Thanks to the judicious reticences of the official historiographers of the 2nd of December, people are not sufficiently apprised how near the _coup d'etat_ came to being abortive, and they are altogether ignorant as to the means by which it was saved.

We proceed to place this special detail before the reader's eyes.
[The author has concluded to reserve for this book alone the chapter in question which now forms an integral part thereof.

He has therefore rewritten for the _History of a Crime_, the narrative of the events of December 4, with new facts, and from another point of view.] I "The resistance had assumed unexpected proportions.
"The combat had become menacing; it was no longer a combat, but a battle, which was engaged on all sides.

At the Elysee and the different departments, people began to turn pale; they had wished for barricades, and they had got them.
"All the centre of Paris was becoming covered with improvised redoubts; the quarters thus barricaded formed a sort of immense trapezium, between the Halles and Rue Rambuteau on one side, and the boulevards on the other; bounded on the east by Rue du Temple, and on the west by Rue Montmartre.

This vast network of streets, cut in all directions by redoubts and entrenchments, assumed every hour a more terrible aspect, and was becoming a kind of fortress.