Samuel Rutherford Crockett – The Complete Collection

Chapter 19

Listen! The gamins and vauriens of the quarters--louts and cruel rabble--were running after him--yes, screaming all about him. There were groups of National Guards looking for their regiments, or marauding to pick up what they could lay their hands on, for it was a great time for patriotism. But Strauss of the Blaue Husaren, he sat his horse stiff and steady as at parade, and looked out under his eyebrows while the mob howled and surged. Himmel! It made me proud. Ach, Gott! but the old badger-grey Strauss sat steady, and rode his horse at a walk--easy, cool as if he were going up Unter den Linden on Mayday under the eyes of the pretty girls. Not that ever old Strauss cared as much for maids' eyes as I would have done--ah me, in Siebenzig!

Then came two men behind him, looking quickly up the side-streets, with carbines ready across their saddles. And so they rode, these three, like true Prussians every one. And I swear it took Jacob Oertler, that was Jules of the Midi, all his possible to keep from crying out; but he could not for his life keep down the sobs. However, the Frenchmen thought that he wept to see the disgrace of Paris. So that, and nothing else, saved him.

When Strauss and his two stayed a moment to consult as to the way, the crowd of noisy whelps pressed upon them, snarling and showing their teeth. Then Strauss and his men grimly fitted a cartridge into each carbine. Seeing which, it was enough for these very faint-heart patriots. They turned and ran, and with them ran Jules of the Midi that waited at the Hôtel de Ville. He ran as fast as the best of them; and so no man took me for a German that day or any other day that I was in Paris.

Then, after this deliverance, I went on to the Halles. The streets were more ploughed with shells than a German field when the teams go to and fro in the spring.

There were two men with me in the uniform of the Hôtel de Ville, to carry the provisions. For already the new marketings were beginning to come in by the Porte Maillot at Neuilly.

As ever, when we came to the market-stalls, it was "Give place to the Hôtel de Ville!" While I made my purchases, an old man came up to the butcher-fellow who was serving, and asked him civilly for a piece of the indifferent beef he was cutting for me. The rascal, a beast of Burgundy, dazed with absinthe and pig by nature, answered foully after his kind. The old man was very old, but his face was that of a man of war. He lifted his stick as though to strike, for he had a beautiful young girl on his arm. But I saw the lip of the Burgundian butcher draw up over his teeth like a snarling dog, and his hand shorten on his knife.

"Have politeness," I said sharply to the rascal, "or I will on my return report you to the General, and have you fusiladed!"

This made him afraid, for indeed the thing was commonly done at that time.

The old man smiled and held out his hand to me. He said--

"My friend, some day I may be able to repay you, but not now."

Yet I had interfered as much for the sake of the lady's eyes as for the sake of the old man's grey hairs. Besides, the butcher was but a pig of a Burgundian who daily maligned the Prussians with words like pig's offal.

Then we went back along the shell-battered streets, empty of carriages, for all the horses had been eaten, some as beef and some as plain horse.

"Monsieur the Commissary," said one of the porters, "do you know that the old man to whom you spoke, with the young lady, is le Père Félix, whom all the patriots of Paris call the 'Deliverer of Forty-eight'?"

I knew it not, nor cared. I am a Prussian, though born in Elsass.

So in Paris the days passed on. In our Hôtel de Ville the officials of the Provisional Government became more and more uneasy. The gentlemen of the National Guard took matters in their own hands, and would neither disband nor work. They sulked about the brows of Montmartre, where they had taken their cannon. My word, they were dirty patriots! I saw them every day as I went by to the Halles, lounging against the walls--linesmen among them, too, absent from duty without leave. They sat on the kerb-stone leaning their guns against the placard-studded wall. Some of them had loaves stuck on the points of their bayonets--dirty scoundrels all!

Then came the flight of one set of masters and the entry of another. But even the Commune and the unknown young men who came to the Hôtel de Ville made no change to Jules, the head waiter from the Midi. He made ready the _déjeuner_ as usual, and the gentlemen of the red sash were just as fond of the calves' flesh and the red wine as the brutal bourgeoisie of Thiers' Republic or the aristocrats of the _règime_ of Buonaparte. It was quite equal.

It was only a little easier to send my weekly report to my Prince and Chancellor out at Saint Denis. That was all. For if the gentlemen who went talked little and lined their pockets exceedingly well, these new masters of mine both talked much and drank much. It was no longer the Commune, but the Proscription. I knew what the end of these things would be, but I gave no offence to any, for that was not my business. Indeed, what mattered it if all these Frenchmen cut each other's throats? There were just so many the fewer to breed soldiers to fight against the Fatherland, in the war of revenge of which they are always talking.

So the days went on, and there were ever more days behind them--east-windy, bleak days, such as we have in Pomerania and in Prussia, but seldom in Paris. The city was even then, with the red flag floating overhead, beautiful for situation--the sky clear save for the little puffs of smoke from the bombs when they shelled the forts, and Valerien growled in reply.

The constant rattle of musketry came from the direction of Versailles. It was late one afternoon that I went towards the Halles, and as I went I saw a company of the Guard National, tramping northward to the Buttes Montmartre where the cannons were. In their midst was a man with white hair at whom I looked--the same whom we had seen at the market-stalls. He marched bareheaded, and a pair of the scoundrels held him, one at either sleeve.

Behind him came his daughter, weeping bitterly but silently, and with the salt water fairly dripping upon her plain black dress.

"What is this?" I asked, thinking that the cordon of the Public Safety would pass me, and that I might perhaps benefit my friend of the white locks.

"Who may you be that asks so boldly?" said one of the soldiers sneeringly.

They were ill-conditioned, white-livered hounds.

"Jules the garçon--Jules of the white apron!" cried one who knew me. "Know you not that he is now Dictator? Vive the Dictator Jules, Emperor-of 'Encore-un-Bock'!"

So they mocked me, and I dared not try them further, for we came upon another crowd of them with a poor frightened man in the centre. He was crying out--"For me, I am a man of peace--gentlemen, I am no spy. I have lived all my life in the Rue Scribe." But one after another struck at him, some with the butt-end of their rifles, some with their bayonets, those behind with the heels of their boots--till that which had been a man when I stood on one side of the street, was something which would not bear looking upon by the time that I had passed to the other. For these horrors were the commonest things done under the rule of Hell--which was the rule of the Commune. Then I desired greatly to have done my commission and to be rid of Paris.

In a little the Nationals were thirsty. Ho, a wine-shop! There was one with the shutters up, probably a beast of a German--or a Jew. It is the same thing. So with the still bloody butts of their chassepots they made an entrance. They found nothing, however, but a few empty bottles and stove-in barrels. This so annoyed them that they wrought wholesale destruction, breaking with their guns and with their feet everything that was breakable.

So in time we came to the Prison of Mazas, which in ordinary times would have been strongly guarded; but now, save for a few National Guards loafing about, it was deserted--the criminals all being liberated and set plundering and fighting--the hostages all fusiladed.

When we arrived at the gate, there came out a finely dressed, personable man in a frock-coat, with a red ribbon in his button-hole. The officer in charge of the motley crew reported that he held a prisoner, the citizen commonly called Père Félix.

"Père Félix?" said the man in the frock-coat, "and who might he be?"

"A member of the Revolutionary Government of Forty-eight," said the old man with dignity, speaking from the midst of his captors; "a revolutionary and Republican before you were born, M. Raoul Regnault!"

"Ah, good father, but this is not Forty-eight! It is Seventy-one!" said the man on the steps, with a supercilious air. "I tell you as a matter of information!"

"You had better shoot him and have the matter over!" he added, turning away with his cane swinging in his hand.

Then, with a swirl of his sword, the officer marshalled us all into the courtyard--for I had followed to see the end. I could not help myself.

It was a great, bare, barren quadrangle of brick, the yard of Mazas where the prisoners exercise. The walls rose sheer for twenty feet. The doorway stood open into it, and every moment or two another company of Communists would arrive with a gang of prisoners. These were rudely pushed to the upper end, where, unbound, free to move in every direction, they were fired at promiscuously by all the ragged battalions--men, women, and even children shooting guns and pistols at them, as at the puppet-shows of Asnières and Neuilly.

The prisoners were some of them running to and fro, pitifully trying between the grim brick walls to find a way of escape. Some set their bare feet in the niches of the brick and strove to climb over. Some lay prone on their faces, either shot dead or waiting for the guards to come round (as they did every five or ten minutes) to finish the wounded by blowing in the back of their heads with a charge held so close that it singed the scalp.

As I stood and looked at this horrible shooting match, a human shambles, suddenly I was seized and pushed along, with the young girl beside me, towards the wall. Horror took possession of me. "I am Chief Servitor at the Hôtel de Ville," I cried. "Let me go! It will be the worse for you!"

"There is no more any Hôtel de Ville!" cried one. "See it blaze."

"Accompany gladly the house wherein thou hast eaten many good dinners! Go to the Fire, ingrate!" cried another of my captors.

So for very shame, and because the young maid was silent, I had to cease my crying. They erected us like targets against the brick wall, and I set to my prayers. But when they had retired from us and were preparing themselves to fire, I had the grace to put the young girl behind me. For I said, if I must die, there is no need that the young maid should also die--at least, not till I am dead. I heard the bullets spit against the wall, fired by those farthest away; but those in front were only preparing.