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miracle, declares that he saw "more than 800 corpses."
Towards four o'clock the post-chaises which were in the courtyard of the
Elysée were unhorsed and put up.
This extermination, which an English witness, Captain William Jesse,
calls "a wanton fusillade," lasted from two till five o'clock. During
these three terrible hours, Louis Bonaparte carried out what he had been
premeditating, and completed his work. Up to that time the poor little
"middle-class" conscience was almost indulgent. Well, what of it? It was
a game at Prince, a species of state swindling, a conjuring feat on a
large scale; the sceptics and the knowing men said, "It is a good joke
played upon those idiots." Suddenly Louis Bonaparte grew uneasy and
revealed all his policy. "Tell Saint-Arnaud to execute my orders."
Saint-Arnaud obeyed, the coup d'état acted according to its own code
of laws, and from that appalling moment an immense torrent of blood
began to flow across this crime.
They left the corpses lying on the pavements, wild-looking, livid,
stupefied, with their pockets turned inside out. The military murderer
is thus condemned to mount the villainous scale of guilt. In the morning
an assassin, in the evening a thief.
When night came enthusiasm and joy reigned at the Elysée. These men
triumphed. Conneau has ingeniously related the scene. The familiar
spirits were delirious with joy. Fialin addressed Bonaparte in
hail-fellow-well-met style. "You had better break yourself of that,"
whispered Vieillard. In truth this carnage made Bonaparte Emperor. He
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