had seen, and which Cassal and Alexander Rey completed by adding new

circumstances, enabled us to ascertain the situation. The Committee could

no longer hesitate: I myself renounced the hopes which I had based upon a

grand manifestation, upon a powerful reply to the coup d'état, upon a

sort of pitched battle waged by the guardians of the Republic against the

banditti of the Elysée. The Faubourgs failed us; we possessed the

lever--Right, but the mass to be raised, the People, we did not possess.

There was nothing more to hope for, as those two great orators, Michel de

Bourges and Jules Favre, with their keen political perception, had

declared from the first, save a slow long struggle, avoiding decisive

engagements, changing quarters, keeping Paris on the alert, saying to

each, It is not at an end; leaving time for the departments to prepare

their resistance, wearying the troops out, and in which struggle the

Parisian people, who do not long smell powder with impunity, would

perhaps ultimately take fire. Barricades raised everywhere, barely

defended, re-made immediately, disappearing and multiplying themselves at

the same time, such was the strategy indicated by the situation. The

Committee adopted it, and sent orders in every direction to this effect.

At that moment we were sitting at No. 15, Rue Richelieu, at the house of

our colleague Grévy, who had been arrested in the Tenth Arrondissement on

the preceding day, who was at Mazas. His brother had offered us his house

for our deliberations. The Representatives, our natural emissaries,

flocked around us, and scattered themselves throughout Paris, with our

instructions to organize resistance at every point. They were the arms

and the Committee was the soul. A certain number of ex-Constituents,

intrepid men, Garnier-Pagès, Marie, Martin (de Strasbourg), Senart,

formerly President of the Constituent Assembly, Bastide, Laissac,

Landrin, had joined the Representatives on the preceding day. They

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The History of a Crime