“What is the matter now?” exclaimed Lamartine in sorrowful tones.
M. Armand Marrast and M. Marie went out to see what was going on.
“Ah! my friend,” continued Lamartine, “how heavy is this revolutionary power to bear! One has to assume such weighty and such sudden responsibilities before one’s conscience and in presence of history! I do not know how I have been living during the past ten days. Yesterday I had a few grey hairs; to-morrow they will be white.”
“Yes, but you are doing your duty as a man of genius grandly,” I commented.
In a few minutes M. Armand Marrast returned.
“It was not against us,” he said. “How the lamentable affray came about could not be explained to me. There was a collision, the rifles went off, why? Was it a misunderstanding, was it a quarrel between Socialists and Republicans? No one knows.”
A gloomy silence followed. I rose. “You have no doubt some measures to take?” I said.
“What measures?” answered Lamartine. “This morning we resolved to decree what you have already been able to do on a small scale in your quarter: the organization of the citizen’s National Guard--every Frenchman a soldier as well as a voter. But time is required, and meanwhile--” he pointed to the waves and eddies of heads surging on the square outside--“look, it is the sea!”
A boy wearing an apron entered and spoke to him in low tones.
“Ah! very good!” said Lamartine, “it is my luncheon. Will you share it with me, Hugo?”
“I haven’t and I am dying of hunger. At least come and look on at the feast; I will let you go, afterwards.”
He showed me into a room that gave on to an interior court-yard. A gentle faced young man who was writing at a table rose and was about to withdraw. He was the young workman whom Louis Blanc had had attached to the Provisional Government.
“Stay where you are, Albert,” said Lamartine, “I have nothing of a private nature to say to Victor Hugo.”
The little waiter showed Lamartine a table upon which were some mutton cutlets in an earthenware dish, some bread, a bottle of wine and a glass. The whole came from a wine-shop in the neighbourhood.
“Well,” exclaimed Lamartine, “what about a knife and fork?”
“I thought you had knives and forks here,” returned the boy. “I had trouble enough to bring the luncheon, and if I have got to go and fetch knives and forks--”