My Visit to the Barricade
My coachman deposited me at the corner of Saint Eustache, and said to me, “Here you are in the hornets’ nest.”
He added, “I will wait for you in the Rue de la Vrillière, near the Place des Victoires. Take your time.”
I began walking from barricade to barricade.
In the first I met De Flotte, who offered to serve me as a guide. There is not a more determined man than De Flotte. I accepted his offer; he took me everywhere where my presence could be of use.
On the way he gave me an account of the steps taken by him to print our proclamations; Boulé‘s printing-office having failed him, he had applied to a lithographic press, at No. 30, Rue Bergère, and at the peril of their lives two brave men had printed 500 copies of our decrees. These two true-hearted workmen were named, the one Rubens, the other Achille Poincellot.
While walking I made jottings in pencil (with Baudin’s pencil, which I had with me); I registered facts at random; I reproduce this page here. These living facts are useful for History; the coup d’état is there, as though freshly bleeding.
“Morning of the 4th. It looks as if the combat was suspended. Will it burst forth again? Barricades visited by me: one at the corner of Saint Eustache. One at the Oyster Market. One in the Rue Mauconseil. One in the Rue Tiquetonne. One in the Rue Mandar (Rocher de Cancale). One barring the Rue du Cadran and the Rue Montorgueil. Four closing the Petit-Carreau. The beginning of one between the Rue des Deux Portes and the Rue Saint Sauveur, barring the Rue Saint Denis. One, the largest, barring the Rue Saint Denis, at the top of the Rue Guérin-Boisseau. One barring the Rue Grenetat. One farther on in the Rue Grenetat, barring the Rue Bourg-Labbé (in the centre an overturned flour wagon; a good barricade). In the Rue Saint Denis one barring the Rue de Petit-Lion-Saint-Sauveur. One barring the Rue du Grand Hurleur, with its four corners barricaded. This barricade has already been attacked this morning. A combatant, Massonnet, a comb-maker of 154, Rue Saint Denis, received a ball in his overcoat; Dupapet, called ‘the man with the long beard,’ was the last to stay on the summit of the barricade. He was heard to cry out to the officers commanding the attack, ‘You are traitors!’ He is believed to have been shot. The troops retired — strange to say without demolishing the barricade. A barricade is being constructed in the Rue du Renard. Some National Guards in uniform watch its construction, but do not work on it. One of them said to me, ‘We are not against you, you are on the side of Right.’ They add that there are twelve or fifteen barricades in the Rue Rambuteau. This morning at daybreak the cannon had fired ‘steadily,’ as one of them remarks, in the Rue Bourbon-Villeneuve. I visit a powder manufactory improvised by Leguevel at a chemist’s opposite the Rue Guérin-Boisseau.
“They are constructing the barricades amicably, without angering any one. They do what they can not to annoy the neighborhood. The combatants of the Bourg-Labbé barricades are ankle-deep in mud on account of the rain. It is a perfect sewer. They hesitate to ask for a truss of straw. They lie down in the water or on the pavement.
“I saw there a young man who was ill, and who had just got up from his bed with the fever still on him. He said to me, ‘I am going to my death’ (he did so).
“In the Rue Bourbon-Villeneuve they had not even asked a mattress of the ‘shopkeepers,’ although, the barricade being bombarded, they needed them to deaden the effect of the balls.
“The soldiers make bad barricades, because they make them too well. A barricade should be tottering; when well built it is worth nothing; the paving-stones should want equilibrium, ‘so that they may roll down on the troopers,’ said a street-boy to me, ‘and break their paws.’ Sprains form a part of barricade warfare.
“Jeanty Sarre is the chief of a complete group of barricades. He presented his first lieutenant to me, Charpentier, a man of thirty-six, lettered and scientific. Charpentier busies himself with experiments with the object of substituting gas for coal and wood in the firing of china, and he asks permission to read a tragedy to me ‘one of these days.’ I said to him, ‘We shall make one.’
“Jeanty Sarre is grumbling at Charpentier; the ammunition is failing. Jeanty Sarre, having at his house in the Rue Saint Honoré a pound of fowling-powder and twenty army cartridges, sent Charpentier to get them. Charpentier went there, and brought back the fowling-powder and the cartridges, but distributed them to the combatants on the barricades whom he met on the way. ‘They were as though famished,’ said he. Charpentier had never in his life touched a fire-arm. Jeanty Sarre showed him how to load a gun.
“They take their meals at a wine-seller’s at the corner, and they warm themselves there. It is very cold. The wine-seller says, ‘Those who are hungry, go and eat.’ A combatant asked him, ‘Who pays?’ ‘Death,’ was the answer. And in truth some hours afterwards he had received seventeen bayonet thrusts.
“They have not broken the gas-pipes — always for the sake of not doing unnecessary damage. They confine themselves to requisitioning the gasmen’s keys, and the lamplighters’ winches in order to open the pipes. In this manner they control the lighting or extinguishing.
“This group of barricades is strong, and will play an important part. I had hoped at one moment that they would attack it while I was there. The bugle had approached, and then had gone away again. Jeanty Sarre tells me ‘it will be for this evening.’
“His intention is to extinguish the gas in the Rue du Petit-Carreau and all the adjoining streets, and to leave only one jet lighted in the Rue du Cadran. He has placed sentinels as far as the corner of the Rue Saint Denis; at that point there is an open side, without barricades, but little accessible to the troops, on account of the narrowness of the streets, which they can only enter one by one. Thence little danger exists, an advantage of narrow streets; the troops are worth nothing unless massed together. The soldier does not like isolated action; in war the feeling of elbow to elbow constitutes half the bravery. Jeanty Sarre has a reactionary uncle with whom he is not on good terms, and who lives close by at No. 1, Rue du Petit-Carreau.—‘What a fright we shall give him presently!’ said Jeanty Sarre to me, laughing. This morning Jeanty Sarre has inspected the Montorgueil barricade. There was only one man on it, who was drunk, and who put the barrel of his gun against his breast, saying, ‘No thoroughfare.’ Jeanty Sarre disarmed him.
“I go to the Rue Pagevin. There at the corner of the Place des Victoires there is a well-constructed barricade. In the adjoining barricade in the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, the troops this morning made no prisoners. The soldiers had killed every one. There are corpses as far as the Place des Victoires. The Pagevin barricade held its own. There are fifty men there, well armed. I enter. ‘Is all going on well?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Courage.’ I press all these brave hands; they make a report to me. They had seen a Municipal Guard smash in the head of a dying man with the butt end of his musket. A pretty young girl, wishing to go home, took refuge in the barricade. There, terrified, she remained for an hour. When all danger was over, the chef of the barricade caused her to be reconducted home by the eldest of his men.
“As I was about to leave the barricade Pagevin, they brought me a prisoner, a police spy, they said.
“He expected to be shot. I had him set at liberty.”
Bancel was in this barricade of the Rue Pagevin. We shook hands.
He asked me,—
“Shall we conquer?”
“Yes,” I answered.
We then could hardly entertain a doubt.
De Flotte and Bancel wished to accompany me, fearing that I should be arrested by the regiment guarding the Bank.
The weather was misty and cold, almost dark. This obscurity concealed and helped us. The fog was on our side.
As we reached the corner of the Rue de la Vrillière, a group on horseback passed by.
It consisted of a few others, preceded by a man who seemed a soldier, but who was not in uniform. He wore a cloak with a hood.
De Flotte nudged me with his elbow, and whispered,—
“Do you know Fialin?”
I answered,—
“No.”
“Have you seen him?
“No.”
“Do you wish to see him?”
“No.”
“Look at him.”
I looked at him.
This man in truth was passing before us. It was he who preceded the group of officers. He came out of the Bank. Had he been there to effect a new forced loan? The people who were at the doors looked at him with curiosity, and without anger. His entire bearing was insolent. He turned from time to time to say a word to one of his followers. This little cavalcade “pawed the ground” in the mist and in the mud. Fialin had the arrogant air of a man who caracoles before a crime. He gazed at the passers-by with a haughty look. His horse was very handsome, and, poor beast, seemed very proud. Fialin was smiling. He had in his hand the whip that his face deserved.
He passed by. I never saw the man except on this occasion.
De Flotte and Bancel did not leave me until they had seen me get into my vehicle. My true-hearted coachman was waiting for me in the Rue de la Vrillière. He brought me back to No 15, Rue Richelieu.
The Barricade of the Rue Meslay
The first barricade of the Rue Saint Martin was erected at the junction of the Rue Meslay. A large cart was overturned, placed across the street, and the roadway was unpaved; some flag-stones of the footway were also torn up. This barricade, the advanced work of defence of the whole revolted street, could only form a temporary obstacle. No portion of the piled-up stones was higher than a man. In a good third of the barricade the stones did not reach above the knee. “It will at all events be good enough to get killed in,” said a little street Arab who was rolling numerous flag-stones to the barricade. A hundred combatants took up their position behind it. Towards nine o’clock the movements of the troops gave warning of the attack. The head of the column of the Marulaz Brigade occupied the corner of the street on the side of the boulevard. A piece of artillery, raking the whole of the street, was placed in position before the Porte Saint Martin. For some time both sides gazed on each other in that moody silence which precedes an encounter; the troops regarding the barricade bristling with guns, the barricade regarding the gaping cannon. After a while the order for a general attack was given. The firing commenced. The first shot passed above the barricade, and struck a woman who was passing some twenty paces in the rear, full in the breast. She fell, ripped open. The fire became brisk without doing much injury to the barricade. The cannon was too near; the bullets flew too high.
The combatants, who had not yet lost a man, received each bullet with a cry of “Long live the Republic!” but without firing. They possessed few cartridges, and they husbanded them. Suddenly the 49th regiment advanced in close column order.
The barricade fired.
The smoke filled the street; when it cleared away, there could be seen a dozen men on the ground, and the soldiers falling back in disorder by the side of the houses. The leader of the barricade shouted, “They are falling back. Cease firing! Let us not waste a ball.”
The street remained for some time deserted. The cannon recommenced fining. A shot came in every two minutes, but always badly aimed. A man with a fowling-piece came up to the leader of the barricade, and said to him, “Let us dismount that cannon. Let us kill the gunners.”
“Why!” said the chief, smiling, “they are doing us no harm, let us do none to them.”
Nevertheless the sound of the bugle could be distinctly heard on the other side of the block of houses which concealed the troops echelloned on the Square of Saint Martin, and it was manifest that a second attack was being prepared.
This attack would naturally be furious, desperate, and stubborn.
It was also evident that, if this barricade were carried, the entire street would be scoured. The other barricades were still weaker than the first, and more feebly defended. The “middle class” had given their guns, and had re-entered their houses. They lent their street, that was all.
It was therefore necessary to hold the advanced barricade as long as possible. But what was to be done, and how was the resistance to be maintained? They had scarcely two shots per man left.
An unexpected source of supply arrived.
A young man, I can name him, for he is dead — Pierre Tissié,19 who was a workman, and who also was a poet, had worked during a portion of the morning at the barricades, and at the moment when the firing began he went away, stating as his reason that they would not give him a gun. In the barricade they had said, “There is one who is afraid.”
Pierre Tissié was not afraid, as we shall see later on.
He left the barricade.
Pierre Tissié had only his knife with him, a Catalan knife; he opened it at all hazards, he held it in his hand, and went on straight before him.
As he came out of the Rue Saint Sauveur, he saw at the corner of a little lonely street, in which all the windows were closed, a soldier of the line standing sentry, posted there doubtlessly by the main guard at a little distance.
This soldier was at the halt with his gun to his shoulder ready to fire.
He heard the step of Pierre Tissié, and cried out,—
“Who goes there?”
“Death!” answered Pierre Tissié.
The soldier fired, and missed Pierre Tissié, who sprang on him, and struck him down with a blow of his knife.
The soldier fell, and blood spurted out of his mouth.
“I did not know I should speak so truly,” muttered Pierre Tissié.
And he added, “Now for the ambulance!”
He took the soldier on his back, picked up the gun which had fallen to the ground, and came back to the barricade. “I bring you a wounded man,” said he.
“A dead man,” they exclaimed.
In truth the soldier had just expired.
“Infamous Bonaparte!” said Tissié. “Poor red breeches! All the same, I have got a gun.”
They emptied the soldier’s pouch and knapsack. They divided the cartridges. There were 150 of them. There were also two gold pieces of ten francs, two days’ pay since the 2d of December. These were thrown on the ground, no one would take them.
They distributed the cartridges with shouts of “Long live the Republic!”
Meanwhile the attacking party had placed a mortar in position by the side of the cannon.
The distribution of the cartridges was hardly ended when the infantry appeared, and charged upon the barricade with the bayonet. This second assault, as had been foreseen, was violent and desperate. It was repulsed. Twice the soldiers returned to the charge, and twice they fell back, leaving the street strewn with dead. In the interval between the assaults, a shell had pierced and dismantled the barricade, and the cannon began to fire grape-shot.
The situation was hopeless; the cartridges were exhausted. Some began to throw down their guns and go away. The only means of escape was by the Rue Saint Sauveur, and to reach the corner of the Rue Saint Sauveur it was necessary to get over the lower part of the barricade, which left nearly the whole of the fugitives unprotected. There was a perfect rain of musketry and grape-shot. Three or four were killed there, one, like Baudin, by a ball in his eye. The leader of the barricade suddenly noticed that he was alone with Pierre Tissié, and a boy of fourteen years old, the same who had rolled so many stones for the barricade. A third attack was pending, and the soldiers began to advance by the side of the houses.
“Let us go,” said the leader of the barricade.
“I shall remain,” said Pierre Tissié.
“And I also,” said the boy.
And the boy added,—
“I have neither father nor mother. As well this as anything else.”
The leader fired his last shot, and retired like the others over the lower part of the barricade. A volley knocked off his hat. He stooped down and picked it up again. The soldiers were not more than twenty-five paces distant.
He shouted to the two who remained,—
“Come along!”
“No,” said Pierre Tissié.
“No,” said the boy.
A few moments afterwards the soldiers scaled the barricade already half in ruins.
Pierre Tissié and the boy were killed with bayonet thrusts.
Some twenty muskets were abandoned in this barricade.
The Barricade of the Mairie of the Fifth Arrondissement
National Guards in uniform filled the courtyard of the Mairie of the Fifth Arrondissement. Others came in every moment. An ex-drummer of the Garde Mobile had taken a drum from a lower room at the side of the guard-room, and had beaten the call to arms in the surrounding streets. Towards nine o’clock a group of fourteen or fifteen young men, most of whom were in white blouses, entered the Mairie, shouting, “Long live the Republic!” They were armed with guns. The National Guard received them with shouts of “Down with Louis Bonaparte!” They fraternized in the courtyard. Suddenly there was a movement. It was caused by the arrival of the Representatives Doutre and Pelletier.
“What is to be done?” shouted the crowd.
“Barricades,” said Pelletier.
They unharnessed the horses, which the carter led away, and they turned the cart round without upsetting it across the wide roadway of the faubourg. The barricade was completed in a moment. A truck came up. They took it and stood it against the wheels of the cart, just as a screen is placed before a fireplace.
The remainder was made up of casks and paving-stones. Thanks to the flour-cart the barricade was lofty, and reached to the first story of the houses. It intersected the faubourg at the corner of the little Rue Saint Jean. A narrow entrance had been contrived at the barricade at the corner of the street.
“One barricade is not sufficient,” said Doutre, “we must place the Mairie between two barriers, so as to be able to defend both sides at the same time.”
They constructed a second barricade, facing the summit of the faubourg. This one was low and weakly built, being composed only of planks and of paving-stones. There was about a hundred paces distance between the two barricades.
There were three hundred men in this space. Only one hundred had guns. The majority had only one cartridge.
The firing began about ten o’clock. Two companies of the line appeared and fired several volleys. The attack was only a feint. The barricade replied, and made the mistake of foolishly exhausting its ammunition. The troops retired. Then the attack began in earnest. Some Chasseurs de Vincennes emerged from the corner of the boulevard.
Following out the African mode of warfare, they glided along the side of the walls, and then, with a run, they threw themselves upon the barricade.
No more ammunition in the barricade. No quarter to be expected.
Those who had no more powder or balls threw down their guns. Some wished to reoccupy their position in the Mairie, but it was impossible for them to maintain any defence there, the Mairie being open and commanded from every side; they scaled the walls and scattered themselves about in the neighboring houses; others escaped by the narrow passage of the boulevard which led into the Rue Saint Jean; most of the combatants reached the opposite side of the boulevard, while those who had a cartridge left fired a last volley upon the troops from the height of the paving-stones. Then they awaited their death. All were killed.
One of those who succeeded in slipping into the Rue Saint Jean, where moreover they ran the gauntlet of a volley from their assailants, was M.H. Coste, Editor of the Evénement and of the Avénement du Peuple.
M. Coste had been a captain in the Garde Mobile. At a bend in the street, which placed him out of reach of the balls, M. Conte noticed in front of him the drummer of the Garde Mobile, who, like him, had escaped by the Rue Saint Jean, and who was profiting by the loneliness of the street to get rid of his drum.
“Keep your drum,” cried he to him.
“For what purpose?”
“To beat the call to arms.”
“Where?”
“At Batignolles.”
“I will keep it,” said the drummer.
These two men came out from the jaws of death, and at once consented to re-enter them.
But how should they cross all Paris with this drum? The first patrol which met them would shoot them. A porter of an adjoining house, who noticed their predicament, gave them a packing-cloth. They enveloped the drum in it, and reached Batignolles by the lonely streets which skirt the walls.
The Barricade of the Rue Thevenot
Georges Biscarrat was the man who had given the signal for the looting in the Rue de l’Echelle.
I had known Georges Biscarrat ever since June, 1848. He had taken part in that disastrous insurrection. I had had an opportunity of being useful to him. He had been captured, and was kneeling before the firing-party; I interfered, and I saved his life, together with that of some others, M., D., D., B., and that brave-hearted architect Rolland, who when an exile, later on, so ably restored the Brussels Palace of Justice.
This took place on the 24th June, 1848, in the underground floor of No. 93, Boulevard Beaumarchais, a house then in course of construction.
Georges Biscarrat became attached to me. It appeared that he was the nephew of one of the oldest and best friends of my childhood, Félix Biscarrat, who died in 1828. Georges Biscarrat came to see me from time to time, and on occasions he asked my advice or gave me information.
Wishing to preserve him from evil influences, I had given him, and he had accepted, this guiding maxim, “No insurrection except for Duty and for Right.”
What was this hooting in the Rue de l’Echelle? Let us relate the incident.
On the 2d of December, Bonaparte had made an attempt to go out. He had ventured to go and look at Paris. Paris does not like being looked at by certain eyes; it considers it an insult, and it resents an insult more than a wound. It submits to assassination, but not to the leering gaze of the assassin. It took offence at Louis Bonaparte.
At nine o’clock in the morning, at the moment when the Courbevoie garrison was descending upon Paris, the placards of the coup d’état being still fresh upon the walls, Louis Bonaparte had left the Elysée, had crossed the Place de la Concorde, the Garden of the Tuileries, and the railed courtyard of the Carrousel, and had been seen to go out, by the gate of the Rue de l’Echelle. A crowd assembled at once. Louis Bonaparte was in a general’s uniform; his uncle, the ex-King Jér?me, accompanied him, together with Flahaut, who kept in the near. Jér?me wore the full uniform of a Marshal of France, with a hat with a white feather; Louis Bonaparte’s horse was a head before Jér?me’s horse. Louis Bonaparte was gloomy, Jér?me attentive, Flahaut beaming. Flahaut had his hat on one side. There was a strong escort of Lancers. Edgar Ney followed. Bonaparte intended to go as far as the H?tel de Ville. Georges Biscarrat was there. The street was unpaved, the road was being macadamized; he mounted on a heap of stones, and shouted, “Down with the Dictator! Down with the Praetorians!” The soldiers looked at him with bewilderment, and the crowd with astonishment. Georges Biscarrat (he told me so himself) felt that this cry was too erudite, and that it would not be understood, so he shouted, “Down with Bonaparte! Down with the Lancers!”
The effect of this shout was electrical. “Down with Bonaparte! Down with the Lancers!” cried the people, and the whole street became stormy and turbulent. “Down with Bonaparte!” The outcry resembled the beginning of an execution; Bonaparte made a sudden movement to the right, turned back, and re-entered the courtyard of the Louvre.
Georges Biscarrat felt it necessary to complete his shout by a barricade.
He said to the bookseller, Benoist Mouilhe, who had just opened his shop, “Shouting is good, action is better.” He returned to his house in the Rue du Vert Bois, put on a blouse and a workman’s cap, and went down into the dark streets. Before the end of the day he had made arrangements with four associations — the gas-fitters, the last-makers, the shawl-makers, and the hatters.
In this manner he spent the day of the 2d of December.
The day of the 3d was occupied in goings and comings “almost useless.” So Biscarrat told Versigny, and he added, “However I have succeeded in this much, that the placards of the coup d’état have been everywhere torn down, so much so that in order to render the tearing down more difficult the police have ultimately posted them in the public conveniences — their proper place.”
On Thursday, the 4th, early in the morning, Georges Biscarrat went to Ledouble’s restaurant, where four Representatives of the People usually took their meals, Brives, Bertlhelon, Antoine Bard, and Viguier, nicknamed “Father Viguier.” All four were there. Viguier related what we had done on the preceding evening, and shared my opinion that the closing catastrophe should be hurried on, that the Crime should be precipitated into the abyss which befitted it. Biscarrat came in. The Representatives did not know hire, and stared at him. “Who are you?” asked one of them. Before he could answer, Dr. Petit entered, unfolded a paper, and said,—
“Does any one know Victor Hugo’s handwriting?”
“I do,” said Biscarrat. He looked at the paper. It was my proclamation to the army. “This must be printed,” said Petit. “I will undertake it,” said Biscarrat. Antoine Bard asked him, “Do you know Victor Hugo?” “He saved my life,” answered Biscarrat. The Representatives shook hands with him.
Guilgot arrived. Then Versigny. Versigny knew Biscarrat. He had seen him at my house. Versigny said, “Take care what you do. There is a man outside the door.” “It is a shawl-maker,” said Biscarrat. “He has come with me. He is following me.” “But,” resumed Versigny, “he is wearing a blouse, beneath which he has a handkerchief. He seems to be hiding this, and he has something in the handkerchief.”
“Sugar-plums,” said Biscarrat.
They were cartridges.
Versigny and Biscarrat went to the office of the Siècle; at the Siècle thirty workmen, at the risk of being shot, offered to print my Proclamation. Biscarrat left it with them, and said to Versigny, “Now I want my barricade.”
The shawl-maker walked behind them. Versigny and Biscarrat turned their steps towards the top of the Saint Denis quarter. When they drew near to she Porte Saint Denis they heard the hum of many voices. Biscarrat laughed and said to Versigny, “Saint Denis is growing angry, matters are improving.” Biscarrat recruited forty combatants on the way, amongst whom was Moulin, head of the association of leather-dressers. Chapuis, sergeant-major of the National Guard, brought them four muskets and ten swords. “Do you know where there are any more?” asked Biscarrat. “Yes, at the Saint Sauveur Baths.” They went there, and found forty muskets. They gave them swords and cartridge-pouches. Gentlemen well dressed, brought tin boxes containing powder and balls. Women, brave and light-hearted, manufactured cartridges. At the first door adjoining the Rue du Hasard-Saint-Sauveur they requisitioned iron bars and hammers from a large courtyard belonging to a locksmith. Having the arms, they had the men. They speedily numbered a hundred. They began to tear up the pavements. It was half-past ten. “Quick! quick!” cried Georges Biscarrat, “the barricade of my dreams!” It was in the Rue Thévenot. The barrier was constructed high and formidable. To abridge. At eleven o’clock Georges Biscarrat had completed his barricade. At noon he was killed there.
Ossian and Scipio
Arrests grew more numerous.
Towards noon a Commissary of Police, named Boudrot, appeared at the divan of the Rue Lepelletier. He was accompanied by the police agent Delahodde. Delahodde was that traitorous socialist writer, who, upon being unmasked, had passed from the Secret Police to the Public Police Service. I knew him, and I record this incident. In 1832 he was a master in the school at which were my two sons, then boys, and he had addressed poetry to me. At the same time he was acting the spy upon me. The Lepelletier divan was the place of meeting of a large number of Republican journalists. Delahodde knew them all. A detachment of the Republican Guard occupied the entrances to the café. Then ensued an inspection of all the ordinary customers, Delahodde walking first, with the Commissary behind him. Two Municipal Guards followed them. From time to time Delahodde looked round and said, “Lay hold of this man.” In this manner some score of writers were arrested, among whom were Hennett de Kesler.20 On the preceding evening Kesler had been on the Saint Antoine barricade. Kesler said to Delahodde, “You are a miserable wretch.” “And you are an ungrateful fellow,” replied Delahodde; “I am saving your life.” Curious words; for it is difficult to believe that Delahodde was in the secret of what was to happen on the fatal day of the Fourth.
At the head-quarters of the Committee encouraging information was forwarded to us from every side. Testelin, the Representative of Lille, is not only a learned man, but a brave man. On the morning of the 3d he had reached, shortly after me, the Saint Antoine barricade, where Baudin had just been killed. All was at an end in that direction. Testelin was accompanied by Charles Gambon, another dauntless man.21 The two Representatives wandered through the agitated and dark streets, little followed, in no way understood, seeking a ferment of insurgents, and only finding a swarming of the curious. Testelin, nevertheless, having come to the Committee, informed us of the following:— At the corner of a street of the Faubourg Saint Antoine Gambon and himself had noticed a crowd. They had gone up to it. This crowd was reading a bill placarded on a wall. It was the Appeal to Arms signed “Victor Hugo.” Testelin asked Gambon, “Have you a pencil?” “Yes,” answered Gambon. Testelin took the pencil, went up to the placard, and wrote his name beneath mine, then he gave the pencil to Gambon, who in turn wrote his name beneath that of Testelin. Upon this the crowd shouted, “Bravo! these are true-hearted men!” “Shout ‘Long live the Republic!’” cried Testelin. All shouted “Long live the Republic!” “And from above, from the open windows,” added Gambon, “women clapped their hands.”
“The little hands of women applauding are a good sign,” said Michel de Bourges.
As has been seen, and we cannot lay too much stress upon the fact, what the Committee of Resistance wished was to prevent the shedding of blood as much as possible. To construct barricades, to let them be destroyed, and to reconstruct them at other points, to avoid the army, and to wear it out, to wage in Paris the war of the desert, always retreating, never yielding, to take time for an ally, to add days to days; on the one hand to give the people time to understand and to rise, on the other, to conquer the coup d’état by the weariness of the army; such was the plan discussed and adopted.
The order was accordingly given that the barricades should be but slightly defended.
We repeated in every possible form to the combatants,—
“Shed as little blood as possible! Spare the blood of the soldiers and husband your own.”
Nevertheless, the struggle once begun, it became impossible in many instances, during certain excited hours of fighting, to moderate their ardor. Several barricades were obstinately defended, particularly those in the Rue Rambuteau, in the Rue Montorgueil, and in the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache.
These barricades were commanded by daring leaders.
Here, for the sake of history, we will record a few of these brave men fighting outlines who appeared and disappeared in the smoke of the combat. Radoux, an architect, Deluc, Mallarmet, Félix Bony, Luneau, an ex-Captain of the Republican Guard, Camille Berru, editor of the Avénement, gay, warmhearted, and dauntless, and that young Eugène Millelot, who was destined to be condemned at Cayenne to receive 200 lashes, and to expire at the twenty-third stroke, before the very eyes of his father and brother, proscribed and convicts like himself.
The barricade of the Rue Aumaire was amongst those which were not carried without resistance. Although raised in haste, it was fairly constructed. Fifteen or sixteen resolute men defended it; two were killed.
The barricade was carried with the bayonet by a battalion of the 16th of the line. This battalion, hurled on the barricade at the double, was received by a brisk fusillade; several soldiers were wounded.
The first who fell in the soldiers’ ranks was an officer. He was a young man of twenty-five, lieutenant of the first company, named Ossian Dumas; two balls broke both of his legs as though by a single blow.
At that time there were in the army two brothers of the name of Dumas, Ossian and Scipio. Scipio was the elder. They were near relatives of the Representative, Madier de Montjau.
These two brothers belonged to a poor but honored family. The elder had been educated at the Polytechnic School, the other at the School of Saint Cyr.
Scipio was four years older than his brother. According to that splendid and mysterious law of ascent, which the French Revolution has created, and which, so to speak, has placed a ladder in the centre of a society hitherto caste-bound and inaccessible, Scipio Dumas’ family had imposed upon themselves the most severe privations in order to develop his intellect and secure his future. His relations, with the touching heroism of the poor of the present era, denied themselves bread to afford him knowledge. In this manner he attained to the Polytechnic School, where he quickly became one of the best pupils.
Having concluded his studies, he was appointed an officer in the artillery, and sent to Metz. It then became his turn to help the boy who had to mount after him. He held out his hand to his younger brother. He economized the modest pay of an artillery lieutenant, and, thanks to him, Ossian became an officer like Scipio. While Scipio, detained by duties belonging to his position, remained at Metz, Ossian was incorporated in an infantry regiment, and went to Africa. There he saw his first service.
Scipio and Ossian were Republicans. In October, 1851, the 16th of the line, in which Ossian was serving, was summoned to Paris. It was one of the regiments chosen by the ill-omened hand of Louis Bonaparte, and on which the coup d’état counted.
The 2d of December arrived.
Lieutenant Ossian Dumas obeyed, like nearly all his comrades, the order to take up arms; but every one round him could notice his gloomy attitude.
The day of the 3d was spent in marches and counter-marches. On the 4th the combat began. The 16th, which formed part of the Herbillon Brigade, was told off to capture the barricades of the Rues Beaubourg, Trausnonain, and Aumaire. This battle-field was formidable; a perfect square of barricades had been raised there.
It was by the Rue Aumaire, and with the regiment of which Ossian formed part, that the military leaders resolved to begin action.
At the moment when the regiment, with arms loaded, was about to march upon the Rue Aumaire, Ossian Dumas went up to his captain, a brave and veteran officer, with whom he was a favorite, and declared that he would not march a step farther, that the deed of the 2d of December was a crime, that Louis Bonaparte was a traitor, that it was for them, soldiers, to maintain the oath which Bonaparte violated; and that, as for himself, he would not lend his sword to the butchery of the Republic.
A halt was made. The signal of attack was awaited; the two officers, the old captain and the young lieutenant, conversed in a low tone.
“And what do you want to do?” asked the captain.
“Break my sword.”
“You will be taken to Vincennes.”
“That is all the same to me.”
“Most certainly dismissed.”
“Possibly.”
“Perhaps shot.”
“I expect it.”
“But there is no longer any time; you should have resigned yesterday.”
“There is always time to avoid committing a crime.”
The captain, as may be seen, was simply one of those professional heroes, grown old in the leather stock, who know of no country but the flag, and no other law but military discipline. Iron arms and wooden heads. They are neither citizens nor men. They only recognize honor in the form of a general’s epaulets. It is of no use talking to them of political duties, of obedience to the laws, of the Constitution. What do they know about all this? What is a Constitution; what are the most holy laws, against three words which a corporal may murmur into the ear of a sentinel? Take a pair of scales, put in one side the Gospels, in the other the official instructions; now weigh them. The corporal turns the balance; the Deity kicks the beam.
God forms a portion of the order of the day of Saint Bartholomew. “Kill all. He will recognized his own.”
This is what the priests accept, and at times glorify.
Saint Bartholomew has been blessed by the Pope and decorated with the Catholic medal.22
Meanwhile Ossian Dumas appeared determined. The captain made a last effort.
“You will ruin yourself,” said he.
“I shall save my honor.”
“It is precisely your honor that you are sacrificing.”
“Because I am going away?”
“To go away is to desert.”
This seemed to impress Ossian Dumas. The captain continued,—
“They are about to fight. In a few minutes the barricade will be attacked. Your comrades will fall, dead or wounded. You are a young officer — you have not yet been much under fire.”
“At all events,” warmly interrupted Ossian Dumas, “I shall not have fought against the Republic; they will not say I am a traitor.”
“No, but they will say that you are a coward.”
Ossian made no reply.
A moment afterwards the command was given to attack.
The regiment started at the double. The barricade fired.
Ossian Dumas was the first who fell.
He had not been able to bear that word “coward,” and he had remained in his place in the first rank.
They took him to the ambulance, and from thence to the hospital.
Let us at once state the conclusion of this touching incident.
Both of his legs were broken. The doctors thought that it would be necessary to amputate them both.
General Saint-Arnaud sent him the Cross of Honor.
As is known, Louis Bonaparte hastened to discharge his debt to his praetorian accomplices. After having massacred, the sword voted.
The combat was still smoking when the army was brought to the ballot-box.
The garrison of Paris voted “Yes.” It absolved itself.
With the rest of the army it was otherwise. Military honor was indignant, and roused the civic virtue. Notwithstanding the pressure which was exercised, although the regiments deposited their votes in the shakos of their colonels, the army voted “No” in many districts of France and Algeria.
The Polytechnic School voted “No” in a body. Nearly everywhere the artillery, of which the Polytechnic School is the cradle, voted to the same effect as the school.
Scipio Dumas, it may be remembered, was at Metz.
By some curious chance it happened that the feeling of the artillery, which everywhere else had pronounced against the coup d’état, hesitated at Metz, and seemed to lean towards Bonaparte.
Scipio Dumas, in presence of this indecision set an example. He voted in a loud voice, and with an open voting paper, “No.”
Then he sent in his resignation. At the same time that the Minister at Paris received the resignation of Scipio Dumas, Scipio Dumas at Metz, received his dismissal, signed by the Minister.
After Scipio Dumas’ vote, the same thought had come at the same time to both the Government and to the officer, to the Government that the officer was a dangerous man, and that they could no longer employ him, to the officer that the Government was an infamous one, and that he ought no longer to serve it.
The resignation and the dismissal crossed on the way. By this word “dismissal” must be understood the withdrawal of employment.
According to our existing military laws it is in this manner that they now “break” an officer. Withdrawal of employment, that is to say, no more service, no more pay; poverty.
Simultaneously with his dismissal, Scipio Dumas learnt the news of the attack on the barricade of the Rue Aumaire, and that his brother had both his legs broken. In the fever of events he had been a week without news of Ossian. Scipio had confined himself to writing to his brother to inform him of his vote and of his dismissal, and to induce him to do likewise.
His brother wounded! His brother at the Val-de. Grace! He left immediately for Paris.
He hastened to the hospital. They took him to Ossian’s bedside. The poor young fellow had had both his legs amputated on the preceding day.
At the moment when Scipio, stunned, appeared at his bedside, Ossian held in his hand the cross which General Saint-Arnaud had just sent him.
The wounded man turned towards the aide-de-camp who had brought it, and said to him,—
“I will not have this cross. On my breast it would be stained with the blood of the Republic.”
And perceiving his brother, who had just entered, he held out the cross to him, exclaiming,—
“You take it. You have voted “No,” and you have broken your sword! It is you who have deserved it!”
The Question Presents Itself
It was one o’clock in the afternoon.
Bonaparte had again become gloomy.
The gleams of sunshine on such countenances as these last very short time.
He had gone back to his private room, had seated himself before the fire, with his feet on the hobs, motionless, and no one any longer approached him except Roquet.
What was he thinking of?
The twistings of the viper cannot be foreseen.
What this man achieved on this infamous day I have told at length in another book. See “Napoleon the Little.”
From time to time Roquet entered and informed him of what was going on. Bonaparte listened in silence, deep in thought, marble in which a torrent of lava boiled.
He received at the Elysée the same news that we received in the Rue Richelieu; bad for him, good for us. In one of the regiments which had just voted, there were 170 “Noes:” This regiment has since been dissolved, and scattered abroad in the African army.
They had counted on the 14th of the line which had fired on the people in February. The Colonel of the 14th of the line had refused to recommence; he had just broken his sword.
Our appeal had ended by being heard. Decidedly, as we have seen, Paris was rising. The fall of Bonaparte seemed to be foreshadowed. Two Representatives, Fabvier and Crestin, met in the Rue Royale, and Crestin, pointing to the Palace of the Assembly, said to Fabvier, “We shall be there to-morrow.”
One noteworthy incident. Mazes became eccentric, the prison unbent itself; the interior experienced an undefinable reverberation from the outside. The warders, who the preceding evening had been insolent to the Representatives when going for their exercise in the courtyard, now saluted them to the ground. That very morning of Thursday, the 4th, the governor of the prison had paid a visit to the prisoners, and had said to them, “It is not my fault.” He brought them books and writing-paper, a thing which up to that time he had refused. The Representative Valentin was in solitary confinement; on the morning of the 4th his warder suddenly became amiable, and offered to obtain for him news from outside, through his wife, who, he said, had been a servant in General Lefl?‘s household. These were significant signs. When the jailer smiles it means that the jail is half opening.
We may add, what is not a contradiction, that at the same time the garrison at Mazas was being increased. 1200 more men were marched in, in detachments of 100 men each, spacing out their arrivals in “little doses” as an eye-witness remarked to us. Later on 400 men. 100 litres of brandy were distributed to them. One litre for every sixteen men. The prisoners could hear the movement of artillery round the prison.
The agitation spread to the most peaceable quarters. But the centre of Paris was above all threatening. The centre of Paris is a labyrinth of streets which appears to be made for the labyrinth of riots. The Ligue, the Fronde, the Revolution — we must unceasingly recall these useful facts — the 14th of July, the 10th of August, 1792, 1830, 1848, have come out from thence. These brave old streets were awakened. At eleven o’clock in the morning from Notre Dame to the Porte Saint Martin there were seventy-seven barricades. Three of them, one in the Rue Maubuée, another in the Rue Bertin-Poirée, another in the Rue Guérin-Boisseau, attained the height of the second stories; the barricade of the Porte Saint Denis was almost as bristling and as formidable as the barrier of the Faubourg Saint Antoine in June, 1848. The handful of the Representatives of the People had swooped down like a shower of sparks on these famous and inflammable crossroads. The beginning of the fire. The fire had caught. The old central market quarter, that city which is contained in the city, shouted, “Down with Bonaparte!” They hooted the police, they hissed the troops. Some regiments seemed stupefied. They cried, “Throw up your butt ends in the air!” From the windows above, women encouraged the construction of the barricades. There was powder there, there were muskets. Now, we were no longer alone. We saw rising up in the gloom behind us the enormous head of the people. Hope at the present time was on our side. The oscillation of uncertainty had at length become steady, and we were, I repeat, almost perfectly confident.
There had been a moment when, owing to the good news pouring in upon us, this confidence had become so great that we who had staked our lives on this great contest, seized with an irresistible joy in the presence of a success becoming hourly more certain, had risen from our seats, and had embraced each other. Michel de Bourges was particularly angered against Bonaparte, for he had believed his word, and had even gone so far as to say, “He is my man.” Of the four of us, he was the most indignant. A gloomy flash of victory shone in him. He struck the table with his fist, and exclaimed, “Oh! the miserable wretch! To-morrow —” and he struck the table a second time, “to-morrow his head shall fall in the Place de Grève before the H?tel de Ville.”
I looked at him.
“No,” said I, “this man’s head shall not fall.”
“What do you mean?”
“I do not wish it.”
“Why?”
“Because,” said I, “if after such a crime we allow Louis Bonaparte to live we shall abolish the penalty of death.”
This generous Michel de Bourges remained thoughtful for a moment, then he pressed my hand.
Crime is an opportunity, and always gives us a choice, and it is better to extract from it progress than punishment. Michel de Bourges realized this.
Moreover this incident shows to what a pitch our hopes had been raised.
Appearances were on our side, actual facts not so. Saint-Arnaud had his orders. We shall see them.
Strange incidents took place.
Towards noon a general, deep in thought, was on horseback in the Place de la Madeleine, at the head of his wavering troops. He hesitated.
A carriage stopped, a woman stepped out and conversed in a low tone with the general. The crowd could see her. The Representative Raymond, who lived at No 4, Place de la Madeleine, saw her from his window. This woman was Madame K. The general stooping down on his horse, listened, and finally made the dejected gesture of a vanquished man. Madame K. got back into her carriage. This man, they said, loved that woman. She could, according to the side of her beauty which fascinated her victim, inspire either heroism or crime. This strange beauty was compounded of the whiteness of an angel, combined with the look of a spectre.
It was the look which conquered.
This man no longer hesitated. He entered gloomily into the enterprise.
From twelve to two o’clock there was in this enormous city given over to the unknown an indescribable and fierce expectation. All was calm and awe-striking. The regiments and the limbered batteries quitted the faubourg and stationed themselves noiselessly around the boulevards. Not a cry in the ranks of the soldiery. An eye-witness said, “The soldiers march with quite a jaunty air.” On the Quai de la Ferronnerie, heaped up with regiments ever since the morning of the 2d of December, there now only remained a post of Municipal Guards. Everything ebbed back to the centre, the people as well as the army; the silence of the army had ultimately spread to the people. They watched each other.
Each soldier had three days’ provisions and six packets of cartridges.
It has since transpired that at this moment 10,000 francs were daily spent in brandy for each brigade.
Towards one o’clock, Magnan went to the H?tel de Ville, had the reserve limbered under his own eyes, and did not leave until all the batteries were ready to march.
Certain suspicious preparations grew more numerous. Towards noon the State workmen and the hospital corps had established a species of huge ambulance at No. 2, Faubourg Montmartre. A great heap of litters was piled up there. “What is all this for?” asked the crowd.
Dr. Deville, who had attended Espinasse when he had been wounded, noticed him on the boulevard, and asked him, “Up to what point are you going?”
Espinasse’s answer is historical.
He replied, “To the end.”
At two o’clock five brigades, those of Cotte, Bourgon, Canrobert, Dulac, and Reybell, five batteries of artillery, 16,400 men,23 infantry and cavalry, lancers, cuirassiers, grenadiers, gunners, were echelloned without any ostensible reason between the Rue de la Paix and the Faubourg Poissonnière. Pieces of cannon were pointed at the entrance of every street; there were eleven in position on the Boulevard Poissonnière alone. The foot soldiers had their guns to their shoulders, the officers their swords drawn. What did all this mean? It was a curious sight, well worth the trouble of seeing, and on both sides of the pavements, on all the thresholds of the shops, from all the stories of the houses, an astonished, ironical, and confiding crowd looked on.
Little by little, nevertheless, this confidence diminished, and irony gave place to astonishment; astonishment changed to stupor. Those who have passed through that extraordinary minute will not forget it. It was evident that there was something underlying all this. But what? Profound obscurity. Can one imagine Paris in a cellar? People felt as though they were beneath a low ceiling. They seemed to be walled up in the unexpected and the unknown. They seemed to perceive some mysterious will in the background. But after all they were strong; they were the Republic, they were Paris; what was there to fear! Nothing. And they cried, “Down with Bonaparte!” The troops continued to keep silence, but the swords remained outside their scabbards, and the lighted matches of the cannon smoldered at the corners of the streets. The cloud grew blacker every minute, heavier and more silent. This thickening of the darkness was tragical. One felt the coming crash of a catastrophe, and the presence of a villain; snake-like treason writhed during this night, and none can foresee where the downward slide of a terrible design will stop when events are on a steep incline.
What was coming out of this thick darkness?
The Massacre
Suddenly a window was opened.
Upon Hell.
Dante, had he leaned over the summit of the shadow, would have been able to see the eighth circle of his poem; the funereal Boulevard Montmartre.
Paris, a prey to Bonaparte; a monstrous spectacle. The gloomy armed men massed together on this boulevard felt an appalling spirit enter into them; they ceased to be themselves, and became demons.
There was no longer a single French soldier, but a host of indefinable phantoms, carrying out a horrible task, as though in the glimmering light of a vision.
There was no longer a flag, there was no longer law, there was no longer humanity, there was no longer a country, there was no longer France; they began to assassinate.
The Schinderhannes division, the brigades of Mandrin, Cartouche, Poulailler, Trestaillon, and Tropmann appeared in the gloom, shooting down and massacring.
No; we do not attribute to the French army what took place during this mournful eclipse of honor.
There have been massacres in history, abominable ones assuredly, but they have possessed some show of reason; Saint Bartholomew and the Dragonnades are explained by religion, the Sicilian Vespers and the butcheries of September are explained by patriotism; they crush the enemy or annihilate the foreigner; these are crimes for a good cause; but the carnage of the Boulevard Montmartre is a crime without an ostensible reason.
The reason exists, however. It is hideous.
Let us give it.
Two things stand erect in a State, the Law and the People.
A man murders the Law. He feels the punishment approaching, there only remains one thing for him to do, to murder the People. He murders the People.
The Second of December was the Risk, the Fourth was the Certainty.
Against the indignation which arose they opposed the Terror.
The Fury, Justice, halted petrified before the Fury, Extermination. Against Erinnyes they set up Medusa.
To put Nemesis to flight, what a terrifying triumph!
To Louis Napoleon pertains this glory, which is the summit of his shame.
Let us narrate it.
Let us narrate what History had never seen before.
The assassination of a people by a man.
Suddenly, at a given signal, a musket shot being fired, no matter where, no matter by whom, the shower of bullets poured upon the crowd. A shower of bullets is also a crowd; it is death scattered broadcast. It does not know whither it goes, nor what it does; it kills and passes on.
But at the same time it has a species of soul; it is premeditated, it executes a will. This was an unprecedented moment. It seemed as though a handful of lightnings was falling upon the people. Nothing simpler. It formed a clear solution to the difficulty; the rain of lead overwhelmed the multitude. What are you doing there? Die! It is a crime to be passing by. Why are you in the street? Why do you cross the path of the Government? The Government is a cut-throat. They have announced a thing, they must certainly carry it out; what is begun must assuredly be achieved; as Society is being saved, the People must assuredly be exterminated.
Are there not social necessities? Is it not essential that Béville should have 87,000 francs a year and Fleury 95,000 francs? Is it not essential that the High Chaplain, Menjaud, Bishop of Nancy, should have 342 francs a day, and that Bassano and Cambacérès should each have 383 francs a day, and Vaillant 468 francs, and Saint-Arnaud 822 francs? Is it not necessary that Louis Bonaparte should have 76,712 francs a day? Could one be Emperor for less?
In the twinkling of an eye there was a butchery on the boulevard a quarter of a league long. Eleven pieces of cannon wrecked the Sallandrouze carpet warehouse. The shot tore completely through twenty-eight houses. The baths of Jouvence were riddled. There was a massacre at Tortoni’s. A whole quarter of Paris was filled with an immense flying mass, and with a terrible cry. Everywhere sudden death. A man is expecting nothing. He falls. From whence does this come? From above, say the Bishops’ Te Deum; from below, says Truth.
From a lower place than the galleys, from a lower place than Hell.
It is the conception of a Caligula, carried out by a Papavoine.
Xavier Durrieu comes upon the boulevard. He states,—
“I have taken sixty steps, I have seen sixty corpses.”
And he draws back. To be in the street is a Crime, to be at home is a Crime. The butchers enter the houses and slaughter. In slaughter-house slang the soldiers cry, “Let us pole-axe the lot of them.”
Adde, a bookseller, of 17, Boulevard Poissonnière, is standing before his door; they kill him. At the same moment, for the field of murder is vast, at a considerable distance from there, at 5, Rue de Lancry, M. Thirion de Montauban, owner of the house, is at his door; they kill him. In the Rue Tiquetonne a child of seven years, named Boursier, is passing by; they kill him. Mdlle. Soulac, 196, Rue du Temple, opens her window; they kill her. At No. 97, in the same street, two women, Mesdames Vidal and Raboisson, sempstresses, are in their room; they kill them. Belval, a cabinet-maker, 10, Rue de la Lune, is at home; they kill him. Deba?cque, a merchant, 45, Rue du Sentier, is in his own house; Couvercelle, florist, 257, Rue Saint Denis, is in his own house; Labitte, a jeweller, 55, Boulevard Saint Martin, is in his own house; Monpelas, perfumer, 181, Rue Saint Martin, is in his own house; they kill Monpelas, Labitte, Couvercelle, and Deba?cque. They sabre at her own home, 240, Rue Saint Martin, a poor embroideress, Mdlle. Seguin, who not having sufficient money to pay for a doctor, died at the Beaujon hospital, on the 1st of January, 1852, on the same day that the Sibour Te Deum was chanted at Notre Dame. Another, a waistcoat-maker, Fran?oise No?l, was shot down at 20, Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, and died in the Charité. Another, Madame Ledaust, a working housekeeper, living at 76, Passage du Caire, was shot down before the Archbishop’s palace, and died at the Morgue. Passers-by, Mdlle. Gressier, living at 209, Faubourg Saint Martin; Madame Guilard, living at 77, Boulevard Saint Denis; Madame Gamier, living at 6, Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, who had fallen, the first named beneath the volleys on the Boulevard Montmartre, the two others on the Boulevard Saint Denis, and who were still alive, attempted to rise, and became targets for the soldiers, bursting with laughter, and this time fell back again dead. Deeds of gallantry ware performed. Colonel Rochefort, who was probably created General for this, charged in the Rue do la Paix at the head of his Lancers a flock of nurses, who were put to flight.
Such was this indescribable enterprise. All the men who took part in it were instigated by hidden influences; all had something which urged them forward; Herbillon had Zaatcha behind him; Saint-Arnaud had Kabylia; Renault had the affair of the Saint-André and Saint Hippolyte villages; Espinasse, Rome and the storming of the 30th of June; Magnan, his debts.
Must we continue? We hesitate. Dr. Piquet, a man of seventy, was killed in his drawing-room by a ball in his stomach; the painter Jollivart, by a ball in the forehead, before his easel, his brains bespattered his painting. The English captain, William Jesse, narrowly escaped a ball which pierced the ceiling above his head; in the library adjoining the Magasins du Prophète, a father, mother, and two daughters were sabred. Lefilleul, another bookseller, was shot in his shop on the Boulevard Poissonnière; in the Rue Lepelletier, Boyer, a chemist, seated at his counter, was “spitted” by the Lancers. A captain, killing all before him, took by storm the house of the Grand Balcon. A servant was killed in the shop of Brandus. Reybell through the volleys said to Sax, “And I also am discoursing sweet music.” The Café Leblond was given over to pillage. Billecoq’s establishment was bombarded to such a degree that it had to be pulled down the next day. Before Jouvain’s house lay a heap of corpses, amongst them an old man with his umbrella, and a young man with his eye-glass. The H?tel de Castille, the Maison Dorée, the Petite Jeannette, the Café de Paris, the Café Anglais became for three hours the targets of the cannonade. Raquenault’s house crumbled beneath the shells; the bullets demolished the Montmartre Bazaar.
None escaped. The guns and pistols were fired at close quarters.
New Year’s-day was not far off, some shops were full of New Year’s gifts. In the passage du Saumon, a child of thirteen, flying before the platoon-firing, hid himself in one of these shops, beneath a heap of toys. He was captured and killed. Those who killed him laughingly widened his wounds with their swords. A woman told me, “The cries of the poor little fellow could be heard all through the passage.” Four men were shot before the same shop. The officer said to them, “This will teach you to loaf about.” A fifth named Mailleret, who was left for dead, was carried the next day with eleven wounds to the Charité. There he died.
They fired into the cellars by the air-holes.
A workman, a currier, named Moulins, who had taken refuge in one of these shot-riddled cellars, saw through the cellar air-hole a passer-by, who had been wounded in the thigh by a bullet, sit down on the pavement with the death rattle in his throat, and lean against a shop. Some soldiers who heard this rattle ran up and finished off the wounded man with bayonet thrusts.
One brigade killed the passer-by from the Madeleine to the Opera, another from the Opera to the Gymmase; another from the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle to the Porte Saint Denis; the 75th of the line having carried the barricade of the Porte Saint Denis, it was no longer a fight, it was a slaughter. The massacre radiated — a word horribly true — from the boulevard into all the streets. It was a devil-fish stretching out its feelers. Flight? Why? Concealment? To what purpose? Death ran after you quicker than you could fly. In the Rue Pagevin a soldier said to a passer-by, “What are you doing here?” “I am going home.” The soldier kills the passer-by. In the Rue des Marais they kill four young men in their own courtyard. Colonel Espinasse exclaimed, “After the bayonet, cannon!” Colonel Rochefort exclaimed, “Thrust, bleed, slash!” and he added, “It is an economy of powder and noise.” Before Barbedienne’s establishment an officer was showing his gun, an arm of considerable precision, admiringly to his comrades, and he said, “With this gun I can score magnificent shots between the eyes.” having said this, he aimed at random at some one, and succeeded. The carnage was frenzied. While the butchering under the orders of Carrelet filled the boulevard, the Bourgon brigade devastated the Temple, the Marulaz brigade devastated the Rue Rambuteau; the Renault division distinguished itself on the “other side of the water.” Renault was that general, who, at Mascara, had given his pistols to Charras. In 1848 he had said to Charras, “Europe must be revolutionized.” And Charras had said, “Not quite so fast!” Louis Bonaparte had made him a General of Division in July, 1851. The Rue aux Ours was especially devastated. Morny that evening said to Louis Bonaparte, “The 15th Light Infantry have scored a success. They have cleaned out the Rue aux Ours.”
At the corner of the Rue du Sentier an officer of Spahis, with his sword raised, cried out, “This is not the sort of thing! You do not understand at all. Fire on the women.” A woman was flying, she was with child, she falls, they deliver her by the means of the butt-ends of their muskets. Another, perfectly distracted, was turning the corner of a street. She was carrying a child. Two soldiers aimed at her. One said, “At the woman!” And he brought down the woman. The child rolled on the pavement. The other soldier said, “At the child!” And he killed the child.
A man of high scientific repute, Dr. Germain Sée, declares that in one house alone, the establishment of the Jouvence Baths, there were at six o’clock, beneath a shed in the courtyard, about eighty wounded, nearly all of whom (seventy, at least) were old men, women, and children. Dr. Sée was the first to attend to them.
In the Rue Mandar, there was, stated an eye-witness, “a rosary of corpses,” reaching as far as the Rue Neuve Saint Eustache. Before the house of Odier twenty-six corpses. Thirty before the hotel Montmorency. Fifty-two before the Variétés, of whom eleven were women. In the Rue Grange-Batelière there were three naked corpses. No. 19, Faubourg Montmartre, was full of dead and wounded.
A woman, flying and maddened, with dishevelled hair and her arms raised aloft, ran along the Rue Poissonnière, crying, “They kill! they kill! they kill! they kill! they kill!”
The soldiers wagered. “Bet you I bring down that fellow there.” In this manner Count Poninsky was killed whilst going into his own house, 52, Rue de la Paix.
I was anxious to know what I ought to do. Certain treasons, in order to be proved, need to be investigated. I went to the field of murder.
In such mental agony as this, from very excess of feeling one no longer thinks, or if one thinks, it is distractedly. One only longs for some end or other. The death of others instills in you so much horror that your own death becomes an object of desire; that is to say, if by dying, you would be in some degree useful! One calls to mind deaths which have put an end to angers and to revolts. One only retains this ambition, to be a useful corpse.
I walked along terribly thoughtful.
I went towards the boulevards; I saw there a furnace; I heard there a thunderstorm.
I saw Jules Simon coming up to me, who during these disastrous days bravely risked a precious life. He stopped me. “Where are you going?” he asked me. “You will be killed. What do you want?” “That very thing,” said I.
We shook hands.
I continued to go on.
I reached the boulevard; the scene was indescribable. I witnessed this crime, this butchery, this tragedy. I saw that reign of blind death, I saw the distracted victims fall around me in crowds. It is for this that I have signed myself in this book AN EYE-WITNESS.
Destiny entertains a purpose. It watches mysteriously over the future historian. It allows him to mingle with exterminations and carnages, but it does not permit him to die, because it wishes him to relate them.
In the midst of this inexpressible Pandemonium, Xavier Durrieu met me as I was crossing the bullet-swept boulevard. He said to me, “Ah, here you are. I have just met Madame D. She is looking for you.” Madame D.24 and Madame de la R.,25 two noble and brave women, had promised Madame Victor Hugo, who was ill in bed, to ascertain where I was, and to give her some news of me. Madame D. had heroically ventured into this carnage. The following incident happened to her. She stopped before a heap of bodies, and had had the courage to manifest her indignation; at the cry of horror to which she gave vent, a cavalry soldier had run up behind her with a pistol in his hand, and had it not been for a quickly opened door through which she threw herself, and which saved her, she would have been killed.
It is well known that the total slaughter in this butchery is unrecorded. Bonaparte has kept these figures hidden in darkness. Such is the habit of those who commit massacres. They are scarcely likely to allow history to certify the number of the victims. These statistics are an obscure multitude which quickly lose themselves in the gloom. One of the two colonels of whom we have had a glimpse in pages 223-225 of this work, has stated that his regiment alone had killed “at least 2,500 persons.” This would be more than one person per soldier. We believe that this zealous colonel exaggerates. Crime sometimes boasts of its blackness.
Lireux, a writer, arrested in order to be shot, and who escaped by a miracle, declares that he saw “more than 800 corpses.”
Towards four o’clock the post-chaises which were in the courtyard of the Elysée were unhorsed and put up.
This extermination, which an English witness, Captain William Jesse, calls “a wanton fusillade,” lasted from two till five o’clock. During these three terrible hours, Louis Bonaparte carried out what he had been premeditating, and completed his work. Up to that time the poor little “middle-class” conscience was almost indulgent. Well, what of it? It was a game at Prince, a species of state swindling, a conjuring feat on a large scale; the sceptics and the knowing men said, “It is a good joke played upon those idiots.” Suddenly Louis Bonaparte grew uneasy and revealed all his policy. “Tell Saint-Arnaud to execute my orders.” Saint-Arnaud obeyed, the coup d’état acted according to its own code of laws, and from that appalling moment an immense torrent of blood began to flow across this crime.
They left the corpses lying on the pavements, wild-looking, livid, stupefied, with their pockets turned inside out. The military murderer is thus condemned to mount the villainous scale of guilt. In the morning an assassin, in the evening a thief.
When night came enthusiasm and joy reigned at the Elysée. These men triumphed. Conneau has ingeniously related the scene. The familiar spirits were delirious with joy. Fialin addressed Bonaparte in hail-fellow-well-met style. “You had better break yourself of that,” whispered Vieillard. In truth this carnage made Bonaparte Emperor. He was now “His Majesty.” They drank, they smoked like the soldiers on the boulevards; for having slaughtered throughout the day, they drank throughout the night; wine flowed upon the blood. At the Elysée they were amazed at the result. They were enraptured; they loudly expressed their admiration. “What a capital idea the Prince had had! How well the thing had been managed! This was much better than flying the country, by Dieppe, like D’Haussez; or by Membrolle, like Guernon-Ranville; or being captured, disguised as a footboy, and blacking the boots of Madame de Saint Fargeau, like poor Polignac!” “Guizot was no cleverer than Polignac,” exclaimed Persigny. Fleury turned to Morny: “Your theorists would not have succeeded in a coup d’état.” “That is true, they were not particularly vigorous,” answered Morny. He added, “And yet they were clever men,— Louis Philippe, Guizot, Thiers —” Louis Bonaparte, taking his cigarette from his lips, interrupted, “If such are clever men, I would rather be an ass —”
“A hyena in an ass’s skin,” says History.
The Appointment Made with the Workmen’s Societies
What had become of our Committee during these tragic events, and what was it doing? It is necessary to relate what took place.
Let us go back a few hours.
At the moment when this strange butchery began, the seat of the Committee was still in the Rue Richelieu. I had gone back to it after the exploration which I had thought it proper to make at several of the quarters in insurrection, and I gave an account of what I had seen to my colleagues. Madier de Montjau, who also arrived from the barricades, added to my report details of what he had seen. For some time we heard terrible explosions, which appeared to be close by, and which mingled themselves with our conversation. Suddenly Versigny came in. He told us that horrible events were taking place on the Boulevards; that the meaning of the conflict could not yet be ascertained, but that they were cannonading, and firing volleys of musket-balls, and that the corpses bestrewed the pavement; that, according to all appearances, it was a massacre,— a sort of Saint Bartholomew improvised by the coup d’état; that they were ransacking the houses at a few steps from us, and that they were killing every one. The murderers were going from door to door, and were drawing near. He urged us to leave Grévy’s house without delay. It was manifest that the Insurrectionary Committee would be a “find” for the bayonets. We decided to leave, whereupon M. Dupont White, a man distinguished for his noble character and his talent, offered us a refuge at his house, 11, Rue Monthabor. We went out by the back-door of Grévy’s house, which led into 1, Rue Fontaine Molière, but leisurely, and two by two, Madier de Montjau with Versigny, Michel de Bourges with Carnot, myself arm-in-arm with Jules Favre. Jules Favre, dauntless and smiling as ever, wrapped a comforter over his mouth, and said, “I do not much mind being shot, but I do mind catching cold.”
Jules Favre and I reached the rear of Saint Roch, by the Rue des Moulins. The Rue Veuve Saint Roch was thronged with a mass of affrighted passers-by, who came from the Boulevards flying rather than walking. The men were talking in a loud voice, the women screaming. We could hear the cannon and the ear-piercing rattle of the musketry. All the shops were being shut. M. de Falloux, arm-in-arm with M. Albert de Rességuier, was striding down the Rue de Saint Roch and hurrying to the Rue Saint Honoré. The Rue Saint Honoré presented a scene of clamorous agitation. People were coming and going, stopping, questioning one another, running. The shopkeepers, at the threshold of their half-opened doors, asked the passers-by what was taking place, and were only answered by this cry, “Oh, my God!” People came out of their houses bareheaded and mingled with the crowd. A fine rain was falling. Not a carriage in the street. At the corner of the Rue Saint Roch and Rue Saint Honoré we heard voices behind us saying, “Victor Hugo is killed.”
“Not yet,” said Jules Favre, continuing to smile, and pressing my arm.
They had said the same thing on the preceding day to Esquiros and to Madier de Montjau. And this rumor, so agreeable to the Reactionaries, had even reached my two sons, prisoners in the Concièrgerie.
The stream of people driven back from the Boulevards and from the Rue Richelieu flowed towards the Rue de la Paix. We recognized there some of the Representatives of the Right who had been arrested on the 2d, and who were already released. M. Buffet, an ex-minister of M. Bonaparte, accompanied by numerous other members of the Assembly, was going towards the Palais Royal. As he passed close by us he pronounced the name of Louis Bonaparte in a tone of execration.
M. Buffet is a man of some importance; he is one of the three political advisers of the Right; the two others are M. Fould and M. Molé.
In the Rue Monthabor, two steps from the Rue Saint Honoré, there was silence and peace. Not one passer-by, not a door open, not a head out of window.
In the apartment into which we were conducted, on the third story, the calm was not less perfect. The windows looked upon an inner courtyard. Five or six red arm-chairs were drawn up before the fire; on the table could be seen a few books which seemed to me works on political economy and executive law. The Representatives, who almost immediately joined us and who arrived in disorder, threw down at random their umbrellas and their coats streaming with water in the corner of this peaceful room. No one knew exactly what was happening; every one brought forward his conjectures.
The Committee was hardly seated in an adjoining little room when our ex-colleague, Leblond, was announced. He brought with him King the delegate of the working-men’s societies. The delegate told us that the committee of the societies were sitting in permanent session, and had sent him to us. According to the instructions of the Insurrectionary Committee, they had done what they could to lengthen the struggle by evading too decisive encounters. The greater part of the associations had not yet given battle; nevertheless the plot was thickening. The combat had been severe during the morning. The Association of the Rights of Man was in the streets; the ex-constituent Beslay had assembled, in the Passage du Caire, six or seven hundred workmen from the Marais, and had posted them in the streets surrounding the Bank. New barricades would probably be constructed during the evening, the forward movement of the resistance was being precipitated, the hand-to-hand struggle which the Committee had wished to delay seemed imminent, all was rushing forward with a sort of irresistible impulse. Should we follow it, or should we stop? Should we run the risk of bringing matters to an end with one blow, which should be the last, and which would manifestly leave one adversary on the ground — either the Empire or the Republic? The workmen’s societies asked for our instructions; they still held in reserve their three or four thousand combatants; and they could, according to the order which the Committee should give them, either continue to restrain them or send them under fire without delay. They believed themselves curtain of their adherents; they would do whatever we should decide upon, while not hiding from us that the workmen wished for an immediate conflict, and that it would be somewhat hazardous to leave them time to become calm.
The majority of the members of the Committee were still in favor of a certain slackening of action which should tend to prolong the struggle; and it was difficult to say that they were in the wrong. It was certain that if they could protract the situation in which the coup d’état had thrown Paris until the next week, Louis Bonaparte was lost. Paris does not allow herself to be trampled upon by an army for a whole week. Nevertheless, I was for my own part impressed with the following:— The workmen’s societies offered us three or four thousand combatants, a powerful assistance;— the workman does not understand strategy, he lives on enthusiasm, abatements of ardor discourage him; his zeal is not extinguished, but it cools:— three thousand to-day would be five hundred to-morrow. And then some serious incident had just taken place on the Boulevards. We were still ignorant of what it actually was: we could not foresee what consequences it might bring about; but seemed to me impossible that the still unknown, but yet violent event, which had just taken place would not modify the situation, and consequently change our plan of battle. I began to speak to this effect. I stated that we ought to accept the offer of the associations, and to throw them at once into the struggle; I added that revolutionary warfare often necessitates sudden changes of tactics, that a general in the open country and before the enemy operates as he wishes; it is all clear around him; he knows the effective strength of his soldiers, the number of his regiments; so many men, so many horses, so many cannons, he knows his strength, and the strength of his enemy, he chooses his hour and his ground, he has a map under his eyes, he sees what he is doing. He is sure of his reserves, he possesses them, he keeps them back, he utilizes them when he wishes, he always has them by him. “But for ourselves,” cried I, “we are in an undefined and inconceivable position. We are stepping at a venture upon unknown risks. Who is against us? We hardly know. Who is with us? We are ignorant. How many soldiers? How many guns? How many cartridges? Nothing! but the darkness. Perhaps the entire people, perhaps no one. Keep a reserve! But who would answer for this reserve? It is an army to-day, it will be a handful of dust to-morrow. We only can plainly distinguish our duty, as regards all the rest it is black darkness. We are guessing at everything. We are ignorant of everything. We are fighting a blind battle! Let us strike all the blows that can be struck, let us advance straight before us at random, let us rush upon the danger! And let us have faith, for as we are Justice and the Law, God must be with us in this obscurity. Let us accept this glorious and gloomy enterprise of Right disarmed yet still fighting.”
The ex-constituent Leblond and the delegate King being consulted by the Committee, seconded my advice. The Committee decided that the societies should be requested in our name to come down into the streets immediately, and to call out their forces. “But we are keeping nothing for to-morrow,” objected a member of the Committee, “what ally shall we have to-morrow?” “Victory,” said Jules Favre. Carnot and Michel de Bourges remarked that it would be advisable for those members of the association who belonged to the National Guard to wear their uniforms. This was accordingly settled.
The delegate King rose,—“Citizen Representatives,” said he, “these orders will be immediately transmitted, our friends are ready, in a few hours they will assemble. To-night barricades and the combat!”
I asked him, “Would it be useful to you if a Representative, a member of the Committee, were with you to-night with his sash girded?”
“Doubtless,” he answered.
“Well, then,” resumed I, “here I am! Take me.”
“We will all go,” exclaimed Jules Favre.
The delegate observed that it would suffice for one of us to be there at the moment when the societies should make their appearance, and that he could then notify the other members of the Committee to come and join him. It was settled that as soon as the places of meeting and the rallying-points should be agreed upon, he would send some one to let me know, and to take me wherever the societies might be. “Before an hour’s time you shall hear from me,” said he on leaving us.
As the delegates were going away Mathieu de la Dr?me arrived. On coming in he halted on the threshold of the door, he was pale, he cried out to us, “You are no longer in Paris, you are no longer under the Republic; you are in Naples and under King Bomba.”
He had come from the boulevards.
Later on I again saw Mathieu de la Dr?me. I said to him, “Worse than Bomba,— Satan.”
The Verification of Moral Laws
The carnage of the Boulevard Montmartre constitutes the originality of the coup d’état. Without this butchery the 2d of December would only be an 18th Brumaire. Owing to the massacre Louis Bonaparte escapes the charge of plagiarism.
Up to that time he had only been an imitator. The little hat at Boulogne, the gray overcoat, the tame eagle appeared grotesque. What did this parody mean? people asked. He made them laugh; suddenly he made them tremble.
He who becomes detestable ceases to be ridiculous.
Louis Bonaparte was more than detestable, he was execrable.
He envied the hugeness of great crimes; he wished to equal the worst. This striving after the horrible has given him a special place to himself in the menagerie of tyrants. Petty rascality trying to emulate deep villainy, a little Nero swelling himself to a huge Lacénaire; such is this phenomenon. Art for art, assassination for assassination.
Louis Bonaparte has created a special genus.
It was in this manner that Louis Bonaparte made his entry into the Unexpected. This revealed him.
Certain brains are abysses. Manifestly for a long time past Bonaparte had harbored the design of assassinating in order to reign. Premeditation haunts criminals, and it is in this manner that treason begins. The crime is a long time present in them, but shapeless and shadowy, they are scarcely conscious of it; souls only blacken gradually. Such abominable deeds are not invented in a moment; they do not attain perfection at once and at a single bound; they increase and ripen, shapeless and indecisive, and the centre of the ideas in which they exist keeps them living, ready for the appointed day, and vaguely terrible. This design, the massacre for a throne, we feel sure, existed for a long time in Louis Bonaparte’s mind. It was classed among the possible events of this soul. It darted hither and thither like a larva in an aquarium, mingled with shadows, with doubts, with desires, with expedients, with dreams of one knows not what Caesarian socialism, like a Hydra dimly visible in a transparency of chaos. Hardly was he aware that he was fostering this hideous idea. When he needed it, he found it, armed and ready to serve him. His unfathomable brain had darkly nourished it. Abysses are the nurseries of monsters.
Up to this formidable day of the 4th December, Louis Bonaparte did not perhaps quite know himself. Those who studied this curious Imperial animal did not believe him capable of such pure and simple ferocity. They saw in him an indescribable mongrel, applying the talents of a swindler to the dreams of an Empire, who, even when crowned, would be a thief, who would say of a parricide, What roguery! Incapable of gaining a footing on any height, even of infamy, always remaining half-way uphill, a little above petty rascals, a little below great malefactors. They believed him clever at effecting all that is done in gambling-hells and in robbers’ caves, but with this transposition, that he would cheat in the caves, and that he would assassinate in the gambling-hells.
The massacre of the Boulevards suddenly unveiled this spirit. They saw it such as it really was: the ridiculous nicknames “Big-beak,” “Badinguet,” vanished; they saw the bandit, they saw the true contraffatto hidden under the false Bonaparte.
There was a shudder! It was this then which this man held in reserve!
Apologies have been attempted, they could but fail. It is easy to praise Bonaparte, for people have praised Dupin; but it is an exceedingly complicated operation to cleanse him. What is to be done with the 4th of December? How will that difficulty be surmounted? It is far more troublesome to justify than to glorify; the sponge works with greater difficulty than the censer; the panegyrists of the coup d’état have lost their labor. Madame Sand herself, although a woman of lofty intellect, has failed miserably in her attempt to rehabilitate Bonaparte, for the simple reason that whatever one may do, the death-roll reappears through this whitewashing.
No! no! no extenuation whatever is possible. Unfortunate Bonaparte. The blood is drawn. It must be drunk.
The deed of the 4th of December is the most colossal dagger-thrust that a brigand let loose upon civilization has ever effected, we will not say upon a people, but upon the entire human race. The stroke was most monstrous, and struck Paris to the ground. Paris on the ground is Conscience, is Reason, is all human liberty on the ground; it is the progress of centuries lying on the pavement; it is the torch of Justice, of Truth, and of Life reversed and extinguished. This is what Louis Bonaparte effected the day when he effected this.
The success of the wretch was complete. The 2d of December was lost; the 4th of December saved the 2d of December. It was something like Erostratus saving Judas. Paris understood that all had not yet been told as regards deeds of horror, and that beneath the oppressor there was the garbage-picker. It was the case of a swindler stealing César’s mantle. This man was little, it is true, but terrifying. Paris consented to this terror, renounced the right to have the last word, went to bed and simulated death. Suffocation had its share in the matter. This crime resembled, too, no previous achievements. Even after centuries have passed, and though he should be an Aeschylus or a Tacitus, any one raising the cover would smell the stench. Paris resigned herself, Paris abdicated, Paris surrendered; the novelty of the treason proved its chief strength; Paris almost ceased to be Paris; on the next day the chattering of this terrified Titan’s teeth could be heard in the shadows.
Let us lay a stress upon this, for we must verify the laws of morality. Louis Bonaparte remained, even after the 4th of December, Napoleon the Little. This enormity still left him a dwarf. The size of the crime does not change the stature of the criminal, and the pettiness of the assassin withstands the immensity of the assassination.
Be that as it may, the Pigmy had the better of the Colossus. This avowal, humiliating as it is, cannot be evaded.
Such are the blushes to which History, that greatly dishonored one, is condemned.
What Happened During the Night — The Rue Tiquetonne
Just as Mathieu de la Dr?me had said, “You are under King Bomba,” Charles Gambon entered. He sank down upon a chair and muttered, “It is horrible.” Bancel followed him. “We have come from it,” said Bancel. Gambon had been able to shelter himself in the recess of a doorway. In front of Barbedienne’s alone he had counted thirty-seven corpses. What was the meaning of it all? To what purpose was this monstrous promiscuous murder? No one could understand it. The Massacre was a riddle.
We were in the Sphinx’s Grotto.
Labrousse came in. It was urgently necessary that we should leave Dupont White’s house. It was on the point of being surrounded. For some moments the Rue Monthabor, ordinarily so deserted, was becoming thronged with suspicious figures. Men seemed to be attentively watching number Eleven. Some of these men, who appeared to be acting in concert, belonged to the ex-“Club of Clubs,” which, owing to the manoeuvres of the Reactionists, exhaled a vague odor of the police. It was necessary that we should disperse. Labrousse said to us, “I have just seen Longe-pied roving about.”
We separated. We went away one by one, and each in his own direction. We did not know where we should meet again, or whether we should meet again. What was going to happen and what was about to become of us all? No one knew. We were filled with a terrible dread.
I turned up towards the Boulevards, anxious to see what was taking place.
What was taking place I have just related.
Bancel and Versigny had rejoined me.
As I left the Boulevards, mingled with the whirl of the terrified crowd, not knowing where I was going, returning towards the centre of Paris, a voice suddenly whispered in my ear, “There is something over there which you ought to see.” I recognized the voice. It was the voice of E.P.
E.P. is a dramatic author, a man of talent, for whom under Louis Philippe I had procured exemption from military service. I had not seen him for four or five years. I met him again in this tumult. He spoke to me as though we had seen each other yesterday. Such are these times of bewilderment. There is no time to greet each other “according to the rules of society.” One speaks as though all were in full flight.
“Ah! it is you!” I exclaimed. “What do you want with me?”
He answered me, “I live in a house over there.”
And he added,-
“Come.”
He drew me into a dark street. We could hear explosions. At the bottom of the street could be seen the ruins of a barricade. Versigny and Bancel, as I have just said, were with me. E.P. turned to them.
“These gentlemen can come,” said he.
I asked him,—
“What street is this?”
“The Rue Tiquetonne.”
We followed him.
I have elsewhere told this tragical event.26
E.P. stopped before a tall and gloomy house. He pushed open a street-door which was not shut, then another door and we entered into a parlor perfectly quiet and lighted by a lamp.
This room appeared to adjoin a shop. At the end could be distinguished two beds side by side, one large and one small. Above the little bed hung a woman’s portrait, and above the portrait a branch of holy box-tree.
The lamp was placed over the fireplace, where a little fire was burning.
Near the lamp upon a chair there was an old woman leaning forward, stooping down, folded in two as though broken, over something which was in the shadow, and which she held in her arms. I drew near. That which she held in her arms was a dead child.
The poor woman was silently sobbing.
E.P., who belonged to the house, touched her on the shoulder, and said,—
“Let us see it.”
The old woman raised her head, and I saw on her knees a little boy, pale, half-undressed, pretty, with two red holes in his forehead.
The old woman stared at me, but she evidently did not see me, she muttered, speaking to herself,—
“And to think that he called me ‘Granny’ this morning!”
E.P. took the child’s hand, the hand fell back again.
“Seven years old,” he said to me.
A basin was on the ground. They had washed the child’s face; two tiny streams of blood trickled from the two holes.
At the end of the room, near a half-opened clothes-press, in which could be seen some linen, stood a woman of some forty years, grave, poor, clean, fairly good-looking.
“A neighbor,” E.P. said to me.
He explained to me that a doctor lived in the house, that the doctor had come down and had said, “There is nothing to be done.” The child had been hit by two balls in the head while crossing the street to “get out of the way.” They had brought him back to his grandmother, who “had no one left but him.”
The portrait of the dead mother hung above the little bed.
The child had his eyes half open, and that inexpressible gaze of the dead, where the perception of the real is replaced by the vision of the infinite. The grandmother spoke through her sobs by snatches: “God! is it possible? Who would have thought it?— What brigands!”
She cried out,—
“Is this then the Government?”
“Yes,” I said to her.
We finished undressing the child. He had a top in his pocket. His head rolled from one shoulder to the other; I held him and I kissed him on the brow; Versigny and Bancel took off his stockings. The grandmother suddenly started up.
“Do not hurt him!” she cried.
She took the two little white and frozen feet in her old hands, trying to warm them.
When the poor little body was naked, they began to lay it out. They took a sheet from the clothes-press.
Then the grandmother burst into bitter lamentation.
She cried out,—
“They shall give him back to me!”
She drew herself up and gazed at us, and began to pour forth incoherent utterances, in which were mingled Bonaparte, and God, and her little one, and the school to which he went, and her daughter whom she had lost, and even reproaches to us. She was livid, haggard, as though seeing a vision before her, and was more of a phantom than the dead child.
Then she again buried her face in her hands, placed her folded arms on her child, and once more began to sob.
The woman who was there came up to me, and without saying a word, wiped my mouth with a handkerchief. I had blood upon my lips.
What could be done? Alas! We went out overwhelmed.
It was quite dark. Bancel and Versigny left me.