Mlle. Fouchette Part 44

All of these student "manifestations" were seized upon by the worst elements of Paris. The estimable character of these elements found in the Place Maubert and vicinity may be surmised from the fact that a few days previous to the event about to be herein recorded twenty men of the neighborhood were chosen to maintain its superiority to the Halles Centrales against a like number selected by the latter.

The contending factions were drawn up in order of battle in Place Maubert, on Boulevard St. Germain, in broad afternoon, each man being armed with a knife, and precipitated an engagement that required one hundred police reserves to quell.

"If we could only keep that pestiferous gang out of our manifestations," said Jean now to Monsieur de Beauchamp,--"they disgrace us always!"

"Oh, but they are good fighters; and there is to be fighting pretty soon," observed the artist.

"Vive l'armee!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, flouris.h.i.+ng a salad-spoon.

Mlle. Fouchette had a martial spirit.

"Whenever a student is arrested he turns out to be one of the roughs of Place Maubert or a hoodlum of Rue Monge, or a cutthroat of Rue Mouffetard. It is disgraceful!"

"But it shows the discretion of our police, Monsieur Marot," said the artist, with his sweet smile. "You see the police are with us. We must not be too particular who fights on our side, my friend. We can't afford to quarrel with anybody just now going in our direction. They are but means to an end, let us remember, and that end the ancient prestige and glory of France."

"a bas les Juifs!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette, without looking up.

The G.o.dlike face of the painter glowed with the enthusiasm that consumed his soul. He now turned his grand eyes upon the girl with inexpressible sadness.

"That is a question that does not concern us," said he, "except as another means to an end. Innocent or guilty, shall the pleasure or pain of one man stand between the millions of our countrymen and the welfare and perpetuity of France?"

"Never!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, in her excitement bringing down the salad-bowl with a crash that sent the pieces flying about the room.

"Parbleu!" exclaimed Jean, laughing heartily; "there goes my salad!"

"No; the salad is here. There goes my pretty bowl!"

"Very well, then, let us turn out to-morrow, Monsieur Marot, and do our duty. Au revoir."

In parting the artist nodded his head in cold recognition of the existence of Mlle. Fouchette. The latter turned on her dainty heel with a glance at Jean that spoke volumes. But she began arranging the little table slowly, absent-mindedly, without a word. He thought she was lamenting the loss of the salad-bowl.

"I'll buy you a pretty one," he said.

"A pretty--er--a what?"

"Salad-bowl."

"Oh, dame! I was not thinking of the salad-bowl."

"Something more serious?"

"Yes. Don't go to-morrow, Monsieur Jean!"

Her voice was earnest, but sunk to a whisper. He regarded her with astonishment.

"Don't go, Monsieur Jean!" she repeated. "Have nothing to do with them! There will be two thousand hired roughs from La Villette, the killers from the abattoirs, and----" She stopped short.

"How now, mon enfant? How----"

But she had clapped her small hand over his mouth in a half-vexed, half-frightened way, with a definite gesture towards the next room.

"Have a care, monsieur," she whispered in his ear, then laughingly resumed her bantering tone. "How do you like my salad? Is it not capital?"

CHAPTER XI

Jean Marot found Mlle. Fouchette interesting but incomprehensible.

Jean believed himself to be a sincere and true republican,--and he was, in fact, quite as logical in this as were many of the so-called republicans of the French Parliament, who, like their familiar political prototypes in the United States, talked one way and voted another. He had partic.i.p.ated in the street disturbances as a protest against the Ministry and for the pure love of excitement, not against the republic.

As to the Dreyfus case, he had been satisfied, with most of his countrymen, upon the statement of five successive ministers of war.

After all, in a country where so many have always stood ready to sell their national liberty for the gold of the stranger, it came easy to believe in one Judas more.

The United States has had but one Benedict Arnold; France counts her traitors by the thousands. They spring from every rank and are incidental to every age. The word Treachery is the most important word in French domestic history.

And when honest men doubted the justice of a council of war, they were silenced by the specious reasoning of men like M. de Beauchamp. Had Jean been invited to a.s.sist in overturning the republic and to put Philippe d'Orleans on the throne, he would have revolted. His political ideals would have been outraged. Yet every act committed by him and by his blind partisans tended directly, and were secretly engineered by others, to that end.

Jean Marot in this was but a fair type of tens of thousands of his intelligent but headstrong and misguided countrymen.

"In the street!"

Once in the street the following day, Jean forgot his serious reflections of the previous night. It was Sunday, the chosen day of battle by sea and land,--a day consecrated to violence and bloodshed by the Paris mob. The students gathered at the divided rendezvous of the Place Pantheon and the Place de l'Odeon. Many of them wore the white boutonniere of the Jeunesse Royalistes, the tricolor, the red rose of communism, or other badge of particular political belief, and all carried canes, some of which were loaded and some of the sword variety. Their leaders excitedly harangued them while the heavy squads of police agents distributed in the vicinity watched the proceedings without interference.

Indeed, the royalists and their allies had abundant reason to believe the police force of Paris, officers and men, civil and military, in sympathy with their movement against the republic. Not one of the many street disturbances of the year past had been the spontaneous outburst of popular anger that is the forerunner of revolution. On every occasion they had been, as they were in this instance, the publicly prearranged breaches of the peace in which the worst elements of the Paris world were invited or hired to join. This was well known to the government. It would have been easy and perfectly legal and wise to have antic.i.p.ated them by governmental authority. Acting under that authority, a score or two of police agents could have dispersed all preliminary gatherings. Under the eye of such a police force as we have in New York any one of the numerous riots which disgraced the streets of Paris during the pendency of the "Affaire" would have been impossible.

The police of Paris, however, are French,--which is to say that they are incapable of seeing their duty from a strictly impersonal point of view, but are lax to the utmost indifference and partiality or brutal to the extreme of cruelty and fiendishness.

But perhaps the severest censure of the Paris police agent lies in the fact that no just magistrate accepts his unsupported testimony, and that at least two-thirds of his riot arrests are nullified at once by setting the victims at liberty. As the police agent is the creature of the general government and is not responsible to the munic.i.p.ality, he can only be brought to book when he makes the mistake of offending some high personage. To the complaint of an ordinary citizen he would probably reply by drawing his cloak around him and expectorating viciously.

"Qu'est-ce que ca me fiche?"

The students a.s.sembled at the Place du Pantheon easily avoided the shadowy blue barrier drawn up across the Rue Soufflot. They howled a good deal in unison, then suddenly disappeared down Rue Cujas, and, pouring into Boulevard St. Michel, joined forces at the foot of Rue Racine with their comrades from the Place de l'Odeon. Like all student manifestations of any sort, the procession made a great noise, sticks were brandished, and the air rent with cries of "Vive l'armee! a bas les traitres!"

The peaceful shopkeepers came to their doors and regarded the young men indulgently. "Ah! la jeunesse n'a q'un temps!"

Some four hundred young men from the great schools were joined at the Place St. Michel by numerous hoodlums and roughs from the purlieus of Rue St. Severin, Place Maubert, and the equally delectable region of Rue de la Hutchette. These patriot soldiers of fortune "emeuted" for the low rate of forty sous per day, and were mostly armed with bludgeons, wherewith to earn their meagre salary. It mattered little whom they served, though it was just now the n.o.ble Duc d'Orleans.

The police saw this addition with a knowing eye. They barred the entrance to the Pont St. Michel. It was a half-hearted effort, and with cries of "Vive la liberte!" "En avant!" the mob of young men swept the thin files out of the way and gained the bridge. Not, however, without some kicks and blows, broken canes, and bleeding faces. A l.u.s.ty gold-laced brigadier rolled in the dust, desperately clinging to two coat-collars, and won the coveted cross by allowing himself to be kicked and stamped almost out of human resemblance by the infuriated mob of rescuers.

By this time the head of the mob had reached the other end of the bridge, where a double barrier of agents was drawn up across the street. A gray-haired commissaire of long and distinguished police service walked calmly forward alone to meet them. His resolute step, his pose, bespoke his dignity and courage. He raised his left hand with the air of authority accustomed to being obeyed.

His keen eyes at once sought and found and held the eyes of the leaders.

"You must go back,--you cannot cross here,--you must disperse----"

"Sacre!" growled the crowd, moving forward threateningly. "We have a right to cross anywhere! We are citizens of Paris and have the rights of any other citizen,--the same as you, Monsieur le Commissaire!"