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put a stop to this confusion, and to suppress the proper names, which
are always easy to guess. The password settled upon was, "What is Joseph
doing?"
At every moment items of news and information came to us from all
sides, that barricades were everywhere being raised, and that firing
was beginning in the central streets. Michel de Bourges exclaimed,
"
Construct a square of four barricades, and we will go and deliberate
in the centre."
We received news from Mont Valérien. Two prisoners the more. Rigal and
Belle had just been committed. Both of the Left. Dr. Rigal was the
Representative of Gaillac, and Belle of Lavaur. Rigal was ill; they had
arrested him in bed. In prison he lay upon a pallet, and could not
dress himself. His colleague Belle acted as his valet de chambre.
Towards nine o'clock an ex-Captain of the 8th Legion of the National
Guard of 1848, named Jourdan, came to place himself at our service. He
was a bold man, one of those who had carried out, on the morning of the
2
4th February, the rash surprise of the Hôtel de Ville. We charged him
to repeat this surprise, and to extend it to the Prefecture of Police.
He knew how to set about the work. He told us that he had only a few
men, but that during the day he would cause certain houses of strategical
importance on the Quai des Cèvres, on the Quai Lepelletier, and in the
Rue de la Cité, to be silently occupied, and that if it should chance
that the leaders of the coup d'état, owing to the combat in the centre
of Paris growing more serious, should be forced to withdraw the troops
from the Hôtel de Ville and the Prefecture, an attack would be immediately
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