and fetch me."

"Where?"

"Wherever I may be."

He assured me that if the movement should take place during the night he
would know it at half-past ten that evening at the latest, and that I
should be informed of it before eleven o'clock. We settled that in
whatever place I might be at that hour I would send word to Auguste, who
undertook to let him know.

The young woman continued to peep out at us. The conversation was growing
prolonged, and might seem singular to the people in the parlor. "I am
going," said I to Auguste.

I had opened the door, he took my hand, pressed it as a woman might have
done, and said to me in a deeply-moved tone, "You are going: will you
come back?"

"I do not know."

"It is true," said he. "No one knows what is going to happen. Well, you
are perhaps going to be hunted and sought for as I have been. It will
perhaps be your turn to be shot, and mine to save you. You know the mouse
may sometimes prove useful to the lion. Monsieur Victor Hugo, if you need
a refuge, this house is yours. Come here. You will find a bed where you
can sleep, and a man who will lay down his life for you."

I thanked him by a hearty shake of the hand, and I left. Eight o'clock
struck. I hastened towards the Rue de Charonne.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE REPRESENTATIVES HUNTED DOWN

At the corner of the Rue de Faubourg St. Antoine before the shop of the
grocer Pepin, on the same spot where the immense barricade of June,
1848, was erected as high as the second story, the decrees of the
morning had been placarded. Some men were inspecting them, although it
was pitch dark, and they could not read them, and an old woman said,
"The 'Twenty-five francs' are crushed--so much the better!"

A few steps further I heard my name pronounced. I turned round. It was
Jules Favre, Bourzat, Lafon, Madier de Montjau, and Michel de Bourges,
who were passing by. I took leave of the brave and devoted woman who had
insisted upon accompanying me. A _fiacre_ was passing. I put her in it,
and then rejoined the five Representatives. They had come from the Rue
de Charonne. They had found the premises of the Society of Cabinet
Makers closed. "There was no one there," said Madier de Montjau. "These
worthy people are beginning to get together a little capital, they do
not wish to compromise it, they are afraid of us. They say, '_coups
d'etat_ are nothing to us, we shall leave them alone!'"

"That does not surprise me," answered I, "a