She walks with a rapid step, near the shadow of the wall; she is poorly
dressed; her age is between forty and fifty; her forehead is bound with
a red checkered handkerchief, from which hang meshes of uncombed hair.
The face is red and the eyes blurred, and she moves with her look bent
down on the ground. Her right hand is in her pocket, or in the bosom of
her half-unbuttoned dress; in the other hand she holds one of the high,
narrow tin cans in which milk is carried in Paris, but which now, in
the hands of this woman, contains the dreadful petroleum liquid. As she
passes a _poste_ of regulars, she smiles and nods; when they speak to
her she answers, “My good Monsieur!” If the street is deserted she
stops, consults a bit of dirty paper that she holds in her hand, pauses
a moment before the grated opening to a cellar, then continues her way,
steadily, without haste. An hour afterwards, a house is on fire in the
street she has passed. Who is this woman? Paris calls her a
_Pétroleuse_.[108] One of these _pétroleuses_, who was caught in the
act in the Rue Truffault, discharged the six barrels of a revolver and
killed two men before being passed over to execution. Another was seen
falling in a doorway of a house in the Rue de Boulogne, pierced with
balls—but this one was a young girl; a bottle filled with petroleum
fell from her hand as she dropped. Sometimes one of these wretched
women, might be seen leading by the hand a little boy or girl; and the
child probably carrying a bottle of the incendiary liquid in his pocket
with his top and marbles.
[Illustration: Palace of the Luxembourg (garden Front). Used as a
Federal Ambulance Hospital.[109]]
[Illustration: Les Pétroleurs Les Pétroleuses]