Les Misérables
Sometimes they went upstairs, to a private room on the first floor, and
there scenes that were almost masonic were enacted. They made the
initiated take oaths _to render service to himself as well as to the
fathers of families_. That was the formula.
In the tap-rooms, “subversive” pamphlets were read. _They treated the
government with contempt_, says a secret report of that time.
Words like the following could be heard there:—
“I don’t know the names of the leaders. We folks shall not know the day
until two hours beforehand.” One workman said: “There are three hundred
of us, let each contribute ten sous, that will make one hundred and
fifty francs with which to procure powder and shot.”
Another said: “I don’t ask for six months, I don’t ask for even two. In
less than a fortnight we shall be parallel with the government. With
twenty-five thousand men we can face them.” Another said: “I don’t
sleep at night, because I make cartridges all night.” From time to
time, men “of bourgeois appearance, and in good coats” came and “caused
embarrassment,” and with the air of “command,” shook hands with _the
most important_, and then went away. They never stayed more than ten
minutes. Significant remarks were exchanged in a low tone: “The plot is
ripe, the matter is arranged.” “It was murmured by all who were there,”
to borrow the very expression of one of those who were present. The
exaltation was such that one day, a workingman exclaimed, before the
whole wine-shop: “We have no arms!” One of his comrades replied: “The
soldiers have!” thus parodying without being aware of the fact,
Bonaparte’s proclamation to the army in Italy: “When they had anything
of a more secret nature on hand,” adds one report, “they did not
communicate it to each other.” It is not easy to understand what they
could conceal after what they said.
These reunions were sometimes periodical. At certain ones of them,
there were never more than eight or ten persons present, and they were
always the same. In others, any one entered who wished, and the room
was so full that they were forced to stand. Some went thither through
enthusiasm and passion; others because it _was on their way to their
work_. As during the Revolution, there were patriotic women in some of
these wine-shops who embraced newcomers.
Other expressive facts came to light.
A man would enter a shop, drink, and go his way with the remark:
“Wine-merchant, the revolution will pay what is due to you.”
Revolutionary agents were appointed in a wine-shop facing the Rue de
Charonne. The balloting was carried on in their caps.
Workingmen met at the house of a fencing-master who gave lessons in the
Rue de Cotte. There there was a trophy of arms formed of wooden
broadswords, canes, clubs, and foils. One day, the buttons were removed
from the foils.
A workman said: “There are twenty-five of us, but they don’t count on
me, because I am looked upon as a machine.” Later on, that machine
became Quenisset.
The indefinite things which were brewing gradually acquired a strange
and indescribable notoriety. A woman sweeping off her doorsteps said to
another woman: “For a long time, there has been a strong force busy
making cartridges.” In the open street, proclamation could be seen
addressed to the National Guard in the departments. One of these
proclamations was signed: _Burtot, wine-merchant_.
One day a man with his beard worn like a collar and with an Italian
accent mounted a stone post at the door of a liquor-seller in the
Marché Lenoir, and read aloud a singular document, which seemed to
emanate from an occult power. Groups formed around him, and applauded.
The passages which touched the crowd most deeply were collected and
noted down. “—Our doctrines are trammelled, our proclamations torn, our
bill-stickers are spied upon and thrown into prison.”—“The breakdown
which has recently taken place in cottons has converted to us many
mediums.”—“The future of nations is being worked out in our obscure
ranks.”—“Here are the fixed terms: action or reaction, revolution or
counter-revolution. For, at our epoch, we no longer believe either in
inertia or in immobility. For the people against the people, that is
the question. There is no other.”—“On the day when we cease to suit
you, break us, but up to that day, help us to march on.” All this in
broad daylight.
Other deeds, more audacious still, were suspicious in the eyes of the
people by reason of their very audacity. On the 4th of April, 1832, a
passer-by mounted the post on the corner which forms the angle of the
Rue Sainte-Marguerite and shouted: “I am a Babouvist!” But beneath
Babeuf, the people scented Gisquet.
Among other things, this man said:—
“Down with property! The opposition of the left is cowardly and
treacherous. When it wants to be on the right side, it preaches
revolution, it is democratic in order to escape being beaten, and
royalist so that it may not have to fight. The republicans are beasts
with feathers. Distrust the republicans, citizens of the laboring
classes.”
“Silence, citizen spy!” cried an artisan.
This shout put an end to the discourse.
Mysterious incidents occurred.
At nightfall, a workingman encountered near the canal a “very well
dressed man,” who said to him: “Whither are you bound, citizen?” “Sir,”
replied the workingman, “I have not the honor of your acquaintance.” “I
know you very well, however.” And the man added: “Don’t be alarmed, I
am an agent of the committee. You are suspected of not being quite
faithful. You know that if you reveal anything, there is an eye fixed
on you.” Then he shook hands with the workingman and went away, saying:
“We shall meet again soon.”
The police, who were on the alert, collected singular dialogues, not
only in the wine-shops, but in the street.
“Get yourself received very soon,” said a weaver to a cabinet-maker.
“Why?”
“There is going to be a shot to fire.”
Two ragged pedestrians exchanged these remarkable replies, fraught with
evident Jacquerie:—
“Who governs us?”
“M. Philippe.”
“No, it is the bourgeoisie.”
The reader is mistaken if he thinks that we take the word _Jacquerie_
in a bad sense. The Jacques were the poor.
On another occasion two men were heard to say to each other as they
passed by: “We have a good plan of attack.”
Only the following was caught of a private conversation between four
men who were crouching in a ditch of the circle of the Barrière du
Trône:—
“Everything possible will be done to prevent his walking about Paris
any more.”
Who was the _he?_ Menacing obscurity.
“The principal leaders,” as they said in the faubourg, held themselves
apart. It was supposed that they met for consultation in a wine-shop
near the point Saint-Eustache. A certain Aug—, chief of the Society aid
for tailors, Rue Mondétour, had the reputation of serving as
intermediary central between the leaders and the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine.
Nevertheless, there was always a great deal of mystery about these
leaders, and no certain fact can invalidate the singular arrogance of
this reply made later on by a man accused before the Court of Peers:—
“Who was your leader?”
_“I knew of none and I recognized none.”_
There was nothing but words, transparent but vague; sometimes idle
reports, rumors, hearsay. Other indications cropped up.
A carpenter, occupied in nailing boards to a fence around the ground on
which a house was in process of construction, in the Rue de Reuilly
found on that plot the torn fragment of a letter on which were still
legible the following lines:—
The committee must take measures to prevent recruiting in the sections
for the different societies.
And, as a postscript:—
We have learned that there are guns in the Rue du
Faubourg-Poissonnière, No. 5 [bis], to the number of five or six
thousand, in the house of a gunsmith in that court. The section owns no
arms.
What excited the carpenter and caused him to show this thing to his
neighbors was the fact, that a few paces further on he picked up
another paper, torn like the first, and still more significant, of
which we reproduce a facsimile, because of the historical interest
attaching to these strange documents:—
+——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————+
| Q | C | D | E | Learn this list by heart. After so doing |
| | | | | | you will tear it up. The men admitted will do the same |
| | | | | | when you have transmitted their orders to them. Health and |
| | | | | | Fraternity, u og a’ fe L. |
+——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————+
It was only later on that the persons who were in the secret of this
find at the time, learned the significance of those four capital
letters: _quinturions, centurions, decurions, éclaireurs_ [scouts], and
the sense of the letters: _u og a’ fe_, which was a date, and meant
April 15th, 1832. Under each capital letter were inscribed names
followed by very characteristic notes. Thus: Q. _Bannerel_. 8 guns, 83
cartridges. A safe man.—C. _Boubière_. 1 pistol, 40 cartridges.—D.
_Rollet_. 1 foil, 1 pistol, 1 pound of powder.—E. _Tessier_. 1 sword, 1
cartridge-box. Exact.— _Terreur_. 8 guns. Brave, etc.
Finally, this carpenter found, still in the same enclosure, a third
paper on which was written in pencil, but very legibly, this sort of
enigmatical list:—
Unité: Blanchard: Arbre-Sec. 6.
Barra. Soize. Salle-au-Comte.
Kosciusko. Aubry the Butcher?
J. J. R.
Caius Gracchus.
Right of revision. Dufond. Four.
Fall of the Girondists. Derbac. Maubuée.
Washington. Pinson. 1 pistol, 86 cartridges.
Marseillaise.
Sovereignty of the people. Michel. Quincampoix. Sword.
Hoche.
Marceau. Plato. Arbre-Sec.
Warsaw. Tilly, crier of the Populaire.
The honest bourgeois into whose hands this list fell knew its
significance. It appears that this list was the complete nomenclature
of the sections of the fourth arondissement of the Society of the
Rights of Man, with the names and dwellings of the chiefs of sections.
To-day, when all these facts which were obscure are nothing more than
history, we may publish them. It should be added, that the foundation
of the Society of the Rights of Man seems to have been posterior to the
date when this paper was found. Perhaps this was only a rough draft.
Still, according to all the remarks and the words, according to written
notes, material facts begin to make their appearance.
In the Rue Popincourt, in the house of a dealer in bric-à-brac, there
were seized seven sheets of gray paper, all folded alike lengthwise and
in four; these sheets enclosed twenty-six squares of this same gray
paper folded in the form of a cartridge, and a card, on which was
written the following:—
Saltpetre . . . . . . . . . . . 12 ounces.
Sulphur . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces.
Charcoal . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces and a half.
Water . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces.
The report of the seizure stated that the drawer exhaled a strong smell
of powder.
A mason returning from his day’s work, left behind him a little package
on a bench near the bridge of Austerlitz. This package was taken to the
police station. It was opened, and in it were found two printed
dialogues, signed _Lahautière_, a song entitled: “Workmen, band
together,” and a tin box full of cartridges.
One artisan drinking with a comrade made the latter feel him to see how
warm he was; the other man felt a pistol under his waistcoat.
In a ditch on the boulevard, between Père-Lachaise and the Barrière du
Trône, at the most deserted spot, some children, while playing,
discovered beneath a mass of shavings and refuse bits of wood, a bag