infantry soldiers filed out noiselessly from every barrack, with their
colonels at their head. The _aides-de-camp_ and orderly officers of Louis
Bonaparte, who had been distributed in all the barracks, superintended
this taking up of arms. The cavalry were not set in motion until
three-quarters of an hour after the infantry, for fear that the ring of
the horses' hoofs on the stones should wake slumbering Paris too soon.

M. de Persigny, who had brought from the Elysée to the camp of the
Invalides the order to take up arms, marched at the head of the 42d, by
the side of Colonel Espinasse. A story is current in the army, for at the
present day, wearied as people are with dishonorable incidents, these
occurrences are yet told with a species of gloomy indifference--the story
is current that at the moment of setting out with his regiment one of the
colonels who could be named hesitated, and that the emissary from the
Elysée, taking a sealed packet from his pocket, said to him, "Colonel, I
admit that we are running a great risk. Here in this envelope, which I
have been charged to hand to you, are a hundred thousand francs in
banknotes _for contingencies_." The envelope was accepted, and the
regiment set out. On the evening of the 2d of December the colonel said
to a lady, "This morning I earned a hundred thousand francs and my
General's epaulets." The lady showed him the door.

Xavier Durrieu, who tells us this story, had the curiosity later on to
see this lady. She confirmed the story. Yes, certainly! she had shut the
door in the face of this wretch; a soldier, a traitor to his flag who
dared visit her! She receive such a man? No! she could not do that,
"and," states Xavier Durrieu, she added, "And yet I have no character to
lose."

Another mystery was in progress at the Prefecture of Police.