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Another matter for astonishment: Cavaignac was flagging; the Garde Mobile was exposing itself to suspicion. Ledru-Rollin had ruined himself even in Vaucorbeil's estimation. The debates on the Constitution interested nobody, and on the 10th of December all the inhabitants of Chavignolles voted for Bonaparte.
M. de Remusat, who was seated between the prince and myself, remarked to me loud enough for Louis Bonaparte to hear: "I give my best wishes to Louis Bonaparte and my vote to Cavaignac." Louis Bonaparte at the time was feeding Mme. Odilon Barrot's greyhound with fried gudgeons. The proclamation of Louis Bonaparte as President of the Republic was made on December 20.
It was precisely at that moment that the workman arrived there. Arnauld de l'Ariége received him, read his letter, and approved of it. Arnauld de l'Ariége knew the Archbishop of Paris personally. M. Sibour, a Republican priest appointed Archbishop of Paris by General Cavaignac, was the true chief of the Church dreamed of by the liberal Catholicism of Arnauld de l'Ariége.
Another voice immediately issued from a second cell, and said, "What! it is you? Good-morning, Lamoricière!" "Good-morning, Cavaignac!" replied the first voice. General Cavaignac and General Lamoricière had just recognized each other. A third voice was raised from a third cell. "Ah! you are there, gentlemen. Good-morning and a pleasant journey." He who spoke then was General Changarnier.
When the eight prisoners had entered their rooms, the doors were shut upon them; they heard the bolts shot from outside, and they were told: "You are in close confinement." General Cavaignac occupied on the first floor the former room of M. Louis Bonaparte, the best in the prison.
He reminded his hearers of his past, invoked recollections of the Salle Voisin, compared the henchmen of Cavaignac to the henchmen of Guizot, bared his breast "which had braved the poignards of the Red Republic," and ended by resolutely attacking the general, with too few facts and too many words, but fairly and squarely, taking him, so to speak, as the Bible urges that the bull be taken, by the horns.
Owing to the Palace of the Constituent Assembly having been nearly seized by a crowd of insurgents on the 22d of June, 1848, and there being no barracks in the neighborhood, General Cavaignac had constructed at three hundred paces from the Legislative Palace, on the grass plots of the Invalides, several rows of long huts, under which the grass was hidden.
A mean vengeance, sarcasm of the unpopular men of yesterday for the unpopular man of to-day. Cavaignac took leave in a few brief and dignified words, which were applauded by the whole Assembly. He announced that the Ministry had resigned in a body, and that he, Cavaignac, laid down the power. He thanked the Assembly with emotion. A few Representatives wept.
The result of the election showed Louis Napoleon to have had five and a half millions of votes; Cavaignac one and a half million; Lamartine, who six months before had been a popular idol, had nineteen thousand. An early friend of Louis Napoleon, who seems to have been willing to talk freely of the playmate of her childhood, thus spoke of him to an English traveller.
He had first to conquer before he could attempt to govern, and to conquer, too, with the means of his enemy. All this was changed in 1848. Then he was safe in France, as he had been in England, and began the political race on equal terms with such men as Cavaignac and Ledru-Rollin. That he soon passed far ahead of them was, perhaps, as much due to circumstances as to his political abilities.
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