The siege -- The Parisians convinced that the Germans will not
invest Paris -- Paris becomes a vast drill-ground, nevertheless
-- The Parisians leave off singing, but listen to itinerant
performers, though the latter no longer sing the "Marseillaise"
-- The theatres closed -- The Comedie-Francaise and the Opera --
Influx of the Gardes Mobiles -- The Parisian no longer chaffs the
provincial, but does the honours of the city to him -- The
stolid, gaunt Breton and the astute and cynical Normand -- The
gardens of the Tuileries an artillery park -- The mitrailleuse
still commands confidence -- The papers try to be comic -- Food
may fail, drink will not -- My visit to the wine depot at Bercy
-- An official's information -- Cattle in the public squares and
on the outer Boulevards -- Fear with regard to them -- Every man
carries a rifle -- The woods in the suburbs are set on fire --
The statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde -- M.
Prudhomme to his sons -- The men who do not spout -- The French
shopkeeper and bourgeois -- A story of his greed -- He reveals
the whereabouts of the cable laid on the bed of the Seine --
Obscure heroes -- Would-be Ravaillacs and Balthazar Gerards --
Inventors of schemes for the instant annihilation of all the
Germans -- A musical mitrailleuse -- An exhibition and lecture at
the Alcazar -- The last train -- Trains converted into dwellings
for the suburban poor -- Interior of a railway station -- The spy
mania -- Where the Parisians ought to have looked for spies -- I
am arrested as a spy -- A chat with the officer in charge -- A
terrible-looking knife.
In spite of the frequent reports from the provinces that the Germans
were marching on Paris, there were thousands of people in the capital
who seriously maintained that they, the Germans, would not dare to
invest, let alone, shell it. But it must not be inferred, as many
English writers have done, that this confidence was due to a mistaken
view of the Germans' pluck, or their reluctance to beard the "lion" in
his den. Not at all. The Parisians simply credited their foes with the
superstitious love and reverence for "the centre of light and
civilization" which they themselves felt. They did not take their cue
from Victor Hugo's "highfalutin'" remonstrance to King William; on the
contrary, it was the poet who translated their sentiments. It was not a
case of "one fool making many;" but of many mute inglorious visionaries
inspiring a still greater one, who had the gift of eloquence, which
eloquence, in this instance, bordered very closely on sublimated drivel.
Nevertheless, the whole of Paris became suddenly transformed into one
vast drill-ground, and the clang of arms resounded through the city day
and night. For the time being, the crowds left off singing, albeit that
they listened now and then devoutly and reverently to itinerant
performers, male and female, who had paraphrased the patriotic airs of
certain operas for the occasion. The "Pars beau mousquetaire," etc., of
Halevy, became "Pars beau volontaire;" the "Guerre aux tyrans," of the
same composer, "Guerre aux all'mands,"[82] and so forth.
[Footnote 82: The first from "Les Mousquetaires de la Reine;"
the second from "Charles VI."--EDITOR.]
All the theatres had closed their doors by this time, the
Comedie-Francaise being last, I believe; though, almost immediately
afterward, it threw open its portals once more for at least two
performances a week, and often a third time, in aid of the victims of
the siege. Meanwhile, several rooms were being got ready for the
reception of the wounded; the new opera-house, still unfinished, was
made into a commissariat and partly into a barracks, for the provincial
Gardes Mobiles were flocking by thousands to the capital, and the camps
could not hold them all. For once in a way the Parisian forgot to chaff
the provincial who came to pay him a visit; and considering that, even
under such circumstances, all drill and no play would make Jacques a
dull boy, he not only received him very cordially, but showed him some
of the lions of the capital, at which the long-haired gaunt and stolid
Breton stared without moving a muscle, only muttering an unintelligible
gibberish, which might be an invocation to his ancient pagan gods, or a
tribute of admiration; while the more astute and cynical, though
scarcely more impressionable Normand, ten thousand of which had come
from the banks of the Marne, showed the thought underlying all his daily
actions, in one sentence: "C'est _ben_ beau, mais ca a coute beaucoup
d'argent; fallait mieux le garder en poche." Even at this supreme
moment, he remembered, with a kind of bitterness, that he had been made
to pay for part of all this glorious architecture.
The Cirques Napoleon and de l'Imperatrice--the Republic had not had time
to change their names--had become a kind of left-luggage office for
these human cargoes, taken thither at their arrival, which happened
generally during the night. In the morning they were transferred to
their permanent encampments, and their military education was proceeded
with at once. I am afraid I am not competent to judge of the merits of
the method adopted, but I was by no means powerfully impressed with the
knowledge displayed by the instructors.
The gardens of the Tuileries had been closed to the public, who had to
be satisfied with admiring the ordnance and long rows of horses parked
there from a distance. Did the latter lend enchantment to the view?
Apparently, for they were never tired of gazing with ecstasy on the
mitrailleuses. The gunners in charge treated the foremost of the gazers
now and then to a lecture on artillery practice, through the railings of
the gates. In whatsoever else they had lost faith, those murderous
engines of war evidently still commanded their confidence.
The frightful din that marked the first weeks of the war had ceased, but
Paris did by no means look crestfallen. The gas burned brightly still,
the cafes were full of people, the restaurants had all their tables
occupied; for we were not "invested" yet, and the idea of scarcity, let
alone of famine, though a much-discussed contingency, was not a staring,
stubborn fact. "It will never become one," said and thought many, "and
all that talk about doling out rations already is so much nonsense." The
papers waxed positively comic on the subject. They also waxed comic over
the telegrams of the King of Prussia to his Consort; but they left off
harping on that string, for very shame' sake.
One thing was certain from the beginning of the siege--whatever else
might fail, there was enough wine and to spare to cheer the hearts of
men who professed to do and dare more than men. Though the best part of
my life had been spent in Paris, I had, curiously enough, never seen the
wine and spirit depots at Bercy; in fact, I was profoundly ignorant of
that, as well as of other matters connected with the food-supply of
Paris. So I wrote to a member of the firm which had supplied me for many
years with wine and spirits, and he took me thither.
I should think that the "entrepot-general," as it is called, occupied,
at that time, not less than sixty acres of ground, which meant more than
treble that area as far as storage was concerned; for there was not only
the cellarage, but the buildings above ground, rising, in many
instances, to three and four stories. The entrepot consisted, and
consists still, I believe, of three distinct parts: one for wines;
another for what the French call "alcohols," and we "spirits;" a third,
much smaller, for potable, or, rather, edible oils. The latter wing
contains the cellarage of the general administration of the hospitals.
The spirit-cellars were absolutely empty at the time of my visit; their
contents had been removed to a bomb and shell proof cellarage hard by.
Though I had come to see, I felt very little wiser after leaving the
cellars than before; for, truth to tell, I was absolutely bewildered. I
had no more idea of the quantity of wine stored there than a child. My
guide laughed.
"We'll soon make the matter clear to you," he said, shaking hands with a
gentleman who turned out to be one of the principal employes. "This
gentleman will tell you almost to a hectolitre the quantity of ordinary
wine in store. You know pretty well the number of inhabitants of the
capital, and though it has considerably increased during the last few
days, and is not unlikely to decrease during the siege, if siege there
be, the influx does not amount to a hundred thousand. Now, monsieur,
will you tell this gentleman what you have in stock?"
"We have got at the present moment 1,600,000 hectolitres of ordinary
wine in our cellars. Ten days ago we had nearly one hundred thousand
more, but the wine-shops and others have laid in large provisions since
then. The more expensive wines I need not mention, because the quantity
is very considerably less, and, moreover, they are not likely to be
wanted; though, if they were wanted, they would keep us going for many,
many weeks. At a rough guess, the number of 'souls' within the
fortifications is about 1,700,000, with the recent increase 1,800,000;
consequently, with what the 'liquoristes' have recently bought, one
hundred litres for every man, woman, and child. I do not reckon the
contents of private cellars, nor those of the wine-merchants, apart from
their recent purchases. Nor is ordinary wine much dearer than it was in
years of great plenty; it is, in fact, less by twenty-five francs or
thirty francs than in the middle of the fifties. I am comparing prices
for quarter pipes, containing from two hundred and ten to two hundred
and thirty litres. There is no fear of regrating here, nor the
likelihood of our having to drink water for some time."
On our homeward journey, we noticed bullocks, pigs, and sheep littered
down in some of the public squares and on the outer boulevards. The
stunted grass in the former had already entirely disappeared, and it was
evident that, with the utmost care, the cattle would deteriorate under
the existing circumstances; for fodder would probably be the first
commodity to fail; as it was, it had already risen to more than twice
its former price. Moreover, the competent judges feared that, in the
event of a rainy autumn, the cattle penned in such small spaces would be
more subject to epidemic diseases, which would absolutely render them
unfit for human food. In view of such a contingency, the learned members
of the Academie des Sciences were beginning to put their heads together,
but the results of their deliberations were not known as yet.
We returned on foot as we had come; private carriages had entirely
disappeared, and though the omnibuses and cabs were plying as usual,
their progress was seriously impeded by long lines of vans, heavily
laden with neat deal boxes, evidently containing tinned provisions. Very
few female passengers in the public conveyances, and scarcely a man
without a rifle. They were the future defenders of the capital, who had
been to Vincennes, where the distribution of arms was going on from
early morn till late at night. In fact, the sight of a working-man not
provided with a rifle, a mattock, a spade, or a pickaxe was becoming a
rarity, for a great many had been engaged to aid the engineers in
digging trenches, spiking the ground, etc.
I did not, and do not, feel competent to judge of the utility of all
these means of defense; one of them, however, seemed to be conceived in
the wrong spirit: I allude to the firing of the woods around Paris. With
the results of Forbach and Woerth to guide them, the generals entrusted
with the defence of Paris could not leave the woods to stand; but was
there any necessity to destroy them in the way they did? In spite of the
activity displayed, there were still thousands of idle hands anxious to
be employed. Why were not the trees cut down and transported to Paris,
for fuel for the coming winter? At that moment there were lots of horses
available, and such a measure would have given us the double advantage
of saving coals for the manufacture of gas, and of protecting from the
rigours of the coming winter hundreds whose sufferings would have been
mitigated by light and heat. Personally, I did not suffer much. From
what I have seen during the siege, I have come to the conclusion that
shortcomings in the way of food are far less hard to bear, nay, are
almost cheerfully borne, in a warm room and with a lamp brightly
burning. I leave out of the question the quantities of mineral oil
wasted in the attempt to set fire to the woods, because in many
instances the attempt failed utterly.
Meanwhile, patriotism was kept at the boiling point, by glowing reports
of the heroic defence of General Uhrich at Strasburg. The statue,
representing the capital of Alsace on the Place de la Concorde, became
the goal of a reverent pilgrimage on the part of the Parisians, though
the effect of it was spoiled too frequently by M. Prudhomme holding
forth sententiously, to his sons apparently, to the crowd in reality.
These discourses reminded one too much of Heine's sneer, that "all
Frenchmen are actors, and the worse are generally on the stage." In this
instance, however, the amateurs ran the professional very hard. The
crowds were not hypercritical, though, and they applauded the speaker,
who departed, accompanied by his offspring, with the proud consciousness
that he was a born orator, and that he had done his duty to his country
by spouting platitudes. It is not difficult to give the general sequel
to that amateur performance. Next morning there is a line in some
obscure paper, and M. Prudhomme, beside himself with joy, leaves his
card on the journalist who wrote it; the journalist leaves his in
return, and for the next six months the latter has his knife and fork
laid at M. Prudhomme's table. The acquaintance generally terminates on
M. Prudhomme's discovery that Madame Prudhomme carried her friendship
too far by looking after the domestic concerns of the scribe, at the
scribe's bachelor quarters.
The men who did not spout were the Duruys, the Meissoniers, and a
hundred others I could mention. The eminent historian and grand-master
of the University, though sixty, donned the simple uniform of a National
Guard, and performed his garrison duties like the humblest artisan, only
distinguished from the latter by his star of grand-officer of the Legion
d'Honneur; the great painter did the same. The French shopkeeping
bourgeois is, as a rule, a silly, pompous creature; very frequently, he
is mean and contemptible besides.
Here is a story for the truth of which I can vouch, and which shows him
in his true light. In the skirmish in which Lieutenant Winslow was
killed, some damage had been done to the inn at Schirlenhoff, where the
Baden officers were at breakfast when they were surprised by General de
Bernis and his men. The general had his foot already in the stirrup, and
was about to remove his prisoners, when Boniface made his appearance,
coolly asking to whom he was to present the bill for the breakage. The
general burst out laughing: "The losing party pays the damage as a
rule," he said, "but France is sufficiently rich to reverse the rule.
Here is double the amount of your bill."
A second story, equally authentic. A cable had been secretly laid on the
bed of the Seine between Paris and Havre, shortly before the siege. Two
small shopkeepers of St. Germain revealed the fact for a consideration
to the Germans, who had but very vague suspicions of it, and who
certainly did not know the land-bearings; one of the scoundrels was
caught after the siege, the other escaped. The one who was tried pleaded
poverty, and received a ridiculously small sentence. It transpired
afterwards that he was exceedingly well paid for his treachery, and that
he cheated his fellow-informer out of his share.
The contrast is more pleasant to dwell upon. There were hundreds of
obscure heroes, by which I do not mean those prepared to shed their
blood on the battle-field, but men with a sublime indifference to life,
courting the fate of a Ravaillac and a Balthazar Gerard. History would
have called them regicides, and perhaps ranked them with paid assassins
had they accomplished their purpose, would have held them up to the
scorn of posterity as bloodthirsty fanatics,--and history, for once in a
way, would have been wrong. In their reprehensible folly, they were more
estimable than the Jules Favres, the Gambettas who played at being the
saviours of the country, and who were only the saviours of their needy,
fellow political adventurers.
Apart from the former, there were the inventors of impossible schemes
for the instantaneous annihilation of the three hundred thousand Germans
around Paris,--inventors who supply the comic note in the otherwise
terrible drama,--inventors, who day by day besiege the Ministry for War,
and to whom, after all, the minister's collaborateurs are compelled to
listen "on the chance of there being something in their schemes."
"I am asking myself, every now and then, whether I am a staff-officer or
one of the doctors at Charenton," said Prince Bibesca, one evening.
"Since yesterday morning," he went on, "I have been interviewed by a
dozen inventors, every one of whom wanted to see General Trochu or
General Schmitz, and would scarcely be persuaded that I would do as
well. The first one simply took the breath out of me. I had no energy
left to resist the others, or to bow them out politely; if they had
chosen to keep on talking for four and twenty hours, I should have been
compelled to listen. He was a little man, about the height of M. Thiers.
His opening speech was in proportion to his height; it consisted of one
line. 'Monsieur, I annihilate the Germans with one blow,' he said. I was
thrown off my guard in spite of myself, for etiquette demands that I
should keep serious in spite of myself; and I replied, 'Let me fill my
pipe before you do it.'
"Meanwhile, my visitor spread out a large roll of paper on the table. 'I
am not an inventor,' he said; 'I merely adapt the lessons of ancient
history to the present circumstances. I merely modify the trick of the
horse of Troy. Here is Paris with its ninety-six bastions, its forts,
etc. I draw three lines: along the first I send twenty-five thousand men
pretending to attack the northern positions of the enemy; along the
second line I send a similar number, apparently bent on a similar
attempt to the south; my fifty thousand troops are perfectly visible to
the Germans, for they commence their march an hour or so before dusk.
Meanwhile darkness sets in, and that is the moment I choose to despatch
a hundred and fifty thousand troops, screened and entirely concealed by
a movable wall of sheet iron, blackened by smoke. My inventive powers
have gone no further than this. My hundred and fifty thousand men behind
their wall penetrate unhindered as far as the Prussian lines, where a
hundred thousand fall on their backs, taking aim over the wall, while
fifty thousand keep moving it forward slowly. Twelve shots for every man
make twelve hundred thousand shots--more than sufficient to cause a
panic among the Germans, who do not know whence the firing proceeds,
because my wall is as dark as night itself. Supposing, however, that
those who have been left in the camp defend themselves, their
projectiles will glance off against the sheet iron of the wall, which,
if necessary, can be thrown down finally by our own men, who will finish
their business with the bayonet and the sword.'
"My second visitor had something not less formidable to propose;
namely, a sledge-hammer, fifteen miles in circumference, and weighing
ten millions of tons. It was to be lifted up to a certain altitude by
means of balloons. A favourable wind had to be waited for, which would
send the balloons in the direction of Versailles, where the ropes
confining the hammer would be cut. In its fall it would crush and bury
the head-quarters and the bulk of the German army.
"The third showed me the plan of a musical mitrailleuse, which would
deal death and destruction while playing Wagner, Schubert, and
Mendelssohn, the former by preference. 'The Germans,' he remarked, 'are
too fond of music to be able to resist the temptation of listening. They
are sure to draw near in thousands when my mitrailleuses are set
playing. We have got them at our mercy.' I asked him to send me a small
one as a sample: he promised to do so."
Another evening I was induced to go to the Alcazar. I had been there
once before, to hear Theresa. This time it was to see an "Exhibition of
Engines of War," and to listen to a practical lecture thereon. The
audience was as jolly as if the Germans were a thousand miles
away--jollier, perhaps, than when they listened to "Rien n'est sacre
pour un sapeur;" because they were virtually taking part in the
performance. The lecturer began by an exhibition of bullet-proof pads,
by means of which the soldier might fearlessly advance towards the
enemy; "because they render that part of the body on which they are worn
invulnerable." A wag among the spectators made a remark about
"retreating soldiers," which I cannot transcribe; but the exhibitor, an
Italian or Spanish major, to judge by his accent, was in no way
disconcerted. He placed his pad against an upright board in the shape of
a target and began firing at it with a revolver at a distance of four or
five paces. The material, though singed, was not pierced, but the
spectators seemed by no means convinced. "You wear the pad, and let me
have a shot at you," exclaimed one; at which offer the major made a long
face. "Have you ever tried the experiment on a living animal?" asks
another. "Perfectly," replied the major; "I tried it on my clerk," which
admission was hailed with shouts of laughter. There were cries for the
clerk, who did not appear. A corporal of the National Guards proposed to
try an experiment on the major and the pad with the bayonet fastened to
a chassepot; thereupon major and pad suddenly disappeared behind the
wings.
The next inventor exhibits a fire-extinguisher; the audience require
more than a verbal explanation; some of them propose to set the Alcazar
on fire. A small panic, checked in time; and the various demonstrations
are proceeded with amidst shouts, and laughter, and jokes. They yield no
practical results, but they kill time. They are voted the next best
thing to the theatre.
By this time we were shut off from the outer world. On the 17th of
September, at night, the last train of the Orleans Railway Company had
left Paris. The others had ceased working a day or so before, and placed
their rolling stock in safety. Not the whole of it, though. A great many
of the third-class carriages have had their seats taken out, the luggage
and goods vans have been washed, the cattle trucks boarded in, and all
these transformed into temporary dwellings for the suburban poor who
have been obliged to seek shelter within the walls of the capital. The
interiors of the principal railway stations present scenes that would
rejoice the hearts of genre-painters on a large scale. The washing and
cooking of all these squatters is done on the various platforms, the
carriages have become parlor and bedroom in one, and there has even been
some ingenuity displayed in their decoration. The womankind rarely stir
from their improvised homes; the men are on the fortifications or
roaming the streets of Paris. Part of the household gods has been stowed
inside the trucks, the rest is piled up in front. The domestic pets,
such as cats and dogs, have, as yet, not been killed for food, and the
former have a particularly good time of it, for mice and rats abound,
especially in the goods-sheds. Here and there a goat gravely stalking
along, happily unconscious of its impending doom; and chanticleer
surrounded by a small harem trying to make the best of things.
Of course, the sudden and enormous influx of human beings could not be
housed altogether in that way, but care has been taken that none of them
shall be shelterless. All the tenantless apartments, from the most
palatial in the Faubourg St. Honore and Champs-Elysees to the humblest
in the popular quarters, have been utilized, and the pot-au-feu simmers
in marble fireplaces, while Gallic Hodge sees his face reflected in
gigantic mirrors the like of which he never saw before. The dwellings
that have been merely vacated by their tenants who have flitted to
Homburg and Baden-Baden, to Nice and elsewhere, are as yet not called
into requisition by the authorities.
From the moment we were cut off from the outer world, the spy mania,
which had been raging fiercely enough before, became positively
contagious. There is not the slightest doubt that there were spies in
Paris, but I feel perfectly certain that they were not prowling about
the streets, and that to have caught them one would have had to look
among the personnel of the ministries. For a foreigner, unless he spoke
French without the slightest accent, to have accepted such a mission,
would have been akin to madness; and there were and are still few
foreigners, however well they may know French, who do not betray their
origin now and then by imperfect pronunciation. Besides, there was
nothing to spy in the streets; nevertheless, the spy mania, as I have
already said, had reached an acute crisis. The majority of the National
Guard seemed to have no other occupation than to look for spies. A poor
Spanish priest was arrested because he had been three times in the same
afternoon to the cobbler for the only serviceable pair of shoes he
possessed. Woe to the man or woman who was ill-advised enough to take
out his pocket-book in the streets. If you happened to be of studious
habits, or merely inclined to sit up late, the lights peeping through
the carelessly drawn curtains exposed you to a sudden visit from half a
dozen ill-mannered, swaggering National Guards, your concierge was
called out of his bed, while you were taken to the nearest commissary of
police to explain; or, what was worse still, to the nearest military
post, where the lieutenant in command made it a point to be altogether
soldier-like--according to his ideas, _i. e._ brutal, rude, disgustingly
familiar. You might get an apology from the police-official for having
been disturbed and dragged through the streets for no earthly reason;
the quasi-military man would have considered it beneath his dignity to
offer one.
Of course, every now and then, one happened to meet with a gentleman who
was only too anxious to atone for the imbecile "goings-on" of his men,
and I was fortunate enough to do so one night. It was on the 20th of
September, when the feelings of the Parisians had already been
embittered by their first and not very creditable defeat under their own
walls. I do not suppose there were more than a score of Englishmen in
Paris, besides the Irishmen engaged in salting beef at the
slaughter-house of La Villette, when, but for that gentleman, I should
have been in a sore strait. Among the English, there was a groom who, at
the time of the general exodus, was so dangerously ill that the doctor
absolutely forbade his removal, even to a hospital. The case had been
brought under my notice, and as the poor fellow was very respectable and
had been hard-working, as he had a wife and a young family besides, we
not only did all we could for him, but I went to see him personally two
or three times to cheer him up a bit. He was on the mend, but slowly,
very slowly. He lived in one of the side streets of the Avenue de
Clichy, and had lived there a good while, and the concierge of the house
had her mind perfectly at rest with regard to his nationality, albeit
that the fact of being an Englishman was not always a sufficient
guarantee against the suspicion of being a spy on the part of the lower
classes. Moreover, they would not always take the fact for granted; they
were unable to distinguish an English from a German or any other accent,
and, with them, to be a foreigner was necessarily to be a German, and a
German could not be anything but a spy. However, in this instance, I
felt no anxiety for my protege.
Unfortunately, a few days before the closing of Paris, the concierge
herself fell ill, and another one took her place. The successor was a
man, and not by any means a pleasant man. There was a scowl on his face,
as, in answer to his summons, I told him whither I was going; and he
cast a suspicious look at a box I was carrying under my arm, which
happened to contain nothing more formidable than a surgical appliance. I
took no notice, however, and mounted the stairs.
My visit may have lasted between twenty minutes and half an hour. When I
came out, a considerable crowd had assembled on the footway and in the
road, and a dozen National Guards were ranged in a semicircle in front
of the door.
The first cry that greeted me was "Le voila," and then a corporal
advanced. "Your name, citizen," he said, in a hectoring tone, "and what
brings you to this house?" I kept very cool, and told him that I would
neither give him my name nor an explanation of my visit, but that if he
would take me to his lieutenant or captain, I should be pleased to give
both to the latter. But he would not be satisfied. "Where is the box you
had in your hand? what did it contain? and what have you done with it?"
he insisted. I knew that it would be useless to try and enlighten him,
so I stuck to my text. Meanwhile the crowd had become very excited, so I
simply repeated my request to be taken to the post.
The crowd would have willingly judged me there and then; that is, strung
me up to the nearest lamp-post. If they had, not a single one among them
would have been prosecuted for murder, and by the end of the siege the
British Government would have considered it too late to move in the
matter; besides, a great many of my countrymen would have opined that
"it served me right" for remaining in Paris, when I might have made
myself so comfortable in London or elsewhere. So I felt very thankful
when the corporal, though very ungraciously, ordered his men to close
around me and "to march." I have, since then, been twice to the Avenue
de Clichy on pleasure bent; that is, to breakfast at the celebrated
establishment of "le pere Lathuille," and the sight of the lamp-posts
there sent a cold shudder down my back.
The journey to the military post did not take long. It had been
established in a former ball-room or music-hall, for at the far end of
the room there was a stage, representing, as far as I can remember, an
antique palace. The floor of it was littered with straw, on which a
score or so of civic warriors were lazily stretched out; while others
were sitting at the small wooden tables, that had, not long ago, borne
the festive "saladier de petit bleu." Some of the ladles with which that
decoction had been stirred were still hanging from the walls; for in
those neighbourhoods the love of portable property on the part of the
patrons is quite Wemmickian, and the proprietors made and make it a rule
to throw as little temptation as possible in the way of the former. The
place looked quite sombre, though the gas was alight. There was an
intolerable smell of damp straw and stale tobacco smoke.
Part of the crowd succeeded in making their way inside, notwithstanding
the efforts of the National Guards. My appearance caused a certain stir
among the occupants of the room; but in a few moments the captain,
summoned from an apartment at the back, came upon the scene, and my
preliminary trial was proceeded with at once.
The indictment of the corporal who had arrested me was brief and to the
point. "This man is a foreigner who pays constant visits to another
foreigner, supposed to be sick. This evening he arrived with a box under
his arm which he left with his friend. The concierge has reason to
suppose that there is something wrong, for he does not believe in the
man's illness. He is supposed to be poor, and still he and his family
are living on the fat of the land. My prisoner refused to give me his
name and address, or an explanation of his visit."
"What have you to say, monsieur?" asked the captain, a man of about
thirty-five, evidently belonging to the better classes. I found out
afterwards that his name was Garnier or Garmier, and that he was a
cashier in one of the large commercial establishments in the Rue St.
Martin. He was killed in the last sortie of the Parisians.
It was the first time I had been addressed that evening as "monsieur." I
simply took a card from my pocket-book and gave it to him. "If that is
not sufficient, some of your men can accompany me home and ascertain for
themselves that I have not given a false name or address," I said.
He looked at it for a moment. "It is quite unnecessary. I know your name
very well, though I have not the honour of knowing you personally. I
have seen your portrait at my relatives' establishment"--he named a
celebrated picture-dealer in the Rue de la Paix,--"and I ought to have
recognized you at once, for it is a very striking likeness, but it is so
dark here." Then he turned to his men and to the crowd: "I will answer
for this gentleman. I wish we had a thousand or so of foreign spies like
him in Paris. France has no better friend than he."
I was almost as much afraid of the captain's praise as I had been of the
corporal's blame, because the crowd wanted to give me an ovation; seeing
which, M. Garmier invited me to stay with him a little while, until the
latter should have dispersed. It was while sitting in his own room that
he told me the following story.
"My principal duty, monsieur, seems to consist, not in killing Germans,
but in preventing perfectly honest Frenchmen and foreigners from being
killed or maimed. Not later than the night before last, three men were
brought in. They were all very powerful fellows; there was no doubt
about their being Frenchmen. They did not take their arrest as a matter
of course at all, but to every question I put they simply sent me to the
devil. It was not the behaviour of the presumed spy, who, as a rule, is
very soft spoken and conciliating until he sees that the game is up,
when he becomes insulting. Still, I reflected that the violence of the
three men might be a clever bit of acting also, the more that I could
see for myself that they were abominably, though not speechlessly,
drunk. Their offence was that they had been seen loitering in a field
very close to the fortifications, with their noses almost to the ground.
Do what I would, an explanation I could not get, and at last the most
powerful of the trio made a movement as if to draw a knife. With great
difficulty a dozen of my men succeeded in getting his coat off; and
there, between his waistcoat and his shirt, was a murderously looking
blade, a formidable weapon indeed.
"'He is a Prussian spy, sure enough!' exclaimed the roomful of guards.
"I examined the knife carefully, tried to find the name of the maker,
and all at once put it to my nose. Then I took up a candle and looked
more carefully still at the prisoners. 'They are simply drunk,' I said,
'and the best thing you can do is to take them home.'
"'But the knife?' insisted the sergeant.
"'The knife is all right,' I answered.
"'I should think it is all right,' said the owner, 'seeing that I am
cutting provisions all day with it for those confounded Parisians.'
"But the guards were not satisfied with the explanation. They began to
surround me. 'That was surely a sign you made to the fellow when you
lifted the blade to your face, captain,' said the sergeant.
"'Not at all, friend; I was simply smelling it. And it smelt abominably
of onions.' That will give you an idea, monsieur, of the life they lead
me also. Still, I would ask you, as a particular favour, monsieur, not
to mention your mishap to any one. As you are aware, I am not to blame;
but we are in bad odour enough as it is at the Ministry of War, and we
do not wish to increase our somewhat justified reputation for
irresponsible rowdyism and lack of discipline."
I gave him my promise to that effect, and have not mentioned the matter
until this day.