"You must understand clearly that it is I, M. Alexandre Dumas, who lend you these guns; those who get killed I will not bother, but those who survive shall bring back their arms. Is that agreed to?" "On our word of honour!" "Here are twenty rifles." "Thanks!" "That is not all; you must write upon the doors: _No arms left!_" "Who has got any chalk?" "I will call the head carpenter. Darnault, a piece of chalk!" "Here it is." "Go and write!" I said to my men. And one of them, rifle in hand, in sight of the detachment of the Line, went and wrote on the three doors of the theatre, "_No arms left,_" and signed it. Then the twenty men shook hands with me, and went away, shouting, "_Vive la République!_" and flourishing their rifles. "Now," I said to Darnault, "barricade the door." "Upon my word," said Harel, "the theatre is your own from this moment, my dear friend, and you can do what you please in it. You have saved it!" "Let us go and see Georges, and tell her she and the theatre are saved." We went upstairs; Georges was nearly dead with fright. On seeing me enter, dressed as an artillery-man, she cried aloud, "Are you going out in that costume?" "Of course!" "But you will be killed before you reach the faubourg Poissonnière." "Well, that is quite possible ... and if my friend G. de B. had not taken such bad aim it would already have happened." "Harel, lend him some clothes." "Ah! yes, why not, Tom?" "Well, at any rate, send for some of your own; I will not let you go out in that wretched uniform." "Well, we will see!" Harel called Darnault. "Darnault, have you any of your men here?" "Yes, I think so," said Darnault; "there is Guérin." "Send him to fetch some clothes from Dumas's." "Give me a note," said Darnault to me. "Lend me your pencil." I wrote a few pencil lines on a scrap of paper, and he ran off. A quarter of an hour later, Guérin returned safely. For that matter, the road was perfectly cleared. I rapidly dressed myself in my ordinary clothes, and put my uniform under the care of Darnault--not wishing to entrust it to Georges, who would certainly have had it burnt--and I reached M. Laffitte's house by the faubourg Saint-Martin, the passage de l'Industrie, the rue d'Enghien and the rue Bergère. I did not get there till seven in the evening. La Fayette came to it by the boulevard. It was here he related to me the anecdote about the river. We went into Laffitte's house together, which I had not entered since the month of July 1830. The news that from all sides of Paris had reached this centre, of opposition, almost of insurrection, was as follows:--