's splendid! Thiers is arrested,--better still!
Changarnier is in prison,--bravo!' Beneath every placard there
are men placed to lead the approval. My opinion is that the people
will approve!"

At exactly six that morning, Cavaignac, Changarnier, Lamoriciere,
Thiers, and all those who had lain down to sleep as cabinet ministers
of the prince president, were roused from their beds by officers of
cavalry, with orders to dress quickly, for they were under arrest.
Before each door a hackney-coach was waiting, and an escort of two
hundred Lancers was in a street near by. Resistance seemed useless
in the face of such precautions, but Victor Hugo and his friends were
resolved upon a fight. They put their official scarves as deputies
into their pockets, and started forth to see if they could raise
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. But their friend the wood-carver had
told them truly,--there was neither sympathy nor enthusiasm in
the streets for the constitution that had fallen, the deputies
who had been placed under arrest, nor for violated political
institutions.

In vain they appealed to the people in the name of the law. The
mob seemed to consider that provided it had universal suffrage,
and that the man of its choice were at the head of affairs, it
had better trust the safety of the nation to one man than risk the
uncertainties that might attend the tyranny of many.

The frantic efforts made that day by Victor Hugo and a few other
deputies of the Left to rouse the populace are almost ludicrous.
Victor Hugo, no doubt, was a brave man, though a very melodramatic
one, and he seems to have thought that if he could get the soldiers
to shoot him,--_him_, the greatest literary star of France since
the death of Voltaire,--the notoriety of his death might rouse
the population.

Here is one scene in his narrative. He and three of his friends,
finding that the Faubourg Saint-Antoine gave no ear to their appeals,
and for once was disinclined to fight, decided to return home,
and took seats in an omnibus which passed them on the Place de la
Bastille.

"We were all glad to get in," says Victor Hugo. "I took it much
to heart that I had not that morning, when I saw a crowd assembled
round the Porte Saint-Martin, shouted 'To arms!'... The omnibus
started. I was sitting at the end on the left, my friend young
Armand was beside me. As the omnibus moved on, the crowd became
more closely packed upon the Boulevard. When we reached the narrow