In the meantime, defeats and humiliations were beginning to confuse the
good sense of the French, and to lead their instincts astray. The crowd
could not conceive that such things could come about naturally. The
Prussians could not possibly have won by honourable means, but must
have been spying in France for years. Why else were so many Germans
settled in Paris! The French were paying now, not for their faults, but
for their virtues, the good faith, the hospitality, the innocent
welcome they had given to treacherous immigrants. They had not
understood that the foreigner from the North was a crafty and deceitful
enemy.
It gradually became uncomfortable for a foreigner in Paris. I never
went out without my passport. But even a passport was no safeguard. It
was enough for someone to make some utterly unfounded accusation,
express some foolish, chance suspicion, for the non-Frenchman to be
maltreated as a "spy." Both in Metz and in Paris, in the month of
August, people who were taken for "Prussians" were hanged or
dismembered. In the latter part of August the papers reported from the
Dordogne that a mob there had seized a young man, a M. de Moneys, of
whom a gang had asserted that he had shouted _"Vive la Prusse!"_ had
stripped him, bound him with ropes, carried him out into a field, laid
him on a pile of damp wood, and as this would not take fire quick
enough, had pushed trusses of straw underneath all round him, and burnt
him alive. From the _Quartier La Vilette_ in Paris, one heard every day
of similar slaughter of innocent persons who the people fancied were
Prussian spies. Under such circumstances, a trifle might become fatal.
One evening at the end of August I had been hearing _L'Africaine_ at
the grand opera, and at the same time Marie Sass' delivery of the
_Marseillaise_--she sang as though she had a hundred fine bells in her
voice, but she sang the national anthem like an aria. Outside the
opera-house I hailed a cab. The coachman was asleep; a man jogged him
to wake him, and he started to drive. I noticed that during the drive
he looked at his watch and then drove on for all that he was worth, as
fast as the harness and reins would stand. When I got to the hotel I
handed him his fare and a four sous' tip. He bawled out that it was not
enough; he had been _de remise_; he had taken me for someone else,
being waked so suddenly; he had been bespoken by another gentleman. I
laughed and replied that that was his affair, not mine; what had it got
to do with me? But as all he could demand, if he had really been _de
remise_, was two sous more, and as, under the ordinances prevailing, it
was impossible to tell whether he was or not, I gave him the two sous;
but no tip with it, since he had no right to claim it, and I had not
the slightest doubt that he was lying. Then he began to croak that it
was a shame not to give a _pourboire_, and, seeing that did not help
matters, as I simply walked up the hotel steps, he shouted in his
ill-temper, first _"Vous n'êtes pas Français!"_ and then _"Vous êtes
Prussien!"_ No sooner had he said it than all the hotel servants who
were standing in the doorway disappeared, and the people in the street
listened, stopped, and turned round. I grasped the danger, and flew
into a passion. In one bound I was in the road, I rushed at the cabman,
seized him by the throat and shook my hand, with its knuckle-duster
upon it, threateningly at his head. Then he forgot to abuse me and
suddenly whined: _"Ne frappez pas, monsieur!"_ mounted his box, and
drove very tamely away. In my exasperation I called the hotel waiters
together and poured scorn on them for their cowardice.
In spite of the season, it was uncomfortable weather, and the temper of
the town was as uncomfortable as the weather. As time went on, few
people were to be seen about the streets, but there was a run on the
gunmakers' and sword-smiths'. By day no cheerful shouts or songs rang
out, but children of six or seven years of age would go hand in hand in
rows down the street in the evenings, singing _"Mourir pour la
patrie,"_ to its own beautiful, affecting melody. But these were the
only gentle sounds one heard. Gradually, the very air seemed to be
reeking with terror and frenzy. Exasperation rolled up once more, like
a thick, black stream, against the Emperor, against the ministers and
generals, and against the Prussians, whom people thought they saw
everywhere.