advancing to meet me, rush towards a cupboard, open the door, and fling
something hastily into it. After this he leaned against the door as
though to prevent my opening it.
“Excuse me,” he said, in a witty, mocking tone, “but I caught a violent
cold after your first visit. I have just put my overcoat—oh, only an
ugly old overcoat, not a warm one,” he added quickly, “but still an
overcoat—inside there, and there it now is, and I will take the key out
of the lock.”
He put the key carefully into his pocket, and then came forward and
offered me a chair. But our conversation soon took a more serious turn,
for the news was very bad. For the last twelve days the ambulances had
been crowded with wounded men. Everything was in a bad way, home
politics as well as foreign politics. The Germans were advancing on
Paris. The army of the Loire was being formed. Gambetta, Chanzy,
Bourbaki, and Trochu were organising a desperate defence. We talked for
some time about all these sad things, and I told him about the painful
impression I had had on my last visit to the Tuileries, of my
remembrance of every one, so brilliant, so considerate, and so happy
formerly, and so deeply to be pitied at present. We were silent for a
moment, and then I shook hands with him, told him I had received all he
had sent, and returned to my ambulance.
The Prefect had sent me ten barrels of wine and two of brandy; 30,000
eggs, all packed in boxes with lime and bran; a hundred bags of coffee
and boxes of tea, forty boxes of Albert biscuits, a thousand tins of
preserves, and a quantity of other things.
M. Menier, the great chocolate manufacturer, had sent me five hundred
pounds of chocolate. One of my friends, a flour dealer, had made me a
present of twenty sacks of flour, ten of which were maize flour. This
flour dealer was the one who had asked me to be his wife when I was at
the Conservatoire. Félix Potin, my neighbour when I was living at 11
Boulevard Malesherbes, had responded to my appeal by sending two barrels
of raisins, a hundred boxes of sardines, three sacks of rice, two sacks
of lentils, and twenty sugar-loaves. From M. de Rothschild I had
received two barrels of brandy and a hundred bottles of his own wine for
the convalescents. I also received a very unexpected present. Léonie
Dubourg, an old school-fellow of mine at the Grand-Champs convent, sent
me fifty tin boxes each containing four pounds of salt butter. She had
married a very wealthy gentleman farmer, who cultivated his own farms,
which it seems were very numerous. I was very much touched at her
remembering me, for I had never seen her since the old days at the
convent. I had also asked for all the overcoats and slippers of my
various friends, and I had bought up a job lot of two hundred flannel
vests. My Aunt Betsy, my blind grandmother’s sister, who is still living
in Holland, and is now ninety-three years of age, managed to get for me,
through the charming Ambassador for the Netherlands, three hundred
night-shirts of magnificent Dutch linen, and a hundred pairs of sheets.
I received lint and bandages from every corner of Paris, but it was more
particularly from the Palais de l’Industrie that I used to get my
provisions of lint and of linen for binding wounds. There was an
adorable woman there, named Mlle. Hocquigny, who was at the head of all
the ambulances. All that she did was done with a cheerful gracefulness,
and all that she was obliged to refuse she refused sorrowfully, but
still in a gracious manner. She was at that time over thirty years of
age, and although unmarried she looked more like a very young married
woman. She had large, blue, dreamy eyes, and a laughing mouth, a
deliciously oval face, little dimples, and, crowning all this grace,
this dreamy expression, and this coquettish, inviting mouth, a wide
forehead like that of the Virgins painted by the early painters, rather
prominent, encircled by hair worn in smooth, wide, flat bandeaux,
separated by a faultless parting. The forehead seemed like the
protecting rampart of this delicious face. Mlle. Hocquigny was adored
and made much of by every one, but she remained invulnerable to all
homage. She was happy in being beloved, but she would not allow any one
to express affection for her.
At the Palais de l’Industrie a remarkable number of celebrated doctors
and surgeons were on duty, and they, as well as the convalescents, were
all more or less in love with Mlle. Hocquigny. As she and I were great
friends, she confided to me her observations and her sorrowful disdain.
Thanks to her, I was never short of linen nor of lint. I had organised
my ambulance with a very small staff. My cook was installed in the
public _foyer_. I had bought her an immense cooking range, so that she
could make soups and herb-tea for fifty men. Her husband was chief
attendant. I had given him two assistants, and Madame Guérard, Madame
Lambquin, and I were the nurses. Two of us sat up at night, so that we
each went to bed one night in three. I preferred this to taking on some
woman whom I did not know. Madame Lambquin belonged to the Odéon, where
she used to take the part of the duennas. She was plain and had a common
face, but she was very talented. She talked loud and was very plain-
spoken. She called a spade a spade, and liked frankness and no under
meaning to things. At times she was a trifle embarrassing with the
crudeness of her words and her remarks, but she was kind, active, alert,
and devoted. My various friends who were on service at the
fortifications came to me in their free time to do my secretarial work.
I had to keep a book, which was shown every day to a sergeant who came
from the Val-de-Grâce military hospital, giving all details as to how
many men came into our ambulance, how many died, and how many recovered
and left. Paris was in a state of siege; no one could go far outside the
walls, and no news from outside could be received. The Germans were not,
however, round the gates of the city. Baron Larrey came now and then to
see me, and I had as head surgeon Dr. Duchesne, who gave up his whole
time, night and day, to the care of my poor men during the five months
that this truly frightful nightmare lasted.
I cannot recall those terrible days without the deepest emotion. It was
no longer the country in danger that kept my nerves strung up, but the
sufferings of all her children. There were all those who were away
fighting, those who were brought in to us wounded or dying; the noble
women of the people, who stood for hours and hours in the _queue_ to get
the necessary dole of bread, meat, and milk for their poor little ones
at home. Ah, those poor women! I could see them from the theatre
windows, pressing up close to each other, blue with cold, and stamping
their feet on the ground to keep them from freezing—for that winter was
the most cruel one we had had for twenty years. Frequently one of these
poor, silent heroines was brought in to me, either in a swoon from
fatigue or struck down suddenly with congestion caused by cold. On
December 20 three of these unfortunate women were brought into the
ambulance. One of them had her feet frozen, and she lost the big toe of
her right foot. The second was an enormously stout woman, who was
suckling her child, and her poor breasts were harder than wood. She
simply howled with pain. The youngest of the three was a girl of sixteen
to eighteen years of age. She died of cold, on the trestle on which I
had had her placed to send her home. On December 24, there were fifteen
degrees of cold. I often sent Guillaume, our attendant, out with a
little brandy to warm the poor women. Oh! the suffering they must have
endured—those heart-broken mothers, those sisters and _fiancées_—in
their terrible dread. How excusable their rebellion seems during the
Commune, and even their bloodthirsty madness!
My ambulance was full. I had sixty beds, and was obliged to improvise
ten more. The soldiers were installed in the green-room and in the
general _foyer_, and the officers in a room which had been formerly the
refreshment-room of the theatre.
One day a young Breton, named Marie Le Gallec, was brought in. He had
been struck by a bullet in the chest and another in the wrist. Dr.
Duchesne bound up his chest firmly, and attended to his wrist. He then
said to me very simply:
“Let him have anything he likes—he is dying.”
I bent over his bed, and said to him:
“Tell me what would give you pleasure, Marie Le Gallec.”
“Soup,” he answered promptly, in the most comic way.
Madame Guérard hurried away to the kitchen, and soon returned with a
bowl of broth and pieces of toast. I placed the bowl on the little four-
legged wooden shelf, which was so convenient for the meals of our poor
sufferers. The wounded man looked up at me and said, “Barra.” I did not
understand, and he repeated, “Barra.” His poor chest caused him to hiss
out the word, and he made the greatest efforts to repeat his emphatic
request.
I sent immediately to the Marine Office, thinking that there would
surely be some Breton seamen there, and I explained my difficulty and my
ignorance of the Breton dialect.
I was informed that the word “barra” meant bread. I hurried at once to
Le Gallec with a large piece of bread. His face lighted up, and taking
it from me with his sound hand, he broke it up with his teeth and let
the pieces fall in the bowl. He then plunged his spoon into the middle
of the broth, and filled it up with bread until the spoon could stand
upright in it. When it stood up without shaking about, the young soldier
smiled. He was just preparing to eat this horrible concoction when the
young priest from St. Sulpice who had my ambulance in charge arrived. I
had sent for him on hearing the doctor’s sad verdict. He laid his hand
gently on the young man’s shoulder, thus stopping the movement of his
arm. The poor fellow looked up at the priest, who showed him the holy
cup.
“Oh,” he said simply, and then, placing his coarse handkerchief over the
steaming soup, he put his hands together.
We had arranged the two screens which we used for isolating the dead or
dying around his bed. He was left alone with the priest whilst I went on
my rounds to calm those who were chaffing, or help the believers raise
themselves for prayer. The young priest soon pushed aside the partition,
and I then saw Marie Le Gallec, with a beaming face, eating his
abominable bread sop. He soon fell asleep but awoke before long and
asked for something to drink, and then died in a slight fit of choking.
Fortunately I did not lose many men out of the three hundred who came
into my ambulance, for the death of the unfortunate ones completely
upset me.
I was very young at that time, only twenty-four years of age, but I
could nevertheless see the cowardice of some of the men and the heroism
of many of the others. A young Savoyard, eighteen years old, had had his
forefinger shot off. Baron Larrey was quite sure that he had done it
himself with his own gun, but I could not believe that. I noticed,
though, that, in spite of our nursing and care, the wound did not heal.
I bound it up in a different way, and the following day I saw that the
bandage had been altered. I mentioned this to Madame Lambquin, who was
sitting up that night with Madame Guérard.
“Good; I will keep my eye on him. You go to sleep, my child, and rely on
me.”
The next day when I arrived she told me that she had caught the young
man scraping the wound on his finger with his knife. I called him, and
told him that I should have to report this to the Val-de-Grâce Hospital.
He began to weep, and vowed to me that he would never do it again, and
five days later he was well. I signed the paper authorising him to leave
the ambulance, and he was sent to the army of the defence. I often
wondered what became of him. Another of our patients bewildered us too.
Each time that his wound seemed to be just on the point of healing up,
he had a violent attack of dysentery, which prevented him getting well.
This seemed suspicious to Dr. Duchesne, and he asked me to watch the
man. At the end of a considerable time we were convinced that our
wounded man had thought out the most comical scheme.
He slept next the wall, and therefore had no neighbour on the one side.
During the night he managed to file the brass of his bedstead. He put
the filings in a little pot which had been used for ointment of some
kind. A few drops of water and some salt mixed with this powdered brass
formed a poison which might have cost its inventor his life. I was
furious at this stratagem. I wrote to the Val-de-Grâce, and an ambulance
conveyance was sent to take this unpatriotic Frenchman away.
But side by side with these despicable men what heroism we saw! A young
captain was brought in one day. He was a tall fellow, a regular
Hercules, with a superb head and a frank expression. On my book he was
inscribed as Captain Menesson. He had been struck by a bullet at the top
of the arm, just at the shoulder. With a nurse’s assistance I was trying
as gently as possible to take off his cloak, when three bullets fell
from the hood which he had pulled over his head, and I counted sixteen
bullet holes in the cloak. The young officer had stood upright for three
hours, serving as a target himself, whilst covering the retreat of his
men as they fired all the time on the enemy. This had taken place among
the Champigny vines. He had been brought in unconscious, in an ambulance
conveyance. He had lost a great deal of blood, and was half dead with
fatigue and weakness. He was very gentle and charming, and thought
himself sufficiently well two days later to return to the fight. The
doctor, however, would not allow this, and his sister, who was a nun,
besought him to wait until he was something like well again.
“Oh, not quite well,” she said, smiling, “but just well enough to have
strength to fight.”
Soon after he came into the ambulance the Cross of the Legion of Honour
was brought to him, and this was a moment of intense emotion for every
one. The unfortunate wounded men who could not move turned their
suffering faces towards him, and, with their eyes shining through a mist
of tears, gave him a fraternal look. The stronger amongst them held out
their hands to the young giant.
It was Christmas-eve, and I had decorated the ambulance with festoons of
green leaves. I had made pretty little chapels in front of the Virgin
Mary, and the young priest from St. Sulpice came to take part in our
poor but poetical Christmas service. He repeated some beautiful prayers,
and the wounded men, many of whom were from Brittany, sang some sad
solemn songs full of charm.
Porel, the present manager of the Vaudeville Theatre, had been wounded
on the Avron Plateau. He was then convalescent and was one of my
patients, together with two officers now ready to leave the ambulance.
That Christmas supper is one of my most charming and at the same time
most melancholy memories. It was served in the small room which we had
made into a bedroom. Our three beds were covered with draperies and
skins which I had had brought from home, and we used them as seats.
Mlle. Hocquigny had sent me five metres of _boudin blanc_ (“white-
pudding”), the famous Christmas dish, and all my poor soldiers who were
well enough were delighted with this delicacy. One of my friends had had
twenty large _brioche_ cakes made for me, and I had ordered some large
bowls of punch, the coloured flames from which amused the grown-up sick
children immensely. The young priest from St. Sulpice accepted a piece
of _brioche_, and after taking a little white wine left us. Ah, how
charming and good he was, that poor young priest! And how well he
managed to make Fortin, the insupportable wounded fellow, cease talking.
Gradually the latter began to get humanised, until finally he began to
think the priest was a good sort of fellow. Poor young priest! He was
shot by the Communists. I cried for days and days over the murder of
this young St. Sulpice priest.
XVII
PARIS BOMBARDED
The month of January arrived. The army of the enemy held Paris day by
day in a still closer grip. Food was getting scarce. Bitter cold
enveloped the city, and poor soldiers who fell, sometimes only slightly
wounded, passed away gently in a sleep that was eternal, their brain
numbed and their body half frozen.
No more news could be received from outside, but thanks to the United
States Minister, who had resolved to remain in Paris, a letter arrived
from time to time. It was in this way that I received a thin slip of
paper, as soft as a primrose petal, bringing me the following message:
“Every one well. Courage. A thousand kisses.—Your mother.” This
impalpable missive dated from seventeen days previously.
And so my mother, my sisters, and my little boy were at The Hague all
this time, and my mind, which had been continually travelling in their
direction, had been wandering along the wrong route, towards Hâvre,
where I thought they were settled down quietly at the house of a cousin
of my father’s mother.
Where were they, and with whom?
I had two aunts at The Hague, but the question was, were they there? I
no longer knew what to think, and from that moment I never ceased
suffering the most anxious and torturing mental distress.
I was doing all in my power just then to procure some wood for fires.
Comte de Kératry had sent me a large provision before his departure to
the provinces in a balloon on October 9. My stock was growing very
short, and I would not allow what we had in the cellars to be touched,
so that in case of an emergency we should not be absolutely without any.
I had all the little footstools belonging to the theatre used for
firewood, all the wooden cases in which the properties were kept, a good
number of old Roman benches, arm-chairs and curule chairs, that were
stowed away under the theatre, and indeed everything which came to hand.
Finally, taking pity on my despair, pretty Mlle. Hocquigny sent me ten
thousand kilograms of wood, and then I took courage again.
I had been told about some new system of keeping meat, by which the meat
lost neither its juice nor its nutritive quality. I sent Madame Guérard
to the _Mairie_ in the neighbourhood of the Odéon, where such provisions
were distributed, but some brute answered her that when I had removed
all the religious images from my ambulance I should receive the
necessary food. M. Herisson, the mayor, with some functionary holding an
influential post, had been to inspect my ambulance. The important
personage had requested me to have the beautiful white Virgins which
were on the mantelpieces and tables taken away, as well as the Divine
Crucified—one hanging on the wall of each room in which there were any
of the wounded. I refused in a somewhat insolent and very decided way to
act in accordance with the wish of my visitor, whereupon the famous
Republican turned his back on me and gave orders that I should be
refused everything at the _Mairie_. I was very determined, however, and
I moved heaven and earth until I succeeded in getting inscribed on the
lists for distribution of food, in spite of the orders of the chief. It
is only fair to say that the mayor was a charming man. Madame Guérard
returned, after her third visit, with a child pushing a hand-barrow
containing ten enormous bottles of the miraculous meat. I received the
precious consignment with infinite joy, for my men had been almost
without meat for the last three days, and the beloved _pot-au-feu_ was
an almost necessary resource for the poor wounded fellows. On all the
bottles were directions as to opening them: “Let the meat soak so many
hours,” &c. &c.
Madame Lambquin, Madame Guérard, and I, together with all the staff of
the infirmary, were soon grouped anxiously and inquisitively around
these glass receptacles.
I told the head attendant to open the largest of the bottles, in which
through the thick glass we could see an enormous piece of beef
surrounded by thick, muddled-looking water. The string fastened round
the rough paper which hid the cork was cut, and then, just as the man
was about to put the corkscrew in, a deafening explosion was heard and a
rank odour filled the room. Every one rushed away terrified. I called
them all back, scared and disgusted as they were, and showed them the
following words on the directions: “Do not be alarmed at the bad odour
on opening the bottle.” Courageously and with resignation we resumed our
work, though we felt sick all the time from the abominable exhalation. I
took the beef out and placed it on a dish that had been brought for the
purpose. Five minutes later this meat turned blue and then black, and
the stench from it was so unbearable that I decided to throw it away.
Madame Lambquin was wiser, though, and more reasonable.
“No, oh no, my dear girl,” she said; “in these times it will not do to
throw meat away, even though it may be rotten. Let us put it in the
glass bottle again and send it back to the _Mairie_.”
I followed her wise advice, and it was a very good thing I did, for
another ambulance, installed at Boulevard Medicis, on opening these
bottles of meat had been as horrified as we were, and had thrown the
contents into the street. A few minutes after the crowd had gathered
round in a mob, and, refusing to listen to anything, had yelled out
insults addressed to “the aristocrats,” “the clericals,” and “the
traitors,” who were throwing good meat, intended for the sick, into the
street, so that the dogs were enjoying it, while the people were
starving with hunger, &c. &c.
It was with the greatest difficulty that the wretched, mad people had
been prevented from invading the ambulance, and when one of the
unfortunate nurses had gone out, later on, she had been mobbed and
beaten until she was left half dead from fright and blows. She did not
want to be carried back to her own ambulance, and the druggist begged me
to take her in. I kept her for a few days, in one of the upper tier
boxes of the theatre, and when she was better she asked if she might
stay with me as a nurse. I granted her wish, and kept her with me
afterwards as a maid.
She was a fair-haired girl, gentle and timid, and was pre-destined for
misfortune. She was found dead in the Père Lachaise cemetery after the
skirmish between the Communists and the Versailles troop. A stray bullet
struck her in the back of the neck as she was praying at the grave of
her little sister, who had died two days before from small-pox. I had
taken her with me to St. Germain, where I had gone to stay during the
horrors of the Commune. Poor girl! I had allowed her to go to Paris very
much against my own will.
As we could not count on this preserved meat for our food, I made a
contract with a knacker, who agreed to supply me, at rather a high
price, with horse flesh, and until the end this was the only meat we had
to eat. Well prepared and well seasoned, it was very good.
Hope had now fled from all hearts, and we were living in the expectation
of we knew not what. An atmosphere of misfortune seemed to hang like
lead over us, and it was a sort of relief when the bombardment commenced
on December 27. At last we felt that something new was happening! It was
an era of fresh suffering. There was some stir, at any rate. For the
last fortnight the fact of not knowing anything had been killing us.
On January 1, 1871, we lifted our glasses to the health of the absent
ones, to the repose of the dead, and the toast choked us with such a
lump in our throats.
Every night we used to hear the dismal cry of “Ambulance! Ambulance!”
underneath the windows of the Odéon. We went down to meet the pitiful
procession, and one, two, or sometimes three conveyances would be there,
full of our poor, wounded soldiers. There would be ten or twelve rows of
them, lying or sitting up on the straw. I said that I had room for one
or two, and, lifting the lantern, I looked into the conveyance, and the
faces would then turn slowly towards the lamp. Some of the men would
close their eyes, as they were too weak to bear even that feeble light.
With the help of the sergeant who accompanied the conveyance and our
attendant, one of the unfortunates would with difficulty be lifted into
the narrow litter on which he was to be carried up to the ambulance.
Oh, what sorrowful anguish it was for me when, on lifting the patient’s
head, I discovered that it was getting heavy, oh, so heavy! And when
bending over that inert face I felt that there was no longer any breath!
The sergeant would then give the order to take him back, and the poor
dead man was put in his place and another wounded man was lifted out.