The building in which Émile lived stood within the shadow of Montmartre, dominated by the basilica of Sacré-Coeur, still under construction at that time. As Émile walked through the streets of his neighborhood, he caught occasional glimpses of the looming structure.
Sacré-Coeur's very presence on Montmartre gnawed at the anarchists, along with other groups of disadvantaged people. The anarchist lithographer Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen depicted an imaginary revolutionary attack on the basilica. At Montmartre's café Le Chat Noir, the audience sang: "Since a temple has burdened it, our old Montmartre is much changed, because of the construction on our butte." It was rumored that more than a hundred dynamite cartridges were ready to go, stocked in Saint-Denis. In July, several compagnons let it be known in a meeting that dynamite would be distributed by the anarchist group The Miners' Revenge, with the goal of destroying Sacré-Coeur. A year later, an anarchist meeting protested the "provocations" of the clergy, an occupying force on Montmartre. In 1893, a man known only as "Captain Boulogne" proposed to a meeting of anarchists that they vote to blow up Sacré-Coeur.
In Zola's novel Paris (1898), Guillaume Froment wants to strike a blow for anarchism. He first considers blowing up the Opera. But he concludes that this would "in the whirlwind of anger and justice [only] destroy a little set of enjoyers." Why not the Bourse? But such "a blow at money, the great agent of corruption," would also have limited impact. Nor would he target the "Palais d'Injustice," or the Arc de Triomphe, the latter symbolizing warfare and the "sanguineous glory of conquerors." He decides to blow up Sacré-Coeur. He hates the basilica, which haunts him. Guillaume Froment could savor its destruction: "And all at once came thunder and earthquake, and a volcano opening and belching forth fire and smoke, and swallowing up the whole church and its multitude of worshippers ... And how fearful would be the avalanche: a broken forest of scaffoldings, a hail of stonework, rushing and bounding through the dust and smoke onto the roofs below."
From the heights of the Montmartre butte, stairs still lead down rue des Abbesses to rue Véron, a narrow street of cobblestones beneath Sacré-Coeur. Early in October 1892, Émile moved into a small room on the top floor of number 31, then a shabby building like the others nearby. Today an old sign on that building proclaims GAS AVAILABLE ON EVERY FLOOR, but that was not the case when Émile lived there. A shop stood to the left of the door, with the concierge's apartment to the right. Émile's only known visitor in those months was a certain Lambert, a provincial law student and friend who stayed with him from time to time. But he knew anarchists on nearby rue Lepic, including Félix Fénéon and Léon Ortiz. A tall, elegant, well-spoken anarchist-burglar known to his friends as Trognon ("Cutie"), Ortiz was Mexican-born of a Polish mother. He espoused the right to steal. He lived with his girlfriend (who was thus known as La Trognette). These men shared a hatred of Sacré-Coeur and what it represented.
On May 28,1892, a large crowd squeezed into the Salle du Commerce, 94, faubourg du Temple. The shadow of the martyred Ravachol was very much present. Trouble had arisen in the hall a month earlier, when anarchists disrupted a meeting held before an election, shouting that workers should abstain from electoral politics. Hundreds of people managed to get into the building. Two glass doors shattered in the tumult, while a crowd outside howled. One speaker set the tone: "Let's steal, kill, and dynamite—all means are good in order to get rid of this scum." Then it was Fortuné's turn. He saluted the theories of Ravachol and denounced "the governmental and bourgeois class." Ravachol had done the right thing. Everybody had seen "the general panic" caused by "two or three rocks" that he had left in apartment buildings. If that could have continued for fifteen days, "we would have been masters of the situation." In the meantime, the bosses were letting the poor die of hunger, while sleazy financial scandals continued. Resistance was difficult when ordinary people faced the rifles that had killed marchers in Fourmies. Then Fortuné shouted, "We have something even better, and you know the results ... Death to those who govern! Death to the bourgeoisie!" He appeared to wave a dynamite cartridge, pulled from his pocket. "Here are our weapons, what we need to blow up the bourgeoisie! Death to those bandits."
A police informer jotted down Fortuné's words, making note of the cartridge. Two days later, on the evening of May 30,1892, four policemen pounded on the door of Émile's room on rue Marcadet, where he was living at the time. They were armed with a warrant signed by the prefect of police, noting the presence of "suspect chemistry." Police believed Fortuné could be hiding there, but neither brother was found. In fact, the Henry brothers were attending another meeting on boulevard Montmartre. A locksmith had to be called to open Émile's door. The police seized twenty items from a table and an envelope that had been half consumed by flames in a small fireplace. An eight-caliber revolver, with five of the six slots loaded, rested on the mantel, with a box of twenty-five bullets nearby, as well as a leaded cane (sometimes used in fights). They took a ring engraved with the initials T.M. and the word REVOLUTION, and they pocketed a photo of Louis Matha, part of Émile's circle. A former barber, Matha was fearless and loyal; anarchists could count on him to do his share, even if he did not thoroughly understand the theoretical basis of anarchism. The police also carried away five anarchist newspapers, including a copy of L'Endehors, and various brochures. The reading material also included a fragment of an Italian newspaper containing instructions for making a bomb.
Émile was arrested the following day when he returned to his room, charged with the "detention of explosive devices," although nothing suspicious had been found. He gave his occupation as a "commercial employee," working for Félix Vanouytre since January 8,1892, on rue du Sentier. He affirmed, with some pride, that he was an anarchist but would not tell them anything about his compagnons. As for his brother, Émile said that he was in Paris, adding that he hoped they would understand that he could not reveal his whereabouts. But the policemen had uncovered the address of Fortuné in the correspondence they had seized.
The police went to Fortuné's room early the same day. Fortuné lived on the quai de Valmy along the canal Saint-Martin, near place de la République. Fortuné claimed that he was staying with a friend, but a rent receipt indicated that the room was his. The police search turned up only newspapers and letters. Fortuné explained to the investigating magistrate that what had been taken by some to be a cartouche of dynamite was only a small leather case for pencils, which was similar in shape to a cartridge. He insisted that he had not said, "Here is our weapon, dynamite," but rather "Here are our arms ... the pen, [with which we] write down our thoughts."
After some interrogation, the police released the younger Henry the same day (although he later remembered being in custody "several days"). Fortuné had been charged with "inciting murder and pillage" but was also released. That evening, the Henry brothers went with other compagnons to the commemorative Wall of the Fédérés in Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Communards had been executed in May 1871. Despite what they had seized from his room, the police had to admit, after interviewing his concierge and his employer, that the information they had gathered on Émile's "conduct and morality" was favorable.
The next day, June 1, Le Temps, one of Paris's most respectable newspapers, carried a brief report on the arrest of the Henry brothers. The arrest cost Émile his job the next day. His boss, Vanoutryne, discovered in his desk a manual "for the production and use of dynamite" and a translation from an Italian newspaper detailing how to make a bomb. Other employees said that they had learned, about two months before, that their colleague was an anarchist. Émile had tried to convert them to anarchism, but Vanoutryne had overlooked this, as he had no complaints at all about Émile's work as an accountant. However, Vanoutryne (and his mother) had decided then to fire him at the first sign of trouble. After the arrest, he was dismissed. That night, Émile went out to Brévannes, walking the several miles from the nearest train station. He told his mother that he was guilty of nothing and that society had condemned him to
misery.
Émile soon attended another anarchist meeting in the Salle du Commerce, at which he briefly held forth on a proposed law concerning the press and public meetings. These measures, he insisted, were "dictated by fear and the fact that the representatives of the people only know how to terrify anarchists." The deputies wanted to still "the voice of those who demand their rights."
At the time of his arrest and release, Émile was serving temporarily as the managing director of L'Endehors. Zo d'Axa, the editor, had been extremely impressed with the young intellectual "whose constant obsession was to work for anarchism." After Zo d'Axa's sudden departure for London, Émile willingly took over the tedious administrative responsibilities of publishing the newspaper, including correspondence with those distributing it. Despite some differences of opinion, which Zo d'Axa considered an inevitable part of anarchist individualism, Émile had been a good colleague. In some ways Émile still seemed like a child, although rather solemn, even obsessed, "as are those who are no longer troubled by religious faith, those who see—and are even hypnotized by—a goal, and then reason, judge, and make decisions with a mathematical certainty." Émile was convinced that a rationally constructed, wonderful society lay ahead. Yet he seemed anything but happy himself, and often expressed astonishment that any joy could be found in modern life.
The day after his arrest, Émile wrote to Zo d'Axa from the offices of L'Endehors. He had received the news that Zo had made it safely to London with Matha. He promised to do all he could to help L'Endehors. The letter contained some details about the status of the publication and asked that Zo write him directly. He signed with "a cordial handshake." On June 24, he penned another short letter, sending Zo d'Axa fifteen francs. He would work on the problem of bringing in some income for the paper. In closing, he sent along the good wishes of everybody, including Fortuné.
However, shortly thereafter, Émile suddenly quit L'Endehors, without explanation. He wrote to Zo d'Axa, asking him to choose someone to take over the paper. Émile had gone to see Félix Fénéon the day before and explained that he could no longer serve as manager and did not want to accept any money, because he had not completed even five weeks of work. Fénéon took over.
For his part, Fortuné continued to be a regular speaker at anarchist meetings. A giant red poster listed him with the other orators to be heard for a contribution of twenty-five centimes at the Salle du Commerce on July 3. During the three-hour meeting, amid shouts of "Vive Ravachol!" Fortuné discussed proposed new restrictions on the press. But he warned that those who suffered had another means of making themselves heard. In response, shouts of "Yes, dynamite!" cascaded down on the podium. At one point, Fortuné said that if blowing up ten houses was not enough, then one thousand, and if necessary, ten thousand houses would be fine. There would certainly be deaths, but this was unavoidable. States at war killed lots of people. Anarchists should not be afraid to avenge Ravachol. Even after this, the elder Henry excused himself for not being able to say all that he wanted—to be sure, he had already said a great deal—because police spies were taking down what he said. Over the next couple of months, he gave several more incendiary speeches—on one occasion, if the police are to be believed, interpreting the "propaganda of the deed" as giving anarchists the right and even the duty to assassinate heads of state.
Émile too remained active, but in different ways. One day someone who knew him noticed acid stains on his hands and mentioned it. He replied that he had not put enough nitroglycerin in his preparation, and it had been a waste. He added that he would try again with a little more acid and promised to let his friend know how it went.
Émile spent much of July looking for work, while trying to help raise enough money to assist Meunier and Francis, the two anarchists implicated in the explosion at the restaurant Le Very. In the meantime, Émile took many of his meals with Constant Martin, who seemed to host nightly gatherings of anarchists at his shop. In September, Émile worked as an unpaid apprentice to a watchmaker whom his friend Matha knew on the elegant rue Saint-Honoré, west of the Opera. Émile even offered to pay the watchmaker fifteen francs a month if he could work in the shop but finally left after a month because he needed a paying job. Watchmaking skills, of course, were useful in putting together bombs that explode with a timing device. A policeman reported that this was precisely what Émile was up to. Another undercover agent insisted he was working secretly in his room on such things, having borrowed an alarm clock that could detonate explosives.
A spirited debate continued in anarchist circles concerning the efficacy of terrorist attacks. After all, one of the originators of the concept of "propaganda by the deed"—Kropotkin himself—had turned away from the idea, repelled by its violence. Émile had already concluded that words and speeches were not enough—that the way to anarchism lay in bombs. He was now obsessed with Ravachol and his courage before the guillotine. Émile told his friend Malato, "We should finish with these people who dishonor our party." Those who wanted to use the pen instead of the bomb aimed to live comfortably in "the bourgeois style," unwilling to sacrifice their lives for anarchism. His departure from L'Endehors was likely related to this shift in thinking.
In L'Endehors on August 21, 1892, Errico Malatesta expressed his views on "propaganda by the deed" in an article titled "A Little Theory." Clearly, the mood of revolt was becoming greater and greater, in some places the result of anarchist ideas, in other places simply the result of the miserable circumstances of the poor. Malatesta believed that in principle, the end—revolution and a new society—justified any means. He reiterated the familiar notion that all anarchist acts were good if they served to facilitate the revolution. But then he came to a controversial point. Anarchists, in Malatesta's view, should never go beyond "the limit determined by necessity." They should operate like a surgeon who cuts where necessary but avoids inflicting needless suffering. Anarchists should continue to be inspired by love, which remained at the heart of their project: to serve the future of humanity. "Brutal revolt" would indeed come and could put an end to the way society was organized, but revolutionaries had to have a more effective tool than violence to prepare the way. Malatesta warned that "hate does not produce love, and by hate one cannot remake the world." A revolution fueled only by hate—and thus murder—would completely fail, or lead to new repression. In the wake of Ravachol's attacks, Malatesta was issuing a stern warning to the exponents of "propaganda by the deed." His letter reflected the split in anarchist ranks between the "associationalists" like him, who no longer believed in "deeds," and the "individualists," who fully approved of Ravachol's strategy of violence.
Malatesta's letter angered Émile, who had embraced deeds. He considered individual initiative the most effective way of striking at bourgeois society, and held that organizations espoused by the assocationalists risked imposing arbitrary hierarchies on their members, a principle that anarchism was supposed to reject. Moreover, operating independent of a group would make it more difficult for the police to effect a mass roundup of anarchists. Hatred for the ruling classes that was based on noble sentiments rather than envy was "a healthy and powerful energetic passion ... To those who say, 'hate does not generate love,' I respond that it is love, a burning love, which often generates hate." The "right of insurrection" trumped all other rights. Ravachol had thought long and hard about placing his bombs. It was "for him alone to be the judge if he was right in having such hate and acting in what seemed to be such a ferocious way."
Émile countered Malatesta's views in a long letter published in L'Endehors on August 28,1892. Addressing his letter to the "Comrades of L'Endehors," he recalled that Malatesta had long underlined the necessity and imminence of a violent revolution, indicating that all acts "of propaganda or concrete acts" were good when they served to expedite the revolution. Yet by now cautioning anarchists to never go beyond "the limit determined by necessity," he was contradicting a central tenet of anarchism: the development of the individual by his own initiative
. This alone ensured happiness. Malatesta wanted to restrain the very autonomy that was so central to the movement. Who should decide if a certain act was useful in bringing about revolution? Émile asked, "Will future Ravachols have to submit their projects for the acceptance by some sort of Grand Tribunal at which sits Malatesta or someone else, which will pass judgment on whether acts are appropriate or not?" It was up to the individual, and anarchists should welcome with pleasure "every energetic act against bourgeois society."
Émile had left rue Marcadet for rue Véron in early October 1892, leaving no forwarding address and telling the concierge that she should refuse any letters or packages arriving for him. The police were trying to keep an eye on him yet did not know that he had moved to rue Véron. A police report noted that Émile was unknown in the slumlike rooming houses, with their shabby attic dormitories, where poor transient workers often perched. It seemed something of a point of pride to the young bourgeois that he was not to be found there, although he frequently shared space and presumably a bed with working-class anarchists he barely knew.
Émile's anarchist friend Ortiz, the burglar, had been working for Dupuy, a decorative sculptor, at 5, rue de Rocroy, in the tenth arrondissement, not far from the Gare du Nord. When he quit his job, he recommended Émile, who began to work for Dupuy in the fall. Émile's new employer was very pleased with his work. Émile seemed "a model employee." His boss was "immediately enchanted by his prodigious abilities and the speed with which the young man learned." He was "a charmer," impressing with his lively intelligence and gentle and obliging nature. He did not hide his anarchism at the office, and Dupuy later said that Émile could probably have converted even him to anarchism.
The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror Page 10
