It was with great happiness that I abandoned the literary side of my life, which had just compelled me, very much against my will, to be disagreeable to a man against whom I have preserved no rancour, and who, besides, about the time we have reached, had given up the theatre and, having published a remarkable book, so I am assured, _La Chevalière d'Éon,_ left for America, and rendered the immense service to French literature of spreading and popularising it in the country of Washington Irving and of Cooper; it was, I repeat, with great pleasure that I abandoned the literary side of my life to take up again the thread of political events which agitated the year 1832, even if they had not as yet stained Paris with blood and thrown a pall of mourning over France. Let us be permitted to take them up a little farther back than the month of June, which saw them burst forth; we will return all too soon to that terrible moment. After the trial of the artillery, of which I have given an account, the old secret societies, endued with the Carbonist principles of 1821, were reorganised, and, at the same time, new societies were created. Our readers are acquainted with the name of the Society of the "Friends of the People," and that of the "Rights of Man": these, in a measure, were the parent societies; but two other societies had sprung up side by side with them: the Société Gauloise, which, at the time of the combat, proved itself one of the most ardent in flying to arms; and the organising Committee of the Municipalities, which connected itself by invisible but real bonds with the famous Society of the Philadelphians, which, under the Empire it had failed in overturning, had, for its principal leaders, Oudet, Pichegru and Moreau. Bastide was affiliated to the latter society, the principles of which were Babouvist; so, at the Lyons insurrection, which, caused by poverty, was of a socialistic tendency, Bastide was sent in to the insurgent town to see what the Republican party could gain from it. All was over by the time he arrived; but he thought he could discern the seeds of fresh insurrections in the dying one, and returned with the idea that something might be done in that direction. So he only stayed a short time in Paris, and soon set off again for the départements of Ardèche and Isère. There he found that fiery Dauphiné population which, in 1788, were the first to keep their States for Vizille; which, since 1816, had conspired against the Bourbons, and, since 1832, against Louis-Philippe. On 13 March he returned from a tour in the mountains with the two brothers Vasseur, both since dead, the eldest of whom was representative of the people in the Legislative Assembly; and, as they approached the gates of Grenoble, they learnt that the town, which they had left perfectly quiet, was in flames. This is what had happened.