favour of Poland, the National Assembly was to be invaded.  Barbes did not approve of this manifestation, and had decided to keep out of it.  Some people cannot be present at a revolutionary scene without taking part in it, and without soon wanting to play the chief part in it.  The excitement goes to their head.  Barbes seems to have been obeying in instinct over which he had no control, for, together with a workman named Albert, he headed the procession which was to march from the Chamber of Deputies to the Hotel de Ville and establish a fresh Provisional Government.  He had already commenced composing the proclamations to be thrown through the windows to the people, after the manner of the times, when suddenly Lamartine appeared on the scene with Ledru-Rollin and a captain in the artillery.  The following dialogue then took place: 

“Who are you?”

“A member of the Provisional Government.”

“Of the Government of yesterday or of to-day?”

“Of the one of to-day.”

“In that case I arrest you.”

Barbes was taken to Vincennes.  He had been free rather less than three months, when he returned to prison as though it were his natural dwelling-place.

George Sand admired him just as much after this as before.  For her, the great man of the Revolution was neither Ledru-Rollin, Lamartine, nor even Louis-Blanc; it was Barbes.  She compared him to Joan of Arc and to Robespierre.  To her, he was much more than a mere statesman, this man of conspiracies and dungeons, ever mysterious and unfortunate, always ready for a drama or a romance.  In her heart she kept an altar for this martyr, and never thought of wondering whether, after all, this idol and hero were not a mere puppet.

The skirmish of May 15 undeceived George Sand very considerably.  The June insurrection and the civil war, with blood flowing in the Paris streets, those streets which were formerly so lively and amusing, caused her terrible grief.  From henceforth her letters were full of her sadness and discouragement.  The most gloomy depression took the place of her former enthusiasm.  It had only required a few weeks for this change to take place.  In February she had been so proud of France, and now she felt that she was to be pitied for being a Frenchwoman.  It was all so sad, and she was so ashamed.  There was no one to count upon now.  Lamartine was a chatterer; Ledru-Rollin was like a woman; the people were ignorant and ungrateful, so that the mission of literary people was over.  She therefore took refuge in fiction, and buried herself in her dreams of art.  We are not sorry to follow her there.