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What was this hooting in the Rue de l'Echelle? Let us relate the
incident.
On the 2d of December, Bonaparte had made an attempt to go out. He had
ventured to go and look at Paris. Paris does not like being looked at
by certain eyes; it considers it an insult, and it resents an insult
more than a wound. It submits to assassination, but not to the leering
gaze of the assassin. It took offence at Louis Bonaparte.
At nine o'clock in the morning, at the moment when the Courbevoie
garrison was descending upon Paris, the placards of the coup d'état
being still fresh upon the walls, Louis Bonaparte had left the Elysée,
had crossed the Place de la Concorde, the Garden of the Tuileries, and
the railed courtyard of the Carrousel, and had been seen to go out, by
the gate of the Rue de l'Echelle. A crowd assembled at once. Louis
Bonaparte was in a general's uniform; his uncle, the ex-King Jérôme,
accompanied him, together with Flahaut, who kept in the near. Jérôme
wore the full uniform of a Marshal of France, with a hat with a white
feather; Louis Bonaparte's horse was a head before Jérôme's horse.
Louis Bonaparte was gloomy, Jérôme attentive, Flahaut beaming. Flahaut
had his hat on one side. There was a strong escort of Lancers. Edgar
Ney followed. Bonaparte intended to go as far as the Hôtel de Ville.
Georges Biscarrat was there. The street was unpaved, the road was being
macadamized; he mounted on a heap of stones, and shouted, "Down with
the Dictator! Down with the Praetorians!" The soldiers looked at him
with bewilderment, and the crowd with astonishment. Georges Biscarrat
(
he told me so himself) felt that this cry was too erudite, and that it
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