Oh! those that hear it not, how happy they must be; they will never
understand how fearful this continuous, this dreadful noise is, and to
feel that each ball is aimed at some breast, and each shell brings ruin
in its train. Fear and horror wrings one’s heart and maddens one’s
brain. Visions pass before one’s eyes of corpses, of houses crushing
sleeping inmates, of men falling and crying out for mercy! and one
feels quite strange to go on living among the crowds that die!
I have been out a little while, a ball whistled over my shoulder, and
flattened itself against an iron bar on a shop front. I heard a mass of
glass shiver into fragments on the pavement. I determined to return
home.
On my way back, I had to pass in front of a liqueur shop, the door of
which was open, and several men were talking there. I stopped to learn
the news. Montmartre is taken; the Federals had not opposed much
resistance; but a great deal of firing had gone on in the side streets
and lanes. Seven insurgents were surrounded. “Give yourselves up, and
your lives will be saved,” cried out the soldiers. They replied, “We
are prisoners;” but one of them drew his revolver and shot an officer
in the leg. Then the soldiers took the seven men, threw them into a
large hole, and shot them from above like so many rabbits. Another man
told me that he had seen a child lying dead at the corner of the Rue de
Rome. “A pretty little fellow,” he said, “his brains were strewed on
the pavement beside him.” A third, that when all the fighting was over
at the Place Saint-Pierre a rifle shot was heard, and a captain of
Chasseurs fell dead. The major who was there, looked up and saw a man
trying to hide himself behind a chimney pot; the soldiers got into the
house, seized him on the roof, and brought him down into the Place.
What did the insurgent do, but walked up to the major, smiling, and hit
him a blow on the cheek. The major set him up against a wall, and blew
his brains out with a revolver. Another insurgent who was arrested,
made an insulting grimace at the soldiers; they shot him. On the
southern sides of Paris, the operations of the army have not been so
fortunate as on this. In the Faubourg St. Germain it advances very
slowly, if it advance at all. The Federals fight with heroic courage at
the Mont-Parnasse Station, the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and the
Croix-Rouge; from the corners of the streets, from the windows, from
the balconies proceed shots rarely ineffective. This sort of warfare
fatigues the soldiers, particularly as the discipline prevents them
from using the same measures. At Saint-Quen, likewise, the march of the
troops is stayed; the barricade of the Rue de Clichy holds out, and
will hold out some time. In other quarters the advantages gained by the
Versaillais are evident. Here and there some small show of resistance
is offered, but the insurgents are flying. I cannot tell whether all
these floating rumours are true. As I return home, I look round; in the
Rue Geoffrey-Marie, near the Faubourg Montmartre, I see a National
Guard alone in the middle of the street, nothing to screen him
whatsoever; he loads his rifle and fires, loads and fires again; again
and again! Thirty-three times! Then the rifle slips to the ground, and
the man staggers and falls.