Yes, yes, this is the very spot! Here the great tragedy of my life was
enacted. Twenty-four weary years of my existence have passed, and until
this moment I have never summoned sufficient courage to visit it. Ah,
Dieu! how all has changed! Paris is herself again.
You may perhaps know the place. Near the Porte de la Muette, a little
way down the Boulevard Suchet, in the direction of Passy, the
fortifications of the city recommence after the open space which gives
access to the Bois. The ponderous walls are the same, though the
breaches made by the German shells have been repaired, and the stones on
which I tread bear no traces of the men's blood that once made them so
slippery. One hundred paces from the corner of the Boulevard there is a
steep little path running up the grass-grown mound, beside a railing.
Ascend it, and you will find yourself on the top of the great wall,
below which, deep down in the fosse, on the outside towards the Bois,
there is a well-kept market garden. The only noises on this sunny
afternoon are the twittering of birds and the rustling of leaves--
different sounds and a different outlook indeed to that which is
indelibly impressed upon my memory. All are gone, gone! and I alone
remain--aged, infirm, forsaken, and forgotten!
What matters, though I still wear my faded scrap of yellow and green
ribbon upon the lapel of my shabby coat--what matters if I am an exile,
an outlaw; that here, in Paris, after all these years, I dare not
inscribe my proper name in the register? To both friends and enemies I
am dead!
As I stand looking away over the market garden, towards the shady wood,
a film gathers in my eyes, and I am carried back into the terrible past,
to those black, fateful days when France lay helpless under the iron
heel of the invader, who had encamped around St. Cloud and Suresnes.
Paris--fettered, existing upon black bread and horse-flesh--shivered
under an icy mantle. The black branches of the leafless trees over in
the Bois stood out distinctly against the grey, stormy sky, and upon the
ground snow was lying thickly. Hour after hour, day after day, week
after week, we had held those walls, regardless of the hail of shell
poured upon us from beyond the trees, and replying with monotonous,
unceasing regularity. Hundreds of our gallant comrades were, alas!
lying dead; hundreds were in the temporary hospitals established in the
neighbouring churches; but we, the survivors--half-starved, with the
biting wind chilling our bones, and so weak that our greatcoats felt as
heavy as millstones,--resolved, every one of us, to face death and do
our duty. We knew well that to hold out much longer would be
impossible. In those dark December days the city was starving. Our
country had been overrun by the Prussian legions, and sooner or later we
must succumb to the inevitable.
The night was dark and moonless, as to and fro I paced on sentry duty.
My post was a lonely one, under the strongest portion of the wall, at
the point I have already indicated. Away in the direction of Courbevoie
there was a lurid glare in the sky, showing that the enemy had committed
another act of incendiarism; and now and then the booming of artillery
echoed like distant thunder. In our quarter the guns of the enemy had
ceased their fire--a silence that we felt was ominous. Under my feet
the snow crunched as I marched slowly up and down; and with rifle
loaded, and ready for any emergency, I waited patiently for relief,
which would come at dawn. As I tramped on, I thought of my home away in
the centre of the inert, trembling city; of my young wife, blue-eyed,
fair-haired, from whom I had been torn away ere our honeymoon was
scarcely over. How, I wondered, was she faring? As an advocate I had
been distinctly successful, having been entrusted with quite a number of
_causes celebres_; but on the outbreak of war my chances of fortune had
been suddenly wrecked, and I had been called upon to serve with the
106th Regiment of Infantry, first under General Chanzy on the Loire, and
afterwards taking part in the defence of Paris.
Though now so near the woman I loved, I saw very little of her; indeed,
I had not been able to snatch an hour to run home for the past
fortnight. Yet, while I trudged on, I knew that one of the truest and
best women on earth was awaiting me _au troisieme_ in the great old
house in the Rue St. Sauveur.
I think that for some time I must have been oblivious to my
surroundings, for on turning sharply, my eyes suddenly detected some
indistinct object, moving cautiously in the shadow. Something prompted
me to refrain from challenging, and, with rifle ready, I quickly hurried
to the spot. With a cry of surprise, a man in a workman's blouse sprang
forward right up to the muzzle of my gun.