studied him attentively—could only be observed from a distance. The
curious, with the aid of opera-glasses, discovered him sitting at
an open window with rifles resting on either side of him; or beheld
him walking about the roof amidst the chimney-pots—an extraordinary
figure in his sombrero. Now and again he discharged revolvers at the
heavens: a proceeding that never failed to arouse the enthusiasm of his
fellow-prisoners. Then leaning perilously over the parapet or out of a
window, Guérin would apostrophise the soldiers and policemen below as
“brigands” and “assassins”; and throw down pencilled messages (addressed
to the “Ministry of Traitors” and the “Government of Forgers”) inviting
all State officials to come to the rue de Chabrol and be shot through
their “infamous heads” or their “abominable hearts.” When particularly
indignant, Guérin would hurl forth a cup, a bottle, a saucepan—but the
missiles invariably fell wide of the mark; and the Guards and police
(whilst smoking cigarettes) snapped their fingers and laughed back
mockingly and sardonically at the rebel. It was weary work for the
besiegers; the air was stale and sickly with disinfectants; and often it
rained.
Guérin blessed the downpours. He was short of water. When the skies
were generous, he brought up buckets and basins and a great bath on to
the roof—and shook his fist exultingly at the watchers beneath as the
rain pattered into and filled those receptacles; and next, coming to
the edge of the parapet with a glass in hand, drank to the death of
the “Government of Assassins.” Indeed, quite an orgy of water-drinking
on the roof of the Fort; for the ex-butchers, with the bull-dog faces,
uproariously proposed the health of their chief, and then emptied their
glasses into the street to show that they had no fear of suffering from
thirst.
But what of provisions? The twenty-fifth night of the siege—a dark,
wet night—the police fancied they discerned mysterious objects flying
far over their heads on to the roof of Fort Chabrol. Much speculation,
infinite straining of eyes and stretching of ears, and suddenly a paper
parcel, falling from above, struck a Municipal Guard. Shock of the Guard.
The cry: “It is a bomb!” But it was only a ham—a fine, excellent ham. And
a few minutes later the Guards and police were searching the house from
which it had been thrown and examining numbers of other paper parcels
(carefully tied up) that contained joints of meat, “groceries,” sugared
cakes, fruit and fresh salads; all of which luxuries were obviously
intended for the rebels over the way. But where were Guérin’s friends
and accomplices? Not a soul in the house; so said a policeman: “Try the
roof.” And there, on the roof, more paper parcels ready to be thrown
across to the Fort; and hiding behind the chimney-pots, four or five men.
“Arrest them,” cried an officer. And then, amidst the chimney-pots, much
dodging and slipping and catching as in the games of “hide-and-seek” and
“touch wood”; whilst over the way on _his_ roof, Jules Guérin raced about
amidst _his_ chimney-pots, swinging a lantern and furiously shouting:
“Assassins. Assassins.” Thus, no sleep for the few remaining householders
that night. When his friends had been removed from the roof, and the
police reappeared in the street with their captives and laden with
parcels, Jules Guérin and his assistants discharged revolvers at the
heavy, dark clouds; and, next morning, hurled fenders, fire-irons and
a bedstead into the street. No one was struck: the prisoners were too
excited to take aim.
Guérin’s harangues were still bloodthirsty, but it was noticed that
he looked pale and drawn when he appeared at the windows, as though
suffering from want of nourishment and exercise.... Now he was more
subdued as he took air amidst the chimney-pots; and he would sit up on
the roof in the moonlight, with a gun across his knees, for a whole
hour without moving. How the air reeked with disinfectants, and how
sombre was the Fort! Apparently oil and candles were scarce, for only
a single candle was used at a time. One saw its dim light passing from
room to room—now on the first floor, then on the second, the third; then
there was darkness. Upon two occasions Guérin spent the entire night
on the roof. A dishevelled shivering object he was at daybreak, with
his coat-collar turned up and the sombrero dragged down over his ears.
Nor did his young assistants with the bull-dog faces fare better. Their
cheers became faint: and they themselves were to be discerned leaning
moodily against the chimney-pots or yawning with all their mouths behind
the windows. Moreover, it was suspected by the police that there was
illness in the Fort. One night a candle burned steadily in the same room.
Not a soul on the roof, silence in the citadel. At daybreak Jules Guérin
hoisted a black flag; one of the young prisoners with the bull-dog face
was dying. In answer to Jules Guérin’s call, an officer stepped forward,
and parleying ensued. An ambulance was brought up. When the solid oak
door of Fort Chabrol opened and Jules Guérin appeared with the dying man
in his arms, the policemen and Guards stood gravely at salute. Away,
slowly, went the ambulance. And no sooner had it vanished than Jules
Guérin—livid and trembling—banged to and bolted the door: rushed back to
his window, and there, pointing dramatically to the black flag, hoarsely
shouted: “Assassins. Assassins. Assassins.”
On the 9th September, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Paris heard from
Rennes that Captain Dreyfus had—O astounding judgment!—been found guilty
of high treason, “with extenuating circumstances.” On the following
Tuesday it was announced—O amazing clemency—that the “traitor” had been
pardoned. And throughout France there arose a cry of “N’en Parlons Plus.”
Up and down the boulevards on that Tuesday rushed scores of hoarse,
unshaven _camelots_ with their latest song. “N’en Parlons Plus,” they
shouted. Then (in some cases) the chorus was chanted:
“Le cauchemar est fini; car la France est vengée,
Qu’importe que l’on a gracié Dreyfus?
La nation entière, heureuse et soulagée,
N’a plus qu’un désir—c’est qu’on n’en parle plus.”
But there remained Fort Chabrol. Neither “sanity” nor “order” could
prevail in Paris whilst Jules Guérin was defying the Government from his
window, and hurling missiles at its public servants, and discharging
revolvers at the heavens. As the _camelots_ were selling their song on
the boulevards, as Paris was rejoicing in cafés that the “Affaire” was
now “buried,” Jules Guérin still walked his roof, and his assistants
leant dejectedly against the chimney-pots: and M. Lépine, Chief of the
Police, was on his side preparing an attack on the stronghold. A few
journalists were let into the secret. At ten o’clock on the night of
Tuesday, the 12th September—the thirty-seventh and last night of the
siege—MM. les journalistes were permitted to penetrate through the
lines of policemen and of Municipal and Republican Guards that guarded
the dark, gloomy rue de Chabrol. Not a light in the citadel. But shadowy
forms were to be distinguished on the roof. And at a window, smoking a
cigarette, stood Jules Guérin, in his sombrero.
“_Mon vieux_ Jules, it is for to-night. Be reasonable and come out,”
shouted a journalist; and he was promptly pulled backwards and called to
order by a policeman. But M. Millevoye, the Anti-Semite deputy and editor
of _La Patrie_, was permitted to converse with the rebel on the condition
that he urged him to surrender.
“He swears he will fight to the death,” stated M. Millevoye to an
officer. Very pale and agitated was the deputy. Very excited were the
journalists, who had provided themselves with sandwiches, flasks and
strong oil of eucalyptus with which to ward off contamination. Calm was
the Chief of the Police, when he appeared on the scene with various
officials and announced that the _pompiers_ and their engines were on the
way.
It was a cold, disagreeable night. The clatter of horses’ hoofs—up
came a detachment of the mounted Republican Guard. The hissing of
fire-engines; here were the _pompiers_. A distant babel of voices, for
now, at one o’clock in the morning, all kinds and conditions of Parisians
had heard of the impending attack on the citadel, and had hastened to
the barriers—only to find themselves refused admittance to the grim,
besieged thoroughfare. From my side of the barrier I beheld—beyond
it—stalwart market-people from the Halles, Apaches in caps and scarlet
waistbands, ragged old loafers, revellers from Maxim’s and the stifling,
frenzied night-restaurants of Montmartre.
“Impossible to pass,” declared the policeman. An officer of the Municipal
Guards facetiously kept up the refrain: “Not President Loubet; not his
Holiness the Pope; not even the _bon Dieu_, could I possibly allow
to pass.” Songs from the Apaches. Naïve exclamations from the simple
market-women.
“Please give this bouquet to Guérin. He is a real man; he is _épatant_—do
please send him these flowers,” cried a brilliant _demi-mondaine_ from
Maxim’s, holding forth a bouquet of weird orchids. “Alas, madame,”
replied the facetious officer; “alas, not even a bouquet from paradise
could I possibly allow to pass.”
Ominous sounds in the rue de Chabrol. The thud and the clanking of the
firemen’s hose as it was dragged towards No. 12; the increased hissing
of the steam-engines; the impatient clatter of the horses’ hoofs; the
bolting and barring of doors, and the putting up of shutters in those
few houses where residents remained. Ominous, too, the consultations
(carried on in a low voice) between M. Lépine and the various officials.
Then the flash of lanterns, the smoke pouring forth from the funnels of
the steam-engines, the stench of the disinfectants, those shadowy figures
still on the roof of Fort Chabrol; and Jules Guérin still at his window
in his sombrero, still smoking cigarettes unconcernedly, still calmly
watching the preparations for the attack.
“It is sinister,” cried a journalist.
“So all is ready,” rang out the voice of the Chief of the Police. Briskly
stepping forward, M. Lépine thus addressed Jules Guérin: “It is a quarter
to four o’clock. If, at four o’clock, you do not surrender, we shall use
force.”
Jules Guérin smoked on.
Still nearer to the Fort came the _pompiers_, dragging their hose. The
plan was that they should deluge the massive building with water, while
their colleagues with the shining hatchets should break down the door. A
last consultation between M. Lépine and the officials. He held his watch
in his hand. Five minutes to four o’clock. The neighing of a restive
horse. Shouts and song from behind the barrier. Again, the clanking of
the hose. Three... two... minutes to four. Jules Guérin, striking a
match, lighted a new cigarette.
“He means to fight. It will be appalling,” exclaimed a journalist.
“Jules Guérin, it is four o’clock,” cried M. Lépine, again stepping
forward. Without a word, the man in the sombrero banged down the window,
and a few moments later the shadowy figures of his assistants disappeared
from the roof.
“I thought so, but I wasn’t sure—no, I wasn’t sure,” said M. Lépine—when
the heavy oak door swung open!
A third time he stepped forward—entered the doorway—vanished—reappeared
to give an order—again vanished. Up with the hose, into the gutter with
the fire-engines; way for half-a-dozen ordinary, shabby _fiacres_ which
came bumping and lurching down the street, pulled up before the oak door:
and a few minutes later took Jules Guérin and the young men with the
bull-dog faces ingloriously away to the Santé prison!
“N’en Parlons Plus,” said Paris, when the Senate, assembled as a
High Court, sentenced Jules Guérin, Paul Déroulède, and other rebels
and conspirators against the safety of the Republic to long terms of
imprisonment and exile.
“N’en Parlons Plus,” reiterated Paris, when the Amnesty Bill permitted
the exiles to return to their country.
Little more was heard of Jules Guérin. France, having been restored to
order and sanity, and having made what reparation she could to Major
Dreyfus, would have no more of Anti-Semitism; and on his return from
exile, the rebel of Fort Chabrol retired into the obscurity of a damp,
ugly little house in the valley of the Seine.
He still wore his sombrero; but his spirit was broken, and he pottered
about in his garden and smoked cigarettes by the side of an evil-smelling
stove. Then, a year ago, came the devastating floods. After saving
his own scanty furniture, Jules Guérin went to the assistance of his
neighbours. He was himself again, dashing hither and thither, issuing
orders, directing operations. Many valiant feats he performed. He was
rough, but he was kind. It was through standing waist-deep in the cold,
murky water—whilst helping his neighbours—that he contracted pneumonia.
“The death, at the age of forty-nine, is announced of M. Jules Guérin:
who had his hour of notoriety.”
So—and no more—said the _Figaro_.
XIII
DEATH OF HENRI ROCHEFORT[6]
It is with mixed emotions that I record my own personal recollections
of the late Henri Rochefort. They go back fourteen years, to the
lurid, delirious summer of 1899, when Jules Guérin, the leader of the
Anti-Semites, evaded arrest by shutting himself up in Fort Chabrol; when
Dreyfus, bent, shattered, almost voiceless, was enduring the anguish of a
second court-martial; when the boulevards were being swept of tumultuous
manifestants every night by the Republican Guard.
Rochefort was living in a little villa at the entrance to the Bois de
Boulogne: a retreat for a sage, a poet, a dreamer; the very last abode,
one would have thought, for the most thunderous figure in French public
life. By rights, Rochefort the Ferocious should have been living in a
vast boulevard apartment overlooking the nightly Anti-Dreyfusard uproar.
But there he was (when first I met him) in that innocent maisonnette—in
dressing-gown and slippers, amidst flowers, pictures and frail
china—actually playing with a fluffy toy lamb, of the kind hawked about
for two francs on the terraces of the Paris cafés. It was only his snowy
white hair, brushed upwards, that made him picturesque. Pale, steely blue
eyes, that lit up cruelly, evilly at times; a face seamed, sallow and
horse-like in shape; a harsh, guttural voice; large, yellowish hands,
with long, pointed finger-nails.
Upon the occasion of my first visit to the innocent maisonnette, there
was no cause for agitation. The toy lamb was the attraction. A tube
was attached to it, and at the end of the tube was a bulb which, when
pressed, made the lamb leap. Again and again, Rochefort the Lurid set the
lamb leaping. I too lost my heart to the lamb, and also made it frisk.
Amidst all this irresponsibility, my host was pleased to pronounce me
“sympathetic” and “charming,” not like the “traditional” Englishman with
the bull-dog, the aggressive side-whiskers and long, glistening teeth.
Rochefort saw me to the garden door; Rochefort actually plucked me a
rose; Rochefort’s parting words were a cordial invitation to visit him
and his lamb again soon. So was I amazed to find myself described in his
very next article as “a sinister brigand, in the pay of the Jews; in
fact, one of those diabolical bandits who are devastating our beloved
France.”
... A week later I approached him, and mildly protested, as he was
sitting on the terrace of the Café de la Paix, drinking milk and Vichy
water, sucking his eternal lozenges—and still playing with the lamb.
“Bah, that was only print,” came the reply. “Let us resume our game
with the lamb.” As he made it leap about deftly amongst the glasses on
the marble-topped table, passers-by, recognising his Luridness, stopped,
stared and smiled at the spectacle. “That’s the great Rochefort,” said
the _maître d’hôtel_ to an American tourist: and stupefaction of the
States. Rising at last, and stuffing the lamb into his pocket, Rochefort
remarked: “I must go off and do my article, but you sha’n’t be the
brigand. I feel amiable to-night.”
Next morning appeared the notorious, atrocious article demanding that
walnut shells—containing long, hairy spiders—should be strapped to the
eyes of Captain Dreyfus.
What was the reason of Rochefort’s abominable campaign against the martyr
from the Devil’s Island? Since he styled himself a democrat, the champion
of liberty and justice, the enemy of tyranny, one would have expected
to see the fierce old journalist fighting vigorously for Dreyfus. The
fact is, Rochefort was a mass of contradictions: an imp of perversity:
at once brutal and humane; gentle and bloodthirsty; simple and vain;
the most chaotic Frenchman that ever died. Search his autobiography,
in three portly volumes: not once do you find him resting, smiling
or reflecting—he is all thunder and lightning, an everlasting storm.
Exile, duels, fines and imprisonment—wild, delirious attacks upon the
Government of the day. No one escaped; for fifty years, in the columns of
the _Figaro_, the _Lanterne_, the _Intransigeant_, and finally, in the
_Patrie_, Rochefort pursued presidents and politicians with his unique,
extravagant vocabulary. M. Jaurès, the Socialist leader, was “a decayed
turnip”; M. Georges Clemenceau, “a loathsome leper”; M. Briand, “a
moulting vulture.” As for M. Combes, to the guillotine with him, and into
the Seine with M. Delcassé, and a rope and a boulevard lamp-post for M.
Pelletan. Then President Loubet was “the foulest of assassins”; President
Fallières, “the fat old satyr of the Élysée”; and Madame Marguerite
Steinheil, “the Black Panther.”
For the life of me I could trace nothing of the “panther” in Madame
Steinheil during the ten terrible days that she sat in the dock of the
dim, oak-panelled Paris Assize Court. As for her “blackness,” Rochefort
was referring to her clothes.
“Heavy crape bands round the accused woman’s black dress, stiff crape
bows in the widow’s cap, a deep sombre border to the handkerchief which
she clenched tightly, convulsively, in her black-gloved hand... under
her eyes, dark, dark shadows, which turned green as the trial tragically
wore on.”[7] Impossible, one might have thought, not to sympathise with
this prisoner who, with all her follies and faults, was certainly not the
murderess of her husband and mother.
But what cared Rochefort for evidence and arguments? Leaning forward in
his seat in the Press-box, his sallow face distorted with fury, he fixed
the “Tragic Widow” with his steely, cruel eyes. (“I think he was trying
to hypnotise me—certainly to terrify me,” relates Madame Steinheil in
her _Memoirs_.) Again and again he cracked his lozenges, gesticulated
angrily with his large yellow hands. During the adjournments, he held
forth violently in the corridors of the Law Courts. Not only was Madame
Steinheil the murderess of her mother and husband, but she was also the
assassin of President Félix Faure. She poisoned him in the Élysée, at
the instigation of the Jews, who knew that so long as Faure remained
President there would be no revision of the Dreyfus affair. So, a triple
murderess—and “crack, crack” went the lozenges. Later, when it became
certain that Madame Steinheil would be acquitted, Rochefort declared that
judge and jury had been “bought,” and that the Government had all along
protected the “Black Panther.” His hands were trembling, the sallow face
had turned livid, when at one o’clock in the morning the jury filed into
the dim, stifling court and delivered their verdict: “Not Guilty” on all
counts. How Rochefort scowled at the cries of “Vive Madame Steinheil!”
and “Vive la Justice!” How he sneered when the barristers cheered,
applauded and flung their black _képis_ into the air! With what disgust
he listened to the bravoes from the journalists and the public at the
back of the court. When Madame Steinheil fainted, and was being carried
out of the dock by the Municipal Guards, Rochefort’s ruthless hatred
made the compassion of the public loathsome to him. Shaking, speechless
with rage, he roughly pushed his way out of court, cracking his lozenges
with such savagery that he must have very nearly broken his teeth.
But there were two Henri Rocheforts, and the virtues of the second almost
made amends for the vices of the first.
The second Rochefort revealed himself at the age of twenty. He was a
medical student. Shortly after the adoption of these studies young
Rochefort harangued the surgeon and his fellow-students upon the
“iniquities” of vivisection: and _that_ ended his short medical career.
Another outburst at the Hôtel de Ville, when Rochefort next accepted
a petty clerkship at a pound a week. His colleagues were underpaid
and overworked; a scarcity of light and utter lack of ventilation in
the dusty, shabby office-rooms resulted in cases of acute anæmia and
consumption. “We must have light—floods of it. We must have air—great,
healthy draughts of it,” shouted youthful Rochefort to a high official.
“I’m strong enough myself and don’t care; but look at your clerks.
Martyrs, victims! _De l’air, de la lumière, nom de Dieu!_”
The high official, a pompous, apoplectic soul, was struck dumb by
Rochefort’s invasion of his private sanctum. At last he gasped: “If you
were not the son of a marquis——” But Rochefort interrupted: “My father
died a fortnight ago. But I have no predilection for titles. My name is
Henri Rochefort.”
Rochefort nevertheless was an aristocrat—“_la race_” remained,
in spite of his assumption of democracy. He was, in fine, a
democrat-aristocrat—most chaotic of combinations. Therein lay the
secret of his turbulence and incoherency. Like all French aristocrats,
he was a militarist at heart. He was the ally of Boulanger. He was the
hottest champion of Paul Déroulède when that well-meaning but impossible
“patriot” attempted his celebrated _coup d’état_, on the morning of
President Félix Faure’s funeral, by establishing General Roget as a
military dictator in the Élysée. He was, furthermore, an Anti-Semite.
“Pale, white blood,” he cried disdainfully of the French _noblesse_.
His own blood was vigorously red, but tinged indelibly with blue. Yes;
“_la race_” remained, persisted—clashed inevitably with the true spirit
of democracy. And hence the chaos, the thunder and lightning; from
out of which there nevertheless shone tenderness, chivalry and a love
of beautiful things. He loved music, sculpture, pictures: and whilst
urging on France to declare war against England over the Fashoda Affair,
announced in my hearing that he would rather annex a portrait by Reynolds
than a province in the Sudan. He loved animals: and animals loved him.
Wild fury of Rochefort when a bull-fight was advertised to take place at
Enghien-les-Bains.
When the Government declined to forbid it, down to Enghien went Rochefort
and a number of friends. Sallow-faced old Rochefort seized hold of the
“impresario” who was organising the bull-fight and shook him. “I and my
friends are going to wreck your arena,” he shouted. Nor did he release
the “impresario” until the latter had promised that the bull-fight should
not take place.
If Rochefort had been all vindictiveness and luridness, how did it come
to pass that he was the guest of the great-hearted Victor Hugo, when both
of them were exiles in Brussels? And if the hoarse-voiced, steely-eyed
old journalist had been all venom, how did it come about that he was the
devoted, admiring friend of that very noble, if disconcerting apostle of
humanity, Louise Michel, “the Red Virgin.”