t abyss of the "unknown" which was there,
yawning and gloomy, and which several of us were about to enter, never to
return.

Arnauld (de l'Ariege) gave me his arm. The two Italian exiles, Carini
aril Montanelli, accompanied me.

Montanelli took my hands and said to me, "Right will conquer. You will
conquer. Oh! that this time France may not be selfish as in 1848, and
that she may deliver Italy." I answered him, "She will deliver Europe."

Those were our illusions at that moment, but this, however, does not
prevent them from being our hopes to-day. Faith is thus constituted;
shadows demonstrate to it the light.

There is a cabstand before the front gate of St. Paul. We went there. The
Rue St. Antoine was alive with that indescribable uneasy swarming which
precedes those strange battles of ideas against deeds which are called
Revolutions. I seemed to catch, in this great working-class district, a
glimpse of a gleam of light which, alas, died out speedily. The cabstand
before St. Paul was deserted. The drivers had foreseen the possibility of
barricades, and had fled.

Three miles separated Arnauld and myself from our houses. It was
impossible to walk there through the middle of Paris, without being
recognized at each step. Two passers-by extricated us from our
difficulty. One of them said to the other, "The omnibuses are still
running on the Boulevards."

We profited by this information, and went to look for a Bastille omnibus.
All four of us got in.

I entertained at heart, I repeat, wrongly or rightly, a bitter reproach
for the opportunity lost during the morning. I said to myself that on
critical days such moments come, but do not return. There are two
theories of Revolution: to arouse the people, or to let them come of
themselves. The first theory was mine, but, through force of discipline,
I had obeyed the second. I reproached myself with this. I said to myself,
"The People offered themselves, and we did not accept them. It is for us
now not to offer ourselves, but to do more, to give ourselves."

Meanwhile the omnibus had started. It was full. I had taken my place at
the bottom on the left; Arnauld (de l'Ariege) sat next to me, Carini
opposite, Montanelli next to Arnauld. We did not speak; Arnauld and
myself silently exchanged that pressure of hands which is a means of
exchanging thoughts.

As the omnibus proceeded towards the centre of Paris the crowd became
denser on the Boulevard. As the omnibus entered