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so abruptly struck to the heart burst forth in sobs. "Ah, infamous
Bonaparte!" cried Madame L----. "He has killed Baudin. Well, then, I will
kill him. I will be the Charlotte Corday of this Marat."
Gindrier claimed the body of Baudin. The Commissary of Police only
consented to restore it to the family on exacting a promise that they
would bury it at once, and without any ostentation, and that they would
not exhibit it to the people. "You understand," he said, "that the sight
of a Representative killed and bleeding might raise Paris." The coup
d'état made corpses, but did not wish that they should be utilized.
On these conditions the Commissary of Police gave Gindrier two men and a
safe conduct to fetch the body of Baudin from the hospital where he had
been carried.
Meanwhile Baudin's brother, a young man of four-and-twenty, a medical
student, came up. This young man has since been arrested and imprisoned.
His crime is his brother. Let us continue. They proceeded to the
hospital. At the sight of the safe conduct the director ushered Gindrier
and young Baudin into the parlor. There were three pallets there covered
with white sheets, under which could be traced the motionless forms of
three human bodies. The one which occupied the centre bed was Baudin. On
his right lay the young soldier killed a minute before him by the side of
Schoelcher, and on the left an old woman who had been struck down by a
spent ball in the Rue de Cotte, and whom the executioners of the coup
d'état had gathered up later on; in the first moment one cannot find out
all one's riches.
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