ested. At Mazas
the under-jailors jeered at Thiers, Nadaud reprimanded them severely. The
Sieur Hubaut (the younger) awoke General Bedeau. "General, you are a
prisoner."--"My person is inviolable."--"Unless you are caught red-handed,
in the very act."--"Well," said Bedeau, "I am caught in the act, the
heinous act of being asleep." They took him by the collar and dragged him
to a _fiacre_.

On meeting together at Mazas, Nadaud grasped the hand of Greppo, and
Lagrange grasped the hand of Lamoriciere. This made the police gentry
laugh. A colonel, named Thirion, wearing a commander's cross round his
neck, helped to put the Generals and the Representatives into jail. "Look
me in the face," said Charras to him. Thirion moved away.

Thus, without counting other arrests which took place later on, there
were imprisoned during the night of the 2d of December, sixteen
Representatives and seventy-eight citizens. The two agents of the crime
furnished a report of it to Louis Bonaparte. Morny wrote "Boxed up;"
Maupas wrote "Quadded." The one in drawing-room slang, the other in the
slang of the galleys. Subtle gradations of language.

CHAPTER V.

THE DARKNESS OF THE CRIME

Versigny had just left me.

While I dressed hastily there came in a man in whom I had every
confidence. He was a poor cabinet-maker out of work, named Girard, to
whom I had given shelter in a room of my house, a carver of wood, and
not illiterate. He came in from the street; he was trembling.

"Well," I asked, "what do the people say?"

Girard answered me,--

"People are dazed. The blow has been struck in such a manner that it
is not realized. Workmen read the placards, say nothing, and go to
their work. Only one in a hundred speaks. It is to say, 'Good!' This
is how it appears to them. The law of the 31st May is abrogated--'Well
done!' Universal suffrage is re-established--'Also well done!' The
reactionary majority has been driven away--'Admirable!' Thiers is
arrested--'Capital!' Changarnier is seized--'Bravo!' Round each placard
there are _claqueurs_. Ratapoil explains his _coup d'etat_ to Jacques
Bonhomme, Jacques Bonhomme takes it all in. Briefly, it is my impression
that the people give their consent."

"Let it be so," said I.

"But," asked Girard of me, "what will you do, Monsieur Victor Hugo?"

I took my scarf of office from a cupboard, and showed it to him.

He understood.

We shook hands.

As he went out Carini entered.

Colonel