ecognised who he was. By this
time it appeared to be understood that a Government had been
constituted, consisting of Blanqui, Ledru-Rollin, Delescluze, Louis
Blanc, Flourens, and others. Flourens, whom I now perceived for the
first time, went through a corridor, with some armed men, and I and
others followed him. We got first into an antechamber, and then into a
large room, where a great row was going on. I did not get farther than
close to the door, and consequently could not well distinguish what was
passing, but I saw Flourens standing on a table, and I heard that he was
calling upon the members of the Government of National Defence, who were
seated round it, to resign, and that Jules Favre was refusing to do so.
After a scene of confusion, which lasted half an hour, I found myself,
with those round me, pushed out of the room, and I heard that the old
Government had been arrested, and that a consultation was to take place
between it and the new one. Feeling hungry, I now went to the door of
the Hotel to get out, but I was told I could not do so without a
permission from the citizen Blanqui. I observed that I was far too
independent a citizen myself to ask any one for a permit to go where I
liked, and, as I walked on, the citizen sentinel did not venture to stop
me. As I passed before Trochu's headquarters at the Louvre I spoke to a
captain of the Etat-Major, whom I knew, and whom I saw standing at the
gate. When he heard that I had just come from the Hotel de Ville, he
anxiously asked me what was going on there, and whether I had seen
Trochu. General Schmitz, he said, had received an order signed by the
mayors of Paris to close the gates of the town, and not on any pretext
to let any one in or out. At the Louvre he said all was in confusion,
but he understood that Picard had escaped from the Hotel de Ville, and
was organizing a counter-movement at the Ministry of Finance. Having
dined, I went off to the Place Vendome, as the generale was beating. The
National Guards of the quarter were hurrying there, and Mobile
battalions were marching in the same direction. I found on my arrival
that this had become the headquarters of the Government; that an officer
who had come with an order to Picard to go to the Hotel de Ville, signed
by Blanqui, had been arrested. General Tamisier was still a prisoner
with the Government. Soon news arrived that a battalion had got inside
the Hotel de Ville and had managed to smuggle Trochu out