The History of a Crime Part 56

"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 b.a.l.l.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes: "G.o.d! 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 G.o.d, 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.

[26] "Les Chatiments."

CHAPTER II.

WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE NIGHT--THE MARKET QUARTER

I came back to my lodging, 19, Rue Richelieu.

The ma.s.sacre seemed to be at an end; the fusillades were heard no longer. As I was about to knock at the door I hesitated for a moment; a man was there who seemed to be waiting. I went straight up to this man, and I said to him,--

"You seem to be waiting for somebody?"

He answered,--

"Yes."

"For whom?"

"For you."

And he added, lowering his voice, "I have come to speak to you."

I looked at this man. A street-lamp shone on him. He did not avoid the light.

He was a young man with a fair beard, wearing a blue blouse, and who had the gentle bearing of a thinker and the robust hands of a workman.

"Who are you?" I asked him.

He answered,--"I belong to the Society of the Last-makers. I know you very well, Citizen Victor Hugo."

"From whom do you come?" I resumed.

He answered still in a whisper,--

"From Citizen King."

"Very good," said I.

He then told me his name. As he has survived the events of the night of the 4th, and as he since escaped the denunciations, it can be understood that we will not mention his name here, and that we shall confine ourselves to terming him throughout the course of this story by his trade, calling him the "last-maker."[27]

"What do you want to say to me?" I asked him.