A certain Jacqueline, an expeditious man, accosted some passing artisans:
“Come here, you!”
He treated them to ten sous’ worth of wine and said:
“Have you work?” “No.” “Go to Filspierre, between the Barriere Charonne and the Barriere Montreuil, and you will find work.”
At Filspierre’s they found cartridges and arms.
Certain well-known leaders were going the rounds, that is to say, running from one house to another, to collect their men. At Barthelemy’s, near the Barriere du Trone, at Capel’s, near the Petit-Chapeau, the drinkers accosted each other with a grave air.
They were heard to say:
“Have you your pistol?”
“Under my blouse.”
“And you?”
“Under my shirt.”
In the Rue Traversiere, in front of the Bland workshop, and in the yard of the Maison-Brulee, in front of tool-maker Bernier’s, groups whispered together.
Among them was observed a certain Mavot, who never remained more than a week in one shop, as the masters always discharged him “because they were obliged to dispute with him every day.”
Mavot was killed on the following day at the barricade of the Rue Menilmontant.
Pretot, who was destined to perish also in the struggle, seconded Mavot, and to the question:
“What is your object?” he replied:
“Insurrection.”
Workmen assembled at the corner of the Rue de Bercy, waited for a certain Lemarin, the revolutionary agent for the Faubourg Saint-Marceau.
Watchwords were exchanged almost publicly.
On the 5th of June, accordingly, a day of mingled rain and sun, General Lamarque’s funeral procession traversed Paris with official military pomp, somewhat augmented through precaution.
Two battalions, with draped drums and reversed arms, ten thousand National Guards, with their swords at their sides, escorted the coffin.
The hearse was drawn by young men.
The officers of the Invalides came immediately behind it, bearing laurel branches.
Then came an innumerable, strange, agitated multitude, the sectionaries of the Friends of the People, the Law School, the Medical School, refugees of all nationalities, and Spanish, Italian, German, and Polish flags, tricolored horizontal banners, every possible sort of banner, children waving green boughs, stone-cutters and carpenters who were on strike at the moment, printers who were recognizable by their paper caps, marching two by two, three by three, uttering cries, nearly all of them brandishing sticks, some brandishing sabres, without order and yet with a single soul, now a tumultuous rout, again a column.
Squads chose themselves leaders; a man armed with a pair of pistols in full view, seemed to pass the host in review, and the files separated before him.
On the side alleys of the boulevards, in the branches of the trees, on balconies, in windows, on the roofs, swarmed the heads of men, women, and children; all eyes were filled with anxiety.
An armed throng was passing, and a terrified throng looked on.
The Government, on its side, was taking observations.
It observed with its hand on its sword.
Four squadrons of carabineers could be seen in the Place Louis XV. in their saddles, with their trumpets at their head, cartridge-boxes filled and muskets loaded, all in readiness to march; in the Latin country and at the Jardin des Plantes, the Municipal Guard echelonned from street to street; at the Halle-aux-Vins, a squadron of dragoons; at the Greve half of the 12th Light Infantry, the other half being at the Bastille; the 6th Dragoons at the Celestins; and the courtyard of the Louvre full of artillery.
The remainder of the troops were confined to their barracks, without reckoning the regiments of the environs of Paris.
Power being uneasy, held suspended over the menacing multitude twenty-four thousand soldiers in the city and thirty thousand in the banlieue.
Divers reports were in circulation in the cortege.
Legitimist tricks were hinted at; they spoke of the Duc de Reichstadt, whom God had marked out for death at that very moment when the populace were designating him for the Empire.
One personage, whose name has remained unknown, announced that at a given hour two overseers who had been won over, would throw open the doors of a factory of arms to the people.
That which predominated on the uncovered brows of the majority of those present was enthusiasm mingled with dejection.
Here and there, also, in that multitude given over to such violent but noble emotions, there were visible genuine visages of criminals and ignoble mouths which said:
“Let us plunder!”
There are certain agitations which stir up the bottoms of marshes and make clouds of mud rise through the water.
A phenomenon to which “well drilled” policemen are no strangers.
The procession proceeded, with feverish slowness, from the house of the deceased, by way of the boulevards as far as the Bastille.
It rained from time to time; the rain mattered nothing to that throng.
Many incidents, the coffin borne round the Vendome column, stones thrown at the Duc de Fitz-James, who was seen on a balcony with his hat on his head, the Gallic cock torn from a popular flag and dragged in the mire, a policeman wounded with a blow from a sword at the Porte Saint-Martin, an officer of the 12th Light Infantry saying aloud:
“I am a Republican,” the Polytechnic School coming up unexpectedly against orders to remain at home, the shouts of:
“Long live the Polytechnique!
Long live the Republic!” marked the passage of the funeral train.
At the Bastille, long files of curious and formidable people who descended from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, effected a junction with the procession, and a certain terrible seething began to agitate the throng.
One man was heard to say to another:
“Do you see that fellow with a red beard, he’s the one who will give the word when we are to fire.”
It appears that this red beard was present, at another riot, the Quenisset affair, entrusted with this same function.