Paris under the Commune Part 33

Going down to the Quai de Pa.s.sy, I found a dense crowd there. Some one screamed out: "Go back! go back! the fire will soon reach the cartridge-magazine." The words had scarcely been uttered, when a storm of b.a.l.l.s fell like hail amongst us. Each person thought himself wounded, and many took to their heels. It did not enter into my head to run away.

From where I was then, the sight was still more terribly beautiful, and the crowd that had withdrawn from the spot soon re-a.s.sembled again.

Dreadful details were pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth. Four five-storied houses had fallen; no one dared to think even of the number of the victims. Bodies had been seen to fall from the windows, horribly mutilated; arms and legs had been picked up in different places. Near the powder-magazine is a hospital, which was shaken from foundation to roof: for an instant it had trembled violently as if it were going to fall. The nurses, dressers, and even the sick had rushed from the wards, shrieking in an agony of fear; the frightened horses, too, with blood streaming down their sides, pranced madly among the fugitives, or galloped away as fast as they could from the awful scene.

As to the cause of the explosion, opinions varied much. Some said it was owing to the negligence of the overseers or the imprudence of the workwomen; others, that the fire was caused by a sh.e.l.l. A woman rushed up to us, screaming out that she had just seen a man arrested in a shed in the Champ de Mars, who acknowledged having blown up the powder-magazine, by order of the Versailles government. Of course this was inevitable. The Commune would not let such a good opportunity pa.s.s for accusing its enemies. A few innocent people will be arrested, tried with more or less form, and shot; when they are so many corpses, the Commune will exclaim, "You see they must have been guilty: they have been shot!"

As evening came on I turned home, thinking that the cup was now filled to overflowing, and that the devoted city had had to suffer defeat, civil war, infamy, and death; but that this last disaster seemed almost more than divine justice. Ever and anon I turned my head to gaze again.

In the gathering gloom, the flames looked blood-red, as if the Commune had unfurled its sinister banner over that irreparable disaster.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 97: Razoua served in a regiment of Spahis in Africa. Becoming acquainted with the journalists who used to frequent the Cafe de Madrid, he was a constant attendant there. He took up literature, and in 1867 published some violent articles in the _Pilori_ of Victor Noir. He afterwards went with Delescluze to the _Reveil_, where his revolutionary principles were manifested. In the month of February, 1871, he was elected a member of the National a.s.sembly by the people of Paris. After having sat for some time at Bordeaux, he gave his resignation, and became one of the Communal council.

Appointed governor of the ecole Militaire, he distinguished himself in no way in his position, except by the sumptuous dinners and dejeuners with which he regaled his friends.]

Lx.x.xIX.

I have gazed so long on what was pa.s.sing around me that my eyes are weary. I have watched the slow decline of joy, of comfort and luxury, almost without knowing how everything has been dying around me, as a man in a ball-room where the candles are put out, one by one, may not perceive at first the gathering gloom. To see Paris, as it is at the present moment, as the Commune has made it, requires an effort. Let me shut my eyes, and evoke the vision of Paris as it was, living, joyous, happy even in the midst of sadness. I have done so--I have brought it all back to me; now I will open my eyes and look around me.

In the street that I inhabit not a vehicle of any kind is visible. Men in the uniform of National Guards pa.s.s and repa.s.s on the pavement; a lady is talking with her _concierge_ on the threshold of one of the houses. They talk low. Many of the shops are closed; some have only the shutters up; a few are quite open. I see a woman at the bar of the wine-shop opposite, drinking.

Some quarters still resist the encroachments of silence and apathy. Some arteries continue to beat. Some ribbons here and there brighten up the shop-windows: bare-headed shopgirls pa.s.s by with a smile on their lips; men look after them as they trip along. At the corner of the Boulevards a sort of tumult is occasioned by a number of small boys and girls, venders of Communal journals, who screech out the name and t.i.tle of their wares at the top of their voices. But even there where the crowd is thickest, one feels as if there were a void. The two contrary ideas of mult.i.tude and solitude seem to present themselves at once in one's mind. A weird impression! Imagine a vast desert with a crowd in it.

The Boulevards look interminable. There used to be a hundred obstacles between you and the distance; now there is nothing to prevent your looking as far as you like. Here and there a cab, an omnibus or two, and that is all. The pa.s.sers-by are no longer promenaders. They have come out because they were obliged: without that they would have remained at home. The distances seem enormous now, and people who used to saunter about from morning till night will tell you now that "the Madeleine is a long way off." Very few men in black coats or blouses are to be seen; only very old men dare show themselves out of uniform. In front of the cafe's are seated officers of the Federal army, sometimes seven or eight around a table. When you get near enough, you generally find they are talking of the dismissal of their last commander. Here and there a lady walks rapidly by, closely veiled, mostly dressed in black, with an unpretending bonnet. The gallop of a horse is distinctly audible--in other times one would never have noticed such a thing; it is an express with despatches, a Garibaldian, or one of the _Vengeurs de Flourens_, who is hoisted on a heavy cart-horse that ploughs the earth with its ponderous forefeet. Several companies of Federals file up towards the Madeleine, their rations of bread stuck on the top of their bayonets.

Look down the side-streets, to the right or the left, and you will see the sidewalks deserted, and not a vehicle from one end to the other of the road. Even on the Boulevards there are times when there is no one to be seen at all. However, beneath it all there is a longing to awaken, which is crushed and kept down by the general apathy.

In the evening one's impulses burst forth; one must move about; one must live. Pa.s.sengers walk backwards and forwards, talking in a loud voice.

But the crowd condenses itself between the Rue Richelieu and the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. Solitude has something terrible about it just now.

People congregate together for the pleasure of elbowing each other, of trying to believe they are in great force. Quite a crowd collects round a little barefooted girl, who is singing at the corner of a street. A man seated before a low table is burning _pastilles_; another offers barley-sugar for sale; another has portraits of celebrities. Everybody tries hard to be gay; but the shops are closed, and the gas is sparingly lighted, so that broad shadows lie between the groups.

Some few persons go to the theatres; the playbills, however, are not seductive. If you go in, you will find the house nearly empty; the actors gabble their parts with as little action as possible. You see they are bored, and they bore us. Sometimes when some actor, naturally comic, says or does something funny, the audience laughs, and then suddenly leaves off and looks more serious than before. Laughter seems out of place. One does not know how to bear it; so one walks up and down the corridors, then instead of returning to the play, wanders out again on to the Boulevard. It is ten o'clock--dreadfully late. Many of the cafes are already closed for the night. At Tortoni's and the Cafe Anglais, not a glimmer is visible. The crowd has nearly disappeared.

Only a few officers remain, who have been drinking all the evening in an _estaminet_. They call to each other to hurry on; perhaps one of them is drunk, but even he is not amusing. Let us go home. Scarcely anyone is left in the street. A bell is rung here and there, as the last of us reach our respective homes.

That, Commune de Paris, is what you have made of Paris! The Prussians came, Paris awaited them quietly with a smile; the sh.e.l.ls fell on its houses, it ate black bread, it waited hours in the cold to obtain an ounce of horse-flesh or thirty pounds of green wood; it fought, but was vanquished; it was told to surrender, and "it was given up," as they say at the Hotel de Ville; and yet through all, Paris had not ceased to smile. And this, they say, const.i.tutes its greatness; it was the last protestation against unmerited misfortunes; it was the remembrance of having once been proud and happy, and the hope of becoming so again; it was, in a word, Paris declaring it was Paris still. Well, what neither defeats, nor famine, nor capitulation could do, thou hast done! And accursed be thou, O Commune; for, as Macbeth murdered sleep, thou hast murdered our smiles!

XC.

The roaring of cannon close at hand, the whizzing of sh.e.l.ls, volleys of musketry! I hear this in my sleep, and awake with a start. I dress and go out. I am told the troops have come in. "How? where? when?" I ask of the National Guards who come rus.h.i.+ng down the street, crying out, "We are betrayed!" They, however, know but very little. They have come from the Trocadero, and have seen the red trousers of the soldiers in the distance. Fighting is going on near the viaduct of Auteuil, at the Champ de Mars. Did the a.s.sault take place last night or this morning? It is quite impossible to obtain any reliable information. Some talk of a civil engineer having made signals to the Versaillais; others say a captain in the navy was the first to enter Paris.[98] Suddenly about thirty men rush into the streets crying, "We must make a barricade." I turn back, fearing to be pressed into the service. The cannonading appears dreadfully near. A sh.e.l.l whistles over my head. I hear some one say, "The batteries of Montmartre are bombarding the Arc de Triomphe;" and strange enough, in this moment of horror and uncertainty, the thought crosses my mind that now the side of the arch on which is the bas-relief of Rude will be exposed to the sh.e.l.ls. On the Boulevard there is only here and there a pa.s.senger hurrying along. The shops are closed; even the cafe's are shut up. The harsh screech of the mitrailleuse grows louder and nearer. The battle seems to be close at hand, all round me. A thousand contradictory suppositions rush through my brain and hurry me along, and here on the Boulevard there is no one that can tell me anything. I walk in the direction of the Madeleine, drawn there by a violent desire to know what is going on, which silences the voice of prudence. As I approach the Chaussee d'Antin I perceive a mult.i.tude of men, women, and children running backwards and forwards, carrying paving-stones. A barricade is being thrown up; it is already more than three feet high. Suddenly I hear the rolling of heavy wheels; I turn, and a strange sight is before me--a ma.s.s of women in rags, livid, horrible, and yet grand, with the Phrygian cap on their heads, and the skirts of their robes tied round their waists, were harnessed to a mitrailleuse, which they dragged along at full speed; other women pus.h.i.+ng vigorously behind. The whole procession, in its sombre colours, with dashes of red here and there, thunders past me; I follow it as fast as I can. The mitrailleuse draws up a little in front of the barricade, and is hailed with wild clamours by the insurgents.

The Amazons are being unharnessed as I come up. "Now," said a young _gamin_, such as one used to see in the gallery of the Theatre Porte St.

Martin, "don't you be acting the spy here, or I will break your head open as if you were a Versaillais."--"Don't waste ammunition," cried an old man with a long white beard--a patriarch of civil war--"don't waste ammunition; and as for the spy, let him help to carry paving-stones.

Monsieur," said he, turning to me with much politeness, "will you be so kind as to go and fetch those stones from the corner there?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cafe Life Under the Commune.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPECTACLES DE PARIS.]

I did as I was bid, although I thought, with anything but pleasure, that if at that moment the barricade were attacked and taken, I might be shot before I had the time to say, "Allow me to explain." But the scene which surrounds me interests me in spite of myself. Those grim hags, with their red headdresses, pa.s.sing the stones I give them rapidly from hand to hand, the men who are building them up only leaving off for a moment now and then to swallow a cup of coffee, which a young girl prepares over a small tin stove; the rifles symmetrically piled; the barricade, which rises higher and higher; the solitude in which we are working--only here and there a head appears at a window, and is quickly withdrawn; the ever-increasing noise of the battle; and, over all, the brightness of a dazzling morning sun--all this has something sinister and yet horribly captivating about it. While we are at work, they talk; I listen. The Versaillais have been coming in all night.[99] The Porte de la Muette and the Porte Dauphine have been surrendered by the 13th and the 113th battalions of the first arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. "Those two numbers 13 will bring them ill-luck," says a woman. Vinoy is established at the Trocadero, and Douai at the Point du Jour: they continue to advance. The Champ de Mars has been taken from the Federals after two hours'

fighting. A battery is erected at the Arc de Triomphe, which sweeps the Champs Elysees and bombards the Tuileries. A sh.e.l.l has fallen in the Rue du Marche Saint Honore. In the Cours-la-Reine the 188th battalion stood bravely. The Tuileries is armed with guns, and sh.e.l.ls the Arc de Triomphe. In the Avenue de Marigny the gendarmes have shot twelve Federals who had surrendered; their bodies are still lying on the pavement in front of the tobacconist's. Rue de Sevres, the _Vengeurs de Flourens_ have put to flight a whole regiment of the line: the _Vengeurs_ have sworn to resist to a man. They are fighting in the Champs elysees, around the Ministere de la Guerre, and on the Boulevard Haussman. Dombrowski has been killed at the Chateau de la Muette. The Versaillais have attacked the Western Saint Lazare station, and are marching towards the Pepiniere barracks. "We have been sold, betrayed, and surprised; but what does it matter, we will triumph. We want no more chiefs or generals; behind the barricades every man is a marshal!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Place de la Concorde_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Poor Pradier's Statues. Lille suffers from her friends in fight--whilst Strasbourg--in c.r.a.pe--mourns the foe of France._]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Eight or ten men come flying down the Chaussee d'Antin; they join, crying out, "The Versaillais have taken the barracks; they are establis.h.i.+ng a battery. Delescluze has been captured at the Ministere de la Guerre."--"It is false!" exclaims a vivandiere; "we have just seen him at the Hotel de Ville."--"Yes, yes," cry out other women, "he is at the Hotel de Ville. He gave us a mitrailleuse. Jules Valles embraced us, one after another; he is a fine man, he is! He told us all was going well, that the Versaillais should never have Paris, that we shall surround them, and that it will all be over in two days."--"Vive la Commune!" is the reply. The barricade is by this time finished. They expect to be attacked every second. "You," said a sergeant, "you had better be off, if you care for your life." I do not wait for the man to repeat his warning. I retrace my steps up the Boulevard, which is less solitary than it was. Several groups are standing at the doors. It appears quite certain that the troops of the a.s.sembly have been pretty successful since they came in. The Federals, surprised by the suddenness and number of the attacks, at first lost much ground. But the resistance is being organised. They hold their own at the Place de la Concorde; at the Place Vendome they are very numerous, and have at their disposal a formidable amount of artillery. Montmartre is sh.e.l.ling furiously. I turn up the Rue Vivienne, where I meet several people in search of news. They tell me that "two battalions of the Faubourg Saint Germain have just gone over to the troops, with their muskets reversed. A captain of the National Guard has been the first in that quarter to unfurl the tricolour. A sh.e.l.l had set fire to the Ministere des Finances, but the firemen in the midst of the shot and sh.e.l.l had managed to put it out."

At the Place de la Bourse I find three of four hundred Federals constructing a barricade; having gained some experience, I hurry on to escape the trouble of being pressed into the service. The surrounding streets are almost deserted; Paris is in hiding. The cannonading is becoming more furious every minute. I cross the garden of the Palais Royal. There I see a few loiterers, a knot of children are skipping. The Rue de Rivoli is all alive with people. A battalion marches hurriedly from the Hotel de Ville; at the head rides a young man mounted on a superb black horse. It is Dombrowski. I had been told he was dead. He is very pale. "A fragment of sh.e.l.l hit him in the chest at La Muette, but did not enter the flesh," says some one. The men sing the _Chant du Depart_ as they march along. I see a few women carrying arms among the insurgents; one who walks just behind Dombrowski has a child in her arms. Looking in the direction of the Place de la Concorde, I see smoke arising from the terrace of the Tuileries. In front of the Ministere des Finances, this side of the barricade is a black ma.s.s of something; I think I can distinguish wheels; it is either cannon or engines. All around is confusion. I can hear the musketry distinctly, but the noise seems to come from the Champs elysees; they are not firing at the barricade. I turn and walk towards the Hotel de Ville: mounted expresses ride constantly past; companies of Federals are here and there lying on the ground around their piled muskets. By the Rue du Louvre there is another barricade; a little further there is another and then another.[100] Close to Saint Germain l'Auxerrois women are busy pulling down the wooden seats; children are rolling empty wine-barrels and carrying sacks of earth. As one nears the Hotel de Ville the barricades are higher, better armed, and better manned. All the Nationals here look ardent, resolved, and fierce. They say little, and do not shout at all. Two guards, seated on the pavement, are playing at picquet. I push on, and am allowed to pa.s.s. The barricades are terminated here, and I have nothing to fear from paving-stones. Looking up, I see that all the windows are closed, with the exception of one, where two old women are busy putting a mattress between the window and the shutter. A sentinel, mounting guard in front of the Cafe de la Compagnie du Gaz, cries out to me, "You can't pa.s.s here!" I therefore seat myself at a table in front of the cafe, which has doubtless been left open by order, and where several officers are talking in a most animated manner. One of them rises and advances towards me. He asks me rudely what I am doing there.

I will not allow myself to be abashed by his tone, but draw out my pa.s.s from my pocket and show it him, without saying a word. "All right," says he, and then seats himself by my side, and tells me, "I know it already, that a part of the left bank of the river is occupied by the troops of the a.s.sembly, that fighting is going on everywhere, and that the army on this side is gradually retreating.--Street fighting is our affair, you see," he continues. "In such battles as that, the merest gamin from Belleville knows more about it than MacMahon.... It will be terrible.

The enemy shoots the prisoners." (For the last two months the Commune had been saying the same thing.) "We shall give no quarter."--I ask him, "Is it Delescluze who is determined to resist?"--"Yes," he answers.[101]

"Lean forward a little. Look at those three windows to the left of the trophy. That is the Salle de l'etat-Major. Delescluze is there giving orders, signing commissions. He has not slept for three days. Just now I scarcely knew him, he was so worn out with fatigue. The Committee of Public Safety sits permanently in a room adjoining, making out proclamations and decrees."--"Ha, ha!" said I, "decrees!"--"Yes, citizen, he has just decreed heroism!"[102] The officer gives me several other bits of information. Tells me that "Lullier this very morning has had thirty _refractaires_ shot, and that Rigault has gone to Mazas to look after the hostages." While he is talking, I try to see what is going on in the Place de l'Hotel de Ville. Two or three thousand Federals are there, some seated, some lying on the ground. A lively discussion is going on. Several little barrels are standing about on chairs; the men are continually getting up and crowding round the barrels, some have no gla.s.ses, but drink in the palms of their hands.

Women walk up and down in bands, gesticulating wildly. The men shout, the women shriek. Mounted expresses gallop out of the Hotel, some in the direction of the Bastille, some towards the Place de la Concorde. The latter fly past us crying out, "All's well!" A man comes out on the balcony of the Hotel de Ville and addresses the crowd. All the Federals start to their feet enthusiastically.--"That's Valles," says my neighbour to me. I had already recognised him. I frequently saw him in the students' quarter in a little _cremerie_ in the Rue Serpente. He was given to making verses, rather bad ones by-the-bye; I remember one in particular, a panegyric on a green coat. They used to say he had a situation in the _pompes funebres_.[103] His face even then wore a bitter and violent expression. He left poetry for journalism, and then journalism for politics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JULES VALLeS, COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.[104]]

To-day he is spouting forth at a window of the Hotel de Ville. I cannot catch a word of what he says; but as he retires he is wildly applauded.

Such applause pains me sadly. I feel that these men and these women are mad for blood, and will know how to die. Alas! how many dead and dying already! neither the cannonading nor the musketry has ceased an instant.

I now see a number of women walk out of the Hotel, the crowd makes room for them to pa.s.s. They come our way. They are dressed in black, and have black c.r.a.pe tied round their arms and a red c.o.c.kade in their bonnets. My friend the officer tells me that they are the governesses who have taken the places of the nuns. Then he walks up to them and says, "Have you succeeded?"--"Yes," answers one of them, "here is our commission. The school children are to be employed in making sacks and filling them with earth, the eldest ones to load the rifles behind the barricades. They will receive rations like National Guards, and a pension will be given to the mothers of those who die for the Republic. They are mad to fight, I a.s.sure you. We have made them work hard during the last month, this will be their holiday!" The woman who says this is young and pretty, and speaks with a sweet smile on her lips. I shudder. Suddenly two staff officers appear and ride furiously up to the Hotel de Ville; they have come from the Place Vendome. An instant later and the trumpets sound.

The companies form in the Place, and great agitation reigns in the Hotel. Men rush in and out. The officers who are in the cafe where I am get up instantly, and go to take their places at the head of their men.

A rumour spreads that the Versaillais have taken the barricades on the Place de la Concorde.--"By Jove! I think you had better go home," says my neighbour to me, as he clasps his sword belt; "we shall have hot work here, and that shortly." I think it prudent to follow this advice. One glance at the Place before I go. The companies of Federals have just started off by the Rue de Rivoli and the quays at a quick march, crying "Vive la Commune!" a ferocious joy beaming in their faces. A young man, almost a lad, lags a little behind, a woman rushes up to him, and lays hold of his collar, screaming, "Well, and you, are you not going to get yourself killed with the others?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: BARRICADE DIVIDING THE RUE DE RIVOLI AND THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE.]

I reach the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, where another barricade is being built up. I place a paving-stone upon it and pa.s.s on. Soon I see open shops and pa.s.sengers in the streets. This tradesmen's quarter seems to have outlived the riot of Paris. Here one might almost forget the frightful civil war which wages so near, if the conversation of those around did not betray the anguish of the speakers, and if you did not hear the cannon roaring out unceasingly, "People of Paris, listen to me!

I am ruining your houses. Listen to me! I am killing your children."

On the boulevards more barricades; some nearly finished, others scarcely commenced. One constructed near the Porte Saint Martin looks formidable.

That spot seems destined to be the theatre of b.l.o.o.d.y scenes, of riot and revolution. In 1852, corpses laid piled up behind the railing, and all the pavement tinged with blood. I return home profoundly sad; I can scarcely think.--I feel in a dream, and am tired to death; my eyelids droop of themselves; I am like one of those houses there with closed shutters.

Near the Gymnase I meet a friend whom I thought was at Versailles. We shake hands sadly. "When did you come back?" I ask.--"To-day; I followed the troops."--Then turning back with me he tells me what he has seen. He had a pa.s.s, and walked into Paris behind the artillery and the line, as far as the Trocadero, where the soldiers halted to take up their line of battle. Not a single man was visible along the whole length of the quays. At the Champ de Mars he did not see any insurgents. The musketry seemed very violent near Vaugirard on the Pont Royal and around the Palais de l'Industrie. Sh.e.l.ls from Montmartre repeatedly fell on the quays. He could not see much,--however only the smoke in the distance.

Not a soul did he meet. Such frightful noise in such solitude was fearful. He continued his way under shelter of the parapet. In one place he saw some gamins cutting huge pieces of flesh off the dead body of a horse that was lying in the path. There must have been fighting there.

Down by the water a man fis.h.i.+ng while two sh.e.l.ls fell in the river, a little higher up, a yard or two from the sh.o.r.e. Then he thought it prudent to get nearer to the Palais de l'Industrie. The fighting was nearly over then, but not quite. The Champs Elysees was melancholy in the extreme; not a soul was there. This was only too literally true; for several corpses lay on the ground. He saw a soldier of the line lying beneath a tree, his forehead covered with blood. The man opened his month as if to speak as he heard the sound of footsteps, the eyelids quivered and then there was a s.h.i.+ver, and all was over. My friend walked slowly away. He saw trees thrown down and bronze lamp-posts broken; gla.s.s crackled under his feet as he pa.s.sed near the ruined kiosques.

Every now and then turning his head he saw sh.e.l.ls from Montmartre fall on the Arc de Triomphe and break off large fragments of stone. Near the Tuileries was a confused ma.s.s of soldiery against a background of smoke.

Suddenly he heard the whizzing of a ball and saw the branch of a tree fall. From one end of the avenue to the other, no one; the road glistened white in the sun. Many dead were to be seen lying about as he crossed the Champs Elysees. All the streets to the left were full of soldiery; there had been fighting there, but it was over now. The insurgents had retreated in the direction of the Madeleine. In many places tricolor flags were hanging from the windows, and women were smiling, and waving their handkerchiefs to the troops. The presence of the soldiery seemed to rea.s.sure everybody. The concierges were seated before their doors with pipes in their mouths, recounting to attentive listeners the perils from which they had escaped; how b.a.l.l.s pierced the mattresses put up at the windows, and how the Federals had got into the houses to hide. One said, "I found three of them in my court; I told a lieutenant they were there, and he had them shot. But I wish they would take them away; I cannot keep dead bodies in the house." Another was talking with some soldiers, and pointing out a house to them. Four men and a corporal went into the place indicated, and an instant afterwards my friend heard the cracking of rifles. The concierge rubbed his hands and winked at the bystanders, while another was saying, "They respect nothing those Federals; during the battle they came in to steal. They wanted to take away my clothes, my linen, everything I have, but I told them to leave that, that it was not good enough for them, that they ought to go up to the first floor, where they would find clocks and plate, and I gave them the key. Well, Messieurs, you would never believe what they have done, the rascals! They took the key and went and pillaged everything on the first floor!" My friend had heard enough, and pa.s.sed on. The agitation everywhere was very great. The soldiers went hither and thither, rang the bells, went into the houses; and brought out with them pale-faced prisoners. The inhabitants continued to smile politely, but grimly. Here and there dead bodies were lying in the road.

A man who was pus.h.i.+ng a truck allowed one of the wheels to pa.s.s over a corpse that was lying with its head on the curbstone. "Bah!" said he, "it won't do him any harm." The dead and wounded were, however, being carried away as quickly as possible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sh.e.l.l HOLE--A CONVENIENT SEAT.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE RUES.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHOT MARKS--EN PROFIL.]