CHAPTER VIII

THE BURNING OF BABYLON--THE BITTER END

When after innumerable stoppages the train coming from Sedan at last

reached the St. Denis station at about nine o'clock, a great red blaze

was already lighting up the sky towards the south, as though all Paris

were on fire. This glow had begun to spread as the night fell and was

now slowly covering the horizon, ensanguining a flight of little

clouds which were travelling eastward into the gloom which the contrast

rendered more intense.

Henriette was the very first to spring out of the train, all anxiety at

sight of those fiery reflections, which the passengers had perceived

across the black fields, from the windows of their carriages, as they

came nearer and nearer to the capital. Moreover, some Prussian soldiers

who had occupied the station were compelling everybody to alight,

whilst a couple of them continued shouting in guttural French: 'Paris

is burning! The train goes no farther, all out here--Paris is burning!

Paris is burning!'

Henrietta's anguish was terrible. Good Heavens! had she arrived too

late, then? Maurice not having answered her last two letters, the

alarming reports from Paris had filled her with mortal anxiety, and she

had abruptly made up her mind to leave Remilly. She had been growing

sadder and sadder during the last few months at uncle Fouchard's; the

soldiery occupying the district had become more and more harsh and

exacting as Paris prolonged its resistance; and now that the regiments

were one by one returning to Germany, the constant passage of troops

again sorely tried both the towns and the villages. That morning, on

rising at daybreak to go and take the train at Sedan, she had found the

courtyard of the farm full of cavalry soldiers who had slept there,

lying pell-mell on the ground, wrapped in their long cloaks. They were

so numerous that it was hardly possible to cross the yard. Then, as a

bugle suddenly sounded, they all rose up in silence, draped in the long

folds of their mantles and in such serried array that she fancied she

was witnessing some resurrection on a battlefield in response to the

call of the last trump. And now she found more Prussians at St. Denis

distressing her with their repeated shouts: 'All out here, the train

goes no farther; Paris is burning, Paris is burning!'

Quite beside herself, Henriette darted out of the carriage carrying her

little valise, and asked for information. For two days past fighting

had been going on in Paris, the railway line was cut, and the Prussians

were posted on the look-out. Nevertheless she was determined to reach

the city, and noticing, on the platform, the Prussian captain in

command of the company which occupied the station, she ran up to him

and said: 'I wish, to join my brother, whom I am very anxious about,

sir. Enable me to continue my journey I beg of you----' And then she

stopped short in surprise, for she had just recognised the captain, on

whose face the light of a gas lamp was falling. 'What! is it you, Otto?

Help me, I beg of you, since chance has again brought us together.'

Otto Gunther--Weiss's cousin--had not changed. Tightly buttoned up

in his captain's uniform, he was still the same stern, well-groomed,

smart officer. On his side, he did not at first recognise that slight,

little woman with the fair hair and gentle face partially hidden by a

crape bonnet. But at last, by the brave, frank light of her eyes, he

remembered her and made a gesture of surprise.

'You know that I have a brother who is a soldier,' continued Henriette

in a feverish voice. 'He has remained in Paris, and I am afraid he may

have become mixed up in that horrible struggle, so I beg of you, Otto,

enable me to continue my journey.'

He then made up his mind to answer: 'But I assure you that I can do

nothing. The trains have not been running since yesterday. I think the

rails have been taken up near the ramparts. And I have neither vehicle

nor horse nor man to drive you----'

She looked at him, stammering plaintive words in her grief at finding

him so callous, so determined not to assist her. 'Oh, God! so you won't

do anything? Oh, God! whom shall I apply to?'

Yet these Prussians were still the all-powerful masters; with a word

they could have turned the town topsy-turvy, have requisitioned a

hundred vehicles, have caused a thousand horses to be brought from

their stables! But nevertheless he refused assistance with that haughty

air of the conqueror whose rule it was not to intervene in the affairs

of the vanquished, deeming them unclean and of a nature to tarnish his

lately won laurels.

'At all events,' resumed Henriette at last, striving to calm

herself--'at all events you know what is happening, and can surely tell

me.'

A slight, barely perceptible smile passed over his lips. 'Paris is

burning. Come over here, it can be seen plainly.'

He walked before her, passed out of the station, and followed the rails

for a hundred paces or so, until they reached a little iron foot-bridge

crossing the line. And when they had climbed its narrow stairway and

found themselves up above, leaning over the handrail, the whole vast

level plain was spread out before them.

'You see, Paris is burning.'

It might have been about half-past nine. The red glow setting the

sky on fire was still spreading. The little ruddy clouds in the east

had now vanished, and in the zenith all was inky blackness save for

occasional reflections of the distant flames. The whole line of

the horizon was on fire; but here and there could be distinguished

conflagrations of greater intensity than others, sheaves of bright

purple flames spurting up continuously amid great whirling smoke-clouds

and streaking the darkness with their fearful splendour. And it seemed,

too, as though the conflagrations were marching on and on, as though

some gigantic forest were catching fire from tree to tree, as though

the earth itself would end by blazing, set alight by that huge pile of

Paris.

'There,' explained Otto, 'that black mass standing out against the red

background is Montmartre. Nothing is burning as yet on the left, at La

Villette and Belleville. It is the central quarters which must have

been set alight, and the fire keeps on gaining ground. Look there, on

the right! There's another conflagration breaking out! You can see the

flames, a mass of seething flames from which a fiery smoke is rising.

And see too, over there are other fires, and others, others still!'

He did not raise his voice or display any excitement, and the

enormity of his quiet delight quite terrified Henriette. Ah! those

Prussians who gazed upon that awful spectacle! She divined all the

insulting significance of his calmness and his faint smile; they

undoubtedly implied that he had long foreseen and been waiting for this

unparalleled disaster.

At last Paris was burning; Paris, whose water-spouts the German shells

had merely managed to chip off! All his rancour was satisfied now; he

had his revenge for the inordinate duration of the siege, the bitter

cold, the ever-recurring difficulties of the war, the memory of which

still filled his countrymen with irritation. Whatever might be the

glory of the triumph, with its conquered provinces and its indemnity

of five milliards, all paled before this spectacle of the destruction

of Paris--Paris seized with furious madness, burning itself down and

flying away in flame and smoke during that clear spring-tide night.

'Ah! it was a certainty!' he added in a lower voice. 'A big business!'

At sight of the immensity of the catastrophe, increasing grief was

oppressing Henriette almost to the point of suffocation. For a few

minutes she forgot her personal misfortunes; what were they beside

this expiation of an entire people? The thought of the human lives

which would be destroyed by the devouring flames, the sight of the city

blazing on the horizon, casting around it the hellish glow of accursed

capitals doomed to destruction for their sins, wrung involuntary cries

of anguish from her heart. Clasping her hands she asked: 'What can we

have done, O God! to be punished thus?'

Otto immediately raised his arm with an apostrophic gesture. He was

about to speak with all the vehemence of that stern, frigid, military

Protestantism so prone to quoting the Scriptures. But on glancing at

the young woman and meeting her beautiful, clear, reasoning eyes, he

stayed his tongue. Besides, his gesture had sufficed; it had expressed

all his racial hatred, his conviction that he was there in France as a

justiciar sent by the God of Battles to chastise a perverted people.

Paris was burning in punishment of its centuries of evil life, its long

career of crime and lust. Once again would the Teutons save the world,

sweeping away the final specks of Latin corruption.

He let his arm fall and simply said: 'It is the end of everything.

Another district is lighting up, over there, on the left--you see it,

don't you?--that long line spreading out like a stream of live embers.'

Then both ceased speaking; a terrified silence prevailed. Waves of

flame were now incessantly rising, streaming and spurting high into

the heavens. Not a moment went by but that sea of fire extended its

limits--an incandescent tossing, billowy ocean it was, with smoke

arising from its midst, and gathering over the city in a huge, dark

coppery pall, which a faint wind wafted across the black night. And as

it slowly travelled across the sky it barred the vault above with an

abominable rain of soot and cinders.

All at once Henriette started as though awakening from a nightmare;

and, again seized with anguish at the thought of her brother, she for

the last time addressed the captain in a tone of entreaty: 'So you can

do nothing for me; you refuse to help me to get into Paris?'

With another wave of his arm Otto swept the horizon. 'What would it

avail you, since there will be nothing but ruins left there to-morrow

morning?'

And that was all; without even saying a word of farewell she

descended from the foot-bridge, fleeing with her little valise; whilst

he remained there motionless for a long time yet, his slim, stiff

figure barely distinguishable in the darkness, as with a sensation of

monstrous enjoyment he feasted his eyes upon that spectacle of Babylon

in flames.

As Henriette was leaving the station she was lucky enough to come

across a stout woman who had just arranged with a flyman to drive her

into Paris; and Henriette pleaded so piteously and shed such touching

tears that this person at last consented to take her with her. The

flyman, a dark little fellow, whipped up his horse and drove them

away without opening his lips during the whole journey. The stout

woman, however, did not cease chattering, telling Henriette that on

closing and leaving her shop in the Rue de Richelieu a couple of days

previously she had unwisely left some shares and debentures there, in

a secret hiding-place in a wall. And as a natural consequence, ever

since the city had begun flaming a couple of hours previously, she

had been possessed by the desire to go back again, and secure those

valuable papers, even though she might have to march through the fire

to do so. When they reached the city gate, where they found a party

of sleepy National Guards, the vehicle was allowed to pass on without

much difficulty, especially as the stout woman unblushingly declared

that she had merely been to St. Denis to fetch her niece to assist her

in nursing her husband, who had been wounded by the Versaillese. Once

in the Paris streets, however, they encountered terrible obstacles;

at each moment they came upon barricades barring the roadways and

were obliged to take a circuitous course. At last, on reaching the

Boulevard Poissonnière the driver would go no further, and the two

women were forced to continue their journey on foot, along the Rue

du Sentier and the Rue des Jeûneurs and through the district of the

Bourse. Whilst they were drawing near to the fortifications, the fiery

sky had illumined their road with as vivid a light as that of daytime.

And therefore, in the quarter of the city which they had now reached

they were astonished to find the streets dim and deserted, with nothing

to disturb their stillness save the vague echo of a distant roar.

Near the Bourse, however, they heard some reports of fire-arms, and

had to glide along cautiously close beside the house-fronts. And when

they reached the Rue de Richelieu and the stout woman found her shop

standing, altogether undamaged, she was so delighted that she insisted

upon showing Henriette her way along the Rue du Hasard and the Rue

Sainte-Anne. In the latter street, which a battalion of Federals still

occupied, some of the men would not at first allow them to pass, and

it was four o'clock and already light, when Henriette, exhausted with

emotion and fatigue, at last reached the old house in the Rue des

Orties and found its door wide open.

* * * * *

Maurice, meantime, on the barricade of the Rue du Bac, had managed

to raise himself to his knees between the two sandbags, and Jean,

who feared that he had pinned him to the ground, was suddenly buoyed

up again by hope. 'Are you still alive, my poor youngster?' said he.

'Shall I have that luck, dirty brute that I am? Wait a moment, let me

look at you.'

Then, by the vivid light of the conflagrations, he cautiously examined

the wound. The bayonet had transpierced the arm near the right

shoulder, and the misfortune was that it had afterwards entered the

body between two of the ribs, and had probably injured the lung. Still,

the wounded man, whose arm hung down, inert, was apparently able to

breathe without any great difficulty.

'Don't distress yourself like that, my poor old fellow,' said Maurice.

'I am quite content to die; I would rather have done with it all. You

did quite enough for me whilst we were together. Had it not been for

you I should long since have died like this by the roadside.'

On hearing him speak in this fashion, Jean was again seized with

violent grief: 'Will you be quiet? You saved me twice from the clutches

of the Prussians. It was my turn to risk my life for you, and here

I've been and massacred you. Thunder! I must have been fuddled not to

recognise you, fuddled like a hog with having drunk too much blood.'

Tears had started from his eyes at memory of their leave-taking

over yonder at Remilly, that parting when they had asked each other

whether they would ever meet again, and if so where and under what

circumstances of grief or joy. Had they, then, spent so many hungry

days and sleepless nights together, with death staring them in the

face, all to no avail? Had their hearts mingled during those weeks

of valorous life simply that all might end in this abomination, this

monstrous, senseless fratricide? No, no, Jean's heart revolted at the

thought.

'Let me see to it, youngster,' said he; 'I _must_ save you.'

First of all he must take him away, for the troops finished off all the

wounded insurgents they found. They were alone together, fortunately;

still there was not a moment to be lost. Taking his knife, he quickly

ripped open the sleeve of Maurice's uniform, and took the garment off

him. Blood was flowing, so he made all haste to bandage the arm firmly

with some strips of lining which he tore away from the tunic he had

removed. Next he plugged the body-wound and fastened the arm tightly

over it with a bit of cord which he fortunately found in his pocket.

Barbarous as was this dressing, it was effective, for it rendered the

injured parts immovable and prevented hæmorrhage.

'Can you walk?'

'Yes, I think so.'

Nevertheless, Jean did not dare to lead him away like that in his

shirt-sleeves. And a sudden inspiration coming to him he ran off into

an adjacent street, where he had seen the corpse of a soldier lying,

and speedily came back with a military great-coat and cap. He threw the

former upon Maurice's shoulders, and helped him to pass his uninjured

arm through the left sleeve. Then, when he had set the cap upon his

head, he exclaimed: 'There, now you are one of us! Where shall we go?'

That was the question, and all Jean's anguish of mind returned again

just as he was awakening to hope and courage. Where could he find a

secure shelter-place? The houses were searched; all the Communists

taken with arms in their hands or whose appearance indicated that they

had been fighting were summarily shot. Moreover, neither of them knew a

soul in that neighbourhood to whom they might apply for shelter, or any

safe place in which they might hide their heads. 'After all, my room

would be the best,' at last said Maurice; 'the house is in a retired

spot, and nobody is likely to come there. But it is on the other side

of the river, in the Rue des Orties.'

In his irresolution and despair Jean continued mumbling oaths:

'Thunder! how can we manage it?'

It was no use to think of crossing the Pont-Royal, which the

conflagrations were lighting up as with a vivid noontide glow. On

this point shots were at every moment being fired from either bank of

the river. And besides, once across this bridge, they would have run

against an impassable barrier--the Tuileries in flames, and the Louvre

guarded and barricaded.

'Then we are done for; there's no means of crossing,' declared Jean,

who knew something of Paris, having lived there for six months or so on

his return from the Italian war.[57]

Suddenly, however, an idea occurred to him. If, as in former times,

there were any boats moored at the water's edge near the Pont-Royal,

they might embark in one of them, and in this wise cross the river.

It would be a long and dangerous job, and by no means an easy one;

but they had no choice in the matter, and must make up their minds at

once. 'Listen, youngster,' said Jean; 'let's get away from here at any

rate; it's a dangerous spot. I shall account for my absence by telling

my lieutenant that the Communards captured me, but that I managed to

escape.'

Grasping Maurice's uninjured arm, he helped him to walk to the end of

the Rue du Bac, between the burning houses, which were now flaring

from basement to garret like so many huge torches. A shower of burning

brands fell upon them as they passed along, and the heat was so intense

that all the hair upon their faces was singed. And when they came out

on the quay, they stopped short for a moment, fairly blinded by the

frightful blaze of the conflagrations, which were throwing up huge

sheaves of flame upon both banks of the Seine.

'There's no lack of candles,' growled Jean, worried by this broad light.

In fact, it was only when he had helped Maurice down the steps leading

to the shore, just below the Pont-Royal, that he felt tolerably safe.

Here, at the water's edge, there was a clump of big trees which

screened them from view, and during nearly a quarter of an hour they

remained on this spot anxiously watching some black, shadowy forms

which were flitting hither and thither on the quay across the river.

Shots were being fired; all at once a loud shriek resounded, and then

they heard a plunge, followed by a sudden spurt of foam. Plainly enough

the bridge was guarded.

'Suppose we spend the night in that shanty,' suggested Maurice,

pointing to a wooden hut used as an office of the navigation service.

'Pooh! we should be caught to-morrow morning,' said Jean, who clung to

his idea. He had found there quite a flotilla of little boats, but

they were moored to the quay by means of padlocked chains; and how

would he be able to detach one of them and also procure some oars?

At last he luckily found an old pair of sculls, and was even able to

force open a padlock, which had no doubt been imperfectly secured.

Thereupon, after helping Maurice to lie down in the bow of the boat, he

cautiously shoved off, hugging the shore, in the shadow of the swimming

baths and the pinnaces. Neither of them spoke, terrified as they were

by the awful spectacle which now unfolded itself. The horror seemed

to increase as they slowly floated down the stream and their horizon

widened. By the time they had reached the Solferino bridge they could

at one glance behold both flaming quays.

On the left, the Tuileries was burning. The Communists had fired both

ends of the palace, the Pavillon de Flore and the Pavillon de Marsan,

at nightfall; and the flames were now rapidly gaining the central

Pavillon de l'Horloge, where a formidable mine had been prepared,

barrels upon barrels of gunpowder being piled up in the Hall of the

Marshals. At this moment the intervening buildings were belching from

their shattered windows great whirling coils of ruddy smoke, through

which darted blue flakes of fire. The roofs were kindling, riddled with

fiery crevices, and opening like volcanic soil as the brazier within

assailed them. No other portion of the palace, however, burnt like the

Pavillon de Flore,[58] where the torch had been first applied, and

which was flaring away, with a formidable roar, from its ground floor

to its lofty roof. The petroleum with which the floorings and the

hangings had been soaked imparted such intensity to the flames that the

iron work of the massive balconies could be seen writhing and twisting,

whilst the monumental chimneys, with their great sculptured suns,

became red hot and burst asunder.

Then, on the right bank, came first of all the palace of the Legion of

Honour, set on fire at five o'clock in the evening. It had now been

alight for nearly seven hours, and was being consumed by a great blaze,

like some huge pile of wood, every log of which is kindled, and fast

burning to ashes. Next came the palace of the Council of State, the

most enormous, the most frightful of those immense conflagrations,

the whole gigantic parallelogram of stone, with its two colonnaded

storeys, vomiting flame upon flame of lurid fire. The four blocks of

building encompassing the spacious interior courtyard had been ignited

at one and the same moment, and the petroleum poured by the cask-full

upon the four staircases at the four corners had streamed down them,

rolling perfect torrents of hell-fire from the highest to the lowest

step. On the façade overlooking the river, the sharp line of the attic

storey stood out blackly above the red tongues of flame which were

licking its base; whilst the colonnades, the entablatures, the friezes,

all the sculptured ornaments acquired startling vividness amid the

blinding furnace-like glow beneath. Here especially there was such a

rage, such a strength of fire, that the colossal monument was as though

upheaved, and quaked and rumbled on its foundations; only the carcase

of its massive walls being able to withstand this eruptive violence,

which hurled the zinc of the roofs towards the sky. Then, near at hand,

was the Orsay barracks, a whole side of which was burning in a lofty

white column like a tower of light. And in the rear there were yet

other conflagrations, seven houses in the Rue du Bac, two-and-twenty

houses in the Rue de Lille, all setting the horizon aglow, with flames

rising up in relief against other flames, in a sanguinary, endless sea

of fire.

'Good Lord, can it be possible!' muttered Jean, with a grip at his

throat; 'the river itself will soon catch alight!'

It already seemed, indeed, as though the boat were floating down a

burning stream. With the reflections of those huge braziers dancing

in the water, it might have been thought that the Seine was rolling

live coals. Red flashes darted fitfully over its surface, amid a great

rippling of yellow brands. And they were still slowly going down stream

between the flaming palaces, carried on by the current of that fiery

water, as though journeying through some accursed city, burning upon

either side of a highway of molten lava.

'Ah!' said Maurice in his turn, struck with madness again, at sight of

the havoc he had longed for. 'May everything blaze and everything blow

up!'

But Jean silenced him with a gesture of terror as though he feared

that such blasphemy might bring them misfortune. Was it possible that

this young fellow whom he was so fond of, who was so highly educated,

who had formerly displayed such delicate susceptibility, could have

come to entertain such ideas as these? And he rowed on faster, for by

this time he had passed the Solferino bridge, and found himself in a

broad open space of water. The light had now become so intense that

it seemed as though the river were illumined by the midday sunrays

streaming down from overhead without casting a shadow. The pettiest

details could be distinguished with wonderful precision--the ripples of

the water, the heaps of gravel on the banks, the little trees planted

along the quays. And the bridges shone out with a dazzling whiteness,

so distinct that you might have counted their very stones. They looked

like narrow gangways as yet undamaged, thrown across the fiery water

from one conflagration to the other. Every now and then a loud crash

would resound amid the continuous, roaring clamour. Squalls of soot

were sweeping down; the wind was laden with pestiferous stenches. And

the terror of it all was that Paris--the distant districts yonder along

the Seine--had disappeared. The conflagrations on either hand blazed

with such fierce, dazzling resplendency that beyond them, upstream and

downstream alike, all was a black abyss. Only an enormous darkness,

nihility, could be seen, as though the fire had already reached and

devoured all the rest of Paris, as though the city had already vanished

into eternal night. And the sky too was obliterated, destroyed; the

flames climbed so high that they extinguished the stars.

Excited by the delirium of fever, Maurice raised a wild laugh: 'A fine

_fête_ at the Council of State and the Tuileries! The façades have been

illuminated, the chandeliers are sparkling, and the women dance. Ah!

dance, dance in your smouldering skirts and your flaming chignons!'

With a wave of his uninjured arm he evoked the gala gatherings of

Sodom and Gomorrah, the music, the flowers, the monstrous pleasures,

the palaces bursting with such lust and debauchery, illumining their

abominations with such a wealth of tapers that they set themselves

ablaze! All at once there was a frightful uproar. It was the fire,

coming from either end of the Tuileries, which was at last reaching the

Hall of the Marshals.[59] The barrels of gunpowder caught alight, and

the Pavillon de l'Horloge blew up with the violence of a powder-mill.

An immense sheaf of fire arose, a plume which waved and spread over the

black sky--the flaming 'bouquet' of those frightful fireworks.

'Bravo, dancers!' cried Maurice, as at the end of a spectacular

performance when all becomes dark on the stage again.

Once more, in distracted phrases, did Jean stammeringly beseech him

not to talk like that. No, no! one should never wish for evil. If this

were the end of everything, would not they themselves perish? And he

was now all eagerness to land and escape the terrible spectacle. Still

he prudently rowed on until they had passed the Concorde bridge, so

as to put into shore below the Quai de la Conférence, beyond the bend

of the Seine. And at that critical moment, instead of allowing the

boat to drift away, he lost some minutes in mooring it, such was his

instinctive respect for other people's property. His plan was to reach

the Rue des Orties by way of the Place de la Concorde and the Rue St.

Honoré. After making Maurice sit down on the shore, he climbed the

steps of the quay to examine the surroundings, and was again seized

with anxiety on realising the difficulty they would have to surmount

all the obstacles assembled together on that point. Here indeed was

the fortress which the Commune had deemed impregnable, the Tuileries

terrace bristling with cannon, the Rue Royale, the Rue St. Florentin,

and the Rue de Rivoli barred by lofty, massively built barricades. And

the spectacle explained the tactics that had been adopted by the army

of Versailles, whose lines that night formed an immense arc, having the

Place de la Concorde for its vertex, and starting, on the right bank of

the river, from the goods station of the Northern Railway Company, and

on the left bank from a bastion of the ramparts near the Arcueil gate.

Dawn, however, would now soon be rising, the Communists had evacuated

the Tuileries and the barricades, and the troops had just taken

possession of the district in the midst of other conflagrations--twelve

more houses which had been burning ever since nine in the evening at

the crossway of the Faubourg St. Honoré and the Rue Royale.

When Jean descended to the shore again he found Maurice drowsy,

stupefied as it were by the reaction following upon his delirious

outburst. 'It won't be easy,' said the corporal. 'Can you still walk,

youngster?'

'Yes, yes, don't worry; I shall always get there, dead or alive.'

He had considerable difficulty, however, in climbing the stone steps;

and once up above, on the quay, leaning on his companion's arm, he

walked on slowly with the step of a somnambulist. Although the

daylight was not yet breaking, a kind of livid dawn--the light cast

by the neighbouring conflagrations--illumined the vast Place. It was

silent, deserted, and they crossed it with their hearts oppressed

by the mournful spectacle of havoc they beheld. Beyond the Concorde

bridge, and at the farther end of the Rue Royale, they could dimly

discern the phantom-like piles of the Palais Bourbon and the Madeleine,

battered by the cannonade. A portion of the Tuileries terrace also had

fallen, breached by the guns. On the Place itself the bronze tritons,

naiads, and dolphins of the fountains had been riddled with bullets,

the colossal trunk of the statue of Lille lay upon the pavement, cut

in halves by a shell; whilst the crape-veiled statue of Strasburg,

near at hand, seemed to be mourning the ruin which surrounded it And

in a trench, near the uninjured obelisk, there was a broken gas pipe,

which had accidentally caught fire, and whence a long jet of flame was

spurting with a strident sound.

Jean was careful not to approach the barricade blocking the

entry of the Rue Royale, between the Ministry of Marine and the

Garde-Meuble,[60] both of which had been preserved from the fire. He

could hear the gruff voices of soldiers behind the barrels of earth

and the sandbags of which this barricade was constructed. Its front

was defended by a ditch, full of stagnant water, on which the corpse

of a Federal was floating, and through an embrasure one could perceive

the houses of the St. Honoré crossway still burning in spite of the

fire-pumps[61] which had come in from the suburbs, and whose snorting

could be plainly heard. To right and left, the little trees and the

kiosks of the news vendors were broken, riddled with bullets, and all

at once loud cries of horror arose, for, on descending into a cellar,

the firemen had there discovered the charred corpses of seven inmates

of one of the burning houses.

Although the lofty, skilfully built barricade barring the Rue St.

Florentin and the Rue de Rivoli appeared yet more formidable than the

other one, Jean somehow instinctively divined that it would be less

difficult for him and Maurice to pass that way. Indeed, the barricade

was evacuated, although the troops had not yet dared to occupy it.

Heavy guns were slumbering there in abandonment. There was not a living

thing left behind that invincible rampart, save a stray dog, which ran

off in alarm. However, whilst Jean was hastily walking up the Rue St.

Florentin sustaining Maurice, who had become very weak, his fears were

suddenly realised, for they came upon a company of the 88th of the Line

which had turned the barricade.

'Sir,' said Jean to the captain, 'this is a comrade of mine whom those

brigands have wounded. I'm taking him to the ambulance.'

The military great-coat thrown over Maurice's shoulders saved him, and

Jean's heart was beating almost to the point of bursting as they at

last turned into the Rue St. Honoré, along which they took their way.

The dawn was scarcely breaking as yet, and the reports of fire-arms

frequently resounded in the side streets, for fighting was still going

on throughout the district. By a miracle, however, they managed to

reach the corner of the Rue des Frondeurs without any other unpleasant

meeting. And now they made way but slowly; those last three or four

hundred yards seemed to be interminable. Whilst going up the Rue des

Frondeurs they fell in with a band of Communards, who fortunately took

to their heels in alarm, fancying that an entire regiment was at hand.

And then they only had to take a few steps along the Rue d'Argenteuil

to find themselves at last in the Rue des Orties.

Ah! that Rue des Orties! with what feverish impatience had Jean been

longing to reach it during four interminable hours! It seemed to

them like deliverance when they entered it at last. It was black,

deserted, and silent, as though a hundred leagues away from the field

of fratricidal battle. The house where Maurice lived, an old, narrow,

lofty building, where there was no door-porter, was fast asleep, as

still as the grave.

'The keys are in my trousers pocket,' stammered Maurice, 'the big one

is that of the street-door, the little one opens my room, right at the

top of the stairs.'

Then he was overcome, and fainted away in the arms of Jean, whose

anxiety and embarrassment were extreme. He was so upset, indeed, that

he forgot to shut the street-door after him. And then he had to grope

his way up those strange stairs, carrying Maurice in his arms and

striving not to stumble for fear lest the noise should bring some of

the lodgers to their doors. Then, up above, he lost himself, and had to

seat the wounded man on a stair, and search for the door of his room

with the help of some matches which he fortunately had about him. And

when he had at last found the door and opened it, he came back to fetch

Maurice, and carried him off, and laid him on the little iron bedstead,

in front of the window, overlooking Paris, which he threw wide open in

his need of air and light. The dawn was now breaking, and he dropped

upon his knees beside the bed, sobbing, stunned, and strengthless, as

the fearful thought awoke within him that he had killed his friend.

Several minutes must have elapsed, and, when he looked up, he hardly

felt any surprise at beholding Henriette. After all, it was perfectly

natural; her brother was dying, and she had come. He had not even

seen her enter the room; for all he knew, she might have been there

for hours. And now, sinking upon a chair, he watched her as she

distractedly hovered here and there, stricken with mortal grief at

sight of her brother lying on that bed, unconscious and covered with

blood. Then all at once Jean's memory came back to him and he asked:

'Did you shut the street-door after you?'

She could not speak, her emotion was too great, but she nodded her head

affirmatively; and then, as she at last stepped up to him to place her

hands in his, in the need she felt of affection and help, he again

spoke: 'You know, it was I who killed him.'

She did not understand, did not believe him. He felt her little hands

lying calmly in his own.

'Yes, it was I who killed him--Yes, on a barricade over yonder. He was

fighting on one side and I on the other.'

The little hands began to tremble.

'We were all mad drunk as it were; we none of us knew what we were

doing--and it was I who killed him.'

Then Henriette, quivering and ghastly pale, gazing at him fixedly with

eyes of terror, withdrew her hands. O God! was everything to perish,

would nothing survive in her crushed heart? Ah! that Jean, she had been

thinking of him that very evening, happy in the vague hope that she

might perhaps see him again. And it was he who had done that abominable

thing; and yet he had again saved Maurice, since it was he who had

brought him thither through so many dangers. She could no longer place

her hands in his without a revolt of her whole being; but she raised a

cry in which rang out the last hope of her warring heart: 'Oh! I will

cure him, I must cure him _now_!'

She had become very expert in nursing and dressing wounds during her

long vigils at the ambulance of Remilly. And she at once wished to

examine her brother, whom she undressed without rousing him from his

fainting fit. But while she was unfastening the rude bandage, which

Jean had devised, the young fellow began to stir, raising a faint cry

as he opened his big feverish eyes. He at once recognised her and

smiled at her: 'So you are here! Ah! how glad I am to see you again

before I die!'

She silenced him with a loving gesture of confidence. 'Die, no, I won't

let you die, I mean you to live. Don't talk, let me attend to you.'

Her face became clouded, however, and her eyes grew dim when she had

examined his transpierced arm and injured ribs. Then, taking possession

of the room, she searched about till she found a little oil, and began

tearing some old shirts into bands, whilst Jean went down to fill

a pitcher with water. He, poor fellow, no longer spoke a word, but

watched her whilst she washed the wounds and skilfully dressed them,

quite incapable of helping her, altogether annihilated as it were

since her arrival. However, he observed her anxiety, and when she had

finished he offered to go and fetch a doctor. But she had an acute

perception of the position: no, no, not the first chance doctor, who

might perhaps betray her brother. Then at last, upon Jean talking of

rejoining his regiment, it was agreed that he should return as soon as

he could manage and endeavour to bring a doctor with him.

Nevertheless, he did not take himself off; it was as though he could

not make up his mind to leave that room, where all told of his unhappy

deed. After being closed for a moment, the window had again been

opened, and the wounded man, lying in bed, with his head propped up by

pillows, could gaze out upon the roofs of Paris, whither the glances of

the others also strayed, in the heavy silence which oppressed them.

From that height of the Butte des Moulins one half of the city lay

stretched out below them--first, the central districts from the

Faubourg St. Honoré to the Bastille, then the long sweep of the Seine

and the distant buildings swarming on its left bank, a sea of roofs,

tree-tops, steeples, domes and towers. The light was now growing

stronger; the abominable night, one of the most frightful in history,

was ended. But in the pure light of the rising sun, under the rosy

sky, the fires continued blazing. In front of them they could see the

Tuileries, which was still burning, the Orsay barracks, the palaces of

the Council of State and the Legion of Honour, the flames from which,

paling in the broad light, imparted a great quivering as it were to the

heavens. And beyond the houses of the Rue de Lille and the Rue du Bac,

other houses must now be flaring, for pillars of flakes were rising

from the crossway of the Croix-Rouge, and from the Rue Vavin and the

Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, yet farther away. Close by, on the right,

the conflagrations of the Rue St. Honoré were running their course,

whilst on the left the fires tardily kindled at the Palais-Royal

and the new Louvre, where the torch had not been applied until near

morning, were prematurely dying out. And, at first, neither Maurice

nor Jean could account for some thick black smoke which the westerly

breeze was slowly driving past the window. Since three in the morning,

however, the Ministry of Finances in the Rue de Rivoli had also been

burning. No lofty flames shot up from it, everything was turning into

dense, whirling masses of soot, so prodigious was the collection of

papers of all kinds gathered together there, under the low ceilings

of the lath-and-plaster partitioned rooms. And thus, if the tragic

impression of the night--the fear of total destruction, the Seine

rolling live embers and Paris blazing at its four corners--had passed

away when the great city awoke, there was in lieu thereof a dreary,

despair-fraught gloominess hanging over the districts that had yet been

spared, a gloominess which slowly travelled along with that dense,

continuous, ever-spreading smoke-cloud from the Ministry of Finances.

And presently, the sun, which had risen bright and clear, was hidden by

the cloud, and only that pall of mourning could be seen aloft in the

tawny sky.

With a slow wave of the hand which embraced the boundless horizon,

Maurice, again delirious, muttered: 'Is everything burning? Ah! how

long it takes!'

Tears were welling in Henriette's eyes as though her burden of misery

were rendered yet heavier by those immense disasters in which her

brother had his share. And Jean, who dared neither take her hand again,

nor even embrace his friend, thereupon hurried off like one who is

losing his senses. 'Good-bye; I will be back soon.'

He was only able to return, however, in the evening at about eight

o'clock, after night had fallen. In spite of his great anxiety he was

in some measure happy, for his regiment was no longer taking any part

in the fighting, but had been transferred from the first to the second

line, with orders to guard this very district. His company camping on

the Place du Carrousel, he hoped that he would be able to run up every

evening to see how Maurice was getting on. And he did not come back

alone; as luck would have it, he had met the surgeon-major of his old

regiment, the 106th, and having failed to find any other doctor he

brought this one with him, reflecting that this terrible man with the

lion's head was, after all, a good and worthy fellow.

When Bouroche, not knowing what wounded man it was whom the corporal so

pressingly begged him to succour, and growling at having had to climb

so many flights of stairs, realised that he had a Communard before him,

he at first flew into a violent passion: 'Thunder! Are you playing

the fool with me? Brigands who are weary of thieving, murdering, and

burning! That bandit's affair is clear enough; I'll cure him precious

quick, yes, with three bullets in his head!'

But on perceiving Henriette, so intensely pale in her black dress,

and with her lovely fair hair falling over her shoulders, he suddenly

became calm again. 'It is my brother, sir,' said she; 'he was one of

your soldiers at Sedan.'

Bouroche did not answer, but uncovered the wounds and examined them

in silence; then, taking some phials from his pocket, he made a fresh

dressing, explaining to the young woman what she would have to do.

And then, in his gruff voice, he all at once asked the wounded man:

'Why were you on the side of those ruffians? Why did you do such an

abominable thing?'

Maurice had been gazing at him with glittering eyes, but without

pronouncing a word. And now, amid his fever, he answered in a burning

voice: 'Because there is too much suffering in the world; too much

iniquity and too much shame!'

Bouroche waved his arm as though to say that such ideas might carry

a man very far indeed. Then he seemed to be on the point of speaking

again, but decided to hold his peace. And as he went out he simply

added: 'I will come back again.'

On the landing, however, he told Henriette plainly that he could answer

for nothing. The lung was seriously injured, and hæmorrhage might

supervene and kill the wounded man in a moment. When Henriette returned

into the room she strove to smile, despite the blow which the doctor's

words had dealt her in the heart. Would she not save him, would she not

prevent that frightful thing, the eternal separation of all three of

them, now gathered together in that chamber and ardently longing for

life? Throughout the day she had not once left the little room, an old

woman occupying a neighbouring attic having obligingly undertaken her

errands. And now she came and resumed her seat on a chair beside the

bed.

Giving way, however, to his feverish excitement, Maurice had begun

to question Jean, anxious to learn what was happening. The corporal

did not tell him everything; he avoided all allusion to the furious

wrath which was rising up against the expiring Commune throughout

delivered Paris. It was now Wednesday, and for two long days, since

the Sunday evening, the inhabitants had been living in their cellars

quaking with fear. And on the Wednesday morning, when they were at

last able to venture out, the spectacle they beheld--the streets torn

up, the remnants of barricades, the corpses, the pools of blood, and

especially the awful conflagrations--inflamed them with vengeful fury.

The chastisement was to prove a terrible one. The houses were searched,

all suspicious characters of either sex were at once handed over to the

firing parties to be summarily shot. By six o'clock on the evening of

that day the army of Versailles was in possession of one half of the

city, its lines running from the park of Montsouris to the Northern

Railway station by way of the main thoroughfares. And the remaining

members of the Commune, some twenty men or so, had now been compelled

to take refuge at the municipal offices of the Eleventh Arrondissement,

on the Boulevard Voltaire.

Silence fell, and at last, as Maurice gazed at the city through the

open window, by which the warm night air streamed into the room, he

muttered: 'At all events, the work goes on--Paris still burns!'

He spoke truly: the flames had shone out once more as soon as night had

fallen, and a villainous glow was again tinging the sky with a purple

hue. During the afternoon, the powder magazine near the Luxembourg

palace had exploded with so frightful a crash, that a rumour had spread

that it was the Panthéon crumbling into the Catacombs. Moreover, the

fires of the previous night had continued burning throughout the

day--the palace of the Council of State and the Tuileries were still

flaming, whilst the Ministry of Finances still belched its wreathing

clouds of smoke. Over and over again had it been necessary to close

the window, in order to shut out a cloud of black butterflies, scraps

upon scraps of charred paper, which the violence of the fire whirled

upward into the sky, whence they fell again in a fine rain. All Paris

was covered with these fragments,[62] some of which, carried off by the

wind, were picked up even in Normandy, twenty leagues away. And now

not merely were the western and southern quarters flaring--the houses

of the Rue Royale, those of the Croix-Rouge crossway, and of the Rue

Notre-Dame-des-Champs--but all the eastern side of the city also seemed

to be in flames. The huge brazier of the Hôtel-de-Ville glowed on the

horizon with a gigantic sacrificial pyre. And flaring like torches

in the same direction there were the municipal offices of the Fourth

Arrondissement, the Lyric theatre, and over thirty houses in adjacent

streets; to say nothing of the Porte-St. Martin theatre, which on the

north shone out all alone, ruddy with fire, like a rick standing out in

the midst of dusky fields. Here and there private vengeance was busy

at work, and desperate efforts were made to hasten the destruction

of various buildings in order that certain records preserved in them

might be annihilated. But among the majority of the insurgents there

was no longer any question of defending themselves, or of arresting the

advance of the troops by the fires. Madness reigned, conflagrations

were kindled in haphazard fashion, for the mere sake of destroying; and

the cathedral of Notre Dame, the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, and the Palais de

Justice were only saved by a lucky chance.

'Ah! War! hateful War!' said Henriette in an undertone, as she gazed on

that city of havoc, suffering, and agony.

Was not this indeed the inevitable last act of the tragedy--the

outbreak of that madness which had germinated on those fatal fields

of defeat around Sedan and Metz; the outbreak too of that epidemic

of destructiveness engendered by the siege of Paris, the supreme

convulsion of a nation threatened with dissolution amid butchery

and ruin? Maurice, however, without taking his eyes off the burning

districts over yonder, stammered with difficulty: 'No, no, don't curse

War--War is good, it has its task----'

But Jean interrupted him with a cry of mingled hatred and remorse:

'Good God! you talk like that when I see you lying there, all through

my fault. No, no, you mustn't defend War again; it is an abominable

thing!'

The wounded man feebly waved his hand: 'What does it matter about me?

There are plenty of others. This blood-letting was perhaps necessary.

War is life, and there can be no life unless there be death also.'

Then Maurice closed his eyes, exhausted by the effort which these few

words had cost him. Henriette signed to Jean not to continue arguing.

Calm though her nature was, the nature of a feeble yet a valiant woman,

with limpid eyes in which the heroic soul of her grandfather lived

anew, she also was now upheaved by a feeling of protest, of anger with

the suffering human race.

Two more days, Thursday and Friday, went by amid the same scenes of

conflagration and massacre. The uproar of the cannonade was incessant.

The batteries of Montmartre captured by the army of Versailles were now

firing without a pause upon those which the Federals had established at

Belleville and the Père-Lachaise cemetery; and the latter were on their

side firing at random upon Paris. Shells had fallen both in the Rue

de Richelieu and on the Place Vendôme. On the evening of the 25th the

whole of the city on the left bank of the Seine was in the hands of the

troops; but on the right bank the barricades on the Place du Château

d'Eau and the Place de la Bastille were still holding out. There were,

on these points, two veritable fortresses defended by a galling,

incessant fire. At twilight, amid the disbanding of the last members

of the Commune, Delescluze took his cane, and, like a promenader out

for a stroll, came quietly to the barricade blocking the Boulevard

Voltaire to fall and die there like a hero. At dawn on the morrow, May

20, the Château d'Eau and the Bastille positions were carried by the

troops, and then only La Villette, Belleville, and Charonne remained in

the power of the Communists, who were becoming less and less numerous,

until there remained at last merely a handful of brave men resolved

to die. And during two more days these prolonged their resistance,

fighting with the fury of despair.

On the Friday evening, while Jean, having managed to get away from the

Place du Carrousel, was on his way to the Rue des Orties, he witnessed,

in the lower part of the Rue de Richelieu, a summary execution which

filled him with horror. Two courts-martial had been sitting since the

Wednesday, one at the Luxembourg palace, the other at the Châtelet

theatre. The men condemned by the former tribunal were executed in the

palace gardens, whilst those sentenced by the latter were dragged to

the Lobau barracks, where firing parties, kept under arms throughout

the day, shot them down almost at point-blank range, in the inner

courtyard. And here especially did the butchery prove frightful: men,

mere boys, condemned to death on the flimsiest evidence--because their

hands were black with powder, or simply because they were wearing

regulation shoes; innocent men, too, falsely denounced, victims of

private malice shouting out explanations to which their military judges

would not listen; droves of prisoners huddled together pell-mell

in front of the gun-barrels, so many poor wretches brought in for

execution at the same time, that the men of the firing-party had

not bullets enough for all of them, and despatched those whom their

discharge had merely wounded with the butt-ends of their guns. From

morning till evening blood streamed and tumbrils carried away the

corpses. And then, too, here and there through the conquered city, amid

the frequent outbursts of vengeful fury, there were other executions in

front of the barricades, against the blank walls of deserted streets,

and on the steps of the public buildings.

It was under such circumstances that Jean saw some inhabitants of the

neighbourhood dragging a woman and two men before the officers of

a detachment of troops guarding the Théâtre Français. The civilian

population indeed showed itself even more ferocious than the soldiers,

and the newspapers that had resumed publication clamoured for

extermination. The violent throng which Jean encountered was especially

wrathful with the woman, a _pétroleuse_ it was said, one of those

creatures the fear of whom now haunted the public imagination, who

were accused of prowling about in the evening, slinking along past the

houses of well-to-do people and flinging canfuls of flaming petroleum

into the cellars. This one, so the crowd shouted, had been surprised

whilst crouching before a vent-hole in the Rue St. Anne. And despite

her protests and her sobs she was flung with the two men into the

ditch of a barricade, which had not yet been filled up; and there, in

that black hole, all three of them were shot like wolves caught in

a trap. Promenaders stood by looking on; among them a lady leaning

on her husband's arm, whilst a pastry-cook's boy, who was carrying a

pie to some house in the neighbourhood, lingered whistling a hunting

refrain.[63]

As Jean, with his heart frozen, was hastening on towards the Rue des

Orties a sudden recollection dawned upon him. Was not that Chouteau,

formerly of his squad in the 106th, whom he had seen watching that

execution--clad in the honest white blouse of a workman and waving his

arm in an approving fashion? Jean knew what part that bandit, traitor,

robber, and murderer had played! For a moment he felt inclined to

retrace his steps, denounce the scoundrel, and have him shot upon the

corpses of the three others. How sad to think that the most guilty

should ever escape punishment, and air their impunity in the sunlight,

whilst thousands of innocents lie rotting in the ground!

Hearing his steps upon the stairs, Henriette came to meet him on the

landing: 'Be prudent, he is in a state of terrible excitement to-day,'

said she; 'the major has been again and gives me but little hope.'

Bouroche indeed had shaken his head ominously, declaring that he was

as yet unable to promise anything. Still, perhaps the sufferer's youth

would triumph over the complications which he feared.

'Ah! it's you,' said Maurice feverishly as soon as he caught sight of

Jean. 'I was waiting for you to come. What is going on? How do matters

stand?' And sitting up in bed, with his back resting on the pillow,

in front of the window which he had compelled his sister to re-open,

he pointed to the city, which another furnace-like glow was now

illumining: 'It's beginning again, eh? Paris is burning, and this time

it will all burn.'

Since sunset, indeed, all the distant districts up the Seine had been

illumined by the conflagration of the Grenier d'Abondance.[64] At the

Tuileries and the Council of State, the roofs and ceilings must have

been falling in, imparting fresh vigour to the braziers of smouldering

beams, for here and there the fires burst forth again, and flakes and

sparks arose. In this way, too, many houses where it was thought the

fires had gone out suddenly began flaming again once more. For three

days past, the night had no sooner gathered in, than the city kindled

afresh; it seemed as though the darkness breathed upon the paling

embers, fanning them again into flames, which it scattered to the four

corners of the horizon. Ah! that hellish city, which began to redden

as soon as the twilight came, burning and burning for seven days,

illumining with its monstrous torches the nights of the Bloody Week!

And on that Friday night, when the magazines of La Villette burned

down, so intense was the light thrown over the immense city, that one

might have thought it fired upon every side, invaded and submerged by

the flames. Under the ensanguined sky, the lurid districts rolled their

waves of shimmering roofs as far as the eye could see.

'The end has come,' repeated Maurice. 'Paris is burning!'

He excited himself with these words, repeating them a score of times

in the febrile longing to talk that had come over him after the heavy

somnolence which for three days had kept him almost mute. However, the

sound of stifled sobbing made him turn his head.

'What! Is it you, little sister, you so brave? You are crying because I

am about to die?'

She interrupted him, protesting: 'No, no, you will not die.'

'Yes, it is better so, it is necessary! Ah! nothing of much account

will be lost in me. Before the war I caused you so much worry. I cost

you dearly both in heart and purse. All those senseless things I was

guilty of--all those acts of folly I committed and which would have

brought me to a bad end, perhaps--who knows?--to imprisonment, the

gutter----'

Again did she violently interrupt him: 'Be quiet, be quiet! You have

atoned for it all!'

He became silent and reflected for a moment: 'Well, yes, I shall

have atoned, perhaps--when I am dead. Ah! my old Jean, you all the

same rendered us a first-rate service when you gave me that bayonet

thrust----'

But Jean, whose eyes were swollen with tears, also protested: 'Don't

say that. Do you want me to go and batter my brains out against a

wall?'

In a burning voice, Maurice continued: 'Do you remember what you said

to me after Sedan, that it sometimes benefited one to receive a good

blow? And you added, too, that when there was any rottenness anywhere,

when one had a diseased limb past healing, it was far better to lop it

off with an axe than to die of it as one dies of the cholera. I have

often thought of those words since then, since I have been alone, shut

up in this mad, miserable Paris. And you see, it's I that am the rotten

limb that you have lopped off----'

His excitement was increasing; he no longer listened to the entreaties

of Henriette and Jean, whom he altogether terrified. Amid his fever he

continued talking almost deliriously, with a profusion of symbolical

terms and vivid imagery. It was the healthy portion of France, that

which was endowed with common-sense and a well-balanced mind, the

peasant portion, which had remained nearest to the soil, which was now

suppressing the crazed, exasperated portion--that which the Empire

had corrupted, which had been driven mad by enjoyment and senseless

fancies; and it had been necessary that France should thus carve into

her own flesh, thus mutilate herself, scarce knowing what she was

doing. Yes, that bath of blood, of French blood, had been necessary; it

was the abominable holocaust, the living sacrifice offered up amidst

purifying fire. And now the Calvary was ascended, the most awful of

agonies had been reached, the crucified nation was expiating its sins

and was about to be born again.

'And you, my old friend Jean, you are the one with the simple mind and

the stout heart. Go, go; take your pick and take your trowel, go and

turn the soil over in the fields, and build the house anew! But as for

me, you have done well to lop me off, since I was the ulcer clinging to

your bones!'

He was again delirious, and wished to rise and lean out of the window.

'Paris is burning,' he gasped once more; 'nothing of it will remain.

Ah! I desired it, longed for it; that flame which carries everything

away, which heals everything--it is doing good work. Let me go down;

let me help finish the work of humanity and liberty!'

Jean had the greatest difficulty in getting him back into bed again,

whilst Henriette in tears spoke to him of their childhood, and

entreated him, in the name of their affection, to be calm. And meantime

the fiery glow above the vast city had spread even farther; the sea of

flames was now gaining the dark, distant limits of the horizon, and

the sky looked like the vaulted roof of some giant, red-hot oven.

Meantime, athwart the lurid light of the fires, the dense smoke rising

from the Ministry of Finances, which since two days previously had been

stubbornly burning without a flame, still slowly travelled by like a

sombre pall of mourning.

On the morrow, which was Saturday, a sudden improvement took place

in Maurice's condition; he was much calmer, the fever had subsided,

and Jean was greatly delighted to find Henriette smiling, and again

dreaming of their intimacy in the happy future, which seemed still

possible. Was Destiny indeed about to pardon? She spent her nights

in watching; she did not stir from that room where her active

Cinderella-like gentleness, her nimble, silent ministrations were like

a continuous caress. And, that evening, Jean lingered in the company of

his friends, with a pleasure that astonished him and made him tremble.

The troops had captured Belleville and the Buttes-Chaumont during the

day, so that the Père-Lachaise cemetery, transformed into an entrenched

camp, was now the only point where the resistance continued. It seemed

to Jean that the whole terrible business was now over, and he even

asserted that no more prisoners were being shot. He merely alluded to

the flocks of captives who were being despatched to Versailles. Passing

along the quay that morning, he had met one of those convoys--men in

blouses, men in coats, and men in their shirt-sleeves, with women of

every age, some with the wrinkled, scraggy visages of furies, and

others in the flower of their youth, girls barely fifteen, but all

blended in a great, long, rolling wave of wretchedness and revolt,

which the soldiers urged along in the bright sunlight, and which

the good folks of Versailles, it was said, greeted with jeering and

hooting, and belaboured with sticks and parasols.

On the Sunday, however, Jean was terrified. It was the last day of

that hateful week. Since the triumphal rising of the sun on that warm,

clear holiday morning he had felt the thrill of the supreme convulsion

passing through the city. It was only now that people learned of the

repeated massacres of the hostages--the archbishop, the priest of

the Madeleine, and the others who had been shot at La Roquette on

the Wednesday; the Dominican monks of Arcueil, who had been picked

off on the run like hares on the Thursday; the other priests and the

gendarmes, who, to the number of forty-seven, had been despatched on

the ramparts near the Rue Haxo on the Friday; and now the fury of the

reprisals had burst forth once more, and the troops were executing _en

masse_ the last prisoners that they made. Throughout that beautiful

Sunday, the sound of platoon firing rang out without cessation from

the courtyard of the Lobau barracks, where all was blood and smoke and

groaning. At La Roquette two hundred and twenty-seven poor wretches,

captured here and there, were shot down in a heap. At the Père-Lachaise

cemetery, bombarded for four days and at last conquered tomb by tomb,

one hundred and forty-eight captives were flung against a wall, the

plaster of which was bespattered with big tears of blood; and three of

these men, who had been merely wounded by the discharge were promptly

recaptured and finished off, when they endeavoured to escape. Among

those twelve thousand unhappy beings who lost their lives through the

Commune, how many innocents there were for each rogue who met his

deserts! It was said that orders to stop the executions had come from

Versailles; but the butchery still continued, and Thiers, amid all

the pure glory he achieved by the Liberation of the Territory, was

to become, for many, the legendary Assassin of Paris; whilst Marshal

MacMahon, the beaten general of Frœschweiler, whose proclamation of

victory was to be seen on every wall, was to pass into history as

the Conqueror of Père-Lachaise. And Paris, strolling forth into the

bright sunshine in its Sunday best, put on that day a festive air;

dense crowds obstructed the reconquered streets, promenaders strolled

cheerfully to view the smoking ruins, and mothers, holding their

little children by the hand, stopped for a moment and listened with an

expression of interest to the deadened reports of the firing at the

Lobau barracks.

When, on the Sunday evening, just as daylight was waning, Jean climbed

the dark staircase of the house in the Rue des Orties, a frightful

presentiment was oppressing his heart.

He entered the room and at once saw that the inevitable end had come.

Maurice lay dead upon the little bed, killed by hæmorrhage, as Major

Bouroche had feared. The red farewell of the setting sun was stealing

in by the open window, and two candles were already burning on the

table near the head of the bed. And Henriette, on her knees, in her

widow's robe which she had not quitted, was weeping there in silence.

Hearing the door open, she raised her head and shuddered as she saw

Jean come in. He, in his despair, darted forward to take her hands that

he might in a loving grasp mingle his own grief with hers. But he felt

that the little hands were trembling, that all her quivering form was

recoiling from him in revolt, that she was tearing herself away from

him for ever. Was it not indeed all over between them now? Maurice's

grave parted them like a bottomless abyss. And then he also could only

fall upon his knees at the bedside, sobbing softly.

However, after a brief silence, Henriette spoke: 'I had turned my

back,' she said, 'and was holding a bowl of broth, when all at once he

gave a cry--I only had time to rush up to him and he died, calling me

and calling you amid a stream of blood.'

Her brother, O God! Her fondly loved Maurice, adored prior to birth

even, her second self, whom she had reared, saved, her sole affection

since she had seen her poor Weiss fall riddled with bullets against

that wall at Bazeilles! So War was taking her whole heart; she was to

remain alone in the world, a widow, brotherless, with none to love her!

'Ah! good Lord!' cried Jean sobbing, 'it's my fault. My dear little

fellow, for whom I would have laid down my life, and whom I killed like

the brute I am! What will become of us? Can you _ever_ forgive me?'

And at that moment their eyes met and they were overwhelmed by that

which they now, at last, could clearly read in them. All the past

arose: the secluded little room at Remilly where they had spent such

sad and yet such pleasant days. He bethought himself of that dream

of his, that dream which had stolen upon him quite unconsciously,

which even later had been barely outlined--life together over yonder,

marriage, a little house, a field to till, which would suffice for

the needs of a couple of modest, simple tastes. And now the dream had

become an ardent desire, a penetrating conviction that with such a

woman as she was, so loving and so industrious, life would have proved

an earthly Paradise. And she who had had no inkling of this dream

in the chaste, unconscious bestowal of her heart, could now clearly

see and understand everything. That remote marriage, she herself had

unknowingly desired it. The germinating seed had covertly sprouted,

and now it was love that she felt for that man by the side of whom she

had at first merely felt comforted. And their eyes told it to them,

and they now loved openly, at the moment when they must part for ever!

That frightful sacrifice had yet to be accomplished, the last rending,

their happiness--still possible the day before--now crumbling to ashes

like everything else, swept away by the stream of blood which had just

carried off their brother.

With a long and painful effort of the knees Jean raised himself to his

feet again. 'Farewell!' Henriette remained motionless on the tiled

floor. 'Farewell!'

However, Jean had drawn near to Maurice, that he might look upon him

for the last time. He gazed upon his lofty forehead, which seemed

loftier still in death, his long thin face and his sightless eyes,

once rather wild but whence all the madness had now departed. Jean

longed to embrace his dear little fellow, as he had so often called

him, but dared not. He beheld himself covered with his brother's blood,

and recoiled before the horror of Destiny. Ah! what a death amid the

Downfall of a world! On that last day, when nothing but a few shreds

was left of the expiring Commune, this additional victim had been

required! Thirsting for Justice, the poor fellow had departed amid the

supreme convulsion of his great black dream: that grandiose, monstrous

conception of the destruction of the old social system, of Paris burnt,

of the soil turned up and purified so that there might spring from it

the idyll of another Golden Age!

With his heart full of anguish Jean turned to the window and looked

out on Paris. The beautiful day was serenely drawing to its close, and

the sun, now on a level with the horizon, was illumining the city with

a bright red glow. It looked not unlike a sun of blood poised upon a

boundless sea. The panes of thousands of windows were scintillating as

though on fire, inflamed by invisible bellows; the roofs glowed like

beds of live coals; yellow walls, lofty rust-coloured monuments flared

and sparkled in the evening air like brisk faggot fires. And was not

this the final pyrotechnical sheaf, the gigantic purple 'bouquet'--all

Paris burning like a giant hurdle, like some ancient forest of dead,

dry trees, fleeting away into the heavens in soaring flames and sparks.

The fires were burning still, volumes of ruddy smoke continued to rise,

and a loud confused clamour could be heard, perhaps the last groans of

the men shot down at the Lobau barracks, or perhaps the gay chatter

of the women and the laughter of the children dining in the open air

outside the wine-shops, after their pleasant promenade. From the

pillaged houses and public buildings, from the torn-up streets, from

the depths of all the havoc and suffering, the buzz and stir of life

still sounded amidst the blaze of that regal sunset, whilst Paris was

dwindling into embers.

And Jean then experienced an extraordinary sensation. It seemed to

him even in the slowly declining light as though another aurora were

already rising above the flaming city. And yet this was apparently the

end of all, for Destiny had proved implacable, accumulating disaster

upon disaster, such as no nation had ever before experienced: the

continual defeats; the lost provinces; the milliards to be paid; the

most frightful of civil wars drowned in a flood of gore; street after

street in ruins and littered with corpses; no money left, no honour

left, a whole world to be built afresh. And in it all he, for his own

part, was losing his lacerated heart--no Maurice left, no Henriette,

all the happy life that might have been swept away in the storm. And

yet beyond the furnace, roaring still, in the depths of the great

tranquil heavens so supremely limpid, perennial hope was rising once

more. 'Twas the certainty of rejuvenescence, the rejuvenescence of

eternal nature and of eternal humanity, the renewal promised unto those

who hope and toil; the tree which throws out a new and powerful stem

when the rotten branch, whose poisonous sap was blighting the leaves,

has been lopped away.

'Farewell!' Jean repeated in a sob.

Henriette did not raise her head; her face was hidden by her joined

hands: 'Farewell!'

The ravaged field was lying waste, the burnt house was level with

the ground; and Jean, the most humble and the most woeful, went off

marching towards the future--to the great and laborious task of

building up a new France.

THE END

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

The foregoing translation of 'La Débâcle' has been subjected to some

revision since its first issue in book form, many verbal alterations

having been made throughout. Exception has been taken, however, to

certain passages and expressions which I have not thought fit to

modify. For instance, an English officer has pointed out to me that

the description of the artillery practice on p. 261 can hardly be

correct, as the French guns must have been fired by friction-tubes,

and not by matches. If there be any error here, it is, however, M.

Zola's and not mine, so that I have allowed the passage to remain as

it originally stood. Objection has also been taken to the description

of the execution of the captured Communists at the Lobau barracks (p.

526), and the expression 'shot down almost at point-blank range' has

been severely criticised. It is certainly awkward, but the meaning I

wished to convey was that a space of no more than seven or eight feet

intervened between the rifles of the firing party and the men summarily

sentenced to be shot. I may add that I personally witnessed some of

these executions.

I should further like to say that I am extremely grateful to my

critics and correspondents for their suggestions, several of which I

have utilised in revising the translation for this new edition. The

judgment passed by the Press on my work was on the whole extremely

flattering, and no doubt largely conduced to the success of the book

in this country. 'The Downfall' in its French and English forms has,

I believe, become the most popular of all M. Zola's novels. No fewer

than 176,000 copies of the original have been sold in the space of one

year, yielding the author the handsome sum of 4,200_l._ in addition to

the 1,600_l._ paid to him for the serial rights in France, and about

2,000_l._ derived from the rights of translation.

E. A. V.

_November_ 1893.

NOTES.

[1] Commanded by Marshal MacMahon.--_Trans._

[2] The hero of M. Zola's novel 'La Terre,' son of Antoine Macquart and

brother of Gervaise, the heroine of 'L'Assommoir.'--_Trans._

[3] Weissenburg was stormed by the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia

on August 4, when General Abel Douay was killed, and 800 of his troops

were taken prisoners.--_Trans._

[4] This was Madame Marie Sass, the prima donna.--_Trans._

[5] It was stationed at Rome and Civita Vecchia for the defence of Pius

IX.--_Trans._

[6] Commanded by the notorious General de Failly who had slaughtered

the Garibaldians at Mentana three years previously, and who, as

aide-de-camp to Napoleon III., had rendered the latter certain services

of an equivocal character. This was proved by the secret papers found

at the Tuileries after the Revolution and published by the Government

of National Defence. To reward M. de Failly, the Emperor appointed him

to the command of an army corps that he might have an opportunity of

winning the _bâton_ of Marshal of France.--_Trans._

[7] The Plebiscitum of May 1870, when the policy of Napoleon III. was

ratified by 7,350,000 votes against 1,500,000.--_Trans._

[8] August 6, 1870. The French, under MacMahon, defeated at Wœrth

by the Crown Prince of Prussia with the loss of two eagles, six

mitrailleuses, thirty cannon, and 6,000 prisoners. The French also

defeated and driven back at Speichern by General Steinmetz on the same

day.--_Trans._

[9] Under the military law then in force in France, a young man drawn

at the conscription was not compelled to serve provided he could pay

for a substitute. Loubet was one of the latter. A similar regulation

obtains in our militia.--_Trans._

[10] See note 5.

[11] A nickname given to Napoleon III.; properly the name of the

workman whose clothes he wore in escaping from the fort of Ham in

1846.--_Trans._

[12] Presided over by the renegade Emile Ollivier, who declared war

with 'a light heart.'--_Trans._

[13] Formed by the mendacious Count de Palikao.--_Trans._

[14] A nickname given to Rouher on account of the large share of

authority he exercised during many years of the Empire.--_Trans._

[15] The Guides were a regiment of light cavalry wearing a hussar style

of uniform, but armed with carbines as well as sabres. The Cent-Gardes

were the imperial bodyguard, picked men of the heavy cavalry, 100

strong as their name implied.--_Trans._

[16] Abel, not Félix Douay.--_Trans._

[17] The Germans brought about 40,000 men into action to overcome these

5,000 Frenchmen.--_Trans._

[18] The Chasseurs d'Afrique thus designate their squads, in imitation

of the Arabs.--_Trans._

[19] On August 14 the Emperor left Metz, Bazaine's army commenced its

retreat, and an indecisive action took place at Courcelles and Pange;

on the 16th Prince Frederick Charles attacked Bazaine at Mars-la-Tour,

and stopped his retreat; and on the 18th the French were again attacked

at Gravelotte, and, after nine hours' fighting, driven back towards

Metz.--_Trans._

[20] The mendacious War Minister, Count de Palikao, had the effrontery

to assert before the Corps Législatif that this engagement had really

taken place, whereas it had no existence, save in the imagination of

some unscrupulous French journalist.--_Trans._

[21] The marching powers of the German infantry are well known. Before

a Prussian recruit is entered in a foot regiment he is carefully

examined in order to see whether his feet will bear the strain of long

marches, and the greatest attention is paid to the fit of the excellent

boots with which he is provided. In war time, moreover, whenever

practicable, the knapsacks are conveyed in a cart attached to each

company, in order to facilitate rapid motion. Such care is sure to reap

its reward.--_Trans._

[22] Meaning the surgeon. French army surgeons are commonly

designated by their military rank, without reference to their medical

qualifications.--_Trans._

[23] In point of fact the Royal Prussian head quarters were at

Bar-le-Duc on August 25, and it was there that the Crown Prince heard

that MacMahon had made at first for Rheims, and then had struck off in

a northerly direction. Count Moltke immediately decided that the army

of the Crown Prince of Saxony, which on August 22 had started on its

westward march from before Metz by Verdun and St. Menehould, should

advance to meet MacMahon, and hold him in the Argonne; whilst the Crown

Prince of Prussia's forces hastened northward by forced marches in view

of sweeping round the right flank of the French, and hemming them in

against the Belgian frontier. On August 26 the Saxons were marching

for Stenay on the Meuse and the Prussians to Clermont-en-Argonne and

Grand-Pré.--_Trans._

[24] In the engagements fought this day (August 30) between the Germans

and De Failly's corps and other portions of MacMahon's army, 7,000 of

the French were taken prisoners, and a quantity of their camp equipage

and twenty guns were captured.--_Trans._

[25] Equivalent to our Charlie.

[26] Napoleon III. had very short legs, and on foot he looked

comparatively insignificant. But the length of his trunk gave him a

commanding presence when he was on horseback, and he then appeared

taller than the majority of his officers.--_Trans._

[27] In order that the reader may form some idea of Bazeilles, it

may be mentioned that in 1870 it was a large village of over 2,000

inhabitants. The great majority of these were weavers. There were a few

cloth manufactories and fulleries there, together with some ironworks

with furnaces, plate-rolling mills, etc. Balan, between Bazeilles and

Sedan, had a population of 1,500; whilst Sedan itself counted over

13,000 inhabitants, but nearly half of these had fled to Belgium prior

to the battle.--_Trans._

[28] This incident will not surprise those who remember how, during the

bombardment of Paris, the urchins used to lie about waiting for the

shells, and, after each explosion, pounce upon the splinters with the

view of selling them as 'souvenirs of the siege.'--_Trans._

[29] The sergeants of the French Artillery are usually styled

quartermasters. This was Honoré's rank. We have quartermaster sergeants

in our own service.--_Trans._

[30] For enlightenment on this point and many others we must wait for

the publication of Marshal MacMahon's memoirs, the portion of which

dealing with the Franco-German war was written some years ago, three

copies of it being then printed for private use.--_Trans._

[31] A celebrated French surgeon of the first half of the present

century.--_Trans._

[32] Literally the Hollow of Givonne. It should not be confounded with

Givonne proper, which lies some miles to the north.--_Trans._

[33] Licorice-root water, a favourite drink among Parisian

children.--_Trans._

[34] The shooting of the civilian inhabitants who took part in

defending the village was in accordance with the cruel, but recognised,

usages of war; but for the deliberate burning of their bodies there

can be no excuse. However, some English newspaper correspondents,

on the German side, asserted at the time that the occurrence was

accidental, both French and Bavarian corpses being burnt by the falling

houses.--_Trans._

[35] M. Zola has omitted to mention that, whilst Count von Bismarck

and the Emperor were together, they came out of the house and sat

talking for a couple of hours in the open air, on chairs that were

placed there for them. Meantime, the staff officers present remained

lying on a patch of grass not far off. When Count von Bismarck had left

him, the Emperor returned into the house, which curiously enough was

tenanted not by a French family, but by that of a Luxemburg weaver,

speaking both French and German. After considerable delay Napoleon

was escorted to the château of Bellevue by a detachment of Prussian

Cuirassiers.--_Trans._

[36] When we remember that the Marseillaise is typical of the French

Revolution, which was the origin of the power of the Bonapartes, the

significance of both these engravings, in the circumstances in which

the Emperor found himself, was truly remarkable. He stood there, as it

were, betwixt Alpha and Omega.--_Trans._

[37] The length of the French league is about 2 miles 6 furlongs.

[38] In time of peace a bottle of the common wine, here priced at seven

francs, had cost about twelve sous, whilst the usual charge for a

liqueur glass of so-called brandy was no more than three sous.--_Trans._

[39] It may be explained that M. Zola borrows this simile from the

Roman ritual, and refers to the Stations of the Cross.--_Trans._

[40] M. Zola, as was to be expected, invariably alludes to these

battles by the names adopted in France. In England, however, we

generally employ the names which the Germans gave to these engagements.

It should therefore be explained that the battle of Borny is also that

of Courcelles; that Rézonville is also Mars-la-Tour; and St. Privât,

Gravelotte. These battles have been referred to in the notes to chap.

III., Part I (note 19).--_Trans._

[41] The 'combined army,' so the Germans called it.--_Trans._

[42] M. Zola's assertion that Bazaine made no attempt to break through

the German lines (subsequent, of course, to Sept. 1) is not correct,

for after a delay of five weeks he made one apparently serious

effort--in the direction of Thionville, on Oct. 7. Then, however, he

remained idle for twenty days and had to capitulate. The translator,

who was present at the marshal's trial as an English newspaper

correspondent, and heard and sifted all the evidence, has never

entertained a doubt as to the justice of the court's finding. We shot

Admiral Byng for dereliction of duty insignificant in comparison with

the charges brought home to Bazaine. Certainly the latter had ability

as a soldier; he had, partly by merit, but also considerably by favour,

risen from the ranks to be a marshal of France; however, his private

character was execrable, his greed well-nigh as insatiable as that of

Marlborough, and his instinctive cruelty of disposition, as exemplified

in Mexico, notorious. Like Marshals Magnan and St. Arnaud, he was a

type of the unscrupulous military adventurer.--_Trans._

[43] The leaders of this rising (most of the phases of which were

witnessed by the translator, who was then in Paris) were Gustave

Flourens, Blanqui, and various officers of the National Guard who

afterwards became members of the Commune. During the afternoon and

evening M. Ernest Picard, General Trochu, and M. Jules Ferry managed

to escape from the Hôtel-de-Ville and succeeded in delivering their

colleagues of the Government at 3 a.m. on Nov. 1.--_Trans._

[44] The eleven fortified places here enumerated were garrisoned by

over 45,000 men of the regular army, all of whom became prisoners of

war.--_Trans._

[45] An allusion of course to Beaumarchais' immortal creation of the

boy-lover.--_Trans._

[46] Gambetta was called a furious madman by Thiers.--_Trans._

[47] The engagement fought on Nov. 9 when D'Aurelle de Paladines with

the army of the Loire defeated Von der Tann's Bavarians, with the

result that the French for a brief period again secured possession of

Orleans.--_Trans._

[48] Fought on December 22-23.--_Trans._

[49] One hundred and twenty millions sterling.

[50] Equivalent to rather more than 10½ ozs.--_Trans._

[51] During the last week in December the number of deaths from natural

causes alone was already 3,280, and during the week ending January

21 it had risen to 4,465, an average of 115 per thousand! And at

the same time the wounded were dying off 'like rotten sheep' in the

ambulances.--_Trans._

[52] Neither the Rue des Orties nor the hill known as the Butte des

Moulins now exists, both having been swept away to make room for

the Avenue de l'Opéra, the lower portion of which runs across the

spot where the Butte, with its few dingy, narrow streets formerly

rose.--_Trans._

[53] Thiers did try to spare it, and Count von Bismarck in the Emperor

William's name offered to forego the triumphal entry if Belfort were

surrendered to Germany. But this proposal was rejected by Thiers, to

his everlasting credit.--_Trans._

[54] This appellation was for brevity's sake bestowed on the Federated

National Guards serving the Commune, whilst the Government troops were

habitually called the Versaillese.--_Trans._

[55] The translator enabled several French friends to get out of Paris

at this time by lending them, in turn, his English passport.--_Trans._

[56] This is not quite accurate. The excessive prudence of the French

commanders at the outset was mainly due to the fear that their men

might fraternise with the National Guards. This fear was altogether

unfounded, as the troops, most of whom had gone through the war, were

enraged with the Communists, whose rising had delayed their discharge.

Nevertheless, the officers remembered what had happened at the outset

of the insurrection, and in the earlier stages of the street-fighting

seldom allowed their men to come within speaking distance of the

National Guards. Officers of high rank admitted this to the translator

at the time.--_Trans._

[57] The Magenta and Solferino campaign of 1859.--_Trans._

[58] Containing the throne-room and the Prince Imperial's

apartments.--_Trans._

[59] The place of revelry where Napoleon III. and his wife, his

mistresses, his sycophants, his corrupt ministers and his incompetent

commanders, had danced and made merry for well-nigh twenty

years.--_Trans._

[60] The State depository for the crown jewels, plate, works of art,

valuable articles of furniture, &c., not used in the palaces.--_Trans._

[61] Hand-pumps were then used by the French firemen. I do not think

there was a single steam fire-engine in Paris at that time. I well

remember assisting in the pumping both in the Rue Royale and at the

Palais de Justice, during those terrible last days of the Commune which

M. Zola here so forcibly and accurately describes.--_Trans._

[62] I remember that both the Place de la Concorde and the Esplanade

des Invalides were littered with these papers, some in fragments quite

charred and black, and others but slightly burnt at the corners. Among

the less damaged documents I noticed were some curious petitions of the

old _émigrés_ of the Revolution beseeching Louis XVIII. to give them

back their ancestral estates.--_Trans._

[63] Among those who witnessed this scene, or at all events one very

similar on the same spot, were the translator's father and brother, Mr.

Henry and Mr. Arthur Vizetelly.

[64] A vast magazine where cereals and oil, especially the latter, were

stored in considerable quantities.--_Trans._