Then a lark carolled faintly among the parting clouds, the sun flashed out in splendor, and the grasses were humming with insect life. Far afield crickets were chirping, all the small creatures of the meadows droned a rhythmic chorus until the wind died away and the stillness of the midday heat was only broken by the prattle of the brook.
It was the overture to “Sylvia Elven,” the new opera.
Suddenly it seemed as though a forest full of birds were singing, and then, rising clear and sweet above the trills of the feathered choir, came the first wonderful notes of Sylvia’s aria.
Jeanne was singing the “Hawthorn Song.”
“Flower of the heath,
Sway and bend; I weave my wreath, Blossom of thyme,
Life is love; I wreathe my rhyme.
Flower of the thorn,
Life is love and love is born.
Blossom of moss,
Sorrow is dead. I drop my cross.
Flower of heather,
Death and I have talked together.
Blossom of weed,
Death has fled on his snow-white steed.
Flower of the May,
Love and I have said him nay.
Blossom of rue,
Shadow of fear no more I knew.
Flower of heath,
Sway and bend, I weave my wreath.”
Then her mood changed. He heard the soft clash of Moorish cymbals, the swaying cadence of young voices, the hollow rumble of the Nautch drum. A reed pipe took up the melody, which soared away among palms, by rivers hurrying through whispering rushes. Imperceptibly the notes of the pipes grew softer, and now it was a Breton herdsman blowing a quaint mimicry of a chœur de chasse. Then the hunting horns rang out, the branches snapped and cracked under the heavy rush of a boar, and, as the chase passed, pack in full cry and horns clanging the “game afoot,” the chimes from a hidden chapel came quavering on the October wind, lingering, ringing faintly long after silence had fallen in the forest.
She came quietly from the piano and he raised his head. For a while they looked at each other; then Tcherka arched her back and yawned, and the puppy gurgled and thumped the floor with his tail.
“It’s a sleepy time,” said Jeanne, with a timid smile.
He rose and she held out her fair hand. Silently, bending low before her, he touched her fingers with his lips.
And as they stood, smiling, lingering, strangely moved, from the distant street came the booming of drums and the trampling of a multitude.
Then the bugles pealed the “alert,” the drums rolled like distant thunder, and a thousand deep voices rose in one long wavering cheer, “Vive la Commune!”
It was the new battalion replacing the old at the barricades in the rue Notre Dame.
CHAPTER XI. THE COMMUNE MOVES.
ON the morning of the twenty-second of March, the day fixed for the elections in Paris, a large square placard printed in bold type appeared on every wall in the city. This was its tenor.
TO THE ELECTORS OF TARIS.
WHEREAS: the convocation of the electors is an act of National sovereignty. —
WHEREAS: the exercise of that sovereignty belongs only to the powers emanating from universal suffrage.
IT FOLLOWS: that the Committee now installed in the Hôtel de Ville has neither right nor power for such convocation. —
THEREFORE, the representatives of the undersigned journals consider the convocation placarded for the 22d of March null and void, and counsel their readers to pay it no atttention. —
Present and approving: —
Journal des Débats. — Constitutionnel.
Élector Libre. — Petite Presse.
Vérité. — Figaro.
Gaulois. — Paris-Journal.
Petit National. — Petit Moniteur.
Siècle. — Presse.
Temps. — Soir.
France. — Liberté.
Pays. — National.
Univers. — Cloche.
Patrie. — Français.
Bien Public. — Union.
Opinion Nationale. — Journal des Villes et Journal de Paris. — Compagnes.
France Nouvelle. — Moniteur Universel.
Monde. — Gazette de France.
Around each placard excited groups gathered, occasionally broken up and dispersed by platoons of the National Guard, but only to collect again and discuss the placard in words and gestures which every moment grew more violent. When, at times, the placards were torn down and the crowd retreated from the glittering bayonets, before the tumult fairly subsided, other placards would mysteriously appear in the place of those destroyed.
This splendid protest of the Paris press fell like a bombshell among the members of the Central Committee and their adherents who occupied the Hôtel de Ville. It was the first time in twenty years that the press of Paris, emasculated and corrupted under the Empire, had raised its united voice in support of a principle. The effect of the protest was instant and decisive. The Commune was profoundly stirred, and the “party of order,” which had kept very quiet since its timid leader had fled to Versailles, now saw that it had in the city an ally and a bulwark — the loyal press. Groups formed in the streets, meetings were held in the open air, loyal battalions offered their services, and everywhere in the centre of Paris the people of the best quarters united their voices with the dignified protest of the press.
Most of the mairies were occupied by moderate republicans, and these gentlemen made it known that they would not abdicate in the presence of the rebellion, neither would they lend their aid to nor countenance any election fixed for the 22d of March. Three wards of the city even had the courage to hoist the tricolor; they were the wards of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, rue de la Banque, and the rue Druot. These three quarters are situated in the very heart of all that is elegant and learned and fashionable in Paris, and their action troubled the insurgents of the Hôtel de Ville.
These events were known in Versailles almost as soon as in Paris, for communication between the Capitol and the city in which the National Assembly was sitting had not been entirely cut off. Fugitives from Paris brought the news of the sudden change in the political situation. The Assembly, during its first sitting, remembering perhaps the number of faults it had committed in the past, voted without hesitation to give Paris the right to elect a municipal government for herself. At one time even, urged by several notabilities of the Left, such as Victor Schoelcher and Louis Blanc, they almost believed that they could arrive at an understanding with the Hôtel de Ville. Negotiations were opened and envoys sent from Versailles. MM. Tirard, Clémençeau, and others, mayors and deputies at the same time, were active in trying to effect a reconciliation, but from the very first it was plain that the Commune was not in earnest. The insurgents would listen to nothing reasonable, and they refused on any terms to quit their places. Thiers was very patient with them, but it was the patience of an old fox with a farmer who has him fast by the leg. Give the fox time and he can twist around and bite. Thiers wanted time. To crush the insurrection, as it now appeared in all its appalling proportions, he needed 50,000 troops. On the 20th of March he had only a third of that number, but every day thousands of troops were arriving from the 325,000 prisoners of the Franco-Prussian war, and, although they were worn out from long suffering and captivity, badly clothed, unarmed, and unclassed, it was plain that with time they could be welded into a powerful and compact army. So Monsieur Thiers was very patient.
On the other hand the “party of order” in Paris lost what little faith it had retained in Adolphe Thiers, and declared that its patience was at an end. Day by day the Communistic revolt, which at first pretended to justify itself in the cry of “Municipal Liberty,” was taking a sinister character, anything but French. Every day the alarmed inhabitants of Paris saw new actors enter the scene. The Hôtel de Ville had become a revolutionary headquarters. Strange, suspicious creatures haunted it: Polish dragoons in full uniform, with tasselled boots and flapping cloaks; Garib
aldians in red shirts, plumed hats, and enormous spurs; “Hussars of Death” in the fantastic panoply which has made their hideous trapping an omen of violence and terror. With crêpe on their arms, revolvers in their belts, and long sabres dangling, these strange creatures rode like nightmares through the dimly lighted streets, or stalked silently, two by two, enveloped in their vast mantles. At night the cafés were crowded with motley throngs who gambled and cursed and drank with women of the most abandoned and dangerous type. Gold was poured out like water, orgies awakened the sober inhabitants whose expostulations were received with jeers and curses and an occasional playful bullet. The Belleville battalions marched and counter-marched all day, blowing their eternal bugles and drumming until the whole city echoed from morning until night with one terrific ear-splitting racket.
A terror which was not without reason seized upon the good people of Paris.
“Are these bandits paid to annoy us in this way?” they demanded of one another. The answer came in a startling manner. The Central Committee, revolvers levelled, “borrowed” 500,000 francs from the Bank of France. Then anger and fright wrung a cry of protest from the decent element in the city. A great meeting of the peaceful citizens of Paris was called for the 22d of March in front of the New Opera. It was to be a silent protest, but an imposing one. The people were cautioned to bring no arms and to utter no hostile cry. They were to march quietly through the streets, their attitude was to be dignified and non-provocative, and they hoped to show the inhabitants and the insurgent National Guard that the majority of the bourgeoisie were not in favor of the violence which was beginning to succeed the brief interval of quiet.
All the morning these inoffensive people had been gathering before the Opera, discussing the protest of the press and the negotiations with Thiers. By noon 10,000 people had gathered and still more were flocking in, eager to take part in the pacific demonstration which they hoped the Commune would not dare disregard. From the Place de l’Opéra they could see, through the rue de la Paix, the formidable barricade which defended the Place Vendôme.
The Place Vendôme had been transformed into a fortress. Cannon and mitrailleuses guarded the barricade across the rue de la Paix, and the whole square swarmed with the troops of the Commune. Du Bisson, that loud-mouthed renegade, commanded the western angle of the square; Lullier, the southern; and the commandant-in-chief, Bergeret, occupied the centre with his bullion-covered staff. Bergeret, clothed in a costume which would have driven an opera tenor crazy with jealousy, sat on a keg in the middle of the square and eyed the throng in front of the Opera with a self-satisfied smile.
“If they come this way,” he said to Du Bisson, “I’ll mow ’em down — only wait and see me!”
Du Bisson stared at the grotesque and ferocious imitation of Santerre and Rossignol.
“You’d better wait until they do something to merit it,” he answered curtly; “study your orders more carefully, my friend.”
“I want no advice,” observed Bergeret, with superb indifference.
“It’s better than rotten eggs” said Du Bisson, brusquely, and turned on his heel.
This allusion to an episode in “General” Bergeret’s career, made that opera-bouffe warrior turn livid, for not only had he once been a painter of mediocrity, but at one time he had been hissed off the stage of a fourth-rate theatre. Casting furious glances around him at his staff to see if anybody was laughing, he got up and marched over to a group of officers who were sitting on the barricade facing the rue de la Paix.
“Where is Colonel Tribert?” he demanded. Tribert rose and saluted. His face was battered out of recognition, but his little eyes burned with a red light above the mass of plaster and bandages, and he held himself straight as a ramrod.
“Do you see those fools gathering there in front of the Opera?” demanded Bergeret, pompously.
“I see,” mumbled Tribert.
“You should say,” corrected Bergeret, frowning, “yes, General Bergeret.”
“Pardon. Yes, General Bergeret.”
“Have you a glass?”
“Here is one, General,” said Sarre.
Bergeret took the glass and, steadying it across the top of the barricade, gazed eagerly through the rue de la Paix to the Place de l’Opéra.
“They have no banners,” he said, without removing his glass; “they carry no arms either. It’s all the same. If they come this way, Colonel Tribert, we will give them a tune to dance to.”
Sarre grinned approval. Bergeret handed the glass to Tribert, and, swelling like a turkey-cock, turned slowly once or twice as if he were on a pivot, and glanced up at the windows of the houses which faced the square on the side of the Hôtel Continental. There were no ladies to admire him, and he petulantly ordered that all the windows facing the square should remain shut. As he spoke, a bay window opposite was raised and two gentlemen stepped into the balcony, conversing.
“Shut that window!” shouted Bergeret.
One of the gentlemen, a short ruddy little fellow with very bright eyes, looked at him calmly for a moment, then quietly resumed the conversation with his companion.
“Do you hear me!” bellowed Bergeret, furious and conscious of the attention of his entire staff, “shut that window and go in!”
The short ruddy-faced gentleman quietly lighted a cigar, leaned over the balcony, and observed General Bergeret with an amused twinkle in his eye.
“Burnside,” he said in English to his companion, “who is that jumping-jack over there?”
Du Bisson, seeing something was wrong, came up hurriedly. “General,” he said, “be careful what you do! That man is General Sheridan of the United States Army and his companion is General Burnside!”
Bergeret bit his lip and turned on his heel. Tribert’s red eyes rested a moment on the two Americans who sat smoking and chatting on the balcony. Then, with an ominous frown, he motioned Sarre to his side and began a whispered conversation in which Philip Landes’ name had the honor of being eulogized in the choicest of Belleville French. Before he had finished his consultation a bugle call from the centre of the square brought every officer to his feet. Then the drums rattled the “alarm” and the troops fell in and “General” Bergeret, swelling with importance, followed by his grotesque staff, marched toward the eastern section of the barricade.
“What’s up now?” grumbled Tribert; “oh, here they come, eh? We’ll give them something to stir them.” —
Sarre followed his superior’s eyes and saw that the crowd which had been gathered in front of the Opera was in motion, and now, headed by a Line soldier without arms who bore the tri-color flag, was entering the rue de la Paix and making straight for the Place Vendôme.
At an order from Bergeret the troops formed a square, officers in the centre, cannon at the angles. At another order, rifles were loaded and bayonets fixed, but, knowing their mission to be peaceful, the procession of citizens continued to advance, urging each other to remember and give no provocation. “Vive la France! Vive l’order! Vive la Garde National!” were all the cries which they permitted themselves. On the way, thinking that possibly the sight of the blue ribbons which many wore might be taken as a pretext for violence, orders were given to remove them. On they came, gravely, quietly, until the foremost rank reached the barricade. Then they requested the National Guard to let them pass, as their mission was harmless and peaceful. Already six or seven Federals had drawn back and opened their ranks with friendly gestures, when suddenly the drums rolled, and a strident voice was heard, loud, frenzied, dominating the crash of the drums, uttering terrible menaces. It was Bergeret, aping the custom of the three legal summonses to disperse.
The citizens stared at each other in amazement.
“Ready! Aim! Fire!” shrieked this ape with a tiger’s heart. An explosion shook the barricade, and when the smoke rose, the rue de la Paix was a ghastly shambles. With terror-stricken cries the crowd turned and fled, trampling over the dead and wounded, searching vainly for a place of saf
ety. A white-haired old man fell with a ball between his eyes; a young woman lay groaning on the sidewalk, her left arm crushed by a bullet. Twenty corpses lay in the rue de la Paix, and sixty people bleeding from rifle bullets dragged themselves toward a place of safety. Twelve corpses lay in one heap on the corner of the rue-Neuve-Saint-Agustin. A doctor wearing the brassard of the ambulances presented himself at the barricade to help the wounded, but Bergeret cursed him.
“F — nous le camp! On n’ a pas besoin de vous!” shouted the Colonel of the 80th Battalion.
“Shoot him!” yelled Tribert; but Bergeret was thinking of other things, and the doctor escaped by a miracle.
Sarre sat on the top of the barricade laughing and mimicking the efforts of a wounded man to drag himself across the pavement to a doorway.
“He walks like a crab!” he chuckled, holding his sides with laughter. Tribert picked up a rifle and blew a hole through the wounded man’s head, which annoyed Sarre, who claimed it spoiled the sport.
When the news of the butchery reached the Hôtel de Ville, the extremists in the Central Committee applauded frantically and shouted their approval. Some even said they regretted that Bergeret had not been able to “slaughter the reaction with one blow.” On a motion of Assi, the Committee voted their thanks to Bergeret and his staff. A document was drawn up and signed by the Committee, and a Cavalier of the Republic left at full gallop to carry the thanks of the Commune to the Place Vendôme. —
Bergeret was radiant. He sat on his powder keg receiving the homage of his officers, while at a little distance from him Jules Vallès, using a box of hiscuits as a desk, sat writing his editorial for the next morning’s “Cri du Peuple,” a villainous sheet of anarchism.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 34
