urgs going to rise?"

The narrator has but one duty, to tell his story; he relates everything,
the bad as well as the good. Whatever may have taken place, however, and
notwithstanding all these details of which it was our duty to speak,
apart from the exceptions which we had mentioned, the attitude of the
men of the Right who composed the large majority of this meeting was in
many respects honorable and worthy. Some of them, as we have just
mentioned, even prided themselves upon their resolution and their energy,
almost as though they had wished to rival the members of the Left.

We may here remark--for in the course of this narrative we shall more
than once see the gaze of some members of the Right turned towards the
people, and in this no mistake should be made--that these monarchical men
who talked of popular insurrection and who invoked the faubourgs were a
minority in the majority,--an imperceptible minority. Antony Thouret
proposed to those who were leaders there to go in a body through the
working-class neighborhoods with the decree of deposition in their
hands. Brought to bay, they refused. They declared that they would only
protect themselves by organized powers, not by the people. It is a
strange thing to say, but it must be noted, that with their habits of
political shortsightedness, the popular armed resistance, even in the
name of the Law, seemed sedition to them. The utmost appearance of
revolution which they could endure was a regiment of the National Guard,
with their drums at their head; they shrank from the barricade; Right in
a blouse was no longer Right, Truth armed with a pike was no longer
Truth, Law unpaving a street gave them the impression of a Fury. In the
main, however, and taking them for what they were, and considering their
position as politicians, these members of the Right were well-advised.
What would they have done with the people? And what would the people have
done with them? How would they have proceeded to set fire to the masses?
Imagine Falloux as a tribune, fanning the Faubourg St. Antoine into a
flame!

Alas! in the midst of this dense gloom, in these fatal complications of
circumstances by which the _coup d'etat_ profited so odiously and so
perfidiously, in that mighty misunderstanding which comprised the whole
situation, for kindling the revolutionary spark in the heart of the
people, Danton himself would not have sufficed.

The _coup d'etat_ entered into this meeting impude