"MONSIEUR LE DUC,--I have received the letter with which you have honoured me, with the habitual sentiments which your personal character has always inspired. M. de Sussy will give you an account of the visit he has been good enough to pay me. I fulfilled your wishes by reading the contents you addressed to me to the many persons who surrounded me; I invited M. de Sussy to proceed to a small gathering of the Commission then sitting at the Hôtel de Ville; finally, I will remit the papers to General Gérard which he entrusted to me; but the duties that detain me here render it impossible for me to come and see you. If you will come to the Hôtel de Ville, I shall be happy to receive you; but it will be useless with respect to the subject of our correspondence, since my colleagues have been informed of your communications."
From that side, at any rate, M. de Mortemart could see that there was no hope to be entertained. Meanwhile, Saint-Quentin, rising in revolt simultaneously with Paris, had sent a deputation to General La Fayette to ask for two students from the École polytechnique to command its National Guard. The deputation added that they would only need to risk one attempt upon La Fère and that, doubtless, they would be able to drive away the 4th Regiment of artillery garrisoned in that town under the command of Colonel Husson. Students of the École were often about the Hôtel de Ville and were all so brave that there was no need to pick out any of them specially. General La Fayette sent Odilon Barrot for the first two he should happen to come across. He brought back Charras and Lothon. Charras still had his hundred and fifty to two hundred men encamped in a corner of the Hôtel de Ville, which formed a corps of its own. The two young men were introduced to General La Fayette's presence, who explained to them what was wanted and gave them the opportunity of going to ask for the necessary authority from the Provisional Government. Charras and Lothon then began to search for that notorious Provisional Government for which I had hunted in vain, and no doubt they were put on the same track as I was, for they reached the same large hall adorned with the same great table covered with the same bottles of wine and beer (empty ones, of course) and occupied by the same quill-driver who was still writing with fierce assiduity.... What--nobody could ever discover. But nothing at all was to be seen of any Provisional Government. Odilon Barrot himself went in search, but it remained as unknown as the passage to the North Pole. They made Mauguin join them, but he was not able to discover it either. The most curious thing of all was, that those who had the greatest knowledge of affairs believed in the existence of this fantastic Provisional Government. Tired of their fruitless search, the two students, still accompanied by Odilon Barrot and Mauguin, returned to the hall and its large tables, its empty bottles and its clerk. They looked each other full in the face.