The History of a Crime eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 549 pages of information about The History of a Crime.

The History of a Crime eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 549 pages of information about The History of a Crime.

Towards four o’clock a regiment of Chasseurs de Vincennes arrived in the courtyard with their platters, and began to eat, singing, with loud bursts of merriment.  M. de Broglie looked at them and said to M. Piscatory, “It is a strange spectacle to see the porringers of the Janissaries vanished from Constantinople reappearing at Paris!”

Almost at the same moment a staff officer informed the Representatives on behalf of General Forey that the apartments assigned to them were ready, and requested them to follow him.  They were taken into the eastern building, which is the wing of the barracks farthest from the Palace of the Council of State; they were conducted to the third floor.  They expected chambers and beds.  They found long rooms, vast garrets with filthy walls and low ceilings, furnished with wooden tables and benches.  These were the “apartments.”  These garrets, which adjoin each other, all open on the same corridor, a narrow passage, which runs the length of the main building.  In one of these rooms they saw, thrown into a corner, side-drums, a big drum, and various instruments of military music.  The Representatives scattered themselves about in these rooms.  M. de Tocqueville, who was ill, threw his overcoat on the floor in the recess of a window, and lay down.  He remained thus stretched upon the ground for several hours.

These rooms were warmed very badly by cast-iron stoves, shaped like hives.  A Representative wishing to poke the fire, upset one, and nearly set fire to the wooden flooring.

The last of these rooms looked out on the quay.  Antony Thouret opened a window and leaned out.  Several Representatives joined him.  The soldiers who were bivouacking below on the pavement, caught sight of them and began to shout, “Ah! there they are, those rascals at ’twenty-five francs a day,’ who wish to cut down our pay!” In fact, on the preceding evening, the police had spread this calumny through the barracks that a proposition had been placed on the Tribune to lessen the pay of the troops.  They had even gone so far as to name the author of this proposition.  Antony Thouret attempted to undeceive the soldiers.  An officer cried out to him, “It is one of your party who made the proposal.  It is Lamennais!”

In about an hour and a half there were ushered into these rooms MM.  Vallette, Bixio, and Victor Lefranc, who had come to join their colleagues and constitute themselves prisoners.

Night came.  They were hungry.  Several had not eaten since the morning.  M. Howyn de Tranchere, a man of considerable kindness and devotion, who had acted as porter at the Mairie, acted as forager at the barracks.  He collected five francs from each Representative, and they sent and ordered a dinner for two hundred and twenty from the Cafe d’Orsay, at the corner of the Quay, and the Rue du Bac.  They dined badly, but merrily.  Cookshop mutton, bad wine, and cheese.  There was no bread.  They ate as they best could, one standing, another

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The History of a Crime from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.