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At Lorient, too, M. Labrousse, a post-captain in the navy, made experiments to find out the best form to give to the rams of warships, while a literary man, M. Jal by name, was hunting all the old books and archives for everything touching the manoeuvres and tactics of ancient rowing ships and galleys.
Hetzel had already revealed his scheme to Representative Labrousse, who was to accompany him and give him the moral support of the Assembly in his perilous expedition. A first rendezvous which had been agreed upon between them at the Café Cardinal having failed, Labrousse had left with the owner of the café for Hetzel a note couched in these terms:
The grottoes of Puy Labrousse near Brive, comprising five or six chambers, have isolated from the rest one that opens in the face of a sheer precipice at a considerable height above the valley.
To what purpose was this monstrous promiscuous murder? No one could understand it. The Massacre was a riddle. We were in the Sphinx's Grotto. Labrousse came in. It was urgently necessary that we should leave Dupont White's house. It was on the point of being surrounded. For some moments the Rue Monthabor, ordinarily so deserted, was becoming thronged with suspicious figures.
Was he about to supplant Maupas? The Representative Labrousse, seated at a table of the café, had witnessed this conspirators' parley. Each of the two Commissaries was followed by that species of police agent which is called "the Commissary's dog." At the same time strange warnings reached the Committee; the following letter was brought to our knowledge. "3d December.
Necessarily brief as is the notice of Gallic ingenuity and skill, the acknowledgment must be made, that, for the invention of the trunk or well, with its attendant advantages, navigation is indebted to Commander Labrousse, of the French navy; and for a novel arrangement of the screw- propeller, which has not attracted all the notice it deserves, obligations are due to M. Allix, a distinguished engineer of that service; and the propeller more recently introduced by M. Mangin, of the same corps, if it performs all that is claimed for it, namely, that it does away with the "shake," will be of great value.
Men seemed to be attentively watching number Eleven. Some of these men, who appeared to be acting in concert, belonged to the ex-"Club of Clubs," which, owing to the manoeuvres of the Reactionists, exhaled a vague odor of the police. It was necessary that we should disperse. Labrousse said to us, "I have just seen Longe-pied roving about." We separated.
Labrousse also left with the same object. They settled to meet at eight o'clock in the evening at the house of the former member of the Provisional Government Marie, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs. As the members of the Committee and the Representatives withdrew I was told that some one had asked to speak to me.
As a rare instance of clear-sightedness, recognizing such a fundamental change in conditions and predicting results, words of Admiral Labrousse of the French navy, written in 1840, are most instructive.
But an actual trial of a dirigible craft, the design of Admiral Labrousse, was made from the Orleans railway station on January 9th. This machine consisted of a balloon of about the standard capacity of the siege balloons, namely some 70,000 cubic feet, fitted with two screws of about 12 feet diameter, but capable of being readily worked at moderate speed. It was not a success.
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