CHAPTER 3;

THE CONSTANCY OF CHANGE.

Monday morning; July, 26, 1830.
Charles-Philippe Valcour's dormitory room;

The knocking on his dormitory
room door was loud, incessant and annoying.
"I'm awake! I'm awake!" Charles growled groggily, "What on earth is happening out there, George, that you have to rouse me from the sleep I so badly need?"
There came a muffled and excited reply,
"Come on, my friend! wake up! The students are taking to the streets! They are throwing up barricades across them! The despicable bourgeois tools of
king Charles are raiding and vandalizing the popular printing shops!"
Charles shook his head in puzzlement as he struggled to the door in semidarkness, rubbing his eyes as he reached for the doorknob.
"Students taking to the streets? Barricades? Tools of the king? What are you talking about, George? What time is it?" Charles demanded to know as he opened the door to his anxious and agitated friend, George-Richard Marchand.
The hazy dim light in the dormitory building corridor clearly showed Charles' close friend to be attired in the uniform that was normally worn by the Polytechnique student's only on special occasions, like Bastille Day.
There was fiery indignation in George's eyes.
"Come on!" he demanded irritably, "Get dressed and join us! It's just after Ten O'Clock!
It's going to be another hot and humid day, but that's not important! What is important is - is that you join us! We will not allow another corrupt and unjust Bourbon monarch to take away our rights and freedoms from us!"
Charles had enough, he angrily waved his impetuous friend to silence.
"STOP!! - - - I will not participate in anything unless I know what is going on and I would have to decide if it's worthwhile! And I will not join you in doing anything rashly! There would have to be a valid reason for me to join you!" he assertively explained in anger, adding, "I was enjoying a sleep I badly needed, when you woke me, having worked late last night with the professeur,
making and assembling the apparatus for the planned experiment next week. And I do not appreciate being
woken and told what to do by someone whom I consider a friend."
George glared in angry disappointment at Charles.
"Oh! I see!" he said in mocking derision,
"That bourgeois professeur, Gay Lussac; his bourgeois science disciple, and their frivolous science experiments are more important than
the fact that our nation's corrupt and tyrannical rulers have sent their lackeys, the police, to raid and shut down the presses and printing shops that represent our liberty! Hmmm?"
George-Richard propped his shoulders
in proud defiance, then flippantly and scornfully waved off Charles, turning to leave as he did.
"Stay behind if you wish." he sneered.
"WAIT! LISTEN TO ME!" Charles screeched in frustration. George reluctantly, hesitantly turned to face him. It was Charles turn to be agitated. He fought to regain his composure
and succeeded.
"I still want to call you, friend. Think this thing through." Charles calmly pleaded.
"I'm not much interested in monarchs, government, nor politics in general. And I
don't see what you are going to accomplish."
George sighed impatiently.
"We're going to demand and obtain our rights
and liberties. We're going to stand for justice.
And if our demands are not met, we will remove this - - - Bourbon king!" he spat out.
Alarmed, a chill went down Charles' spine.
"Oh no! You and the others out there are not planning to put this king to the guillotine as well? We're not talking about another Reign of Terror, are we?"
George raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. Then came a flash of irritation as he
strongly affirmed, "Heaven forbid! No!
Unlike Robespierre and his uneducated and bestial peasant rabble, those of us going to the barricades are both learned and civilized!"
Charles nodded politely, but insincerely and
cynically.
"I have to ask," he said, "Do you think that by removing king Charles, that his successor will meet your approval? in say - - - ten or twenty years to come?"
George-Richard Marchand paused briefly in silent thought; smiled, and then for the first and only time that fateful day, started chuckling; a look of thoughtful disappointment marring his smirk.
"Maybe not, my friend. - - - But I have to do this, even if you don't want to join us."
he quipped.
At that remark, Charles urgently thrust out his right hand and said,
"I'm glad you said, friend. We are still friends,
are we not? Even though I don't join you?"
George looked down at Charles' extended hand and slowly reached out and grasped it.
Charles reached out with his free arm and pulled George in to give him a reconciling hug, followed by a kiss on both his cheeks; George reciprocating.
Upon disengagement, George nodded, somewhat chastened, "Yes! We are still friends, even if you do not join us. We can as friends agree to disagree. That is democracy indeed. To have the right, and to defend the right to agree to disagree." George concluded,
"Now I have to go."
George departed singing "Les Marseillaise" aloud.

FOOTNOTE:

On Friday, July, 30th,1830, after a street clash a day before that came to be pretentiously known as the "Battle at the Rue de Rohan", king Charles X abdicated.
Louis-Philippe ascended to the throne of France to become the last monarch of that nation.