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But its chief end was to go through the Departments in Normandy and enter into relations with the honest folk who populated them. The trip was fruitful in incident. The first happened at Bernay, the native town of the virtuous Dupont de l'Eure, one of those virtuous individuals who would virtuously have your head cut off sooner than drop the smallest iota of their vulgar and utopian ideas.
Dupont de l'Eure, bent and tottering, read from the tribune, with the authority of his eighty years, his own order of the day, amid a deep silence that was broken at intervals by cheers. The order of the day, which was purely and simply a reiteration of the declaration of June 28: "General Cavaignac has merited well of the fatherland," was adopted by 503 votes to 34.
At that moment all his titles and decorations, his honors, his millions, were valueless to him. He had one single idea burning in his brain. "My poor child! Where is my child?" At last he reached the Prefecture of Police. But no one was there the office had been deserted for some time. "I am M. Godefroy, deputy from L'Eure My little boy is lost in Paris; a child of four years.
The following names were then read, and were repeated as they came one after the other from the speaker's mouth by the reporters in loud tones: Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Arago, Dupont de l'Eure, Marie, Georges Lafayette; all were received with general approbation.
The following list of names of those proposed to constitute the Provisional Government was then read off: Lamartine, Marie, Ledru Rollin, Cremieux, Dupont de l'Eure, Arago, and Garnier Pagés. Some of these names were received with cheers, others with hisses. It was impossible to take any formal vote. The voices of the Deputies were lost in the clamor of the mob.
He called M. Landrin M. Flandrin, and the gaiety became delirious. I was among those whom this gaiety made heavy at heart, for I seemed to hear the sobs of the people above these bursts of hilarity. During this uproar a list which was being covered with signatures and which bore an order of the day proposed by M. Dupont de l'Eure, was passed round the benches.
Leaning on the arm of Louis Blanc, the youngest member of the Government, the venerable Dupont de l'Eure, the eldest, accompanied by the other members, now appeared on the balcony of the room formerly called the Chamber of the Throne, but now the Chamber of the Republic!
After the noise incident to this departure had subsided, the venerable M. Dupont de l'Eure, a gray-headed old man of eighty, was, by unanimous acclamation, placed in the President's chair. Lamartine still remained in the tribune, and repeatedly strove to make his voice heard, but in vain.
The baroness, who had all the heraldy of the province at her finger ends, asked: "Does he belong to the family of Lamare de l'Eure?" The priest bowed: "Yes, madame; he is the son of the Vicomte Jean de Lamare, who died last year."
As soon as the proposition became known at Lisieux and Pont-l'Évêque, it was cordially received. All the different shades of the Opposition, M. de La Fayette and M. de Châteaubriand, M. Dupont de l'Eure and the Duke de Broglie, M. Odillon Barrot and M. Bertin de Veaux, seconded my candidateship.
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