Part 25 (1/2)

”Yes, and dead, too.”

A gloomy silence followed. I rose. ”You have no doubt some measures to take?” I said.

”What measures?” answered Lamartine. ”This morning we resolved to decree what you have already been able to do on a small scale in your quarter: the organization of the citizen's National Guard--every Frenchman a soldier as well as a voter. But time is required, and meanwhile--”

he pointed to the waves and eddies of heads surging on the square outside--”look, it is the sea!”

A boy wearing an ap.r.o.n entered and spoke to him in low tones.

”Ah! very good!” said Lamartine, ”it is my luncheon. Will you share it with me, Hugo?”

”Thanks, I have already lunched.”

”I haven't and I am dying of hunger. At least come and look on at the feast; I will let you go, afterwards.”

He showed me into a room that gave on to an interior court-yard. A gentle faced young man who was writing at a table rose and was about to withdraw. He was the young workman whom Louis Blanc had had attached to the Provisional Government.

”Stay where you are, Albert,” said Lamartine, ”I have nothing of a private nature to say to Victor Hugo.”

We saluted each other, M. Albert and I.

The little waiter showed Lamartine a table upon which were some mutton cutlets in an earthenware dish, some bread, a bottle of wine and a gla.s.s. The whole came from a wine-shop in the neighbourhood.

”Well,” exclaimed Lamartine, ”what about a knife and fork?”

”I thought you had knives and forks here,” returned the boy. ”I had trouble enough to bring the luncheon, and if I have got to go and fetch knives and forks--”

”Pshaw!” said Lamartine, ”one must take things as they come!”

He broke the bread, took a cutlet by the bone and tore the meat with his teeth. When he had finished he threw the bone into the fireplace. In this manner he disposed of three cutlets, and drank two gla.s.ses of wine.

”You will agree with me that this is a primitive repast!” he said. ”But it is an improvement on our supper last night. We had only bread and cheese among us, and we all drank water from the same chipped sugar-bowl. Which didn't, it appears, prevent a newspaper this morning from denouncing the great orgy of the Provisional Government!”

I did not find Victor in the room where he was to have waited for me.

I supposed that, having become tired of waiting, he had returned home alone.

When I issued on to the Place de Greve the crowd was still excited and in a state of consternation at the inexplicable collision that had occurred an hour before. The body of a wounded man who had just expired was carried past me. They told me that it was the fifth. It was taken, as the other bodies had been taken, to the Salle Saint Jean, where the dead of the previous day to the number of over a hundred had been exposed.

Before returning to the Place Royale I made a tour for the purpose of visiting our guard-houses. Outside the Minimes Barracks a boy of about fifteen years, armed with the rifle of a soldier of the line, was proudly mounting guard. It seemed to me that I had seen him there in the morning or the day before.

”What!” I said, ”are you doing sentry duty again?”

”No, not again; I haven't yet been relieved.”

”You don't say so. Why, how long have you been here?”

”Oh, about seventeen hours!”