"Now for the carriage and horses!" shouted the two young men. "Oh! the posting stage between here and Chauny is my affair. I am going to drive you," said a jovial-faced, sturdy-looking butcher, who had stationed himself in front of the post-house with his little spring cart, inside which five or six trusses of straw composed the seats, and he rolled up his sleeves; "and I guess," he added, "you will never have been driven so fast." "Very well, thanks, comrade!" said Charras, he and Lothon seating themselves beside him. "Here! postillion, follow us with the carriage!" they shouted. "Adieu, colonel!" "Adieu, my lads!" "Off we go!" cried the butcher, cracking his whip, "and _Vive la Charte! Vive La Fayette! Vive le Gouvernement Provisoire!_ Down with Charles X., the dauphin, Polignac and the whole lot of them! Houp!..." And, as the butcher had promised, the cart whirled away as fast as a waterspout. At Chauny, they parted from the butcher and re-mounted their carriage. Next day, at ten in the morning, an hour after me, Charras and Lothon reached the Hôtel de Ville just at the moment when General La Fayette, who was always gallant, was kissing the hand of Mademoiselle Mante, who, accompanied by M. Samson and a third member, had come to lay the Comédie-Française under the protection of the nation. This deputation kept the two young men waiting for half an hour, during which time they acquainted themselves with what had happened since their departure: how the Duc d'Orléans was made lieutenant-general, and how Louis-Philippe was going to be made king. "Ah! that is how matters stand," Lothon exclaimed to Charras; "well, you shall hear what I have to say to it all to old La Fayette!" It was now Charras's turn to try and calm Lothon. But Lothon would not be quieted: his wound, the heat, the excitement, the little wine he had drunk, his refusal to be bled, all combined to send him into a state of delirium. Brain fever had set in. He entered the room where La Fayette was, hustling everybody who tried to prevent him; for, as I have mentioned, La Fayette was very carefully guarded. Charras followed Lothon. Then, crossing his arms over his breast, his hat that had been riddled into holes by the seven bullets thrown on the ground, his forehead bound up in the black bandage, his eyes flashing with fever, his cheeks purple with anger, the young fellow called the old man to account in terms which ought to have been taken down in shorthand to be properly reproduced, with respect to the liberty which had been bought at the price of much bloodshed, which the People had confided to him and which he had allowed himself to be robbed of by the chicanery and ambition of courtiers. He was so fine, so great, so eloquent, so full of untold poetic feeling, to the point even of frenzy, that no one dared interrupt him. "General," Charras whispered to La Fayette, "forgive him.... You see he is delirious." "Yes, yes," said La Fayette. Then to Lothon--