ing for his "liberty," moaning, kicking--I would say
wrestling, if the word were not too exalted.

Some minutes after the clearance, this Salle des Pas Perdus, which had
just witnessed Representatives pass by in the clutch of gendarmes, saw
M. Dupin in the clutch of the Representatives.

They did not get far. Soldiers barred the great green folding-doors.
Colonel Espinasse hurried thither, the commander of the gendarmerie came
up. The butt-ends of a pair of pistols were seen peeping out of the
commander's pocket.

The colonel was pale, the commander was pale, M. Dupin was livid. Both
sides were afraid. M. Dupin was afraid of the colonel; the colonel
assuredly was not afraid of M. Dupin, but behind this laughable and
miserable figure he saw a terrible phantom rise up--his crime, and he
trembled. In Homer there is a scene where Nemesis appears behind
Thersites.

M. Dupin remained for some moments stupefied, bewildered and speechless.

The Representative Gambon exclaimed to him,--

"Now then, speak, M. Dupin, the Left does not interrupt you."

Then, with the words of the Representatives at his back, and the
bayonets of the soldiers at his breast, the unhappy man spoke. What
his mouth uttered at this moment, what the President of the Sovereign
Assembly of France stammered to the gendarmes at this intensely critical
moment, no one could gather.

Those who heard the last gasps of this moribund cowardice, hastened
to purify their ears. It appears, however, that he stuttered forth
something like this:--

"You are Might, you have bayonets; I invoke Right and I leave you. I
have the honor to wish you good day."

He went away.

They let him go. At the moment of leaving he turned round and let fall a
few more words. We will not gather them up. History has no rag-picker's
basket.

[3] This grated door was closed on December 2, and was not reopened
until the 12th March, when M. Louis Bonaparte came to inspect the works
of the Hall of the Corps Legislatif.

CHAPTER IX.

AN END WORSE THAN DEATH

We should have been glad to have put aside, never to have spoken of him
again, this man who had borne for three years this most honorable title,
President of the National Assembly of France, and who had only known how
to be lacquey to the majority. He contrived in his last hour to sink
even lower than could have been believed possible even for him. His
career in the Assembly had been that of a valet, his end was th