These arrests were not pleasant tasks for the Commissaries of Police.  They were made to drink down their shame in large draughts.  Cavaignac, Leflo, Changarnier, Bedeau, and Lamoriciere did not spare them any more than Charras did.  As he was leaving, General Cavaignac took some money with him.  Before putting it in his pocket, he turned towards Colin, the Commissary of Police who had arrested him, and said, “Will this money be safe on me?”

The Commissary exclaimed, “Oh, General, what are you thinking of?”

“What assurance have I that you are not thieves?” answered Cavaignac.  At the same time, nearly the same moment, Charras said to Courteille, the Commissary of Police, “Who can tell me that you are not pick-pockets?”

A few days afterwards these pitiful wretches all received the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

This cross given by the last Bonaparte to policemen after the 2d of December is the same as that affixed by the first Napoleon to the eagles of the Grand Army after Austerlitz.

I communicated these details to the Committee.  Other reports came in.  A few concerned the Press.  Since the morning of the 4th the Press was treated with soldierlike brutality.  Serriere, the courageous printer, came to tell us what had happened at the Presse.  Serriere published the Presse and the Avenement du Peuple, the latter a new name for the Evenement, which had been judicially suppressed.  On the 2d, at seven o’clock in the morning, the printing-office had been occupied by twenty-eight soldiers of the Republican Guard, commanded by a Lieutenant named Pape (since decorated for this achievement).  This man had given Serriere an order prohibiting the printing of any article signed “Nusse.”  A Commissary of Police accompanied Lieutenant Pape.  This Commissary had notified Serriere of a “decree of the President of the Republic,” suppressing the Avenement du Peuple, and had placed sentinels over the presses.  The workmen had resisted, and one of them said to the soldiers, “We shall print it in spite of you.”  Then forty additional Municipal Guards arrived, with two quarter-masters, four corporals, and a detachment of the line, with drums at their head, commanded by a captain.  Girardin came up indignant, and protested with so much energy that a quarter-master said to him, “I should like a Colonel of your stamp.”  Girardin’s courage communicated itself to the workmen, and by dint of skill and daring, under the very eyes of the gendarmes, they succeeded in printing Girardin’s proclamations with the hand-press, and ours with the brush.  They carried them away wet, in small packages, under their waistcoats.