The majority of the White Blouses and their friends escaped unhurt, and
the police and the guards chiefly expended their vigour on the spectators
of the original disturbance. Whether this had been secretly engineered by
the authorities for one of the purposes I previously indicated, must
always remain a moot point. In any case it did not incline the Parisians
to vote for the Government candidates. Every deputy returned for the city
on that occasion was an opponent of the Empire, and in later years I was
told by an ex-Court official that when Napoleon became acquainted with the
result of the pollings he said, in reference to the nominees whom he had
favoured, "Not one! not a single one!" The ingratitude of the Parisians,
as the Emperor styled it, was always a thorn in his side; yet he should
have remembered that in the past the bulk of the Parisians had seldom, if
ever, been on the side of constituted authority.
Later that year came the famous affair of the Pantin crimes, and I was
present with my father when Troppmann, the brutish murderer of the Kinck
family, stood his trial at the Assizes. But, quite properly, my father
would not let me accompany him when he attended the miscreant's execution
outside the prison of La Roquette.
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