Hyacinthe answered this note with the following reply at my dictation:
"My patron has nothing whatever in particular against the person who has written to me; but çoisRenéhe wishes to live outside everything, and does not wish to accept any service."
Shortly afterwards, the catastrophe came.
Do you know the Rue des Prouvaires[367], a narrow, dirty, populous street, near Saint-Eustache and the markets? It was there that the famous supper of the Third Restoration was held. The guests were armed with pistols, daggers and keys; after drinking, they were to make their way into the gallery of the Louvre and, passing at midnight through a double row of master-pieces, go to strike the usurping monster in the midst of a fête. The conception was a romantic one: the sixteenth century had returned; one might have believed one's self in the times of the Borgias, the Florentine Medicis and the Parisian Medicis: only the men were different.
On the 1st of February, at nine o'clock in the evening, I was going to bed, when a zealous man and the individual of the bills of exchange forced my door in the Rue d'Enfer to tell me that all was ready, that in two hours Louis-Philippe would have disappeared; they came to enquire if they might declare me the principal chief of the Provisional Government and if I would consent to take the reins of the Provisional Government, in the name of Henry V., with a council of Regency. They admitted that the thing was dangerous, but said that I should reap all the greater glory, and that, as I was acceptable to all parties, I was the only man in France in a position to play such a part.
This was pressing me very hard: two hours to decide upon my crown! Two hours in which to sharpen the big mameluke's sabre which I had bought in Cairo in 1806! However, I felt no embarrassment and I said to them:
"Gentlemen, you know that I have never approved of your enterprise, which seems to me a mad one. If I were disposed to meddle in it, I would have shared your dangers and would not have waited for your victory to accept the prize of your risks. You know that I have a serious love of liberty, and it is clear to me, to judge by the leaders of all this business, that they do not want liberty and that, if they remained masters of the field of battle, they would begin by establishing the reign of arbitrariness. They would have no one, they would have me least of all, to support them in these plans; their success would bring about complete anarchy, and other countries, profiting by our discords, would come to dismember France. I cannot therefore enter into all this. I admire your devotion, but mine is not of the same character. I am going to bed; I advise you to do the same; and I am very much afraid that I shall hear to-morrow morning of the misfortune of your friends."