ning corridor, the jailer took up the mattresses,
threw a few buckets of water on the floor, wiped it up anyhow, replaced
the mattresses on the damp stones, and said to them, "Go back again."
They locked them up until the next morning. From time to time they
brought in 100 new prisoners, and they fetched away 100 old ones (those
who had been there for two or three days). What became of them?--At night
the prisoners could hear from their dungeon the sound of explosions, and
in the morning passers-by could see, as we have stated, pools of blood in
the courtyard of the Prefecture.

The calling over of those who went out was conducted in alphabetical
order.

One day they called David d'Angers. David took up his packet, and was
getting ready to leave, when the governor of the jail, who seemed to be
keeping watch over him, suddenly came up and said quickly, "Stay, M.
David, stay."

One morning he saw Buchez, the ex-President of the Constituent Assembly,
coming into his cell "Ah!" said David, "good! you have come to visit the
prisoners?"--"I am a prisoner," said Buchez.

They wished to insist on David leaving for America. He refused. They
contented themselves with Belgium. On the 19th December he reached
Brussels. He came to see me, and said to me, "I am lodging at the Grand
Monarque, 89, Rue des Fripiers."[31]

And he added laughing, "The Great Monarch--the King. The old
clothesmen--the Royalists, '89. The Revolution." Chance occasionally
furnishes some wit.

[31] _Anglice_, "old clothes men."

CHAPTER IX.

OUR LAST MEETING

On the 3d of December everything was coming in in our favor. On the 5th
everything was receding from us. It was like a mighty sea which was going
out. The tide had come in gloriously, it went out disastrously. Gloomy
ebb and flow of the people.

And who was the power who said to this ocean, "Thou shalt go no farther?"
Alas! a pigmy.

These hiding-places of the abyss are fathomless.

The abyss is afraid. Of what?

Of something deeper than itself. Of the Crime.

The people drew back. They drew back on the 5th; on the 6th they
disappeared.

On the horizon there could be seen nothing but the beginning of a species
of vast night.

This night has been the Empire.

We found ourselves on the 5th what we were on the 2d. Alone.

But we persevered. Our mental condition was this--desperate, yes;
discouraged, no.

Items of bad news came to us as good news had come to us on the even