ed for language so
plain.

"M. Dantes is right!" cried Flocon. "To-morrow night when we meet we
shall all admit it!"

It was now nearly three o'clock, and the Republicans repaired to their
homes for a few hours' sleep before the exciting scenes anticipated for
the morrow.

As Louis Blanc and M. Albert passed up the Rue Lepelletier, and came
opposite the Hotel of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which, but a few
hours before, had been the scene of so much confusion and bloodshed,
they paused and looked around. The pavement was still dark and wet with
the gore of the slaughtered citizens, but the whole street was deserted
and silent. Here and there a solitary light might be detected in the
attic windows of the immense hotel; but no other sign of life or human
occupation was to be perceived. True, there was an ominous sound of
rising barricades in the Boulevard beyond--the crash of trees, the click
of steel on stone, the lumbering of wheels--and, at intervals, a distant
shout. But this excepted, all was as quiet in Paris as if the old city
had never known of insurrection.

"This spot will be noted in the future history of France," said Louis
Blanc. "Do you know the exact facts of the case, M. Albert? There are so
many rumors that we can with difficulty get near the truth."

"I was not present when the 14th delivered their fire," was the reply,
"but I learned from M. de Courtais, who hastened to the spot, that the
colonel of the regiment, now in prison, asserts that, at the moment of
the arrival of the crowd, a ball from a musket which accidentally went
off, broke the leg of his horse, and he, thinking this the signal for an
attack, at once gave orders to fire. Another story is that one of our
young blouses blew out an officer's brains with a pistol."

"Many of the troops must have fired in the air," said Louis Blanc,
looking around him, "for there were two hundred of them in line, I
understand, and their discharge was delivered across the whole breadth
of the Boulevard swarming with people."

"It was unfortunate for M. Guizot," rejoined M. Albert, with a sardonic
smile, "that his hotel should have witnessed such a scene."

"But fortunate for the cause, nevertheless," replied Louis Blanc. "This
last movement is called the movement of the journalists, I understand."

"If suspicions are always as correct," said M. Albert, "there will be
fewer false ones, I fancy."

Louis Blanc made no reply, and the friends walked