"Well, yes, it is I," the author of _l'Itinéraire en Espagne_ said, with that bright, almost childish naïveté which was one of the chief characteristics of his personality; "they have just nominated me préfet of the Seine." "You?" "Yes, me." "Who has done that?" "How should I know? ... Some monsieur with a plumed hat, a large sabre and a long scarf." This "_monsieur_" was Colonel Dumoulin, who reappeared at every Revolution in exactly the same plumed hat, sabre and scarf, till one began to think he was the cause of all the misfortune. Odilon Barrot shrugged his shoulders. "You," he said, "you will belong to the Commune of Paris with us...." And in a whisper he added-- "And yet!" Only one who, like myself, was leaning over the back of his arm-chair, could have caught these last two words. I could see from my position another secretary, who had just come and taken his place opposite, as a rival power. It was M. Hippolyte Bonnelier, La Fayette's secretary; he was, indeed, the counterpart to Odilon Barrot, secretary of the Municipal Commission. I shall never forget how peculiarly M. Hippolyte Bonnelier was accoutred. He wore his powder-horn slung round him on a red ribbon. In his belt he had stuck a tiny poniard of four inches in length. Did he load his poniard with the powder-horn or did he fill his powder-flask with his poniard? It was a problem I was never able to solve. "I have felled eighteen trees along the boulevards!" he said to Étienne Arago. "With your poniard?" Étienne laughingly asked. "No," Bonnelier replied, laughing in his turn; "I meant to say that I marked them out with my poniard and that the people felled them." And, meanwhile, he was secretary to La Fayette. It was from him that I learned what had passed between MM. de Vitrolles, Sémonville, and Argout and the Municipal Commission. The situation was becoming more and more interesting. I felt certain that Oudard had gone to Neuilly; and I believed the answer would soon be given, so I made up my mind to spend the night at the Hôtel de Ville. I put myself under Bonnelier's protection and he took me to a kind of private office where was a mahogany desk and arm-chairs upholstered in green velvet. Upon the mantelpiece were five-branched candelabras but without candles in them. I should say that M. de Chabrol was a great and practical economist seeing he had five millions in his safe and no candles in his candlesticks.