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rang at a door which seemed to him that of the Military Commandant. Nobody
answered, the door was not opened, and the Major returned downstairs,
without having been able to speak to anybody.
On his part the Adjutant-Major re-entered the Palace, but the Major did
not see him again. The Adjutant remained near the grated door of the
Place Bourgogne, shrouded in his cloak, and walking up and down the
courtyard as though expecting some one.
At the instant that five o'clock sounded from the great clock of the
dome, the soldiers who slept in the hut-camp before the Invalides were
suddenly awakened. Orders were given in a low voice in the huts to take
up arms, in silence. Shortly afterwards two regiments, knapsack on back
were marching upon the Palace of the Assembly; they were the 6th and the
4
2d.
At this same stroke of five, simultaneously in all the quarters of Paris,
infantry soldiers filed out noiselessly from every barrack, with their
colonels at their head. The aides-de-camp and orderly officers of Louis
Bonaparte, who had been distributed in all the barracks, superintended
this taking up of arms. The cavalry were not set in motion until
three-quarters of an hour after the infantry, for fear that the ring of
the horses' hoofs on the stones should wake slumbering Paris too soon.
M. de Persigny, who had brought from the Elysée to the camp of the
Invalides the order to take up arms, marched at the head of the 42d, by
the side of Colonel Espinasse. A story is current in the army, for at the
present day, wearied as people are with dishonorable incidents, these
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