Paris under the Commune Part 23

Do you not think that during the last paragraphs the tone of the declaration is somewhat modified? It would seem as though Felix Pyat had become tired, and handed the pen to Pierre Denis or to Delescluze, --after Communalism comes socialism.

"Communal revolution is the end of the old governmental and clerical world, of militarism, of officialism (this new editor seems fond of words ending in ism), of exploitation, of commission, of monopolies, and of privileges to which the proletariat owes his thralldom, and the country her misfortunes and disasters."

Of course there is nothing in the world that would please me better; but if I were very certain that Citizen Rigault did not possess an improved gla.s.s enabling him to observe me from a distance of several miles, without leaving his study or his armchair, if I were very certain that Citizen Rigault could not read over my shoulder what I am writing at this moment, I might perhaps venture to insinuate, that the revolution of the 18th of March appears to me to be, at the present moment, the apotheosis of most of the crimes which it pretends to have suppressed.

"Let then our grand and beloved country, deceived by falsehood and calumnies, be rea.s.sured!"

Well, in order that she may be rea.s.sured there is only one thing to be done,--be off with you!

"The struggle going on between Paris and Versailles is one of those which can never be terminated by deceitful compromises. There can be no doubt as to the issue. (Oh, no! there is no doubt about it.) Victory, pursued with indomitable energy by the National Guard, will remain with principle and justice.

We ask it of France."

Where is the necessity, since you have the indomitable energy of the National Guard?".

"Convinced that Paris under arms possesses as much calmness as bravery ..."

You will find that a very difficult thing to persuade France to believe.

"... That it maintains order with equal energy and enthusiasm ..."

Order? No doubt, that which reigned at Warsaw; the order that reigned on the day after the 2nd of December.

"... That it sacrifices itself with as much judgment as heroism ..."

Yes; the judgment of a man who throws himself out of a fourth-floor window to prove that his head is harder than the paving-stones.

"... That it is only armed through devotion for the glory and liberty of all--let France cause this b.l.o.o.d.y conflict to cease!"

She'll cause it to cease, never fear, but not in the way you understand it.

"It is for France to disarm Versailles ..."

Up to the present time she has certainly done precisely the contrary.

"... by the manifestations of her irresistible will. As she will be partaker in our conquests, let her take part in our efforts, let her be our ally in this conflict, which can only finish by the triumph of the Communal idea, or the ruin of Paris."

The ruin of Paris! That is only, I suppose, a figurative expression.

"For ourselves, citizens of Paris, it is our mission to accomplish the modern revolution, the grandest and most fruitful of all those that have illuminated history.

"Our duty is to struggle and to conquer!

"THE COMMUNE OF PARIS."

Such is this long, emphatic, but often obscure declaration. It is not wanting, however, in a certain eloquence; and, although frequently disfigured by glaring exaggerations, it contains here and there some just ideas, or at least, such as conform to the views of the great majority. Will it destroy the bad effect produced by the successive defeats of the Federals at Neuilly and at Asnieres? Will it produce any good feeling towards the Commune in the minds of those who are daily drawing farther and farther from the men of the Commune? No; it is too late. Had this proclamation been placarded fifteen or twenty days sooner, some parts of it might have been approved and the rest discussed. Today we pa.s.s it by with a smile. Ah! many things have happened during the last three days. The acts of the Commune of Paris no longer allow us to take its declarations seriously, and we look upon its members as too mad--if not worse--to believe that by any accident they can be reasonable. These men have finished by rendering detestable whatever good there originally was in their idea.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 65: He was born in 1841, in the department of the Rhone. His education was completed very early. At the age of twenty he was engaged on two journals of the opposition, _La Jeune France_, and _La Jeunesse_.

Those papers were soon suppressed, and their young contributor was imprisoned for three months. In 1864 he became one of the staff of the _Presse_, whence he pa.s.sed to the _Liberte_ in 1866. Two years later he founded the _Courrier Francais_; but from the multiplicity of fines imposed upon it, and from the imprisonment of its founder, the new journal expired very shortly. After a year's incarceration at Sainte-Pelagie, Vermorel was engaged on the _Reforme_, which continued to appear until the fall of the Empire. During the siege he served as a private in the National Guard. He became a member of the Committee of Justice under the Commune, and was one of those who, at its fall, neither deserted nor disgraced it. He is reported to have mounted a barricade armed only with a cane, crying "I come here to die and not to fight." His mother obtained permission to transport his remains to Venice.]

LIX.

We have a court-martial; it is presided over by the citizen Rossel, chief of the grand staff of the army. It has just condemned to death the Commandant Girod, who refused to march against the "enemy." The Executive Committee, however, has pardoned Commandant Girod. Let us look at this matter a little. If the Executive Committee occupies its time in undoing what the court-martial has done, I can't quite understand why the executive has inst.i.tuted a court-martial at all. If I were a member of the latter I should get angry. "What! I should say, they instal me in the hall where the courts-martial are held, they appoint guards to attend upon me, and my president has the right to say, 'Guards, remove the prisoner.' In a word, they convert me into something which resembles a judge as much as a parody can resemble the work burlesqued, and when I, a member of the court-martial, desire to take advantage of the rights that have been conferred upon me, and order the Commandant Girod to be shot, they stand in the way of justice, and save the life of him I have condemned. This is absurd! I had a liking for this commandant, and I wished him to die by my hands."

Never mind, court-martial, take it coolly; you will have your revenge before long. At this moment there are at least sixty-three ecclesiastics in the prisons of Mazas, the Conciergerie, and La Sante. Although they are not precisely soldiers, they will be sent before you to be judged, and you may do just what you like with them, without any fear of the executive commission interposing its veto. The refractory also will give you work to do, and against them you can exercise your pleasure. As to the Commandant Girod, his is a different case, you understand. He is the friend of citizen Delescluze. The members of the Commune have not so many friends that they can afford to have any of them suppressed. But don't be downcast; a dozen priests are well worth a major of the National Guard.

LX.

It is precisely because the men that the Commune sends to the front, fight and die so gloriously, that we feel exasperated against its members. A curse upon them, for thus wasting the moral riches of Paris!

Confusion to them, for enlisting into so bad a service, the first-rate forces which a successful revolt leaves at their disposal. I will tell you what happened yesterday, the 22nd of April, on the Boulevard Bineau; and then I think you will agree with me that France, who has lost so much, still retains some of the bright, dauntless courage which was her.

pride of old.

A trumpeter, a mere lad of seventeen, was marching at the head of his detachment, which had been ordered to take possession of a barricade that the Versailles troops were supposed to have abandoned. When I say, "he marched," I am making a most incorrect statement, for he turned somersets and executed flying leaps on the road, far in advance of his comrades, until his progress was arrested by the barricade; this he greeted with a mocking gesture, and then, with a bound or two, was on the other side. There had been some mistake, the barricade had not been abandoned. Our young trumpeter was immediately surrounded by a pretty large number of troops of the line, who had lain hidden among the sacks of earth and piles of stones, in the hope of surprising the company which was advancing towards them. Several rifles were pointed at the poor boy, and a sergeant said: "If you move a foot, if you utter a sound, you die!" The lad's reply was to leap to the highest part of the barricade and cry out, with all the strength of his young voice, "Don't come on! They are here!" Then he fell backwards, pierced by four b.a.l.l.s, but his comrades were saved!

LXI.

Another, and a sadder scene happened in the Avenue des Ternes. A funeral procession was pa.s.sing along. The coffin, borne by two men, was very small, the coffin of a young child. The father, a workman in a blouse, walked behind with a little knot of other mourners. A sad sight, but the catastrophe was horrible. Suddenly a sh.e.l.l from Mont Valerien fell on the tiny coffin, and, bursting, scattered the remains of the dead child upon the living father. The corpse was entirely destroyed, with the trappings that had surrounded it. Ma.s.sacring the dead! Truly those cannons are a wonderful, a refined invention!

LXII.

At last the unhappy inhabitants of Neuilly are able to leave their cellars. For three weeks, they have been hourly expecting the roofs of their houses to fall in and crush them; and with much difficulty have managed during the quieter moments of the day to procure enough to keep them from dying of starvation. For three weeks they have endured all the terrors, all the dangers of battle and bombardment. Many are dead--they all thought themselves sure to die. Horrible details are told. A little past Gilet's restaurant, where the omnibus office used to be, lived an old couple, man and wife. At the beginning of the civil war, two sh.e.l.ls burst, one after another, in their poor lodging, destroying every article of furniture. Utterly dest.i.tute, they took refuge in the cellar, where after a few hours of horrible suspense, the old man died. He was seventy, and the fright killed him; his wife was younger and stronger, and survived. In the rare intervals between the firing she went out and spoke to her neighbours through the cellar gratings--"My husband is dead. He must be buried; what am I to do?"--Carrying him to the cemetery was of course out of the question; no one could have been found to render this mournful duty. Besides, the bearers would probably have met a sh.e.l.l or a bullet on the way, and then others must have been found to carry them. One day, the old woman ventured as far as the Porte Maillot, and cried out as loud as she could, "My husband is dead in a cellar; come and fetch him, and let us both through the gates!"--The sentinel facetiously (let us hope it was nothing worse) took aim at her with his rifle, and she fled back to her cellar. At night, she slept by the side of the corpse, and when the light of morning filtered into her dreary place of refuge, and lighted up the body lying there, she sobbed with grief and terror. Her husband had been dead four days, when putrefaction set in, and she, able to bear it no longer, rushed out screaming to her neighbours: "You must bury him, or I will go into the middle of the avenue and await death there!"--They took pity on her, and came down into her cellar, dug a hole there and put the corpse in it.

During three weeks she continued there, resting herself on the newly-turned earth. To-day, when they went to fetch her she fainted with horror; the grave had been dug too shallow, and one of the legs of the corpse was exposed to gaze.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FEMALE CURIOSITY AT PORTE MAILLOT. "Prenez garde, Mam'zelle."]

This morning, the 25th of April, at nine o'clock, a dense crowd moved up the Champs Elysees: pedestrians of all ages and cla.s.ses, and vehicles of every description. The truce obtained by the members of the _Republican Union of the rights of Paris_ was about to begin, and relief was to be carried to the sufferers at Neuilly. However, some precautions were necessary, for neither the shooting nor the cannonade had ceased yet, and every moment one expected to see some projectile or other fall among the advancing mult.i.tude. In the Avenue de la Grande Armee a sh.e.l.l had struck a house, and set fire to it. Gradually the sound of the artillery diminished, and then died away entirely; the crowd hastened to the ramparts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTE MAILLOT AND CHAPEL OF ST. FERDINAND.

The chapel was erected by Louis Philippe in memory of the Duke of Orleans, killed on the spot, July 18th, 1842.]