"marched as one steps in a sickroom." It arrived with a stealthy step
before the Presidency door. This ambuscade came to surprise the law.

The sentry, seeing these soldiers arrive, halted, but at the moment when
he was going to challenge them with a _qui-vive_, the Adjutant-Major
seized his arm, and, in his capacity as the officer empowered to
countermand all instructions, ordered him to give free passage to the
42d, and at the same time commanded the amazed porter to open the door.
The door turned upon its hinges, the soldiers spread themselves through
the avenue. Persigny entered and said, "It is done."

The National Assembly was invaded.

At the noise of the footsteps the Commandant Mennier ran up.
"Commandant," Colonel Espinasse cried out to him, "I come to relieve your
battalion." The Commandant turned pale for a moment, and his eyes
remained fixed on the ground. Then suddenly he put his hands to his
shoulders, and tore off his epaulets, he drew his sword, broke it across
his knee, threw the two fragments on the pavement, and, trembling with
rage, exclaimed with a solemn voice, "Colonel, you disgrace the number of
your regiment."

"All right, all right," said Espinasse.

The Presidency door was left open, but all the other entrances remained
closed. All the guards were relieved, all the sentinels changed, and the
battalion of the night guard was sent back to the camp of the Invalides,
the soldiers piled their arms in the avenue, and in the Cour d'Honneur.
The 42d, in profound silence, occupied the doors outside and inside, the
courtyard, the reception-rooms, the galleries, the corridors, the
passages, while every one slept in the Palace.

Shortly afterwards arrived two of those little chariots which are called
"forty sons," and two _fiacres_, escorted by two detachments of the
Republican Guard and of the Chasseurs de Vincennes, and by several squads
of police. The Commissaries Bertoglio and Primorin alighted from the two
chariots.

As these carriages drove up a personage, bald, but still young, was seen
to appear at the grated door of the Place de Bourgogne. This personage
had all the air of a man about town, who had just come from the opera,
and, in fact, he had come from thence, after having passed through a den.
He came from the Elysee. It was De Morny. For an instant he watched the
soldiers piling their arms, and then went on to the Presidency door.
There he exchanged a few words with M. de Persigny.