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assisting at the meetings were not ignorant that wherever they might be
taken they would be killed on the spot by bayonet-thrusts. It was the
fortune of this war. Yet the prevailing expression on every face was
serenity; that profound serenity which comes from a happy conscience. At
times this serenity rose to gaiety. They laughed willingly and at
everything. At the torn trousers of one, at the hat which another had
brought back from the barricade instead of his own, at the comforter of
a third. "Hide your big body," they said to him. They were children, and
everything amused them. On the morning of the 4th Mathien de la Drôme
came in. He had organized for his part a committee which communicated
with the Central Committee, he came to tell us of it. He had shaved off
his fringe of beard so as not to be recognized in the streets. "You look
like an Archbishop," said Michel de Bourges to him, and there was a
general laugh. And all this, with this thought which every moment
brought back; the noise which is heard at the door, the key which turns
in the lock is perhaps Death coming in.
The Representatives and the Committee were at the mercy of chance. More
than once they could have been captured, and they were not; either owing
to the scruples of certain police agents (where the deuce will scruples
next take up their abode?) or that these agents doubted the final
result, and feared to lay their hand heedlessly upon possible victors.
If Vassal, the Commissary of Police, who met us on the morning of the
4
th, on the pavement of the Rue des Moulins, had wished, we might have
been taken that day. He did not betray us. But these were exceptions.
The pursuit of the police was none the less ardent and implacable. At
Marie's, it may be remembered that the sergents de ville and the
gendarmes arrived ten minutes after we had left the house, and that they
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