u to add my protest to your official
report." "Very well," said the Commissary, "let it be so." Baze wrote the
protest as follows:--

"I, the undersigned, Jean-Didier Baze, Representative of the People,
and Questor of the National Assembly, carried off by violence from my
residence in the Palace of the National Assembly, and conducted to this
prison by an armed force which it was impossible for me to resist,
protest in the name of the National Assembly and in my own name against
the outrage on national representation committed upon my colleagues and
upon myself.

"Given at Mazas on the 2d December 1851, at eight o'clock in the
morning.

"BAZE."

While this was taking place at Mazas, the soldiers were laughing and
drinking in the courtyard of the Assembly. They made their coffee in the
saucepans. They had lighted enormous fires in the courtyard; the flames,
fanned by the wind, at times reached the walls of the Chamber. A
superior official of the Questure, an officer of the National Guard,
Ramond de la Croisette, ventured to say to them, "You will set the
Palace on fire;" whereupon a soldier struck him a blow with his fist.

Four of the pieces taken from the Cour de Canons were ranged in battery
order against the Assembly; two on the Place de Bourgogne were pointed
towards the grating, and two on the Pont de la Concorde were pointed
towards the grand staircase.

As side-note to this instructive tale let us mention a curious fact. The
42d Regiment of the line was the same which had arrested Louis
Bonaparte at Boulogne. In 1840 this regiment lent its aid to the law
against the conspirator. In 1851 it lent its aid to the conspirator
against the law: such is the beauty of passive obedience.

[2] The Questors were officers elected by the Assembly, whose special
duties were to keep and audit the accounts, and who controlled all
matters affecting the social economy of the House.

CHAPTER IV.

OTHER DOINGS OF THE NIGHT

During the same night in all parts of Paris acts of brigandage took
place. Unknown men leading armed troops, and themselves armed with
hatchets, mallets, pincers, crow-bars, life-preservers, swords hidden
under their coats, pistols, of which the butts could be distinguished
under the folds of their cloaks, arrived in silence before a house,
occupied the street, encircled the approaches, picked the lock of the
door, tied up the porter, invaded the stairs, and burst through