[46] The game of pitch-halfpenny, in, which, in France, a cork
(_bouchon_), with halfpence on the top of it, is placed on the ground.
[47] General Eudes was the Alcibiades, or rather the Saint Just, of
the Commune. He had the face and manners of a fashionable _tenorino_,
the luxurious taste of the Athenian, the cruel inflexibility of
Robespierre’s protégé. He was born at Bonay, in the arrondissement of
Coutances. His father was a tradesman of the Boulevard des Italians.
In his examination before the Council of War in August, 1870, Eudes
called himself a shorthand writer and law student, though his real
position was said to be that of a linendraper’s clerk. His first
notable exploit was the assassination of a fireman at La Villette. For
this crime he was brought before the First Council of War at Paris.
Here he informed the President, in somewhat unparliamentary terms,
that “the betrayers of the country were not the Republicans, and that
to destroy the Imperial Government was to annihilate the Prussians.”
In spite of the eloquent appeal of his counsel, he was condemned to
death. The events of the fourth of September prevented the execution
of this sentence, and he lived to take an active part in the agitation
of the thirty-first of October. He was again tried for this conduct
and acquitted, together with Vermorel, Ribaldi, Lefrançais and others.
Eudes’ name figures in the first decrees of the Commune, and on the
last of those of the Committee of Public Safety. On the second of
April he was appointed Delegate for War, and, conjointly with
Cluseret, organised ten corps of the Enfants Perdus of Belleville. He
promised to each of his volunteers an annuity of 300 francs and a
decoration. Eudes was an atheist of the most violent type, and sayings
are attributed to him which make one shudder.