The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-WitnessHugo, Victor
History
The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness
Hugo, Victor
France -- History -- 1789-1900
The
first speaker was a workman. He began by apologizing for mingling with
the Representatives, he a stranger to the Assembly. The Representatives
interrupted him. "No, no," they said, "the People and Representatives
are all one! Speak--!" He declared that if he spoke it was in order to
clear from all suspicion the honor of his brethren, the workmen of
Paris; that he had heard some Representatives express doubt about them.
He asserted that this was unjust, that the workmen realized the whole
crime of M. Bonaparte and the whole duty of the People, that they would
not be deaf to the appeal of the Republican Representatives, and that
this would be clearly shown. He said all this, simply, with a sort of
proud shyness and of honest bluntness. He kept his word. I found him the
next day fighting on the Rambuteau barricade.
Mathieu (de la Drôme) came in as the workman concluded. "I bring news,"
he exclaimed. A profound silence ensued.
As I have already said, we vaguely knew since the morning that the Right
were to have assembled, and that a certain number of our friends had
probably taken part in the meeting, and that was all. Mathieu (de la
Drôme) brought us the events of the day, the details of the arrests at
their own houses carried out without any obstacle, of the meeting which
had taken place at M. Daru's house and its rough treatment in the Rue
de Bourgogne, of the Representatives expelled from the Hall of the
Assembly, of the meanness of President Dupin, of the melting away of the
High Court, of the total inaction of the Council of State, of the sad
sitting held at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement, of the Oudinot,
_fiasco_, of the decree of the deposition of the President, and of the
two hundred and twenty forcibly arrested and taken to the Quai d'Orsay.
He concluded in a manly style: "The duty of the Left was increasing
hourly. The morrow would probably prove decisive." He implored the
meeting to take this into consideration.
A workman added a fact. He had happened in the morning to be in the Rue
de Grenelle during the passage of the arrested members of the Assembly;
he was there at the moment when one of the commanders of the Chasseurs
de Vincennes had uttered these words, "Now it is the turn of those
gentlemen--the Red Representatives. Let them look out for themselves!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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