Let us narrate it.

Let us narrate what History had never seen before.

The assassination of a people by a man.

Suddenly, at a given signal, a musket shot being fired, no matter where, no matter by whom, the shower of bullets poured upon the crowd.  A shower of bullets is also a crowd; it is death scattered broadcast.  It does not know whither it goes, nor what it does; it kills and passes on.

But at the same time it has a species of soul; it is premeditated, it executes a will.  This was an unprecedented moment.  It seemed as though a handful of lightnings was falling upon the people.  Nothing simpler.  It formed a clear solution to the difficulty; the rain of lead overwhelmed the multitude.  What are you doing there?  Die!  It is a crime to be passing by.  Why are you in the street?  Why do you cross the path of the Government?  The Government is a cut-throat.  They have announced a thing, they must certainly carry it out; what is begun must assuredly be achieved; as Society is being saved, the People must assuredly be exterminated.

Are there not social necessities?  Is it not essential that Beville should have 87,000 francs a year and Fleury 95,000 francs?  Is it not essential that the High Chaplain, Menjaud, Bishop of Nancy, should have 342 francs a day, and that Bassano and Cambaceres should each have 383 francs a day, and Vaillant 468 francs, and Saint-Arnaud 822 francs?  Is it not necessary that Louis Bonaparte should have 76,712 francs a day?  Could one be Emperor for less?

In the twinkling of an eye there was a butchery on the boulevard a quarter of a league long.  Eleven pieces of cannon wrecked the Sallandrouze carpet warehouse.  The shot tore completely through twenty-eight houses.  The baths of Jouvence were riddled.  There was a massacre at Tortoni’s.  A whole quarter of Paris was filled with an immense flying mass, and with a terrible cry.  Everywhere sudden death.  A man is expecting nothing.  He falls.  From whence does this come?  From above, say the Bishops’ Te Deum; from below, says Truth.

From a lower place than the galleys, from a lower place than Hell.

It is the conception of a Caligula, carried out by a Papavoine.

Xavier Durrieu comes upon the boulevard.  He states,—­

“I have taken sixty steps, I have seen sixty corpses.”

And he draws back.  To be in the street is a Crime, to be at home is a Crime.  The butchers enter the houses and slaughter.  In slaughter-house slang the soldiers cry, “Let us pole-axe the lot of them.”