"Has Lucien been here?" asked the Deputy, after a pause, during which the young men surveyed the brilliant throngs that passed before them and returned the salutations of their acquaintances.
"I think not. We have not met, at least," replied the journalist.
"He can hardly be spared to-night, I fancy. The Ministry have had a stormy day, and are, doubtless, preparing for one still more stormy to-morrow."
"There was a perfect tempest in the Chamber this evening, I understand."
"Call it rather a hurricane, a tornado!"
"Ah! give me the particulars; here, come with me into this corner. Unfortunately, I was not present. I was busy on the General Committee for the Banquet of the Twelfth Arrondissement, to-morrow, at Chaillot. To avoid all possibility of collision with the police, we resolved, you know, not to have the banquet within the walls of Paris, and so there is to be a procession to the Barrière de l'Etoile. I have been there since morning, and reached the city only in time to come here. So, you see, I am edifyingly ignorant of the latest news."
"Then I have to inform you that there is to be no banquet after all."
"No banquet! Why, I thought it was compromised between Guizot and Barrot that the banquet should be allowed to proceed under protest, in order that the question might be brought before the Supreme Court."
"Such was the purpose, but a manifesto of the Banquet Committee, drawn up by Marrast, it is said, and, at all events, issued in 'Le National' this morning, declaring the design not only of a banquet, but of a procession, changed everything. The address sets forth that all invited to the banquet would assemble at the Place de la Madeleine to-morrow at about noon, and thence, escorted by the National Guard, and accompanied by the students of the universities, should proceed by the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, at the extremity of the Avenue des Champs Elysées, and thence to the immense pavilion on the grounds of General Shian. Only one toast, 'Reform, and the right to assemble,' was announced to be drunk, and then a commissary of police could enter a formal protest against the whole proceeding on the spot, on which to base a legal prosecution, and the multitude would disperse."
"A very sensible mode of procedure," quietly remarked the journalist, "and one eminently calculated to relieve your friend Guizot and my friend Barrot from the awkward dilemma of a direct issue."
"But so thought not my friend Guizot. Like his oracle, the sage Montesquieu, he thought, 'Who assembles the people causes them to revolt.' He took fright at the manifesto, as he was pleased to dignify the simple programme in this morning's 'National,' and so, early in the sitting, it was announced that the reform banquet was utterly prohibited by M. Delessert, Préfect of Police, on the express injunction and responsibility of M. Duchatel, Minister of the Interior, by and with the advice of M. Hebert, Minister of Justice."