A formidable proportion of the grand concourse which filled the
fashionable boulevards from curb to curb this beautiful Sunday
afternoon was composed of the so-called "boulevardiers," "flâneurs,"
and "badauds," who invariably appear on occasion offering excitement.
For the Parisian world loves to be amused, and to have the pulse
quickened by riot and bloodshed is to very many the highest form of
amusement. It is better than a bull-fight.
To most of this very large class of Parisians it is immaterial what
form of government they live under, provided that in some way or
another it furnish plenty of excitement. No other country in the
civilized world, unless Spain is to be included under this head,
produces this peculiar class, the unseen influence of which seems to
have escaped the brilliant French writers who have recorded the
turbulent history of France.
The cardinal characteristic of the French individually and as a people
is love of and admiration for theatrical display. This finds such
ample illustration in all of their known domestic as well as
international affairs that even the mere statement seems unnecessary.
It permeates every social rank, and it enters into the performance of
the simplest private as well as public duties. In higher governmental
affairs it was accurately represented by the late President of the
republic, Felix Faure, who went among his countrymen in a coach and
four preceded by trumpeters and accompanied by a regiment of
cuirassiers, and who required of his entourage all of the formalities
of royalty. The hundreds of thousands who enjoyed his kingly funeral
would have been equally entertained by a public execution.
In the French nature, as has been said, is implanted a keen zest for
excitement. The Frenchman is ravenous for the theatrical situation,--a
perfect gormandizer of the dramatic event. Whatever or whoever lacks
this gilded framework is neither remembered nor noted. The supply
invariably follows the demand; without spectators there would be no
spectacle,--just as there is no sound where there are no ears.
Any Frenchman, therefore, who has any theatrical novelty to offer,
whether as a political mountebank, or a bogus hero, or a peculiarly
atrocious crime, is sure of a large audience. For there is a wide
range of appreciation in that mercurial nature which, according to
Voltaire, is half monkey and half tiger.
The evident pleasure with which vast Parisian crowds view riots and
revolution and the various phases of alternate anarchy and absolutism
may be easily and naturally accepted by the actors in these living
dramas as tacit if not positive approval. The professional patriot
does not perform to empty seats, and the few hundred hired assassins
of the public peace and private liberty would be out of a job but for
the hundred thousand passive and more or less amused spectators who
scramble for the best places to witness and make merry over the show.
That this curious crowd is greatly swelled by what in other lands is
recognized as the gentler or softer sex increases its responsibility.
The civilization which has produced so many women of the heroic type,
so many of the nobler masculine brain and hand, has also generated a
vast brood which poisons the germs of human life and hands down
bigotry, intolerance, revengefulness, cruelty, and love of turbulence
and bloodshed from generation to generation.
Of the performers before this audience Jean Marot and his stalwart
companion found themselves particularly observed from their début. The
red turban was conspicuous enough, and gave a theatrical aspect to the
man who wore it. There was that in his ensemble which recalled the
great Revolution and the scarcely less sanguinary conflicts of '71. By
his side and contrasting strangely with the coarse brute features of
this muscular humanity was the finely chiselled face of the student
under the rough cap of the workman. A picturesque pair, they were
greeted on all sides with all sorts of cries and comments:
"That red cap is very appropriate."
"It is the head-dress of the barricades."
"Sure!"
"Of la Villette, hein?"
"The man is mad!"
"Ah! look at that!"
"There goes a good rascal."
"A young man and his father perhaps."
"No!"
"Long live the students!"
"En avant!" roared the man in the red turban.
"Vive l'anarchie!" shouted an individual on the curb whose eyes were
glazed from absinthe.
The crowd laughed. Some applauded,--not so much the sentiment as the
drunken wit. The people were being entertained.
"We certainly have the street this day," observed Jean to his
companion.
"Right you are, my boy!"
Both noted the squadron of cuirassiers drawn up in front of the Opéra,
the police agents massed on either side, and the regiment of the line
under arms in the Rue 4 Septembre close at hand. In the middle
distance a squadron of the Garde de Paris came leisurely up the Avenue
de l'Opéra.
"You see, my friend," said Jean, smiling, "the government is looking
sharply after its strategic position."
"Vive l'armée!"
The man in the red turban swung his bâton, and his resounding cry was
caught up by the manifestants. It was the voice of flattery and
conciliation extended to the army, through which the royalist party
hoped to win a throne.
But they were not alone there. From several quarters came sharp
rejoinders of "Vive la justice!" "Vive la république!" "Vive la
France!"
While these cries seemed harmless if not proper, they were judged
seditious by the police, who made a dash for those who uttered them.
In another instant the man with the red turban would have saved the
agents the trouble of arresting the nearest person had not Jean
grasped the bâton. The brute face had taken on a flush of red
ferocity. His blow restrained, the man spat in the face of his
intended victim and strode on.
"Not yet, my friend!" exclaimed the student leader. "What! precipitate
a fight here! Madness! We should be ridden down within three minutes!
The government will be sure to protect the Opéra."
"Yes; you are always right, mon enfant," growled the man.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate Parisian who wanted "justice" got it; being
dragged off by two police agents, who took turns in kicking and
cuffing their prisoner on the way to the dépôt. There he was charged
with uttering seditious cries calculated to lead to a breach of the
peace.
Gathering confidence from immunity, however, the manifestants soon
ceased to observe this respect for public opinion. In Boulevard
Haussmann they got out from the eye of the military. They began to
hustle those who happened to get in their way. Those who were not
sufficiently explicit in their views were compelled to cry "Vive
l'armée;" whoever refused was promptly knocked on the head.
"Monsieur Front de Boeuf," said Jean Marot to his companion, who had
narrowly missed spattering the young leader with the brains of a
misguided Dreyfusarde, "if you will strike less heavily you will
longer remain with us, and possibly for a time escape the guillotine.
Let us do no murder, mon ami. Your stick is heavy."
"That's so; but it is a lovely stick all the same," replied the man,
with a satisfied air, as he wiped the blood from his hands upon his
blouse.
Then for the first time Jean noticed that this blouse bore many old
stains of the same sanguinary color. Undoubtedly it was blood. Human?
Faugh!
Jean saw around him other men of the same type, red-faced and
strong-limbed, mentally as well as physically saturated with the
brutality of their calling. He thought of Mlle. Fouchette. It was
true, then, that these human brutes from the abattoirs were here. That
other type, the "camelot,"--he of the callous, cadaverous face, thinly
clad body, cunning eyes, husky lungs,--was more familiar.
But these butchers of La Villette, why were they royalists? What
special interest had the killers of cattle in the restoration of the
monarchy? They had emphasized their devotion to the Duc d'Orléans by
re-electing his parliamentary leader, the Comte de Sabran, by an
overwhelming vote. From the rich and influential wholesaler to the low
hind whose twelve hours a day were passed in knocking bullocks on the
head or in slitting throats with precision the butchers stood three to
one for the royal régime. Men may be hired for certain services, but
in such a case as this there must exist some natural sentiment at
bottom. This sentiment was perhaps only the common French intolerance
of existing things.
Jean Marot's train of thought had not reached that far, owing to fresh
differences of opinion between some of his followers and the
spectators, in which it became necessary for a dozen men to kick one
helpless fellow-man into insensibility.
They were now nearing the proposed place of meeting, and the hitherto
scattered cries of "Vive la justice!" "Vive la liberté!" "Vive la
France!" and "Vive la république!" had developed into well-defined
opposition. Personal collisions, blows, objurgations, came thicker and
faster.
Finally, from the "terrasse" of a fashionable café in the Boulevard
Malesherbes came very decided expressions of dissent. They were
followed by a general assault on the place. Not less than thirty of
the usual respectable Sunday afternoon "consommateurs" occupied the
chairs, and, though not more than half a dozen of these could have
offended, the mob came down upon them like a living avalanche,
throwing the entire Sunday party of both sexes promiscuously among the
débris of tables, chairs, glasses, and drinks.
The women shrieked, the men cursed loudly, and everybody struggled in
the general wreck. While the male portion were kicked and stamped
where they lay, the feminine part of the café crowd fought tooth and
nail to escape in any direction.
There were three dissatisfied beings, however, who objected to this
summary treatment, and who, having regained a footing, courageously
defended themselves with the nearest weapons at hand. These were empty
beer-glasses, which, being fraudulently double thick at the bottom,
were admirably designed for that particular use. But when three
beer-glasses conflict with twenty loaded canes the former, however
valiantly wielded, must succumb to the rule of the majority. Among the
latter, too, was the particularly heavy stick of the patriot from the
abattoirs of La Villette. He had received a blow from a glass that
laid his cheek open and had jumped upon his assailant.
"Death!" he roared.
The man sank without a groan amid the broken glass, beer, and blood.
The savage aimed a terrific blow of the boot at the upturned face,
but was jostled out of his aim. Again, and with the snarl of a wild
beast; but a woman had thrown herself across the prostrate figure and
encircled the still form with her protecting arm. The butcher would
have planted his iron-shod heel upon her, but at this critical
juncture another woman--a slender, pale, weak-looking thing whose
blonde hair fell loosely over her rouged cheeks--flew at him with a
scream half human, half feline,--such as chills the blood in the
midnight of the forest. With one hand she tore out great bunches of
beard by the roots, with the other she left red furrows on his face
like the paths of a garden-rake. Quick as lightning-flashes, again and
again, and with each successive stroke of her claws came the low,
hysterical whine of the wild beast.
It was Mlle. Fouchette.
Her catlike jaws were distended and quivering,--the white teeth
glistened,--the eyes of steel seemed to emit sparks of fire,--the
small, lithe body swayed and undulated like that of an angry puma.
"Yes!--so!--death!--yes!--death!--you!--beast!--you devil!"
With each energetic word went a wild sweep of the claws or came a wisp
of beard.
The man bellowed with pain. The unexpected fury of her onslaught, the
general mêlée of close quarters, the instinct of protection,
contributed to prevent the man from simply braining her with his
"casse-tête." He was a lion against a hornet, powerless to punish his
puny assailant. As he finally broke away, she suddenly whirled and
delivered beneath the arm that shielded his eyes a kick that half
choked him with his own teeth.
Blinded with blood and howling with pain, the wretch plunged headlong
through the café front amid a crash of falling glass.
In the mean time, while this little curtain-raiser had been getting
under way, there was still another and more important drama in active
preparation.
The police, as if to lend such material aid to the royalist cause as
lay in their power, and to assist in the punishment of those misguided
Frenchmen who took the words "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité," inscribed
over the doors of the public hall, in a too literal sense, had
violently closed those doors against the latter and by cunningly
arranged barriers driven the unsuspecting Dreyfusardes down upon their
armed enemies. It was a most admirably arranged plot to destroy the
public peace, and reflected credit upon the clerico-royalist-military
council that had planned it.
Before the indignant republicans had begun to realize the character of
the trap set for them they found themselves hemmed in on three sides
by the police and attacked by the combination of hostile forces on the
other side.
The latter had been quietly assembled in the vicinity in anticipation
of this dénouement. They were led by Senators and Deputies wearing the
official scarf of their high legislative function. This at once
afforded the latter reasonable immunity from arrest, and served to
encourage and assure those accustomed to look for some shadow of
authority to conceal or excuse the evil of their deeds.
The French Senator or Deputy who leads street rioters against a
peaceable assemblage of his fellow-citizens one day and serenely sits
in national legislative deliberation the next day is the faithful
representative of a constituency as far removed from the American type
of citizenship as the French legislator is from our national
legislator.
With shouts of "Vive l'armée!" "À bas les vendus!" "Vive France aux
Français!" "À bas les Juifs!" the waiting combination, or
"nationalistes," fell upon their victims with fist, heel, and club.
This was not as a body, the assailants being cleverly scattered
everywhere through the crowd, and assaulting individually and
supporting each other where resistance was encountered. As many were
mere spectators, they were compelled to declare themselves or come in
for a share of the drubbing, though this opportunity for escape was
not always offered or accepted.
The pure love of fighting is strong in the French as in the Irish
breast, and once roused the Frenchman is not too particular whose head
comes beneath his bâton.
It naturally happened, therefore, that on this occasion the innocent
curious of all opinions received impartial treatment, often without
knowing to which side they were indebted for their thumping. Every man
thus assaulted at once became a rioter and began the work on his own
particular account. Within a brief period not less than a hundred
personal combats were going on at the same moment. As far as the eye
could reach the broad boulevard was a surging sea of scuffling
humanity, above which rose a cloud of dust and a continuous roar of
angry voices. To the distant ear this was as one voice,--that of
terrible imprecation.
Having thus ingeniously united the conflicting currents in one
tempest, the police precipitated themselves on the whole.
Had any additional element been required to bring things to the
highest stage of combativeness this would have answered quite well. As
interference in family affairs almost invariably brings the wrath of
both parties down on the peacemaker, so now the police began to
receive their share of the public attention.
The Parisian population have not that docile disposition and
submissive respect for authority characteristic of our Americans. The
absence of the night-stick and ready revolver must be supplied by
overwhelming physical force. Even escaping criminals cannot be shot
down in France with impunity.
Though deprived of both clubs and sabres and not trusted with
revolvers, these police agents make good use of hands and feet. Not
being bound by the rules of the ring, their favorite blow is the blow
below the belt. It is viciously administered by both foot and knee.
Next to that is the kick on the shins, which, delivered by a heavy,
iron-shod cowhide boot, is pretty apt to render the recipient hors de
combat. Supplemented by a quick fist and directed by a quicker temper,
the French police agent is no mean antagonist in a general row. In
brutality and impulsive cruelty he is but the flesh and blood of
those with whom he has mostly to deal.
The battle now raged with increasing violence, the combatants being
slowly driven down upon the approaching manifestants from the Quartier
Latin, Montmartre, and La Villette. It had become everybody's fight,
the original Dreyfusardes having been largely eliminated by
nationaliste clubs and police arrests. The ambulances and cellular
vans, playfully termed "salad-baskets," thoughtfully stationed in the
side streets, were being rapidly filled, and as fast as filled were
driven to hospital and prison respectively.
The reverberating roar of human voices beat against the tall
buildings, rising and falling in frightful diapason, as if it were the
echo from a thousand savage creatures of the jungle clashing their
fangs in deadly combat.
Jean Marot and his immediate followers had scarcely turned from the
scene at the café before they were swallowed up in the vortex that now
met them. Indeed, Jean had not witnessed either the horrible brutality
of the butcher or his punishment. The cries of "Les agents! à bas les
agents!" had suddenly carried him elsewhere on the field of battle. He
found himself, fired by the fever of conflict, in the middle of the
broad street so closely surrounded by friends and foes that sticks
were encumbrances. A short arm blow only was now and then effective. A
dozen police agents were underfoot somewhere, being pitilessly stamped
and trampled by the frantic mob. The platoon that had charged was
wiped out as a platoon. Those who were hemmed in fought like demons.
Men throttled each other and swayed back and forth and yelled
imprecations and fell in struggling masses and got upon their feet
again and twisted and squirmed and panted, like so many monsters, half
serpent and half beast, seeking to bury their fangs in some vital part
or tear each other limb from limb.
Suddenly Jean saw rise before him a face that drove everything else
from his mind. It was that of one who saw him at the same instant. And
when these bloodshot eyes of passion met a fierce yell of wrath burst
from the two men.
It was Henri Lerouge.
He was hatless and his clothes were in shreds and covered with the
grime of the street. His hair was matted with coagulated blood,--his
lips were swollen hideously. A police agent in about the same
condition held him by the throat.
When Henri Lerouge saw Jean Marot he seemed imbued with the strength
of a giant and the agility of a cat. He shook off the grip of the
agent as if it were that of a child and at a bound cleared the
struggling group that separated him from his former friend.
They grappled without a word and without a blow, and, linked in the
embrace of mortal hatred, rolled together in the dust.
The cruel human waves broke over them and rolled on and receded, and
went and came again, and eddied and seethed and roared above them.
These two rose no more.