The first time she met Michel was at Bourges.  She went with her two friends, Papet and Fleury, to call on him at the hotel.  From seven o’clock until midnight he never ceased talking.  It was a magnificent night, and he proposed a walk in the town at midnight.  When they came back to his door he insisted on taking them home, and so they continued walking backwards and forwards until four in the morning.  He must have been an inveterate chatterer to have clung to this public of three persons at an hour when the great buildings, with the moon throwing its white light over them and everything around, must have suggested the majesty of silence.  To people who were amazed at this irrepressible eloquence, Michel answered ingenuously:  “Talking is thinking aloud.  By thinking aloud in this way I advance more quickly than if I thought quietly by myself.”  This was Numa Roumestan’s idea.  “As for me,” he said, “when I am not talking, I am not thinking.”  As a matter of fact, Michel, like Numa, was a native of Provence.  In Paris there was a repetition of this nocturnal and roving scene.  Michel and his friends had come to a standstill on the Saints-Peres bridge.  They caught sight of the Tuileries lighted up for a ball.  Michel became excited, and, striking the innocent bridge and its parapet with his stick, he exclaimed:  “I tell you that if you are to freshen and renew your corrupt society, this beautiful river will first have to be red with blood, that accursed palace will have to be reduced to ashes, and the huge city you are now looking at will have to be a bare strand where the family of the poor man can use the plough and build a cottage home.”

This was a fine phrase for a public meeting, but perhaps too fine for a conversation between friends on the Saints-Peres bridge.

This was in 1835, at the most brilliant moment of Michel’s career.  It was when he was taking part in the trial of the accused men of April.  After the insurrections of the preceding year at Lyons and Paris, a great trial had commenced before the Chamber of Peers.  We are told that:  “The Republican party was determined to make use of the cross-questioning of the prisoners for accusing the Government and for preaching Republicanism and Socialism.  The idea was to invite a hundred and fifty noted Republicans to Paris from all parts of France.  In their quality of defenders, they would be the orators of this great manifestation.”  Barb’es, Blanqui, Flocon, Marie, Raspail, Trelat and Michel of Bourges were among these Republicans.  “On the 11th of May, the revolutionary newspapers published a manifesto in which the committee for the defence congratulated and encouraged the accused men.  One hundred and ten signatures were affixed to this document, which was a forgery.  It had been drawn up by a few of the upholders of the scheme, and, in order to make it appear more important, they had affixed the names of their colleagues without their authorization.  Those who had done this then took fright, and attempted