Roused early in the morning by members of the Assembly, who came to announce the events of the night, Victor Hugo, to whom genuine republicans who were not Socialists looked as a leader, was, like all the rest of Paris, taken completely by surprise.  One of his visitors was a working-man, a wood-carver; of him Hugo eagerly asked:  “What do the working-men—­the people—­say as they read the placards?” He answered:  “Some say one thing, some another.  The thing has been so done that they cannot understand it.  Men going to their work are reading the placards.  Not one in a hundred says anything, and those who do, say generally, ’Good!  Universal suffrage is reestablished.  The conservative majority in the Assembly is got rid of,—­that’s splendid!  Thiers is arrested,—­better still!  Changarnier is in prison,—­bravo!’ Beneath every placard there are men placed to lead the approval.  My opinion is that the people will approve!”

At exactly six that morning, Cavaignac, Changarnier, Lamoriciere, Thiers, and all those who had lain down to sleep as cabinet ministers of the prince president, were roused from their beds by officers of cavalry, with orders to dress quickly, for they were under arrest.  Before each door a hackney-coach was waiting, and an escort of two hundred Lancers was in a street near by.  Resistance seemed useless in the face of such precautions, but Victor Hugo and his friends were resolved upon a fight.  They put their official scarves as deputies into their pockets, and started forth to see if they could raise the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.  But their friend the wood-carver had told them truly,—­there was neither sympathy nor enthusiasm in the streets for the constitution that had fallen, the deputies who had been placed under arrest, nor for violated political institutions.

In vain they appealed to the people in the name of the law.  The mob seemed to consider that provided it had universal suffrage, and that the man of its choice were at the head of affairs, it had better trust the safety of the nation to one man than risk the uncertainties that might attend the tyranny of many.

The frantic efforts made that day by Victor Hugo and a few other deputies of the Left to rouse the populace are almost ludicrous.  Victor Hugo, no doubt, was a brave man, though a very melodramatic one, and he seems to have thought that if he could get the soldiers to shoot him,—­him, the greatest literary star of France since the death of Voltaire,—­the notoriety of his death might rouse the population.

Here is one scene in his narrative.  He and three of his friends, finding that the Faubourg Saint-Antoine gave no ear to their appeals, and for once was disinclined to fight, decided to return home, and took seats in an omnibus which passed them on the Place de la Bastille.