“Bonaparte has an object in view.  The Republic has made the People.  He wishes to restore the Populace.  He will succeed and you will fail.  He has on his side force, cannons, the mistake of the people, and the folly of the Assembly.  The few of the Left to which you belong will not succeed in overthrowing the coup d’etat.  You are honest, and he has this advantage over you—­that he is a rogue.  You have scruples, and he has this advantage over you—­that he has none.  Believe me.  Resist no longer.  The situation is without resources.  We must wait; but at this moment fighting would be madness.  What do you hope for?”

“Nothing,” said I.

“And what are you going to do?”

“Everything.”

By the tone of my voice he understood that further persistence was useless.

“Good-bye,” he said.

We parted.  He disappeared in the darkness.  I have never seen him since.

I went up again to Lafon’s rooms.

In the meantime the copies of the appeal to arms did not come to hand.  The Representatives, becoming uneasy, went up and downstairs.  Some of them went out on the Quai Jemmapes, to wait there and gain information about them.  In the room there was a sound of confused talking the members of the Committee, Madier de Montjau, Jules Favre, and Carnot, withdrew, and sent word to me by Charamaule that they were going to No. 10, Rue des Moulins, to the house of the ex-Constituent Landrin, in the division of the 5th Legion, to deliberate more at their ease, and they begged me to join them.  But I thought I should do better to remain.  I had placed myself at the disposal of the probable movement of the Faubourg St. Marceau.  I awaited the notice of it through Auguste.  It was most important that I should not go too far away; besides, it was possible that if I went away, the Representatives of the Left, no longing seeing a member of the committee amongst them, would disperse without taking any resolution, and I saw in this more than one disadvantage.

Time passed, no Proclamations.  We learned the next day that the packages had been seized by the police.  Cournet, an ex-Republican naval officer who was present, began to speak.  We shall see presently what sort of a man Cournet was, and of what an energetic and determined nature he was composed.  He represented to us that as we had been there nearly two hours the police would certainly end by being informed of our whereabouts, that the members of the Left had an imperative duty—­to keep themselves at all costs at the head of the People, that the necessity itself of their situation imposed upon them the precaution of frequently changing their place of retreat, and he ended by offering us, for our deliberation, his house and his workshops, No. 82, Rue Popincourt, at the bottom of a blind alley, and also in the neighborhood of the Faubourg St. Antoine.

This offer was accepted.  I sent to inform Auguste of our change of abode, and of Cournet’s address.  Lafon remained on the Quai Jemmapes in order to forward on the Proclamations as soon as they arrived, and we set out at once.