t obtain the Salle Roysin we will take
the first church at hand, a stable, a shed, some enclosure where we can
deliberate; at need, as Michel de Bourges has said, we will hold our
sittings in a square bounded by four barricades. But provisionally I
suggest the Salle Roysin. Do not forget that in such a crisis there must
be no vacuum before the nation. That alarms it. There must be a
government somewhere, and it must be known. The rebellion at the Elysee,
the Government at the Faubourg St. Antoine; the Left the Government, the
Faubourg St. Antoine the citadel; such are the ideas which from to-morrow
we must impress upon the mind of Paris. To the Salle Roysin, then! Thence
in the midst of the dauntless throng of workmen of that great district of
Paris, enclosed in the Faubourg as in a fortress, being both Legislators
and Generals, multiplying and inventing means of defence and of attack,
launching Proclamations and unearthing the pavements, employing the women
in writing out placards while the men are fighting, we will issue a
warrant against Louis Bonaparte, we will issue warrants against his
accomplices, we will declare the military chiefs traitors, we will outlaw
in a body all the crime and all the criminals, we will summon the
citizens to arms, we will recall the army to duty, we will rise up before
Louis Bonaparte, terrible as the living Republic, we will fight on the
one hand with the power of the Law, and on the other with the power of
the People, we will overwhelm this miserable rebel, and will rise up
above his head both as a great Lawful Power and a great Revolutionary
Power!"

While speaking I became intoxicated with my own ideas. My enthusiasm
communicated itself to the meeting. They cheered me. I saw that I was
becoming somewhat too hopeful, that I allowed myself to be carried away,
and that I carried them away, that I presented to them success as
possible, as even easy, at a moment when it was important that no one
should entertain an illusion. The truth was gloomy, and it was my duty
to tell it. I let silence be re-established, and I signed with my hand
that I had a last word to say. I then resumed, lowering my voice,--

"Listen, calculate carefully what you are doing. On one side a hundred
thousand men, seventeen harnessed batteries, six thousand cannon-mouths
in the forts, magazines, arsenals, ammunition sufficient to carry out a
Russian campaign; on the other a hundred and twenty Representatives, a
thou