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CHAPTER IV.
THE WORKMEN'S SOCIETIES ASK US FOR THE ORDER TO FIGHT
In presence of the fact of the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine so
heroically constructed by the Representatives, so sadly neglected by the
populace, the last illusions, even mine, should have been dispersed.
Baudin killed, the Faubourg cold. Such things spoke aloud. It was a
supreme, manifest, absolute demonstration of that fact, the inaction of
the people, to which I could not resign myself--a deplorable inaction,
if they understood, a self-treason, if they did not understand, a fatal
neutrality in every case, a calamity of which all the responsibility, we
repeat, recoiled not upon the people but upon those who in June, 1848,
after having promised them amnesty, had refused it, and who had unhinged
the great soul of the people of Paris by breaking faith with them. What
the Constituent Assembly had sown the Legislative Assembly harvested.
We, innocent of the fault, had to submit to the consequence.
The spark which we had seen flash for an instant through the
crowd--Michel de Bourges from the height of Bonvalet's balcony, myself
from the Boulevard du Temple--this spark seemed extinguished. Maigne
firstly, then Brillier, then Bruckner, later on Charmaule, Madier de
Montjau, Bastide, and Dulac came to report to us what had passed at the
barricade of St. Antoine, the motives which had decided the
Representatives present not to await the hour appointed for the
rendezvous, and Baudin's death. The report which I made myself of what I
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