The machining was conducted with the same precautions, each press being
between two soldiers. Notwithstanding all possible diligence the work
lasted two hours. The gendarmes watched over the workmen. Beville watched
over St. Georges.

When the work was finished a suspicious incident occurred, which greatly
resembled a treason within a treason. To a traitor a greater traitor.
This species of crime is subject to such accidents. Beville and St.
Georges, the two trusty confidants in whose hands lay the secret of the
_coup d'etat_, that is to say the head of the President;--that secret,
which ought at no price to be allowed to transpire before the appointed
hour, under risk of causing everything to miscarry, took it into their
heads to confide it at once to two hundred men, in order "to test the
effect," as the ex-Colonel Beville said later on, rather naively. They
read the mysterious document which had just been printed to the Gendarmes
Mobiles, who were drawn up in the courtyard. These ex-municipal guards
applauded. If they had hooted, it might be asked what the two
experimentalists in the _coup d'etat_ would have done. Perhaps M.
Bonaparte would have waked up from his dream at Vincennes.

The coachman was then liberated, the _fiacre_ was horsed, and at four
o'clock in the morning the orderly officer and the manager of the
National Printing Office, henceforward two criminals, arrived at the
Prefecture of Police with the parcels of the decrees. Then began for
them the brand of shame. Prefect Maupas took them by the hand.

Bands of bill-stickers, bribed for the occasion, started in every
direction, carrying with them the decrees and proclamations.

This was precisely the hour at which the Palace of the National Assembly
was invested. In the Rue de l'Universite there is a door of the Palace
which is the old entrance to the Palais Bourbon, and which opened into
the avenue which leads to the house of the President of the Assembly.
This door, termed the Presidency door, was according to custom guarded by
a sentry. For some time past the Adjutant-Major, who had been twice sent
for during the night by Colonel Espinasse, had remained motionless and
silent, close by the sentinel. Five minutes after, having left the huts
of the Invalides, the 42d Regiment of the line, followed at some distance
by the 6th Regiment, which had marched by the Rue de Bourgogne, emerged
from the Rue de l'Universite. "The regiment," says an eye-witness,