Edmond Dantès
it's all folly to rely on the National Guard. They are of the people.
Only the Municipal Guard and the troops of the Line can be relied on in
the civil conflict, which is sure to come to-morrow."
"And the Ministers, what do they?" asked Thiers.
"Oh! they are not idle," replied the soldier. "The bastilles are armed,
and those of Montrouge and Aubervilliers are provisioned. The
horse-artillery at Vincennes are ready, on the instant, to gallop into
the capital. Seventy additional pieces of ordnance are now entering the
barrieres. The Municipal Guard are supplied with ball-cartridges. The
troops concentrated at sunrise to-morrow will not be less than one
hundred thousand strong. With these men in the forts and faithful, the
city can be starved in three days, National Guard and all, if
rebellious. Now is the crisis in which to test the remarkable admission
of M. Duchatel, in May, '45, that the bastilles of Paris were designed
to 'fortify order.' We shall see, we shall see!"
"And the Marshal Duke of Islay--where is he?" quietly asked Marrast,
with a significant shrug and smile.
At this mention of his bitter foe, a frown lowered on the fine face of
Lamoriciere, as he briefly and sternly replied:
"With the King, Monsieur--General Bugeaud is with the King. But they
mistake, Monsieur. Eugene Cavaignac is the man for this emergency.
Bugeaud is a soldier--a mere soldier--Cavaignac is a statesman--a
Napoleon! Paris will discriminate between the two one day, and that
shortly."
And with an abrupt military salute the conqueror of Algeria walked away,
followed by his little brother-in-law, who seemed yet shorter and more
insignificant at the side of his towering and graceful form. At the same
moment, Ledru Rollin entered in great agitation, and, having glanced
hastily around, as if in search of some one in the assemblage, advanced
straight to the journalist and grasped his hand.
"By heavens, Armand, I think the hour has arrived!"
"Whence do you come?" was the quick question.
"From the Boulevards, where I left Flocon, Louis Blanc and M. Dantes,
with the people. I tell you, Armand, the people are ripe--ripe! The
Ministerial ordinances prohibiting the banquet have kindled a flame
wherever they have gone. The pitiful manifesto of the opposition and the
counter manifesto of the Twelfth Arrondissement have only served to fan
this flame into fury. It has been our care to restrain and direct, not
to excite. It is dark and cold without, Armand; the winter wind howls
dismally along the streets, the sleet freezes as it falls and the
furious blast almost extinguishes the torches by which, at the corners
and at the cafes, the different manifestoes of the day are being read to
the eager throngs, on whose faces, in the flare of the blood-red light,
can be perceived the fury of their hearts. The people, at length, are
ripe! To-morrow all Paris will be in arms!"
While Ledru Rollin was thus speaking, Louis Blanc entered and quietly
approached, courteously saluting his acquaintances on his way, and
stopping to exchange a few words with Madame Dantes, who inquired with
considerable anxiety for her husband.
"I have this moment left him, Madame," said Louis Blanc. "Be assured, he
is safe and well. Ah! how glorious to be an object of solicitude to one
like you!" he added, with a smile.
The lady smiled also, and offered an appropriate jest in reply to the
gallantry of the distinguished author, as he moved on to join his
friends.
"The Ministry provokes its fate!" he said, in a low tone, as he
approached. "'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.' These
men suffered seventy reform banquets all over France. The seventy-first
one they prohibit, and that, too, by the exhumation of an old despotic
edict of 1790. This is exactly what we would have. It was the first, not
the last banquet they should have suppressed. Barrot was right to-day,
in the Chamber, when he said that had this manifestation been suffered
the people would have become tranquil."
"Tranquil, indeed!" cried Ledru Rollin. "That's exactly what we have
apprehended! No--no--it is too late! This Reform Banquet was, at first,
but an insignificant thing. In it we now recognize the commencement of a
revolution. The various announcements and postponements of this banquet
have caused an agitation among the masses favorable to our wishes, and
the threats and obstinacy of the Ministry have completed the work. The
hopes, fears, doubts and disappointments attending this affair have put
the mind of all Paris in a ferment, and excited passions of which we may
take immediate advantage."
"Aye!" cried Louis Blanc, "we may now do what I have always wished and
counseled--we, the Communists, may now take advantage of a movement, in
the origin or inception of which we had no hand."
"True, most true!" observed Marrast; "this is the work of the
Dynastics--Thiers, Barrot and the rest--the commencement of a reform
under the law which we design to make a revolution paramount to all
law."
"They begin to fear already that they have gone too far, those discreet
men!" said Louis Blanc, smiling bitterly. "Did you observe how they
shuffled to-night at M. Barrot's, and finally resolved to abandon the
banquet, but, as a sop to the people, pledged themselves to impeach the
Ministry?"
"Ah! ha! ha!" laughed Ledru Rollin; "just as if their abandonment of the
banquet is to keep the people away from it to-morrow, any more than the
Ministerial ordinances! Why, not one man in ten thousand knows of the
existence of these manifestoes! But the faubourgs have been promised a
holiday for a fortnight past, and they don't intend to be put off
again."
"Whether the Dynastics designed or wished to be compromised in this
affair," remarked Marrast, "they certainly are committed now, and it is
too late for them to get out of the movement. Indeed, I view it as
nothing less than a union of all the oppositions against the Crown--aye,
against the Crown, and for a republic! We comprehend this--they don't.
They have not, like us, waited seventeen years for a signal for
revolution;--and now, before God, I believe the hour is at hand! This is
no accidental insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, '32--no outbreak
at a funeral--no riot of operatives--no unmeaning revolt, as in '39. It
is a reform, with the first names in France as its advocates and
supporters, which we will make a revolution if we can secure the
National Guard."
"The National Guard is secured already," said Louis Blanc. "Are they
not of the people? At least twenty thousand of the National Guard are
Republicans. Of the remaining forty thousand, nearly all are well
disposed or neutral in feeling. Have I studied the National Guard for
twenty years in vain, and have all the measures of the Communists to
secure them, when the crisis came on, proved utterly ineffectual? On the
National Guard we may rely. The Municipal Guard are picked men, and well
paid to support the Throne--they will fight even better than the Line.
With the Line and the National Guard the people must seek to fraternize
from the beginning--with the other troops they have solely to
fight--but, after all, general facts and principles only can be laid
down. Circumstances utterly beyond human control must direct and govern,
and vary and determine results when the period of action arrives; and
arrive it may at any hour of the day or night. At this moment Paris
sleeps on a volcano, the fires of which have long been gathering through
many a fair and sunny day! God only knows when the volcano will burst;
but, when the hour comes, let the people be prepared!"
As these enthusiastic words were uttered, the dark eye of the speaker
flashed and his lip quivered. The silver clock on the mantel, beside
which the conspirators stood, struck the first quarter after two. The
night was waning, but the festivity seemed rather to increase than
diminish within the salons of the magnificent mansion, while the storm
howled even more drearily without, and the rain, at intervals, in heavy
blasts, beat even more fiercely against the northern casements.
As Louis Blanc ceased speaking, M. Flocon entered the salon, and, as if
by some preconcerted arrangement, at once sought his political friends.
"What of the night, watchman?" cried Ledru Rollin, as the editor of "La
Reforme" approached. "The latest news! for 'That of an hour's age doth
hiss the speaker,' as the English Shakespeare says. The news! good or
bad!"
"As I entered," said Flocon, "the house trembled with the jar of a train
of heavy ordnance, attended by tumbrels and artillery caissons, and
escorted by a regiment of horse, which rolled along the pavement of the
Champs Elysees."
"Good!" answered Marrast, with enthusiasm.
"All night," continued Flocon, eagerly, "through darkness and storm,
whole regiments of infantry have thronged the line of boulevards which
stretch from the Tuileries to Vincennes, and each soldier bears upon his
knapsack, in addition to all his arms, an axe to demolish barricades.
The garrisons of the arrondissements of Paris are already seventy
thousand strong; and the troops of the Line are concentrating around the
Palais Bourbon and the Chamber of Deputies."
"Excellent--most excellent!" joyfully exclaimed Louis Blanc. "The
affront will not be wanting! But where is M. Dantes?"
"He is still with the chiefs of the faubourgs and the committees of the
Free-masons and workmen, in the Rue Lepelletier, issuing his last
instructions for the morrow. Messieurs, that man is a magician! His zeal
in the good cause puts the boldest of us all to the blush. By most
indefatigable energy and indomitable perseverance, he has brought about
a systematic, almost scientific organization and fraternity, through
various modes of rapid intercommunication between the innumerable
classes of operatives of every description throughout the whole capital
and its faubourgs, so that, within six hours, he can have in military
array an armed mass of one hundred thousand blouses upon the boulevards.
The workshops alone, he tells me, can furnish fifty thousand. The
rapidity with which he conveys intelligence through this immense army
and their utter subservience to his will and subordination to his orders
are all so wonderful that it is impossible to determine which is most
so. To control a Parisian populace has hitherto been deemed a chimera.
With M. Dantes it is an existing reality. Not an army in Europe is so
obedient or so prompt as his army of workmen. The secret is this--they
know him to be their friend. All over Paris are to be seen his
workshops, savings banks, hospitals and houses of industry and reform,
and, in the suburbs, his phalansteries and his model farms. That he has
the command of boundless wealth is certain; but whose it is, or whence
it comes, no one can divine; and never did man make use of boundless
wealth to attain his ends more wisely than he does! Why, I am told that
the pens of half the litterateurs and feuilletonists of Paris have for
years past been guided by his will and compensated from his purse to
accomplish his purposes. 'The Mysteries of Paris' and 'The Wandering
Jew' are but two of the triumphs of his policy. And his system of
philanthropy seems not bounded by France, but to embrace all Europe. The
Swiss Protestant and the Italian patriot have each felt his effective
sympathy as well as the French workman; and in the same manner as with
the operatives so has he obtained influence and weight with the National
Guard, and to such an extent that of the sixty thousand one-half would
obey his orders with greater alacrity than those of Jacqueminot himself.
I tell you, Messieurs, he is a magician!"
"Hush! hush!" cried Marrast; "he is entering now!"
"He pauses and looks around him!" said Louis Blanc.