Dunoisse never had sought, never would seek, news or speech or sight of
the faithless friend; but now at last, without seeking, within a few
days of his return to Paris, came the vision of de Moulny....
It rose before him in a flare of artificial light that made a yellow
patch upon the foggy gloaming of that fateful day when the White
Flag of Orleans that drooped--or dripped in rainy weather--above the
stately central Pavilion of the Palace of the Tuileries began to show
unmistakable signs of coming down.
Such signs as the unceasing, resistless rolling of huge, dense,
continually-augmenting crowds of the people along the boulevards;
through the wider of the ordinary Paris thoroughfares, murmuring as
they went, with a sound like the great sea. With other crowds streaming
in upon these from the suburbs. With thirty-seven battalions of
Infantry, one of Chasseurs d’Orléans, three companies of Engineers,
twenty squadrons of Cavalry, five thousand veterans of the Municipal
Guard, and five batteries of Artillery, garrisoning the capital. With
students of the Schools of Technical Military Instruction, students
of Law and Medicine, students of Art, students of Music, starting the
_Marseillaise_ in the Place de la Madeleine. With the chant taken up by
the Titanic voice of the people. With the breaking of a tidal wave of
humanity over the palisades of the Chamber of Deputies; a rolling-back
of this before the trampling horses of an advancing squadron of
Dragoons; a similar advance upon the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
repelled by Municipal Guards; a shutting of shops, a mushroom-like
springing up of Barricades, radiating from the Cloisters of Ste.
Marie in the very heart of ancient Paris, extending from the mouths of
tortuous streets to the gullets of narrow, crooked alleys, so as to
form a citadel where Revolutionists concentrated, waiting instructions
from headquarters of secret societies,--pending results of sittings of
Committees of Insurrection, held by day and by night in the offices of
the Republican Journals,--ready to act without these if they were not
forthcoming. While by rail and by road, in answer to the urgent summons
of muddy dispatch-bearers on wearied horses, or at the imperative
tap-tapping of the electric needle; amidst the roaring and grinding of
iron wheels and the trampling of iron-shod hoofs; a never-ending flood
of armed men rolled down on Paris.
Now, upon a deputation from the Fourth Legion of the National Guard,
calling upon a certain Crémieux, Deputy of the Opposition, with a
petition to the Chamber, demanding dismissal of Ministers and Electoral
Reform, came by the dawning of the twenty-fourth of February the rumor
that this demanded change was actually To Be--a rumor meaning little
to some, welcomed by others as the first indication of the scepter of
St. Louis falling from a weak, relaxing Royal hand. Huge bonfires,
made by students, of the heaped-up wooden benches belonging to the
Champs-Élysées, had showed officers of the Staff galloping hither and
thither with orders and counter-orders all through the raw, bleak
night; had illuminated the crowds assembled to stare at the spectacle
of Royal troops bivouacking on boulevards and public squares; and had
been reflected in the shining bronze and polished steel of cannon,
posted on the Places du Carrousel and de la Concorde.
But as yet, though Paris had seen the pulling-down, by detachments
of the military, of the barricades choking those narrow labyrinthine
streets that were the veins of the heart of her, and had winked at
the building-up of these by the Revolutionists as fast as they were
demolished; but, though a volley or two had made matchwood of the
tables and chairs, the market-carts and omnibuses of the Barricades;
though some minor conflicts between the People and the Police had
ended with the tearing of tricolors and the capture of a red flannel
petticoat mounted on a barber’s pole, and the dispatch of a few laden
stretchers to the Hospitals; though a bayonet-point or so had been
reddened; though the edge of a saber may have been used here and
there, instead of the flat; though a guerilla-warfare between scattered
groups of Socialists with revolvers and bludgeons and small parties of
Dragoons and Cuirassiers made public streets and squares perilous for
peaceable citizens; though Republicans had disarmed the National Guards
of the Batignolles and burned the station at the barrier, and though
the _rappel_ had been beaten and Legion by Legion these tax-paying
citizen-soldiers were answering to the call to arms,--as yet the
anticipated insurrection had not begun.
The sails of the Red Windmills that grind out Civil War hung slack,
though the _piquets_ of Dragoons and Chasseurs, posted at the openings
of the streets and thoroughfares, had been on duty for thirty-six
hours; were swaying with weariness and hunger in the saddles of their
exhausted, tottering horses, their haggard faces half-hidden as they
dozed behind the high collars of their long gray cloaks....
How did the spark reach the powder? Processions had been formed in
token of popular delight at the announced change in the Government.
Bloused workmen armed with pikes and sabers and pistols that had done
duty in 1793, half-fledged boys with bludgeons or cheap revolvers,
women of the Faubourgs with babies or choppers or broomsticks, the
swarming life of the poorest quarters formed into column under the
Tricolor or the Red Flag. Such a column came muddily rolling towards
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, filled the Rue de Choiseul with no
sound beyond the trampling of feet, many of them in wooden shoes, many
more naked, while the head of the column advanced upon the front of
the Hotel, that, like its assailable sides and rear, was protected by
a steel hedge, the bayonets of a half-battalion of the Line, hastily
summoned from their barracks in the Rue de l’Assyrie, some twenty-four
hours previously.
The Colonel and one or two officers who were personally acquainted
with the Minister in popular disfavor had been summoned to a
conference--involving dinner--in his private apartments looking on
the garden--from which he was a little later to escape, disguised in
a footman’s livery. An Assistant-Adjutant commanded the companies
of infantry that stemmed the onward rolling of those muddy waves of
humanity that threatened to swamp the front courtyard--a slender,
black-eyed, soldierly young Staff-officer of perhaps twenty-seven, with
a reddish skin tanned to swarthiness by desert sunshine and dust-winds.
It was Hector Dunoisse. He sat upon an iron-gray half-breed Arab mare
at the upper outer end of the bristling double line of bayonets and
red _képis_ that were flanked at either end by a squadron of Municipal
Guards. The shako of a subaltern officer showed at the rear of the
files, behind the Lieutenant rose the white-painted, gilt-headed
railings topping the wall that enclosed the courtyard of the Hotel,
carriages and cabriolets waiting there in charge of their owners’
servants, the broad steps under the high sculptured portico dotted
with curious groups of uniformed officials or liveried lackeys,
or neutral-tinted strangers who had taken refuge there before the
advancing column with its flaring naphtha torches and its Red Flag, and
its raucous roar of voices....
There were even ladies amongst the groups in the courtyard. One, who
wore a costly mantle of ermines, revealing between its parting folds
a brilliant evening-toilette, upon whose bare white bosom diamonds
and rubies glowed and sparkled; who had a coronet of the same jewels
crowning the rich luxuriance of her curled and braided hair, stood
apart, isolated from the rest, under the tall wrought-iron standard of
a gas-lamp not yet lighted, talking to a tall, heavily-built young man
wearing the chocolate, gold-buttoned, semi-military frock-coat that,
in conjunction with trousers striped with narrow gold braid, formed
the uniforms of secretaries and attachés of the Foreign Office. And
that the young man was very much more absorbed by the conversation of
his companion than the lady was in her listener was evident. For while
his light brown head with its carefully massed locks and accurate
side-parting was bent down towards her so that you saw his profile,
the accurate tuft of reddish whisker above the black satin stock, the
large handsome ear, the heavy clumsy nose, the jutting underlip and
long, obstinate chin, _her_ full face was constantly turned towards
the packed and seething thoroughfare before the tall iron gates, and
the living barrier of human flesh and horsemeat and steel that guarded
them. And that face was very fair to see. Even in the uncertain
gloaming, the loveliness of it went to the heart like a sword....
Now as the foggy dusk of the gray February day closed coldly in,
and the muddy sea of humanity surged up against the wall of steel
and discipline that Authority had built before the lofty gilt-topped
railings of the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, the oil-cressets on the
gate-pillars and above the central arch that spanned the entrance were
lighted by the porters, the great gas-lamp in the courtyard and under
the portico roared and hooted into an illumination that dimmed the
smoky, flaring torches of the men who marched with the Red Flag. As the
Adjutant on the iron-gray charger rode along the gleaming gray line
of leveled bayonets, bidding the men close up;--as he called over the
heads of the rank-and-file, giving some order to the Lieutenant, the
young attaché who was conversing with the lady in the ermine mantle
started and looked round. There was something in the clear, frosty
ring of the voice that recalled ... a voice he had once known. His
hard blue eyes met the eyes of the black-haired swarthy officer on the
half-breed Arab the next instant. And--with a cold, thrilling shock of
recognition, dying out in a crisping shudder of the nerves, Redskin and
de Moulny knew each other again.
The fiery, sensitive Arab felt her rider’s violent start, a sudden
contraction of the muscles of the sinewy thighs that gripped her satiny
sides drove both spurs home to the quick, behind the girths. As the
Red Flag showed through the thick rank smoke of naphtha-torches held
high in grimy hands, Djelma bounded forwards, snorting fiercely at the
unexpected sting; reared at the checking bit, backed, still rearing,
upon the goading steel points behind; lashed madly out, wounding
herself yet more, and, knocking down two linesmen; then plunged
forwards, kicking, screaming, and biting, into the thick of the crowd.
Those who marched with the Red Flag took the rebellion of Djelma as
obedience, and resented being trampled, after the manner of mankind.
Dunoisse was struck on the bridle-arm by a bludgeon wielded by a
red-capped, bloused, bearded artisan. A frowsy, bare-bosomed woman
aimed a savage blow at him with that deadly weapon of the lower
classes, a baby. The man who carried the drum went down at a blow
from the Arab’s fore-foot. The empty-sounding crack of the splintered
instrument, the oaths and yells and curses of the crowd were mingled
in the ears of Dunoisse with the snorting of Djelma, the cries and
exclamations from the thronged courtyard behind the wall of soldiers.
A single shot cracked out behind him: the finger that pressed the
trigger upset the Cabinet, changed the Government, toppled the rocking
House of Orleans over with one touch. For instantly following the
detonation of the shot a sharp, loud, bold, imperious voice cried:
“Fire!”
And, the next instant, jagged tongues of flame ran along the front line
of leveled bayonets, the deafening clatter of a volley of musketry
reverberated from the many-windowed façade of the Hotel, mingled with
the splintering and shattering of glass; ran rattling up and down
adjacent streets and neighboring thoroughfares, mingled with the echoes
of shrieks and curses and groans.... Tumult prevailed, the Municipal
Guard charged, striking with the flat of the saber ... the Red Flag
wavered and staggered, the column broke up, its units fled in disorder
to the Rue Lafitte. Pandemonium reigned there, a hundred voices telling
a hundred stories of massacre deliberately planned....