My friends Guinard, Cavaignac and Trélat, with sixteen other fellow-prisoners, were brought up before the Court of Assizes. It will be recollected that it was on account of the Artillery conspiracy, wherein I had taken an active part; therefore, one thing alone surprised me, why they should be in prison and I free; why they should have to submit to the cross-questionings of the law court whilst I was rehearsing a piece at the Porte-Saint-Martin. Between the 6th and the 11th of April the audiences had been devoted to the interrogation of the prisoners and to the hearing of witnesses. On the 12th, the Solicitor-General took up the case. I need hardly say that from the 12th to the 15th, the day when sentence was passed, I never left the sittings. It was a difficult task for the Solicitor-General to accuse men like those seated on the prisoners' bench, who were the chief combatants of July, and pronounced the "heroes of the Three Days," those whom the Lieutenant-General had received, flattered and pampered ten months back; the men whom Dupont (de l'Eure) referred to as his friends, whom La Fayette had called his children and whom, when he was no longer in the Ministry, Laffitte had called his accomplices. As a matter of fact, the Laffitte Ministry had fallen on 9 March. The cause of that fall could not have been more creditable to the former friend of King Louis-Philippe; he had found that five months of political friction with the new monarch had been enough to turn him into one of his most irreconcilable enemies. It was the time when three nations rose up and demanded their independent national rights: Belgium, Poland and Italy. People's minds were nearly settled about Belgium's fate; but not so with regard to Poland and Italy; and all generous hearts felt sympathy with those two Sisters in Liberty who were groaning, the one beneath the sword blade of the Czar, the other under Austria's chastisement. Attention was riveted in particular upon Modena. The Duke of Modena had fled from his duchy when he heard the news of the insurrection of Bologna, on the night of 4 February. The Cabinet at the Palais-Royal received a communication upon the subject from the Cabinet of Vienna, informing it that the Austrian government was preparing to intervene to replace Francis IV. upon his ducal throne. It was curious news and an exorbitant claim to make. The French Government had proclaimed the principle of non-intervention; now, upon what grounds could Austria interfere in the Duchy of Modena? Austria had, indeed, a right of reversion over that duchy; but the right was entirely conditional, and, until the day when all the male heirs of the reigning house should be extinct, Modena could be a perfectly independent duchy. Such demands were bound to revolt so upright and fair a mind as M. Laffitte's, and he vowed in full council that, if Austria persisted in that insolent claim, France would go to war with her.