A balloon! A balloon! Quick! A balloon! There is not a moment to be
lost. The inhabitants of Brive-la-Gaillarde and the mountaineers of
Savoy are thirsting for news; let us shower manna on them. Write away!
Pierre Denis! Pump in your gas, emulators of Godard! And may the four
winds of heaven carry our “Declarations” to the four quarters of
France! Ah! ah! The Versaillais—band of traitors that they are!—did not
calculate on this. They raise soldiers, the simpletons; they bombard
our forts and our houses, the idiots! But we make decrees, and
distribute our proclamations throughout the country by means of an
unlimited number of revolutionary aeronauts. May they be guided by the
wind which blows across the mountains! How the honest labourers, the
good farmers, the eager workers of the departments will rejoice when
they receive, dropping, from the sky, the pages on which are inscribed
the rights and duties of the man of the present day! They will not
hesitate one single instant. They will leave their fields, their homes,
their workshops, and cry, “A musket! a musket!” with no thought that
they leave behind them women without husbands, and children without
fathers! They will fly to us, happy to conquer or die for the glory of
Citizen Delescluze and Citizen Vermorel! What ardour! What patriotism!
Already they are on their way; they are coming, they are come! Those
who had no fire-arms have seized their pickaxes or pieces of their
broken ploughs! Hurrah! Forward! March! To arms, citizens, to arms!
Hail to France, who comes to the rescue of Paris!
All to no purpose. I tell you the people of Brive-la-Gaillarde and the
mountaineers of Savoy have not once thought of taking up arms. They
have never been more tranquil or more resolute on remaining in peace
and quiet than now. When they see one of your balloons—always supposing
that it has any other end in view than of depositing repentant
communists in safe, snug corners, pass the lines of the Versailles
troops—when they see one of your balloons, they simply exclaim,
“Hulloa! Here’s a balloon! Where in the world can it come from?” If
some printed papers fall from the sky, the peasant picks them up,
saying, “I shall give them to my son to read, when he returns from
school.” The evening comes, the son spells them out, while the father
listens. The son cannot understand; the father falls asleep. “Ah! those
Parisians!” cries the mother. Can you wonder? These people are born to
live and die without knowing all that is admirable in the men of the
Hôtel de Ville. They are fools enough to cling to their own lives and
the lives of those near them. They do not go to war amongst themselves;
they are poor ignorant creatures, and you will never make them believe
that when once they have paid their taxes, worked, fed their wives and
children, there still remains to them one duty to fulfil, more holy,
more imperative than all others,—that of coming to the Porte-Maillot to
receive a ball or a fragment of shell in their skulls.
But these balloons might be made of some use, nevertheless. Pick out
one, the best made, the largest in size, the best rigged; put in
Citizen Félix Pyat—who, you may be sure, will not be the last to sit
down—and Citizen Delescluze too, nor must we omit Citizen Cluseret, nor
any of the citizens who at the present moment constitute the happiness
of Paris and the tranquillity of France! Now inflate this admirable
balloon, which is to bear off all your hopes, with the lightest gases.
Then blow, ye winds, terrifically, furiously, and bear it from us!
Balloons can be capricious at times. Have you read, the story of Hans
Pfaal? Good Heavens! if the wind could only carry them away, up to the
moon, or even a great deal further still.