The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo (android pdf ebook reader txt) 📖

Cécile, "Now, really, what does this mean?" The Admiral answered by this definition: "It is a small matter." M. Vézin added, "He wishes History to call him 'Sire.'" "Poor Sire, then," said M. de Camas de la Guibourgère. M. Odilon Barrot exclaimed, "What a fatality, that we should have been condemned to employ this man!"

This said, these heights attained, political philosophy was exhausted, and they ceased talking.

On the right, by the side of the door, there was a canteen elevated a few steps above the courtyard. "Let us promote this canteen to the dignity of a refreshment room," said the ex-ambassador to China, M. de Lagrenée. They entered, some went up to the stove, others asked for a basin of soup. MM. Favreau, Piscatory, Larabit, and Vatimesnil took refuge in a corner. In the opposite corner drunken soldiers chatted with the maids of the barracks. M. de Kératry, bent with his eighty years, was seated near the stove on an old worm-eaten chair; the chair tottered; the old man shivered.

Towards four o'clock a regiment of Chasseurs de Vincennes arrived in the courtyard with their platters, and began to eat, singing, with loud bursts of merriment. M. de Broglie looked at them and said to M. Piscatory, "It is a strange spectacle to see the porringers of the Janissaries vanished from Constantinople reappearing at Paris!"

Almost at the same moment a staff officer informed the Representatives on behalf of General Forey that the apartments assigned to them were ready, and requested them to follow him. They were taken into the eastern building, which is the wing of the barracks farthest from the Palace of the Council of State; they were conducted to the third floor. They expected chambers and beds. They found long rooms, vast garrets with filthy walls and low ceilings, furnished with wooden tables and benches. These were the "apartments." These garrets, which adjoin each other, all open on the same corridor, a narrow passage, which runs the length of the main building. In one of these rooms they saw, thrown into a corner, side-drums, a big drum, and various instruments of military music. The Representatives scattered themselves about in these rooms. M. de Tocqueville, who was ill, threw his overcoat on the floor in the recess of a window, and lay down. He remained thus stretched upon the ground for several hours.

These rooms were warmed very badly by cast-iron stoves, shaped like hives. A Representative wishing to poke the fire, upset one, and nearly set fire to the wooden flooring.

The last of these rooms looked out on the quay. Antony Thouret opened a window and leaned out. Several Representatives joined him. The soldiers who were bivouacking below on the pavement, caught sight of them and began to shout, "Ah! there they are, those rascals at 'twenty-five francs a day,' who wish to cut down our pay!" In fact, on the preceding evening, the police had spread this calumny through the barracks that a proposition had been placed on the Tribune to lessen the pay of the troops. They had even gone so far as to name the author of this proposition. Antony Thouret attempted to undeceive the soldiers. An officer cried out to him, "It is one of your party who made the proposal. It is Lamennais!"

In about an hour and a half there were ushered into these rooms MM. Vallette, Bixio, and Victor Lefranc, who had come to join their colleagues and constitute themselves prisoners.

Night came. They were hungry. Several had not eaten since the morning. M. Howyn de Tranchère, a man of considerable kindness and devotion, who had acted as porter at the Mairie, acted as forager at the barracks. He collected five francs from each Representative, and they sent and ordered a dinner for two hundred and twenty from the Café d'Orsay, at the corner of the Quay, and the Rue du Bac. They dined badly, but merrily. Cookshop mutton, bad wine, and cheese. There was no bread. They ate as they best could, one standing, another on a chair, one at a table, another astride on his bench, with his plate before him, "as at a ball-room supper," a dandy of the Right said laughingly, Thuriot de la Rosière, son of the regicide Thuriot. M. de Rémusat buried his head in his hands. Emile Péan said to him, "We shall get over it." And Gustave de Beaumont cried out, addressing himself to the Republicans, "And your friends of the Left! Will they preserve their honor? Will there be an insurrection at least?" They passed each other the dishes and plates, the Right showing marked attention to the Left. "Here is the opportunity to bring about a fusion," said a young Legitimist. Troopers and canteen men waited upon them. Two or three tallow candles burnt and smoked on each table. There were few glasses. Right and Left drank from the same. "Equality, fraternity," exclaimed the Marquis Sauvaire-Barthélemy, of the Right. And Victor Hannequin answered him, "But not Liberty."

Colonel Feray, the son-in-law of Marshal Bugeaud, was in command at the barracks; he offered the use of his drawing-room to M. de Broglie and to M. Odilon Barrot, who accepted it. The barrack doors were opened to M. de Kératry, on account of his great age, to M. Dufaure, as his wife had just been confined, and to M. Etienne, on account of the wound which he had received that morning in the Rue de Bourgogne. At the same time there were added to the two hundred and twenty MM. Eugène Sue, Benoist (du Rhône), Fayolle, Chanay, Toupet des Vignes, Radoubt-Lafosse, Arbey, and Teillard-Latérisse, who up to that time had been detained in the new Palace of Foreign Affairs.

Towards eight o'clock in the evening, when dinner was over, the restrictions were a little relaxed, and the intermediate space between the door and the barred gate of the barracks began to be littered with carpet bags and articles of toilet sent by the families of the imprisoned Representatives.

The Representatives were summoned by their names. Each went down in turn, and briskly remounted with his cloak, his coverlet, or his foot-warmer. A few ladies succeeded in making their way to their husbands. M.M. Chambolle was able to press his son's hand through the bars.

Suddenly a voice called out, "Oho! We are going to spend the night here." Mattresses were brought in, which were thrown on the tables, on the floor, anywhere.

Fifty or sixty Representatives found resting-places on them. The greater number remained on their benches. Marc Dufraisse settled himself to pass the night on a footstool, leaning on a table. Happy was the man who had a chair.

Nevertheless, cordiality and gaiety did not cease to prevail. "Make room for the 'Burgraves!'" said smilingly a venerable veteran of the Right. A young Republican Representative rose, and offered him his mattress. They pressed on each offers of overcoats, cloaks, and coverlets.

"Reconciliation," said Chamiot, while offering the half of his mattress to the Duc de Luynes. The Duc de Luynes, who had 80,000 francs a year, smiled, and replied to Chamiot, "You are St. Martin, and I am the beggar."

M. Paillet, the well-known barrister, who belonged to the "Third Estate," used to say, "I passed the night on a Bonapartist straw mattress, wrapped in a burnouse of the Mountain, my feet in a Democratic and Socialist sheepskin, and my head in a Legitimist cotton nightcap." The Representatives, although prisoners in the barracks, could stroll about freely. They were allowed to go down into the courtyard. M. Cordier (of Calvados) came upstairs again, saying, "I have just spoken to the soldiers. They did not know that their generals had been arrested. They appeared surprised and discontented." This incident raised the prisoners' hopes.

Representative Michel Renaud of the Basses-Pyrénees, found several of his compatriots of the Basque country amongst the Chasseurs de Vincennes who occupied the courtyard. Some had voted for him, and reminded him of the fact. They added, "Ah! We would again vote for the 'Red' list." One of them, quite a young man, took him aside, and said to him. "Do you want any money, sir? I have a forty-sous piece in my pocket."

Towards ten o'clock in the evening a great hubbub arose in the courtyard. The doors and the barred gate turned noisily upon their hinges. Something entered which rumbled like thunder. They leaned out of window, and saw at the foot of the steps a sort of big, oblong chest, painted black, yellow, red, and green, on four wheels, drawn by post-horses, and surrounded by men in long overcoats, and with fierce-looking faces, holding torches. In the gloom, and with the help of imagination, this vehicle appeared completely black. A door could be seen, but no other opening. It resembled a great coffin on wheels. "What is that? Is it a hearse?" "No, it is a police-van." "And those people, are they undertakers?" "No, they are jailers." "And for whom has this come?"

"For you, gentlemen!" cried out a voice.

It was the voice of an officer; and the vehicle which had just entered was in truth a police-van.

At the same time a word of command was heard: "First squadron to horse." And five minutes afterwards the Lancers who were to escort the vehicle formed in line in the courtyard.

Then arose in the barracks the buzz of a hive of angry bees. The Representatives ran up and down the stairs, and went to look at the police-van close at hand. Some of them touched it, and could not believe their eyes. M. Piscatory met M. Chambolle, and cried out to him, "I am leaving in it!" M. Berryer met Eugène Sue, and they exchanged these words: "Where are you going?" "To Mount Valérien. And you?" "I do not know."

At half-past ten the roll-call of those who were to leave began. Police agents stationed themselves at a table between two candles in a parlor at the foot of the stairs, and the Representatives were summoned two by two. The Representatives agreed not to answer to their names, and to reply to each name which should be called out, "He is not here." But those "Burgraves" who had accepted the hospitality of Colonel Feray considered such petty resistance unworthy of them, and answered to the calling out of their names. This drew the others after them. Everybody answered. Amongst the Legitimists some serio-comic scenes were enacted. They who alone were not threatened insisted on believing that they were in danger. They would not let one of their orators go. They embraced him, and held him back, almost with tears, crying out, "Do not go away! Do you know where they are taking you? Think of the trenches of Vincennes!"

The Representatives, having been summoned two by two, as we have just said, filed in the parlor before the police agents, and then they were ordered to get into the "robbers' box." The stowage was apparently made at haphazard and promiscuously; nevertheless, later, by the difference of the treatment accorded to the Representatives in the various prisons, it was apparent that this promiscuous loading had perhaps been somewhat prearranged. When the first vehicle was full, a second, of a similar construction drew up. The police agents, pencil and pocket-book in hand, noted down the contents of each vehicle. These men knew the Representatives. When Marc Dufraisse, called in his turn, entered the parlor, he was accompanied by Benoist (du Rhône). "Ah! here is Marc Dufraisse," said the attendant who held the pencil. When asked for his name, Benoist replied "Benoist." "Du Rhône," added the police agent; and he continued, "for there are also Benoist d'Azy and Benoist-Champy."

The loading of each vehicle occupied nearly half an hour. The successive arrivals had raised the number of imprisoned Representatives to two hundred and thirty-two Their embarkation, or, to use the expression of M. de Vatimesnil, their "barrelling up," which began a little after ten in the evening, was not finished until nearly seven o'clock in the morning. When there were