The History of a Crime


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"
To-morrow we shall date our decrees from the Pantheon."  
Signs of good omen grew more numerous. An old hotbed of insurrection,  
the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts, was becoming agitated. The association  
called La Presse du Travail gave signs of life. Some brave workmen, at  
the house of one of their colleagues, Nétré No. 13, Rue du Jardinet,  
had organized a little printing-press in a garret, a few steps from the  
barracks of the Gendarmerie Mobile. They had spent the night first in  
compiling, and then in printing "A Manifesto to Working Men," which  
called the people to arms. They were five skilful and determined men;  
they had procured paper, they had perfectly new type; some of them  
moistened the paper, while the others composed; towards two o'clock in  
the morning they began to print. It was essential that they should not  
be heard by the neighbors; they had succeeded in muffling the hollow  
blows of the ink-rollers, alternating with the rapid sound of the  
printing blankets. In a few hours fifteen hundred copies were pulled,  
and at daybreak they were placarded at the corners of the streets. The  
leader of these intrepid workmen, A. Desmoulins, who belonged to that  
sturdy race of men who are both cultured and who can fight, had been  
greatly disheartened on the preceding day; he now had become hopeful.  
On the preceding day he wrote:--"Where are the Representatives? The  
communications are cut. The quays and the boulevards can no longer be  
crossed. It has become impossible to reunite the popular Assembly. The  
people need direction. De Flotte in one district, Victor Hugo in  
another, Schoelcher in a third, are actively urging on the combat, and  
expose their lives a score of times, but none feel themselves supported  
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Page
387 388 389 390 391

Quick Jump
1 171 343 514 685