The History of a Crime Part 55

It was in this manner that Louis Bonaparte made his entry into the Unexpected. This revealed him.

Certain brains are abysses. Manifestly for a long time past Bonaparte had harbored the design of a.s.sa.s.sinating in order to reign.

Premeditation haunts criminals, and it is in this manner that treason begins. The crime is a long time present in them, but shapeless and shadowy, they are scarcely conscious of it; souls only blacken gradually. Such abominable deeds are not invented in a moment; they do not attain perfection at once and at a single bound; they increase and ripen, shapeless and indecisive, and the centre of the ideas in which they exist keeps them living, ready for the appointed day, and vaguely terrible. This design, the ma.s.sacre for a throne, we feel sure, existed for a long time in Louis Bonaparte's mind. It was cla.s.sed among the possible events of this soul. It darted hither and thither like a _larva_ in an aquarium, mingled with shadows, with doubts, with desires, with expedients, with dreams of one knows not what Caesarian socialism, like a Hydra dimly visible in a transparency of chaos. Hardly was he aware that he was fostering this hideous idea. When he needed it, he found it, armed and ready to serve him. His unfathomable brain had darkly nourished it. Abysses are the nurseries of monsters.

Up to this formidable day of the 4th December, Louis Bonaparte did not perhaps quite know himself. Those who studied this curious Imperial animal did not believe him capable of such pure and simple ferocity.

They saw in him an indescribable mongrel, applying the talents of a swindler to the dreams of an Empire, who, even when crowned, would be a thief, who would say of a parricide, What roguery! Incapable of gaining a footing on any height, even of infamy, always remaining half-way uphill, a little above petty rascals, a little below great malefactors.

They believed him clever at effecting all that is done in gambling-h.e.l.ls and in robbers' caves, but with this transposition, that he would cheat in the caves, and that he would a.s.sa.s.sinate in the gambling-h.e.l.ls.

The ma.s.sacre of the Boulevards suddenly unveiled this spirit. They saw it such as it really was: the ridiculous nicknames "Big-beak," "Badinguet,"

vanished; they saw the bandit, they saw the true _contraffatto_ hidden under the false Bonaparte.

There was a shudder! It was this then which this man held in reserve!

Apologies have been attempted, they could but fail. It is easy to praise Bonaparte, for people have praised Dupin; but it is an exceedingly complicated operation to cleanse him. What is to be done with the 4th of December? How will that difficulty be surmounted? It is far more troublesome to justify than to glorify; the sponge works with greater difficulty than the censer; the panegyrists of the _coup d'etat_ have lost their labor. Madame Sand herself, although a woman of lofty intellect, has failed miserably in her attempt to rehabilitate Bonaparte, for the simple reason that whatever one may do, the death-roll reappears through this whitewashing.

No! no! no extenuation whatever is possible. Unfortunate Bonaparte. The blood is drawn. It must be drunk.

The deed of the 4th of December is the most colossal dagger-thrust that a brigand let loose upon civilization has ever effected, we will not say upon a people, but upon the entire human race. The stroke was most monstrous, and struck Paris to the ground. Paris on the ground is Conscience, is Reason, is all human liberty on the ground; it is the progress of centuries lying on the pavement; it is the torch of Justice, of Truth, and of Life reversed and extinguished. This is what Louis Bonaparte effected the day when he effected this.

The success of the wretch was complete. The 2d of December was lost; the 4th of December saved the 2d of December. It was something like Erostratus saving Judas. Paris understood that all had not yet been told as regards deeds of horror, and that beneath the oppressor there was the garbage-picker. It was the case of a swindler stealing Cesar's mantle.

This man was little, it is true, but terrifying. Paris consented to this terror, renounced the right to have the last word, went to bed and simulated death. Suffocation had its share in the matter. This crime resembled, too, no previous achievements. Even after centuries have pa.s.sed, and though he should be an Aeschylus or a Tacitus, any one raising the cover would smell the stench. Paris resigned herself, Paris abdicated, Paris surrendered; the novelty of the treason proved its chief strength; Paris almost ceased to be Paris; on the next day the chattering of this terrified t.i.tan's teeth could be heard in the shadows.

Let us lay a stress upon this, for we must verify the laws of morality.

Louis Bonaparte remained, even after the 4th of December, Napoleon the Little. This enormity still left him a dwarf. The size of the crime does not change the stature of the criminal, and the pettiness of the a.s.sa.s.sin withstands the immensity of the a.s.sa.s.sination.

Be that as it may, the Pigmy had the better of the Colossus. This avowal, humiliating as it is, cannot be evaded.

Such are the blushes to which History, that greatly dishonored one, is condemned.

THE FOURTH DAY--THE VICTORY.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE NIGHT--THE RUE TIQUETONNE

Just as Mathieu de la Drome had said, "You are under King Bomba,"

Charles Gambon entered. He sank down upon a chair and muttered, "It is horrible." Bancel followed him. "We have come from it," said Bancel.

Gambon had been able to shelter himself in the recess of a doorway. In front of Barbedienne's alone he had counted thirty-seven corpses. What was the meaning of it all? To what purpose was this monstrous promiscuous murder? No one could understand it. The Ma.s.sacre was a riddle.

We were in the Sphinx's Grotto.

Labrousse came in. It was urgently necessary that we should leave Dupont White's house. It was on the point of being surrounded. For some moments the Rue Monthabor, ordinarily so deserted, was becoming thronged with suspicious figures. Men seemed to be attentively watching number Eleven.

Some of these men, who appeared to be acting in concert, belonged to the ex-"Club of Clubs," which, owing to the manoeuvres of the Reactionists, exhaled a vague odor of the police. It was necessary that we should disperse. Labrousse said to us, "I have just seen Longe-pied roving about."

We separated. We went away one by one, and each in his own direction. We did not know where we should meet again, or whether we should meet again. What was going to happen and what was about to become of us all?

No one knew. We were filled with a terrible dread.

I turned up towards the Boulevards, anxious to see what was taking place.

What was taking place I have just related.

Bancel and Versigny had rejoined me.

As I left the Boulevards, mingled with the whirl of the terrified crowd, not knowing where I was going, returning towards the centre of Paris, a voice suddenly whispered in my ear, "There is something over there which you ought to see." I recognized the voice. It was the voice of E.P.

E.P. is a dramatic author, a man of talent, for whom under Louis Philippe I had procured exemption from military service. I had not seen him for four or five years. I met him again in this tumult. He spoke to me as though we had seen each other yesterday. Such are these times of bewilderment. There is no time to greet each other "according to the rules of society." One speaks as though all were in full flight.

"Ah! it is you!" I exclaimed. "What do you want with me?"

He answered me, "I live in a house over there."

And he added,-

"Come."

He drew me into a dark street. We could hear explosions. At the bottom of the street could be seen the ruins of a barricade. Versigny and Bancel, as I have just said, were with me. E.P. turned to them.

"These gentlemen can come," said he.

I asked him,--

"What street is this?"

"The Rue Tiquetonne."

We followed him.

I have elsewhere told this tragical event.[26]

E.P. stopped before a tall and gloomy house. He pushed open a street-door which was not shut, then another door and we entered into a parlor perfectly quiet and lighted by a lamp.

This room appeared to adjoin a shop. At the end could be distinguished two beds side by side, one large and one small. Above the little bed hung a woman's portrait, and above the portrait a branch of holy box-tree.

The lamp was placed over the fireplace, where a little fire was burning.

Near the lamp upon a chair there was an old woman leaning forward, stooping down, folded in two as though broken, over something which was in the shadow, and which she held in her arms. I drew near. That which she held in her arms was a dead child.

The poor woman was silently sobbing.

E.P., who belonged to the house, touched her on the shoulder, and said,--