n revolt, the form, and
insurrection, the foundation.

This movement of 1832 had, in its rapid outbreak and in its melancholy
extinction, so much grandeur, that even those who see in it only an
uprising, never refer to it otherwise than with respect. For them, it
is like a relic of 1830. Excited imaginations, say they, are not to be
calmed in a day. A revolution cannot be cut off short. It must needs
undergo some undulations before it returns to a state of rest, like a
mountain sinking into the plain. There are no Alps without their Jura,
nor Pyrenees without the Asturias.

This pathetic crisis of contemporary history which the memory of
Parisians calls "the epoch of the riots," is certainly a characteristic
hour amid the stormy hours of this century. A last word, before we enter
on the recital.

The facts which we are about to relate belong to that dramatic and
living reality, which the historian sometimes neglects for lack of time
and space. There, nevertheless, we insist upon it, is life, palpitation,
human tremor. Petty details, as we think we have already said, are, so
to speak, the foliage of great events, and are lost in the distance of
history. The epoch, surnamed "of the riots," abounds in details of
this nature. Judicial inquiries have not revealed, and perhaps have not
sounded the depths, for another reason than history. We shall therefore
bring to light, among the known and published peculiarities, things
which have not heretofore been known, about facts over which have passed
the forgetfulness of some, and the death of others. The majority of the
actors in these gigantic scenes have disappeared; beginning with the
very next day they held their peace; but of what we shall relate, we
shall be able to say: "We have seen this." We alter a few names, for
history relates and does not inform against, but the deed which we shall
paint will be genuine. In accordance with the conditions of the book
which we are now writing, we shall show only one side and one episode,
and certainly, the least known at that, of the two days, the 5th and the
6th of June, 1832, but we shall do it in such wise that the reader may
catch a glimpse, beneath the gloomy veil which we are about to lift, of
the real form of this frightful public adventure.

CHAPTER III--A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN

In the spring of 1832, although the cholera had been chilling all
minds for the last three months and had cast over their agit