+------------------------------------------------------------+ | Q | C | D | E | Learn this list by heart. After so doing | | | | | | you will tear it up. The men admitted | | | | | | will do the same when you have transmitted | | | | | | their orders to them. | | | | | | Health and Fraternity, | | | | | | u og a' fe L. | +------------------------------------------------------------+

  It was only later on that the persons who were in the secret of thisfind at the time, learned the significance of those four capitalletters: _quinturions, centurions, decurions, éclaireurs_ [scouts],and the sense of the letters: _u og a' fe_, which was a date, andmeant April 15th, 1832. Under each capital letter were inscribed namesfollowed by very characteristic notes. Thus: Q. _Bannerel_. 8 guns, 83cartridges. A safe man.--C. _Boubière_. 1 pistol, 40 cartridges.--D._Rollet_. 1 foil, 1 pistol, 1 pound of powder.--E. _Tessier_. 1 sword, 1cartridge-box. Exact.-- _Terreur_. 8 guns. Brave, etc.

  Finally, this carpenter found, still in the same enclosure, a thirdpaper on which was written in pencil, but very legibly, this sort ofenigmatical list:--

  Unité: Blanchard: Arbre-Sec. 6. Barra. Soize. Salle-au-Comte. Kosciusko. Aubry the Butcher? J. J. R. Caius Gracchus. Right of revision. Dufond. Four. Fall of the Girondists. Derbac. Maubuée. Washington. Pinson. 1 pistol, 86 cartridges. Marseillaise. Sovereignty of the people. Michel. Quincampoix. Sword. Hoche. Marceau. Plato. Arbre-Sec. Warsaw. Tilly, crier of the _Populaire_.

  The honest bourgeois into whose hands this list fell knew itssignificance. It appears that this list was the complete nomenclature ofthe sections of the fourth arondissement of the Society of the Rightsof Man, with the names and dwellings of the chiefs of sections. To-day,when all these facts which were obscure are nothing more than history,we may publish them. It should be added, that the foundation of theSociety of the Rights of Man seems to have been posterior to the datewhen this paper was found. Perhaps this was only a rough draft.

  Still, according to all the remarks and the words, according to writtennotes, material facts begin to make their appearance.

  In the Rue Popincourt, in the house of a dealer in bric-à-brac, therewere seized seven sheets of gray paper, all folded alike lengthwiseand in four; these sheets enclosed twenty-six squares of this samegray paper folded in the form of a cartridge, and a card, on which waswritten the following:--

  Saltpetre . . . . . . . . . . . 12 ounces. Sulphur . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces. Charcoal . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces and a half. Water . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces.

  The report of the seizure stated that the drawer exhaled a strong smellof powder.

  A mason returning from his day's work, left behind him a little packageon a bench near the bridge of Austerlitz. This package was taken tothe police station. It was opened, and in it were found two printeddialogues, signed _Lahautière_, a song entitled: "Workmen, bandtogether," and a tin box full of cartridges.

  One artisan drinking with a comrade made the latter feel him to see howwarm he was; the other man felt a pistol under his waistcoat.

  In a ditch on the boulevard, between Père-Lachaise and the Barrièredu Trône, at the most deserted spot, some children, while playing,discovered beneath a mass of shavings and refuse bits of wood, abag containing a bullet-mould, a wooden punch for the preparation ofcartridges, a wooden bowl, in which there were grains of hunting-powder,and a little cast-iron pot whose interior presented evident traces ofmelted lead.

  Police agents, making their way suddenly and unexpectedly at fiveo'clock in the morning, into the dwelling of a certain Pardon, whowas afterwards a member of the Barricade-Merry section and got himselfkilled in the insurrection of April, 1834, found him standing near hisbed, and holding in his hand some cartridges which he was in the act ofpreparing.

  Towards the hour when workingmen repose, two men were seen to meetbetween the Barrière Picpus and the Barrière Charenton in a little lanebetween two walls, near a wine-shop, in front of which there was a "Jeude Siam."33 One drew a pistol from beneath his blouse and handed it tothe other. As he was handing it to him, he noticed that the perspirationof his chest had made the powder damp. He primed the pistol and addedmore powder to what was already in the pan. Then the two men parted.

  A certain Gallais, afterwards killed in the Rue Beaubourg in the affairof April, boasted of having in his house seven hundred cartridges andtwenty-four flints.

  The government one day received a warning that arms and two hundredthousand cartridges had just been distributed in the faubourg. Onthe following week thirty thousand cartridges were distributed. Theremarkable point about it was, that the police were not able to seize asingle one.

  An intercepted letter read: "The day is not far distant when, withinfour hours by the clock, eighty thousand patriots will be under arms."

  All this fermentation was public, one might almost say tranquil. Theapproaching insurrection was preparing its storm calmly in the face ofthe government. No singularity was lacking to this still subterraneancrisis, which was already perceptible. The bourgeois talked peaceably tothe working-classes of what was in preparation. They said: "How is therising coming along?" in the same tone in which they would have said:"How is your wife?"

  A furniture-dealer, of the Rue Moreau, inquired: "Well, when are yougoing to make the attack?"

  Another shop-keeper said:--

  "The attack will be made soon."

  "I know it. A month ago, there were fifteen thousand of you, now thereare twenty-five thousand." He offered his gun, and a neighbor offered asmall pistol which he was willing to sell for seven francs.

  Moreover, the revolutionary fever was growing. Not a point in Paris norin France was exempt from it. The artery was beating everywhere. Likethose membranes which arise from certain inflammations and form in thehuman body, the network of secret societies began to spread all over thecountry. From the associations of the Friends of the People, which wasat the same time public and secret, sprang the Society of the Rights ofMan, which also dated from one of the orders of the day: _Pluviôse,Year 40 of the republican era_, which was destined to survive even themandate of the Court of Assizes which pronounced its dissolution, andwhich did not hesitate to bestow on its sections significant names likethe following:--

  Pikes. Tocsin. Signal cannon. Phrygian cap. January 21. The beggars. The vagabonds. Forward march. Robespierre. Level. Ça Ira.

  The Society of the Rights of Man engendered the Society of Action. Thesewere impatient individuals who broke away and hastened ahead. Otherassociations sought to recruit themselves from the great mothersocieties. The members of sections complained that they were tornasunder. Thus, the Gallic Society, and the committee of organization ofthe Municipalities. Thus the associations for the liberty of the press,for individual liberty, for the instruction of the people againstindirect taxes. Then the Society of Equal Workingmen which was dividedinto three fractions, the levellers, the communists, the reformers.Then the Army of the Bastilles, a sort of cohort organized on a militaryfooting, four men commanded by a corporal, ten by a sergeant, twenty bya sub-lieutenant, forty by a lieutenant; there were never more thanfive men who knew each other. Creation where precaution is combined withaudacity and which seemed stamped with the genius of Venice.

  The central committee, which was at the head, had two arms, the Societyof Action, and the Army of the Bastilles.

  A legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, stirred aboutamong these the republican affiliations. It was denounced and repudiatedthere.

  The Parisian societies had ramifications in the principal cities, Lyons,Nantes, Lille, Marseilles, and each had its Society of the Rights ofMan, the Charbonnière, and The Free Men. All had a revolutionary societywhich was called the Cougourde. We have already mentioned this word.

  In Paris, the Faubourg Saint-Marceau kept up an equal buzzing with theFaubourg Saint-Antoine, and the schools were no less moved than thefaubourgs. A café in the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe and the wine-shop of the_Seven Billiards_, Rue des Mathurins-Saint-Jacques, served as rallyingpoints for the students. The Society of the Friends of the A B Caffiliated to the Mutualists of Angers, and to the Cougourde of Aix,met, as we have seen, in the Café Musain. These same young men assembledalso, as we have stated already, in a restaurant wine-shop of the RueMondétour which was called Corinthe. These meetings were secret. Otherswere as public as possible, and the reader can judge of their boldnessfrom these fragments of an interrogatory undergone in one of theulterior prosecutions: "Where was this meeting held?" "In the Rue de laPaix." "At whose house?" "In the street." "What sections were there?""Only one." "Which?" "The Manuel section." "Who was its leader?""I." "You are too young to have decided alone upon the bold course ofattacking the government. Where did your instructions come from?" "Fromthe central committee."

  The army was mined at the same time as the population, as was provedsubsequently by the operations of Béford, Luneville, and Épinard. Theycounted on the fifty-second regiment, on the fifth, on the eighth, onthe thirty-seventh, and on the twentieth light cavalry. In Burgundy andin the southern towns they planted the liberty tree; that is to say, apole surmounted by a red cap.

  Such was the situation.

  The Faubourg Saint-Antoine, more than any other group of the population,as we stated in the beginning, accentuated this situation and madeit felt. That was the sore point. This old faubourg, peopled likean ant-hill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees, wasquivering with expectation and with the desire for a tumult. Everythingwas in a state of agitation there, without any interruption, however, ofthe regular work. It is impossible to convey an idea of this lively yetsombre physiognomy. In this faubourg exists poignant distress hiddenunder attic roofs; there also exist rare and ardent minds. It isparticularly in the matter of distress and intelligence that it isdangerous to have extremes meet.

  The Faubourg Saint-Antoine had also other causes to tremble; for itreceived the counter-shock of commercial crises, of failures, strikes,slack seasons, all inherent to great political disturbances. In timesof revolution misery is both cause and effect. The blow which it dealsrebounds upon it. This population full of proud virtue, capable to thehighest degree of latent heat, always ready to fly to arms, prompt toexplode, irritated, deep, undermined, seemed to be only awaiting thefall of a spark. Whenever certain sparks float on the horizon chasedby the wind of events, it is impossible not to think of the FaubourgSaint-Antoine and of the formidable chance which has placed at the verygates of Paris that powder-house of suffering and ideas.

  The wine-shops of the _Faubourg Antoine_, which have been more thanonce drawn in the sketches which the reader has just perused, possesshistorical notoriety. In troublous times people grow intoxicated theremore on words than on wine. A sort of prophetic spirit and an afflatusof the future circulates there, swelling hearts and enlarging souls. Thecabarets of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine resemble those taverns of MontAventine erected on the cave of the Sibyl and communicating withthe profound and sacred breath; taverns where the tables were almosttripods, and where was drunk what Ennius calls the _sibylline wine_.

  The Faubourg Saint-Antoine is a reservoir of people. Revolutionaryagitations create fissures there, through which trickles the popularsovereignty. This sovereignty may do evil; it can be mistaken like anyother; but, even when led astray, it remains great. We may say of it asof the blind cyclops, _Ingens_.

  In '93, according as the idea which was floating about was good or evil,according as it was the day of fanaticism or of enthusiasm, there leapedforth from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine now savage legions, now heroicbands.

  Savage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in theearly days of the revolutionary chaos, tattered, howling, wild, withuplifted bludgeon, pike on high, hurled themselves upon ancient Paris inan uproar, what did they want? They wanted an end to oppression, anend to tyranny, an end to the sword, work for men, instruction for thechild, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity,bread for all, the idea for all, the Edenizing of the world. Progress;and that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress, they claimed in terriblewise, driven to extremities as they were, half naked, club in fist,a roar in their mouths. They were savages, yes; but the savages ofcivilization.

  They proclaimed right furiously; they were desirous, if only withfear and trembling, to force the human race to paradise. They seemedbarbarians, and they were saviours. They demanded light with the mask ofnight.

  Facing these men, who were ferocious, we admit, and terrifying, butferocious and terrifying for good ends, there are other men, smiling,embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in whiteplumes, in yellow gloves, in varnished shoes, who, with their elbows ona velvet table, beside a marble chimney-piece, insist gently on demeanorand the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right,of fanaticism, of innocence, of slavery, of the death penalty, of war,glorifying in low tones and with politeness, the sword, the stake, andthe scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to make a choice betweenthe barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, weshould choose the barbarians.

  But, thank Heaven, still another choice is possible. No perpendicularfall is necessary, in front any more than in the rear.

  Neither despotism nor terrorism. We desire progress with a gentle slope.

  God takes care of that. God's whole policy consists in rendering slopesless steep.