Page 1795 - les-miserables

other capital. To this end, two things are requisite, the size
of Paris and its gayety. The city of Voltaire and Napoleon is
necessary.
On this occasion, however, in the resort to arms of June
25th, 1832, the great city felt something which was, perhaps,
stronger than itself. It was afraid.
Closed doors, windows, and shutters were to be seen
everywhere, in the most distant and most ‘disinterested’
quarters. The courageous took to arms, the poltroons hid.
The busy and heedless passer-by disappeared. Many streets
were empty at four o’clock in the morning.
Alarming details were hawked about, fatal news was
disseminated,— that they were masters of the Bank;—that
there were six hundred of them in the Cloister of Saint-Mer-
ry alone, entrenched and embattled in the church; that the
line was not to be depended on; that Armand Carrel had
been to see Marshal Clausel and that the Marshal had said:
‘Get a regiment first”; that Lafayette was ill, but that he had
said to them, nevertheless: ‘I am with you. I will follow you
wherever there is room for a chair”; that one must be on
one’s guard; that at night there would be people pillaging
isolated dwellings in the deserted corners of Paris (there
the imagination of the police, that Anne Radcliffe mixed up
with the Government was recognizable); that a battery had
been established in the Rue Aubry le Boucher; that Lobau
and Bugeaud were putting their heads together, and that,
at midnight, or at daybreak at latest, four columns would
march simultaneously on the centre of the uprising, the
first coming from the Bastille, the second from the Porte

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