Part 22 (2/2)

”Now,” I say to M. Ernest Moreau, ”I must go and proclaim the news in the Place de la Bastille.”

But the Mayor is discouraged.

”You can very well see that it is useless,” he says sadly. ”The Regency is not accepted. And you have spoken here in a quarter where you are known and loved. At the Bastille your audience will be the revolutionary people of the faubourg, who will perhaps harm you.”

”I will go,” I say, ”I promised Odilon Barrot that I would.”

”I have changed my hat,” the Mayor goes on, ”but remember my hat of this morning.”

”This morning the army and the people were face to face, and there was danger of a conflict; now, however, the people are alone, the people are the masters.”

”Masters--and hostile; have a care!”

”No matter, I have promised, and I will keep my promise.”

I tell the Mayor that his place is at the Mairie and that he ought to stay there. But several National Guard officers present themselves spontaneously and offer to accompany me, among them the excellent M.

Launaye, my former captain. I accept their friendly offer, and we form a little procession and proceed by the Rue du Pas de la Mule and the Boulevard Beaumarchais towards the Place de la Bastille.

Here are a restless, eager crowd in which workingmen predominate, many of them armed with rifles taken from the barracks or given up to them by the soldiers; shouts and the song of the Girondins: ”Die for the fatherland!” numerous groups debating and disputing pa.s.sionately. They turn round, they look at us, they interrogate us:

”What's the news? What is going on?” And they follow us. I hear my name mentioned coupled with various sentiments: ”Victor Hugo! It's Victor Hugo!” A few salute me. When we reach the Column of July we are surrounded by a considerable gathering. In order that I may be heard I mount upon the base of the column.

I will only repeat the words which it was possible for me to make my turbulent audience hear. It was much less a speech than a dialogue, but the dialogue of one voice with ten, twenty, a hundred voices more or less hostile.

I began by announcing at once the abdication of Louis Philippe, and, as in the Place Royale, applause that was practically unanimous greeted the news. There were also, however, cries of ”No! no abdication, deposition!

deposition!” Decidedly, I was going to have my hands full.

When I announced the Regency violent protests arose:

”No! no! No Regency! Down with the Bourbons! Neither King nor Queen! No masters!”

I repeated: ”No masters! I don't want them any more than you do. I have defended liberty all my life.”

”Then why do you proclaim the Regency?”

”Because a Queen-Regent is not a master. Besides, I have no right whatever to proclaim the Regency; I merely announce it.”

”No! no! No Regency!”

A man in a blouse shouted: ”Let the peer of France be silent. Down with the peer of France!” And he levelled his rifle at me. I gazed at him steadily, and raised my voice so loudly that the crowd became silent: ”Yes, I am a peer of France, and I speak as a peer of France. I swore fidelity, not to a royal personage, but to the Const.i.tutional Monarchy.

As long as no other government is established it is my duty to be faithful to this one. And I have always thought that the people approved of a man who did his duty, whatever that duty might be.”

There was a murmur of approbation and here and there a few bravos.

But when I endeavoured to continue: ”If the Regency--” the protests redoubled. I was permitted to take up only one of these protests. A workman had shouted: ”We will not be governed by a woman.” I retorted quickly:

”Well, neither will I be governed by a woman, nor even by a man. It was because Louis Philippe wanted to govern that his abdication is to-day necessary and just. But a woman who reigns in the name of a child! Is that not a guarantee against all thought of personal government? Look at Queen Victoria in England--”

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