ermediate regency, either of the duchess or of Nemours.
With acclamations, the party went back into the Chamber to await
events.

We know already how the duchess was received, and how a mob broke
into the Chamber. A provisional government was demanded, in the
midst of indescribable tumult; and by the suffrages of a crowd of
roughs quite as much as by the action of the deputies, a provisional
government of five members (afterwards increased to seven) was
voted in, the names being written down with a pencil by Lamartine
on the spur of the moment. The five men thus nominated and chosen
to be rulers of France were Lamartine, Cremieux, Ledru-Rollin,
Garnier-Pages, and Arago.

Meantime in the Hotel-de-Ville the mob had set up another provisional
government under Socialistic leaders, and the first thing the more
genuine provisional government had to do was to get rid of the
others.

Lamartine says of himself that he felt his mission was to preserve
society, and very nobly he set himself to his task. When he and his
colleagues reached the Hotel-de-Ville, where the mob was clamoring
for Socialism and a republic, a compromise had to be effected;
and thus Louis Blanc, the Socialistic reformer, came into the
Provisional Government. It was growing night, and the announcement
of this new arrangement somewhat calmed the crowd; but at midnight
an attack was made on the Hotel-de-Ville, and the new rulers had to
defend themselves by personal strength, setting their backs against
the doors of the Council Chamber, and repelling their assailants
with their own hands. But the Press and the telegraph were at their
command, and by morning the news of the Provisional Government was
spread all over the provinces. "The mob," says Lamartine, "was
in part composed of galley slaves who had no political ideas in
their heads, nor social principles in their hearts, and partly
of that scum which rises to the surface in popular commotions,
and floats between the fumes of intoxication and the thirst for
blood."

Lamartine was not a great man, but it was lucky for France, and
for all Europe, that at this crisis he succeeded in establishing
a provisional government, and that he was placed at its head. But
for him, Paris might have had the Commune in 1848, as she had it
in 1871, but with no great army collected at Versailles to bring
it to subjection.

From such a fate France was saved by the energy and enthusiastic
patriotism of one man, to whom, i