Читать книгу The History of a Crime - Victor Hugo - Страница 8

"I, the undersigned, Jean-Didier Baze, Representative of the People,

and Questor of the National Assembly, carried off by violence from my

residence in the Palace of the National Assembly, and conducted to this

prison by an armed force which it was impossible for me to resist,

protest in the name of the National Assembly and in my own name against

the outrage on national representation committed upon my colleagues and

upon myself.

"Given at Mazas on the 2d December 1851, at eight o'clock in the

morning.

"BAZE."

While this was taking place at Mazas, the soldiers were laughing and drinking in the courtyard of the Assembly. They made their coffee in the saucepans. They had lighted enormous fires in the courtyard; the flames, fanned by the wind, at times reached the walls of the Chamber. A superior official of the Questure, an officer of the National Guard, Ramond de la Croisette, ventured to say to them, "You will set the Palace on fire;" whereupon a soldier struck him a blow with his fist.

Four of the pieces taken from the Cour de Canons were ranged in battery order against the Assembly; two on the Place de Bourgogne were pointed towards the grating, and two on the Pont de la Concorde were pointed towards the grand staircase.

As side-note to this instructive tale let us mention a curious fact. The 42d Regiment of the line was the same which had arrested Louis Bonaparte at Boulogne. In 1840 this regiment lent its aid to the law against the conspirator. In 1851 it lent its aid to the conspirator against the law: such is the beauty of passive obedience.

2 The Questors were officers elected by the Assembly, whose special duties were to keep and audit the accounts, and who controlled all matters affecting the social economy of the House.