The Downfall: Chapter 7

Chapter 7

On the day succeeding the battle of Sedan the mighty hosts of the
two German armies, without the delay of a moment, commenced their
march on Paris, the army of the Meuse coming in by the north through
the valley of the Marne, while the third army, passing the Seine at
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, turned the city to the south and moved on
Versailles; and when, on that bright, warm September morning, General
Ducrot, to whom had been assigned the command of the as yet incomplete
14th corps, determined to attack the latter force while it was
marching by the flank, Maurice's new regiment, the 115th, encamped in
the woods to the left of Meudon, did not receive its orders to advance
until the day was lost. A few shells from the enemy sufficed to do the
work; the panic started with a regiment of zouaves made up of raw
recruits, and quickly spreading to the other troops, all were swept
away in a headlong rout that never ceased until they were safe behind
the walls of Paris, where the utmost consternation prevailed. Every
position in advance of the southern line of fortifications was lost,
and that evening the wires of the Western Railway telegraph, the
city's sole remaining means of communicating with the rest of France,
were cut. Paris was cut off from the world.

The condition of their affairs caused Maurice a terrible dejection.
Had the Germans been more enterprising they might have pitched their
tents that night in the Place du Carrousel, but with the prudence of
their race they had determined that the siege should be conducted
according to rule and precept, and had already fixed upon the exact
lines of investment, the position of the army of the Meuse being at
the north, stretching from Croissy to the Marne, through Epinay, the
cordon of the third army at the south, from Chennevieres to Chatillon
and Bougival, while general headquarters, with King William, Bismarck,
and General von Moltke, were established at Versailles. The gigantic
blockade, that no one believed could be successfully completed, was an
accomplished fact; the city, with its girdle of fortifications eight
leagues and a half in length, embracing fifteen forts and six detached
redoubts, was henceforth to be transformed into a huge prison-pen. And
the army of the defenders comprised only the 13th corps, commanded by
General Vinoy, and the 14th, then in process of reconstruction under
General Ducrot, the two aggregating an effective strength of eighty
thousand men; to which were to be added fourteen thousand sailors,
fifteen thousand of the francs corps, and a hundred and fifteen
thousand mobiles, not to mention the three hundred thousand National
Guards distributed among the sectional divisions of the ramparts. If
this seems like a large force it must be remembered that there were
few seasoned and trained soldiers among its numbers. Men were
constantly being drilled and equipped; Paris was a great intrenched
camp. The preparations for the defense went on from hour to hour with
feverish haste; roads were built, houses demolished within the
military zone; the two hundred siege guns and the twenty-five hundred
pieces of lesser caliber were mounted in position, other guns were
cast; an arsenal, complete in every detail, seemed to spring from the
earth under the tireless efforts of Dorian, the patriotic war
minister. When, after the rupture of the negotiations at Ferrieres,
Jules Favre acquainted the country with M. von Bismarck's demands--the
cession of Alsace, the garrison of Strasbourg to be surrendered, three
milliards of indemnity--a cry of rage went up and the continuation of
the war was demanded by acclaim as a condition indispensable to the
country's existence. Even with no hope of victory Paris must defend
herself in order that France might live.

On a Sunday toward the end of September Maurice was detailed to carry
a message to the further end of the city, and what he witnessed along
the streets he passed through filled him with new hope. Ever since the
defeat of Chatillon it had seemed to him that the courage of the
people was rising to a level with the great task that lay before them.
Ah! that Paris that he had known so thoughtless, so wayward, so keen
in the pursuit of pleasure; he found it now quite changed, simple,
earnest, cheerfully brave, ready for every sacrifice. Everyone was in
uniform; there was scarce a head that was not decorated with the
_kepi_ of the National Guard. Business of every sort had come to a
sudden standstill, as the hands of a watch cease to move when the
mainspring snaps, and at the public meetings, among the soldiers in
the guard-room, or where the crowds collected in the streets, there
was but one subject of conversation, inflaming the hearts and minds of
all--the determination to conquer. The contagious influence of
illusion, scattered broadcast, unbalanced weaker minds; the people
were tempted to acts of generous folly by the tension to which they
were subjected. Already there was a taint of morbid, nervous
excitability in the air, a feverish condition in which men's hopes and
fears alike became distorted and exaggerated, arousing the worst
passions of humanity at the slightest breath of suspicion. And Maurice
was witness to a scene in the Rue des Martyrs that produced a profound
impression on him, the assault made by a band of infuriated men on a
house from which, at one of the upper windows, a bright light had been
displayed all through the night, a signal, evidently, intended to
reach the Prussians at Bellevue over the roofs of Paris. There were
jealous citizens who spent all their nights on their house-tops,
watching what was going on around them. The day before a poor wretch
had had a narrow escape from drowning at the hands of the mob, merely
because he had opened a map of the city on a bench in the Tuileries
gardens and consulted it.

And that epidemic of suspicion Maurice, who had always hitherto been
so liberal and fair-minded, now began to feel the influence of in the
altered views he was commencing to entertain concerning men and
things. He had ceased to give way to despair, as he had done after the
rout at Chatillon, when he doubted whether the French army would ever
muster up sufficient manhood to fight again: the sortie of the 30th of
September on l'Hay and Chevilly, that of the 13th of October, in which
the mobiles gained possession of Bagneux, and finally that of October
21, when his regiment captured and held for some time the park of la
Malmaison, had restored to him all his confidence, that flame of hope
that a spark sufficed to light and was extinguished as quickly. It was
true the Prussians had repulsed them in every direction, but for all
that the troops had fought bravely; they might yet be victorious in
the end. It was Paris now that was responsible for the young man's
gloomy forebodings, that great fickle city that at one moment was
cheered by bright illusions and the next was sunk in deepest despair,
ever haunted by the fear of treason in its thirst for victory. Did it
not seem as if Trochu and Ducrot were treading in the footsteps of the
Emperor and Marshal MacMahon and about to prove themselves incompetent
leaders, the unconscious instruments of their country's ruin? The same
movement that had swept away the Empire was now threatening the
Government of National Defense, a fierce longing of the extremists to
place themselves in control in order that they might save France by
the methods of '92; even now Jules Favre and his co-members were more
unpopular than the old ministers of Napoleon III. had ever been. Since
they would not fight the Prussians, they would do well to make way for
others, for those revolutionists who saw an assurance of victory in
decreeing the _levee en masse_, in lending an ear to those visionaries
who proposed to mine the earth beneath the Prussians' feet, or
annihilate them all by means of a new fashioned Greek fire.

Just previous to the 31st of October Maurice was more than usually a
victim to this malady of distrust and barren speculation. He listened
now approvingly to crude fancies that would formerly have brought a
smile of contempt to his lips. Why should he not? Were not imbecility
and crime abroad in the land? Was it unreasonable to look for the
miraculous when his world was falling in ruins about him? Ever since
the time he first heard the tidings of Froeschwiller, down there in
front of Mulhausen, he had harbored a deep-seated feeling of rancor in
his breast; he suffered from Sedan as from a raw sore, that bled
afresh with every new reverse; the memory of their defeats, with all
the anguish they entailed, was ever present to his mind; body and mind
enfeebled by long marches, sleepless nights, and lack of food,
inducing a mental torpor that left them doubtful even if they were
alive; and the thought that so much suffering was to end in another
and an irremediable disaster maddened him, made of that cultured man
an unreflecting being, scarce higher in the scale than a very little
child, swayed by each passing impulse of the moment. Anything,
everything, destruction, extermination, rather than pay a penny of
French money or yield an inch of French soil! The revolution that
since the first reverse had been at work within him, sweeping away the
legend of Napoleonic glory, the sentimental Bonapartism that he owed
to the epic narratives of his grandfather, was now complete. He had
ceased to be a believer in Republicanism, pure and simple, considering
the remedy not drastic enough; he had begun to dabble in the theories
of the extremists, he was a believer in the necessity of the Terror as
the only means of ridding them of the traitors and imbeciles who were
about to slay the country. And so it was that he was heart and soul
with the insurgents when, on the 31st of October, tidings of disaster
came pouring in on them in quick succession: the loss of Bourget, that
had been captured from the enemy only a few days before by a dashing
surprise; M. Thiers' return to Versailles from his visit to the
European capitals, prepared to treat for peace, so it was said, in the
name of Napoleon III.; and finally the capitulation of Metz, rumors of
which had previously been current and which was now confirmed, the
last blow of the bludgeon, another Sedan, only attended by
circumstances of blacker infamy. And when he learned next day the
occurrences at the Hotel de Ville--how the insurgents had been for a
brief time successful, how the members of the Government of National
Defense had been made prisoners and held until four o'clock in the
morning, how finally the fickle populace, swayed at one moment by
detestation for the ministers and at the next terrified by the
prospect of a successful revolution, had released them--he was filled
with regret at the miscarriage of the attempt, at the non-success of
the Commune, which might have been their salvation, calling the people
to arms, warning them of the country's danger, arousing the cherished
memories of a nation that wills it will not perish. Thiers did not
dare even to set his foot in Paris, where there was some attempt at
illumination to celebrate the failure of the negotiations.

The month of November was to Maurice a period of feverish expectancy.
There were some conflicts of no great importance, in which he had no
share. His regiment was in cantonments at the time in the vicinity of
Saint-Ouen, whence he made his escape as often as he could to satisfy
his craving for news. Paris, like him, was awaiting the issue of
events in eager suspense. The election of municipal officers seemed to
have appeased political passion for the time being, but a circumstance
that boded no good for the future was that those elected were rabid
adherents of one or another party. And what Paris was watching and
praying for in that interval of repose was the grand sortie that was
to bring them victory and deliverance. As it had always been, so it
was now; confidence reigned everywhere: they would drive the Prussians
from their position, would pulverize them, annihilate them. Great
preparations were being made in the peninsula of Gennevilliers, the
point where there was most likelihood of the operation being attended
with success. Then one morning came the joyful tidings of the victory
at Coulmiers; Orleans was recaptured, the army of the Loire was
marching to the relief of Paris, was even then, so it was reported, in
camp at Etampes. The aspect of affairs was entirely changed: all they
had to do now was to go and effect a junction with it beyond the
Marne. There had been a general reorganization of the forces; three
armies had been created, one composed of the battalions of National
Guards and commanded by General Clement Thomas, another, comprising
the 13th and 14th corps, to which were added a few reliable regiments,
selected indiscriminately wherever they could be found, was to form
the main column of attack under the lead of General Ducrot, while the
third, intended to act as a reserve, was made up entirely of mobiles
and turned over to General Vinoy. And when Maurice laid him down to
sleep in the wood of Vincennes on the night of the 28th of November,
with his comrades of the 115th, he was without a doubt of their
success. The three corps of the second army were all there, and it was
common talk that their junction with the army of the Loire had been
fixed for the following day at Fontainebleau. Then ensued a series of
mischances, the usual blunders arising from want of foresight; a
sudden rising of the river, which prevented the engineers from laying
the pontoon bridge; conflicting orders, which delayed the movement of
the troops. The 115th was among the first regiments to pass the river
on the following night, and in the neighborhood of ten o'clock, with
Maurice in its ranks, it entered Champigny under a destructive fire.
The young man was wild with excitement; he fired so rapidly that his
chassepot burned his fingers, notwithstanding the intense cold. His
sole thought was to push onward, ever onward, surmounting every
obstacle until they should join their brothers from the provinces over
there across the river. But in front of Champigny and Bry the army
fell up against the park walls of Coeuilly and Villiers, that the
Prussians had converted into impregnable fortresses, more than a
quarter of a mile in length. The men's courage faltered, and after
that the action went on in a half-hearted way; the 3d corps was slow
in getting up, the 1st and 2d, unable to advance, continued for two
days longer to hold Champigny, which they finally abandoned on the
night of December 2, after their barren victory. The whole army
retired to the wood of Vincennes, where the men's only shelter was the
snow-laden branches of the trees, and Maurice, whose feet were
frost-bitten, laid his head upon the cold ground and cried.

The gloom and dejection that reigned in the city, after the failure of
that supreme effort, beggars the powers of description. The great
sortie that had been so long in preparation, the irresistible eruption
that was to be the deliverance of Paris, had ended in disappointment,
and three days later came a communication from General von Moltke
under a flag of truce, announcing that the army of the Loire had been
defeated and that the German flag again waved over Orleans. The girdle
was being drawn tighter and tighter about the doomed city all whose
struggles were henceforth powerless to burst its iron fetters. But
Paris seemed to accumulate fresh powers of resistance in the delirium
of its despair. It was certain that ere long they would have to count
famine among the number of their foes. As early as October the people
had been restricted in their consumption of butcher's meat, and in
December, of all the immense herds of beeves and flocks of sheep that
had been turned loose in the Bois de Boulogne, there was not a single
creature left alive, and horses were being slaughtered for food. The
stock of flour and wheat, with what was subsequently taken for the
public use by forced sale, it was estimated would keep the city
supplied with bread for four months. When the flour was all consumed
mills were erected in the railway stations to grind the grain. The
supply of coal, too, was giving out; it was reserved to bake the bread
and for use in the mills and arms factories. And Paris, her streets
without gas and lighted by petroleum lamps at infrequent intervals;
Paris, shivering under her icy mantle; Paris, to whom the authorities
doled out her scanty daily ration of black bread and horse flesh,
continued to hope--in spite of all, talking of Faidherbe in the north,
of Chanzy on the Loire, of Bourbaki in the east, as if their
victorious armies were already beneath the walls. The men and women
who stood waiting, their feet in snow and slush, in interminable lines
before the bakers' and butchers' shops, brightened up a bit at times
at the news of some imaginary success of the army. After the
discouragement of each defeat the unquenchable flame of their illusion
would burst out and blaze more brightly than ever among those wretched
people, whom starvation and every kind of suffering had rendered
almost delirious. A soldier on the Place du Chateau d'Eau having
spoken of surrender, the by-standers mobbed and were near killing him.
While the army, its endurance exhausted, feeling the end was near,
called for peace, the populace clamored still for the sortie _en
masse_, the torrential sortie, in which the entire population of the
capital, men, women, and children, even, should take part, rushing
upon the Prussians like water from a broken dyke and overwhelming them
by sheer force of numbers.

And Maurice kept himself apart from his comrades, with an
ever-increasing disgust for the life and duties of a soldier, that
condemned him to inactivity and uselessness behind the ramparts of
Mont-Valerien. He grasped every occasion to get away and hasten to
Paris, where his heart was. It was in the midst of the great city's
thronging masses alone that he found rest and peace of mind; he tried
to force himself to hope as they hoped. He often went to witness the
departure of the balloons, which were sent up every other day from the
station of the Northern Railway with a freight of despatches and
carrier pigeons. They rose when the ropes were cast loose and soon
were lost to sight in the cheerless wintry sky, and all hearts were
filled with anguish when the wind wafted them in the direction of the
German frontier. Many of them were never heard of more. He had himself
twice written to his sister Henriette, without ever learning if she
had received his letters. The memory of his sister and of Jean, living
as they did in that outer, shadowy world from which no tidings ever
reached him now, was become so blurred and faint that he thought of
them but seldom, as of affections that he had left behind him in some
previous existence. The incessant conflict of despair and hope in
which he lived occupied all the faculties of his being too fully to
leave room for mere human feelings. Then, too, in the early days of
January he was goaded to the verge of frenzy by the action of the
enemy in shelling the district on the left bank of the river. He had
come to credit the Prussians with reasons of humanity for their
abstention, which was in fact due simply to the difficulties they
experienced in bringing up their guns and getting them in position.
Now that a shell had killed two little girls at the Val-de-Grace, his
scorn and hatred knew no bounds for those barbarous ruffians who
murdered little children and threatened to burn the libraries and
museums. After the first days of terror, however, Paris had resumed
its life of dogged, unfaltering heroism.

Since the reverse of Champigny there had been but one other attempt,
ending in disaster like the rest, in the direction of Bourget; and the
evening when the plateau of Avron was evacuated, under the fire of the
heavy siege artillery battering away at the forts, Maurice was a
sharer in the rage and exasperation that possessed the entire city.
The growing unpopularity that threatened to hurl from power General
Trochu and the Government of National Defense was so augmented by this
additional repulse that they were compelled to attempt a supreme and
hopeless effort. What, did they refuse the services of the three
hundred thousand National Guards, who from the beginning had been
demanding their share in the peril and in the victory! This time it
was to be the torrential sortie that had all along been the object of
the popular clamor; Paris was to throw open its dikes and drown
the Prussians beneath the on-pouring waves of its children.
Notwithstanding the certainty of a fresh defeat, there was no way of
avoiding a demand that had its origin in such patriotic motives; but
in order to limit the slaughter as far as possible, the chiefs
determined to employ, in connection with the regular army, only the
fifty-nine mobilized battalions of the National Guard. The day
preceding the 19th of January resembled some great public holiday; an
immense crowd gathered on the boulevards and in the Champs-Elysees to
witness the departing regiments, which marched proudly by, preceded by
their bands, the men thundering out patriotic airs. Women and children
followed them along the sidewalk, men climbed on the benches to wish
them Godspeed. The next morning the entire population of the city
hurried out to the Arc de Triomphe, and it was almost frantic with
delight when at an early hour news came of the capture of Montretout;
the tales that were told of the gallant behavior of the National Guard
sounded like epics; the Prussians had been beaten all along the line,
the French would occupy Versailles before night. As a natural result
the consternation was proportionately great when, at nightfall, the
inevitable defeat became known. While the left wing was seizing
Montretout the center, which had succeeded in carrying the outer wall
of Buzanval Park, had encountered a second inner wall, before which it
broke. A thaw had set in, the roads were heavy from the effects of a
fine, drizzling rain, and the guns, those guns that had been cast by
popular subscription and were to the Parisians as the apple of their
eye, could not get up. On the right General Ducrot's column was tardy
in getting into action and saw nothing of the fight. Further effort
was useless, and General Trochu was compelled to order a retreat.
Montretout was abandoned, and Saint-Cloud as well, which the Prussians
burned, and when it became fully dark the horizon of Paris was
illuminated by the conflagration.

Maurice himself this time felt that the end was come. For four hours
he had remained in the park of Buzanval with the National Guards under
the galling fire from the Prussian intrenchments, and later, when he
got back to the city, he spoke of their courage in the highest terms.
It was undisputed that the Guards fought bravely on that occasion;
after that was it not self-evident that all the disasters of the army
were to be attributed solely to the imbecility and treason of its
leaders? In the Rue de Rivoli he encountered bands of men shouting:
"Hurrah for the Commune! down with Trochu!" It was the leaven of
revolution beginning to work again in the popular mind, a fresh
outbreak of public opinion, and so formidable this time that the
Government of National Defense, in order to preserve its own
existence, thought it necessary to compel General Trochu's resignation
and put General Vinoy in his place. On that same day Maurice, chancing
to enter a hall in Belleville where a public meeting was going on,
again heard the _levee en masse_ demanded with clamorous shouts. He
knew the thing to be chimerical, and yet it set his heart a-beating
more rapidly to see such a determined will to conquer. When all is
ended, is it not left us to attempt the impossible? All that night he
dreamed of miracles.

Then a long week went by, during which Paris lay agonizing without a
murmur. The shops had ceased to open their doors; in the lonely
streets the infrequent wayfarer never met a carriage. Forty thousand
horses had been eaten; dogs, cats and rats were now luxuries,
commanding a high price. Ever since the supply of wheat had given out
the bread was made from rice and oats, and was black, damp, and slimy,
and hard to digest; to obtain the ten ounces that constituted a day's
ration involved a wait, often of many hours, in line before the
bake-house. Ah, the sorrowful spectacle it was, to see those poor
women shivering in the pouring rain, their feet in the ice-cold mud
and water! the misery and heroism of the great city that would not
surrender! The death rate had increased threefold; the theaters were
converted into hospitals. As soon as it became dark the quarters where
luxury and vice had formerly held carnival were shrouded in funereal
blackness, like the faubourgs of some accursed city, smitten by
pestilence. And in that silence, in that obscurity, naught was to be
heard save the unceasing roar of the cannonade and the crash of
bursting shells, naught to be seen save the red flash of the guns
illuminating the wintry sky.

On the 28th of January the news burst on Paris like a thunderclap that
for the past two days negotiations had been going on, between Jules
Favre and M. von Bismarck, looking to an armistice, and at the same
time it learned that there was bread for only ten days longer, a space
of time that would hardly suffice to revictual the city. Capitulation
was become a matter of material necessity. Paris, stupefied by the
hard truths that were imparted to it at that late day, remained
sullenly silent and made no sign. Midnight of that day heard the last
shot from the German guns, and on the 29th, when the Prussians had
taken possession of the forts, Maurice went with his regiment into the
camp that was assigned them over by Montrouge, within the
fortifications. The life that he led there was an aimless one, made up
of idleness and feverish unrest. Discipline was relaxed; the soldiers
did pretty much as they pleased, waiting in inactivity to be dismissed
to their homes. He, however, continued to hang around the camp in a
semi-dazed condition, moody, nervous, irritable, prompt to take
offense on the most trivial provocation. He read with avidity all the
revolutionary newspapers he could lay hands on; that three weeks'
armistice, concluded solely for the purpose of allowing France to
elect an assembly that should ratify the conditions of peace, appeared
to him a delusion and a snare, another and a final instance of
treason. Even if Paris were forced to capitulate, he was with Gambetta
for the prosecution of the war in the north and on the line of the
Loire. He overflowed with indignation at the disaster of Bourbaki's
army in the east, which had been compelled to throw itself into
Switzerland, and the result of the elections made him furious: it
would be just as he had always predicted; the base, cowardly
provinces, irritated by Paris' protracted resistance, would insist on
peace at any price and restore the monarchy while the Prussian guns
were still directed on the city. After the first sessions, at
Bordeaux, Thiers, elected in twenty-six departments and constituted by
unanimous acclaim the chief executive, appeared to his eyes a monster
of iniquity, the father of lies, a man capable of every crime. The
terms of the peace concluded by that assemblage of monarchists seemed
to him to put the finishing touch to their infamy, his blood boiled
merely at the thought of those hard conditions: an indemnity of five
milliards, Metz to be given up, Alsace to be ceded, France's blood and
treasure pouring from the gaping wound, thenceforth incurable, that
was thus opened in her flank.

Late in February Maurice, unable to endure his situation longer, made
up his mind he would desert. A stipulation of the treaty provided that
the troops encamped about Paris should be disarmed and returned to
their abodes, but he did not wait to see it enforced; it seemed to him
that it would break his heart to leave brave, glorious Paris, which
only famine had been able to subdue, and so he bade farewell to army
life and hired for himself a small furnished room next the roof of a
tall apartment house in the Rue des Orties, at the top of the butte
des Moulins, whence he had an outlook over the immense sea of roofs
from the Tuileries to the Bastille. An old friend, whom he had known
while pursuing his law studies, had loaned him a hundred francs. In
addition to that he had caused his name to be inscribed on the roster
of a battalion of National Guards as soon as he was settled in his new
quarters, and his pay, thirty sous a day, would be enough to keep him
alive. The idea of going to the country and there leading a tranquil
life, unmindful of what was happening to the country, filled him with
horror; the letters even that he received from his sister Henriette,
to whom he had written immediately after the armistice, annoyed him by
their tone of entreaty, their ardent solicitations that he would come
home to Remilly and rest. He refused point-blank; he would go later on
when the Prussians should be no longer there.

And so Maurice went on leading an idle, vagabondish sort of life, in a
state of constant feverish agitation. He had ceased to be tormented by
hunger; he devoured the first white bread he got with infinite gusto;
but the city was a prison still: German guards were posted at the
gates, and no one was allowed to pass them until he had been made to
give an account of himself. There had been no resumption of social
life as yet; industry and trade were at a standstill; the people lived
from day to day, watching to see what would happen next, doing
nothing, simply vegetating in the bright sunshine of the spring that
was now coming on apace. During the siege there had been the military
service to occupy men's minds and tire their limbs, while now the
entire population, isolated from all the world, had suddenly been
reduced to a state of utter stagnation, mental as well as physical. He
did as others did, loitering his time away from morning till night,
living in an atmosphere that for months had been vitiated by the germs
arising from the half-crazed mob. He read the newspapers and was an
assiduous frequenter of public meetings, where he would often smile
and shrug his shoulders at the rant and fustian of the speakers, but
nevertheless would go away with the most ultra notions teeming in his
brain, ready to engage in any desperate undertaking in the defense of
what he considered truth and justice. And sitting by the window in his
little bedroom, and looking out over the city, he would still beguile
himself with dreams of victory; would tell himself that France and the
Republic might yet be saved, so long as the treaty of peace remained
unsigned.

The 1st of March was the day fixed for the entrance of the Prussians
into Paris, and a long-drawn howl of wrath and execration went up from
every heart. Maurice never attended a meeting now that he did not hear
Thiers, the Assembly, even the men of September 4th themselves, cursed
and reviled because they had not spared the great heroic city that
crowning degradation. He was himself one night aroused to such a pitch
of frenzy that he took the floor and shouted that it was the duty of
all Paris to go and die on the ramparts rather than suffer the
entrance of a single Prussian. It was quite natural that the spirit of
insurrection should show itself thus, should bud and blossom in the
full light of day, among that populace that had first been maddened by
months of distress and famine and then had found itself reduced to a
condition of idleness that afforded it abundant leisure to brood on
the suspicions and fancied wrongs that were largely the product of its
own disordered imagination. It was one of those moral crises that have
been noticed as occurring after every great siege, in which excessive
patriotism, thwarted in its aims and aspirations, after having fired
men's minds, degenerates into a blind rage for vengeance and
destruction. The Central Committee, elected by delegates from the
National Guard battalions, had protested against any attempt to disarm
their constituents. Then came an immense popular demonstration on the
Place de la Bastille, where there were red flags, incendiary speeches
and a crowd that overflowed the square, the affair ending with the
murder of a poor inoffensive agent of police, who was bound to a
plank, thrown into the canal, and then stoned to death. And
forty-eight hours later, during the night of the 26th of February,
Maurice, awakened by the beating of the long roll and the sound of the
tocsin, beheld bands of men and women streaming along the Boulevard
des Batignolles and dragging cannon after them. He descended to the
street, and laying hold of the rope of a gun along with some twenty
others, was told how the people had gone to the Place Wagram and taken
the pieces in order that the Assembly might not deliver them to the
Prussians. There were seventy of them; teams were wanting, but the
strong arms of the mob, tugging at the ropes and pushing at the
limbers and axles, finally brought them to the summit of Montmartre
with the mad impetuosity of a barbarian horde assuring the safety of
its idols. When on March 1 the Prussians took possession of the
quarter of the Champs Elysees, which they were to occupy only for one
day, keeping themselves strictly within the limits of the barriers,
Paris looked on in sullen silence, its streets deserted, its houses
closed, the entire city lifeless and shrouded in its dense veil of
mourning.

Two weeks more went by, during which Maurice could hardly have told
how he spent his time while awaiting the approach of the momentous
events of which he had a distinct presentiment. Peace was concluded
definitely at last, the Assembly was to commence its regular sessions
at Versailles on the 20th of the month; and yet for him nothing was
concluded: he felt that they were ere long to witness the beginning of
a dreadful drama of atonement. On the 18th of March, as he was about
to leave his room, he received a letter from Henriette urging him to
come and join her at Remilly, coupled with a playful threat that she
would come and carry him off with her if he delayed too long to afford
her that great pleasure. Then she went on to speak of Jean, concerning
whose affairs she was extremely anxious; she told how, after leaving
her late in December to join the Army of the North, he had been seized
with a low fever that had kept him long a prisoner in a Belgian
hospital, and only the preceding week he had written her that he was
about to start for Paris, notwithstanding his enfeebled condition,
where he was determined to seek active service once again. Henriette
closed her letter by begging her brother to give her a faithful
account of how matters were with Jean as soon as he should have seen
him. Maurice laid the open letter before him on the table and sank
into a confused revery. Henriette, Jean; his sister whom he loved so
fondly, his brother in suffering and privation; how absent from his
daily thoughts had those dear ones been since the tempest had been
raging in his bosom! He aroused himself, however, and as his sister
advised him that she had been unable to give Jean the number of the
house in the Rue des Orties, promised himself to go that very day to
the office where the regimental records were kept and hunt up his
friend. But he had barely got beyond his door and was crossing the Rue
Saint-Honore when he encountered two fellow-soldiers of his battalion,
who gave him an account of what had happened that morning and during
the night before at Montmartre, and the three men started off on a run
toward the scene of the disturbance.

Ah, that day of the 18th of March, the elation and enthusiasm that it
aroused in Maurice! In after days he could never remember clearly what
he said and did. First he beheld himself dimly, as through a veil of
mist, convulsed with rage at the recital of how the troops had
attempted, in the darkness and quiet that precedes the dawn, to disarm
Paris by seizing the guns on Montmartre heights. It was evident that
Thiers, who had arrived from Bordeaux, had been meditating the blow
for the last two days, in order that the Assembly at Versailles might
proceed without fear to proclaim the monarchy. Then the scene shifted,
and he was on the ground at Montmartre itself--about nine o'clock it
was--fired by the narrative of the people's victory: how the soldiery
had come sneaking up in the darkness, how the delay in bringing up the
teams had given the National Guards an opportunity to fly to arms, the
troops, having no heart to fire on women and children, reversing their
muskets and fraternizing with the people. Then he had wandered
desultorily about the city, wherever chance directed his footsteps,
and by midday had satisfied himself that the Commune was master of
Paris, without even the necessity of striking a blow, for Thiers and
the ministers had decamped from their quarters in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, the entire government was flying in disorder to
Versailles, the thirty thousand troops had been hastily conducted from
the city, leaving more than five thousand deserters from their numbers
along the line of their retreat. And later, about half-past five in
the afternoon, he could recall being at a corner of the exterior
boulevard in the midst of a mob of howling lunatics, listening without
the slightest evidence of disapproval to the abominable story of the
murder of Generals Lecomte and Clement Thomas. Generals, they called
themselves; fine generals, they! The leaders they had had at Sedan
rose before his memory, voluptuaries and imbeciles; one more, one
less, what odds did it make! And the remainder of the day passed in
the same state of half-crazed excitement, which served to distort
everything to his vision; it was an insurrection that the very stones
of the streets seemed to have favored, spreading, swelling, finally
becoming master of all at a stroke in the unforeseen fatality of its
triumph, and at ten o'clock in the evening delivering the Hotel de
Ville over to the members of the Central Committee, who were greatly
surprised to find themselves there.

There was one memory, however, that remained very distinct to
Maurice's mind: his unexpected meeting with Jean. It was three days
now since the latter had reached Paris, without a sou in his pocket,
emaciated and enfeebled by the illness that had consigned him to a
hospital in Brussels and kept him there two months, and having had the
luck to fall in with Captain Ravaud, who had commanded a company in
the 106th, he had enlisted at once in his former acquaintance's new
company in the 124th. His old rank as corporal had been restored to
him, and that evening he had just left the Prince Eugene barracks with
his squad on his way to the left bank, where the entire army was to
concentrate, when a mob collected about his men and stopped them as
they were passing along the boulevard Saint-Martin. The insurgents
yelled and shouted, and evidently were preparing to disarm his little
band. With perfect coolness he told them to let him alone, that he had
no business with them or their affairs; all he wanted was to obey his
orders without harming anybody. Then a cry of glad surprise was heard,
and Maurice, who had chanced to pass that way, threw himself on the
other's neck and gave him a brotherly hug.

"What, is it you! My sister wrote me about you. And just think, no
later than this very morning I was going to look you up at the war
office!"

Jean's eyes were dim with big tears of pleasure.

"Ah, my dear lad how glad I am to see you once more! I have been
looking for you, too, but where could a fellow expect to find you in
this confounded great big place?"

To the crowd, continuing their angry muttering, Maurice turned and
said:

"Let me talk to them, citizens! They're good fellows; I'll answer for
them." He took his friend's hands in his, and lowering his voice:
"You'll join us, won't you?"

Jean's face was the picture of surprise. "How, join you? I don't
understand." Then for a moment he listened while Maurice railed
against the government, against the army, raking up old sores and
recalling all their sufferings, telling how at last they were going to
be masters, punish dolts and cowards and preserve the Republic. And as
he struggled to get the problems the other laid before him through his
brain, the tranquil face of the unlettered peasant was clouded with an
increasing sorrow. "Ah, no! ah, no! my boy. I can't join you if it's
for that fine work you want me. My captain told me to go with my men
to Vaugirard, and there I'm going. In spite of the devil and his
angels I will go there. That's natural enough; you ought to know how
it is yourself." He laughed with frank simplicity and added:

"It's you who'll come along with us."

But Maurice released his hands with an angry gesture of dissent, and
thus they stood for some seconds, face to face, one under the
influence of that madness that was sweeping all Paris off its feet,
the malady that had been bequeathed to them by the crimes and follies
of the late reign, the other strong in his ignorance and practical
common sense, untainted as yet because he had grown up apart from the
contaminating principle, in the land where industry and thrift were
honored. They were brothers, however, none the less; the tie that
united them was strong, and it was a pang to them both when the crowd
suddenly surged forward and parted them.

"_Au revoir_, Maurice!"

"_Au revoir_, Jean!"

It was a regiment, the 79th, debouching from a side street, that had
caused the movement among the crowd, forcing the rioters back to the
sidewalks by the weight of its compact column, closed in mass. There
was some hooting, but no one ventured to bar the way against the
soldier boys, who went by at double time, well under control of their
officers. An opportunity was afforded the little squad of the 124th to
make their escape, and they followed in the wake of the larger body.

"_Au revoir_, Jean!"

"_Au revoir_, Maurice!"

They waved their hands once more in a parting salute, yielding to the
fatality that decreed their separation in that manner, but each none
the less securely seated in the other's heart.

The extraordinary occurrences of the next and the succeeding days
crowded on the heels of one another in such swift sequence that
Maurice had scarcely time to think. On the morning of the 19th Paris
awoke without a government, more surprised than frightened to learn
that a panic during the night had sent army, ministers, and all the
public service scurrying away to Versailles, and as the weather
happened to be fine on that magnificent March Sunday, Paris stepped
unconcernedly down into the streets to have a look at the barricades.
A great white poster, bearing the signature of the Central Committee
and convoking the people for the communal elections, attracted
attention by the moderation of its language, although much surprise
was expressed at seeing it signed by names so utterly unknown. There
can be no doubt that at this incipient stage of the Commune Paris, in
the bitter memory of what it had endured, in the suspicions by which
it was haunted, and in its unslaked thirst for further fighting, was
against Versailles. It was a condition of absolute anarchy, moreover,
the conflict for the moment being between the mayors and the Central
Committee, the former fruitlessly attempting to introduce measures of
conciliation, while the latter, uncertain as yet to what extent it
could rely on the federated National Guard, continued modestly to lay
claim to no higher title than that of defender of the municipal
liberties. The shots fired against the pacific demonstration in the
Place Vendome, the few corpses whose blood reddened the pavements,
first sent a thrill of terror circulating through the city. And while
these things were going on, while the insurgents were taking definite
possession of the ministries and all the public buildings, the
agitation, rage and alarm prevailing at Versailles were extreme, the
government there hastening to get together sufficient troops to repel
the attack which they felt sure they should not have to wait for long.
The steadiest and most reliable divisions of the armies of the North
and of the Loire were hurried forward. Ten days sufficed to collect a
force of nearly eighty thousand men, and the tide of returning
confidence set in so strongly that on the 2d of April two divisions
opened hostilities by taking from the federates Puteaux and
Courbevoie.

It was not until the day following the events just mentioned that
Maurice, starting out with his battalion to effect the conquest of
Versailles, beheld, amid the throng of misty, feverish memories that
rose to his poor wearied brain, Jean's melancholy face as he had seen
it last, and seemed to hear the tones of his last mournful _au
revoir_. The military operations of the Versaillese had filled the
National Guard with alarm and indignation; three columns, embracing a
total strength of fifty thousand men, had gone storming that morning
through Bougival and Meudon on their way to seize the monarchical
Assembly and Thiers, the murderer. It was the torrential sortie that
had been demanded with such insistence during the siege, and Maurice
asked himself where he should ever see Jean again unless among the
dead lying on the field of battle down yonder. But it was not long
before he knew the result; his battalion had barely reached the
Plateau des Bergeres, on the road to Reuil, when the shells from
Mont-Valerien came tumbling among the ranks. Universal consternation
reigned; some had supposed that the fort was held by their comrades of
the Guard, while others averred that the commander had promised
solemnly to withhold his fire. A wild panic seized upon the men; the
battalions broke and rushed back to Paris fast as their legs would let
them, while the head of the column, diverted by a flanking movement of
General Vinoy, was driven back on Reuil and cut to pieces there.

Then Maurice, who had escaped unharmed from the slaughter, his nerves
still quivering with the fury that had inspired him on the
battlefield, was filled with fresh detestation for that so-called
government of law and order which always allowed itself to be beaten
by the Prussians, and could only muster up a little courage when it
came to oppressing Paris. And the German armies were still there, from
Saint-Denis to Charenton, watching the shameful spectacle of
internecine conflict! Thus, in the fierce longing for vengeance and
destruction that animated him, he could not do otherwise than sanction
the first measures of communistic violence, the building of barricades
in the streets and public squares, the arrest of the archbishop, some
priests, and former officeholders, who were to be held as hostages.
The atrocities that distinguished either side in that horrible
conflict were already beginning to manifest themselves, Versailles
shooting the prisoners it made, Paris retaliating with a decree that
for each one of its soldiers murdered three hostages should forfeit
their life. The horror of it, that fratricidal conflict, that wretched
nation completing the work of destruction by devouring its own
children! And the little reason that remained to Maurice, in the ruin
of all the things he had hitherto held sacred, was quickly dissipated
in the whirlwind of blind fury that swept all before it. In his eyes
the Commune was to be the avenger of all the wrongs they had suffered,
the liberator, coming with fire and sword to purify and punish. He was
not quite clear in mind about it all, but remembered having read how
great and flourishing the old free cities had become, how wealthy
provinces had federated and imposed their law upon the world. If Paris
should be victorious he beheld her, crowned with an aureole of glory,
building up a new France, where liberty and justice should be the
watchwords, organizing a new society, having first swept away the
rotten debris of the old. It was true that when the result of the
elections became known he was somewhat surprised by the strange
mixture of moderates, revolutionists, and socialists of every sect and
shade to whom the accomplishment of the great work was intrusted; he
was acquainted with several of the men and knew them to be of
extremely mediocre abilities. Would not the strongest among them come
in collision and neutralize one another amid the clashing ideas which
they represented? But on the day when the ceremony of the inauguration
of the Commune took place before the Hotel de Ville, amid the thunder
of artillery and trophies and red banners floating in the air, his
boundless hopes again got the better of his fears and he ceased to
doubt. Among the lies of some and the unquestioning faith of others,
the illusion started into life again with renewed vigor, in the acute
crisis of the malady raised to paroxysmal pitch.

During the entire month of April Maurice was on duty in the
neighborhood of Neuilly. The gentle warmth of the early spring had
brought out the blossoms on the lilacs, and the fighting was conducted
among the bright verdure of the gardens; the National Guards came into
the city at night with bouquets of flowers stuck in their muskets. The
troops collected at Versailles were now so numerous as to warrant
their formation in two armies, a first line under the orders of
Marshal MacMahon and a reserve commanded by General Vinoy. The Commune
had nearly a hundred thousand National Guards mobilized and as many
more on the rosters who could be called out at short notice, but fifty
thousand were as many as they ever brought into the field at one time.
Day by day the plan of attack adopted by the Versaillese became more
manifest: after occupying Neuilly they had taken possession of the
Chateau of Becon and soon after of Asnieres, but these movements were
simply to make the investment more complete, for their intention was
to enter the city by the Point-du-Jour soon as the converging fire
from Mont-Valerien and Fort d'Issy should enable them to carry the
rampart there. Mont-Valerien was theirs already, and they were
straining every nerve to capture Issy, utilizing the works abandoned
by the Germans for the purpose. Since the middle of April the fire of
musketry and artillery had been incessant; at Levallois and Neuilly
the fighting never ceased, the skirmishers blazing away
uninterruptedly, by night as well as by day. Heavy guns, mounted on
armored cars, moved to and fro on the Belt Railway, shelling Asnieres
over the roofs of Levallois. It was at Vanves and Issy, however, that
the cannonade was fiercest; it shook the windows of Paris as the siege
had done when it was at its height. And when finally, on the 9th of
May, Fort d'Issy was obliged to succumb and fell into the hands of the
Versailles army the defeat of the Commune was assured, and in their
frenzy of panic the leaders resorted to most detestable measures.

Maurice favored the creation of a Committee of Public Safety. The
warnings of history came to his mind; had not the hour struck for
adopting energetic methods if they wished to save the country? There
was but one of their barbarities that really pained him, and that was
the destruction of the Vendome column; he reproached himself for the
feeling as being a childish weakness, but his grandfather's voice
still sounded in his ears repeating the old familiar tales of Marengo,
Austerlitz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Wagram, the Moskowa--those epic
narratives that thrilled his pulses yet as often as he thought of
them. But that they should demolish the house of the murderer Thiers,
that they should retain the hostages as a guarantee and a menace, was
not that right and just when the Versaillese were unchaining their
fury on Paris, bombarding it, destroying its edifices, slaughtering
women and children with their shells? As he saw the end of his dream
approaching dark thoughts of ruin and destruction filled his mind. If
their ideas of justice and retribution were not to prevail, if they
were to be crushed out of them with their life-blood, then perish the
world, swept away in one of those cosmic upheavals that are the
beginning of a new life. Let Paris sink beneath the waves, let it go
up in smoke and flame, like a gigantic funeral pyre, sooner than let
it be again delivered over to its former state of vice and misery, to
that old vicious social system of abominable injustice. And he dreamed
another dark, terrible dream, the great city reduced to ashes, naught
to be seen on either side the Seine but piles of smoldering ruins, the
festering wound purified and healed with fire, a catastrophe without a
name, such as had never been before, whence should arise a new race.
Wild stories were everywhere circulated, which interested him
intensely, of the mines that were driven under all the quarters of the
city, the barrels of powder with which the catacombs were stuffed, the
monuments and public buildings ready to be blown into the air at a
moment's notice; and all were connected by electric wires in such a
way that a single spark would suffice to set them off; there were
great stores of inflammable substances, too, especially petroleum,
with which the streets and avenues were to be converted into seething
lakes of flame. The Commune had sworn that should the Versaillese
enter the city not one of them would ever get beyond the barricades
that closed the ends of the streets; the pavements would yawn, the
houses would sink in ruins, Paris would go up in flames, and bury
assailants and assailed under its ashes.

And if Maurice solaced himself with these crazy dreams, it was because
of his secret discontent with the Commune itself. He had lost all
confidence in its members, he felt it was inefficient, drawn this way
and that by so many conflicting elements, losing its head and becoming
purposeless and driveling as it saw the near approach of the peril
with which it was menaced. Of the social reforms it had pledged itself
to it had not been able to accomplish a single one, and it was now
quite certain that it would leave behind it no great work to
perpetuate its name. But what more than all beside was gnawing at its
vitals was the rivalries by which it was distracted, the corroding
suspicion and distrust in which each of its members lived. For some
time past many of them, the more moderate and the timid, had ceased to
attend its sessions. The others shaped their course day by day in
accordance with events, trembling at the idea of a possible
dictatorship; they had reached that point where the factions of
revolutionary assemblages exterminate one another by way of saving the
country. Cluzeret had become suspected, then Dombrowski, and Rossel
was about to share their fate. Delescluze, appointed Civil Delegate at
War, could do nothing of his own volition, notwithstanding his great
authority. And thus the grand social effort that they had had in view
wasted itself in the ever-widening isolation about those men, whose
power had become a nullity, whose actions were the result of their
despair.

In Paris there was an increasing feeling of terror. Paris, irritated
at first against Versailles, shivering at the recollection of what it
had suffered during the siege, was now breaking away from the Commune.
The compulsory enrollment, the decree incorporating every man under
forty in the National Guard, had angered the more sedate citizens and
been the means of bringing about a general exodus: men in disguise and
provided with forged papers of Alsatian citizenship made their escape
by way of Saint-Denis; others let themselves down into the moat in the
darkness of the night with ropes and ladders. The wealthy had long
since taken their departure. None of the factories and workshops had
opened their doors; trade and commerce there was none; there was no
employment for labor; the life of enforced idleness went on amid the
alarmed expectancy of the frightful denouement that everyone felt
could not be far away. And the people depended for their daily bread
on the pay of the National Guards, that dole of thirty sous that was
paid from the millions extorted from the Bank of France, the thirty
sous for the sake of which alone many men were wearing the uniform,
which had been one of the primary causes and the _raison d'etre_ of
the insurrection. Whole districts were deserted, the shops closed, the
house-fronts lifeless. In the bright May sunshine that flooded the
empty streets the few pedestrians beheld nothing moving save the
barbaric display of the burial of some federates killed in action, the
funeral train where no priest walked, the hearse draped with red
flags, followed by a crowd of men and women bearing bouquets of
immortelles. The churches were closed and did duty each evening as
political club-rooms. The revolutionary journals alone were hawked
about the streets; the others had been suppressed. Great Paris was
indeed an unhappy city in those days, what with its republican
sympathies that made it detest the monarchical Assembly at Versailles
and its ever-increasing terror of the Commune, from which it prayed
most fervently to be delivered among all the grisly stories that were
current, the daily arrests of citizens as hostages, the casks of
gunpowder that filled the sewers, where men patrolled by day and night
awaiting the signal to apply the torch.

Maurice, who had never been a drinking man, allowed himself to be
seduced by the too prevalent habit of over-indulgence. It had become a
thing of frequent occurrence with him now, when he was out on picket
duty or had to spend the night in barracks, to take a "pony" of
brandy, and if he took a second it was apt to go to his head in the
alcohol-laden atmosphere that he was forced to breathe. It had become
epidemic, that chronic drunkenness, among those men with whom bread
was scarce and who could have all the brandy they wanted by asking for
it. Toward evening on Sunday, the 21st of May, Maurice came home
drunk, for the first time in his life, to his room in the Rue des
Orties, where he was in the habit of sleeping occasionally. He had
been at Neuilly again that day, blazing away at the enemy and taking a
nip now and then with the comrades, to see if it would not relieve the
terrible fatigue from which he was suffering. Then, with a light head
and heavy legs, he came and threw himself on the bed in his little
chamber; it must have been through force of instinct, for he could
never remember how he got there. And it was not until the following
morning, when the sun was high in the heavens, that he awoke, aroused
by the ringing of the alarm bells, the blare of trumpets and beating
of drums. During the night the Versaillese, finding a gate undefended,
had effected an unresisted entrance at the Point-du-Jour.

When he had thrown on his clothes and hastened down into the street,
his musket slung across his shoulder by the strap, a band of
frightened soldiers whom he fell in with at the _mairie_ of the
arrondissement related to him the occurrences of the night, in the
midst of a confusion such that at first he had hard work to
understand. Fort d'Issy and the great battery at Montretout, seconded
by Mont Valerien, for the last ten days had been battering the rampart
at the Point-du-Jour, as a consequence of which the Saint-Cloud gate
was no longer tenable and an assault had been ordered for the
following morning, the 22d; but someone who chanced to pass that way
at about five o'clock perceived that the gate was unprotected and
immediately notified the guards in the trenches, who were not more
than fifty yards away. Two companies of the 37th regiment of regulars
were the first to enter the city, and were quickly followed by the
entire 4th corps under General Douay. All night long the troops were
pouring in in an uninterrupted stream. At seven o'clock Verge's
division marched down to the bridge at Grenelle, crossed, and pushed
on to the Trocadero. At nine General Clinchamp was master of Passy and
la Muette. At three o'clock in the morning the 1st corps had pitched
its tents in the Bois de Boulogne, while at about the same hour
Bruat's division was passing the Seine to seize the Sevres gate and
facilitate the movement of the 2d Corps, General de Cissey's, which
occupied the district of Grenelle an hour later. The Versailles army,
therefore, on the morning of the 22d, was master of the Trocadero and
the Chateau of la Muette on the right bank, and of Grenelle on the
left; and great was the rage and consternation that prevailed among
the Communists, who were already accusing one another of treason,
frantic at the thought of their inevitable defeat.

When Maurice at last understood the condition of affairs his first
thought was that the end had come, that all left him was to go forth
and meet his death. But the tocsin was pealing, drums were beating,
women and children, even, were working on the barricades, the streets
were alive with the stir and bustle of the battalions hurrying to
assume the positions assigned them in the coming conflict. By midday
it was seen that the Versaillese were remaining quiet in their new
positions, and then fresh courage returned to the hearts of the
soldiers of the Commune, who were resolved to conquer or die. The
enemy's army, which they had feared to see in possession of the
Tuileries by that time, profiting by the stern lessons of experience
and imitating the prudent tactics of the Prussians, conducted its
operations with the utmost caution. The Committee of Public Safety and
Delescluze, Delegate at War, directed the defense from their quarters
in the Hotel de Ville. It was reported that a last proposal for a
peaceable arrangement had been rejected by them with disdain. That
served to inspire the men with still more courage, the triumph of
Paris was assured, the resistance would be as unyielding as the attack
was vindictive, in the implacable hate, swollen by lies and cruelties,
that inflamed the heart of either army. And that day was spent by
Maurice in the quarters of the Champ de Mars and the Invalides, firing
and falling back slowly from street to street. He had not been able to
find his battalion; he fought in the ranks with comrades who were
strangers to him, accompanying them in their march to the left bank
without taking heed whither they were going. About four o'clock they
had a furious conflict behind a barricade that had been thrown across
the Rue de l'Universite, where it comes out on the Esplanade, and it
was not until twilight that they abandoned it on learning that Bruat's
division, stealing up along the _quai_, had seized the Corps
Legislatif. They had a narrow escape from capture, and it was with
great difficulty that they managed to reach the Rue de Lille after a
long circuit through the Rue Saint-Dominique and the Rue Bellechasse.
At the close of that day the army of Versailles occupied a line which,
beginning at the Vanves gate, led past the Corps Legislatif, the
Palace of the Elysee, St. Augustine's Church, the Lazare station, and
ended at the Asnieres gate.

The next day, Tuesday, the 23d, was warm and bright, and a terrible
day it was for Maurice. The few hundred federates with whom he was,
and in whose ranks were men of many different battalions, were charged
with the defense of the entire quartier, from the _quai_ to the Rue
Saint-Dominique. Most of them had bivouacked in the gardens of the
great mansions that line the Rue de Lille; he had had an unbroken
night's rest on a grass-plot at one side of the Palace of the Legion
of Honor. It was his belief that soon as it was light enough the
troops would move out from their shelter behind the Corps Legislatif
and force them back upon the strong barricades in the Rue du Bac, but
hour after hour passed and there was no sign of an attack. There was
only some desultory firing at long range between parties posted at
either end of the streets. The Versaillese, who were not desirous of
attempting a direct attack on the front of the formidable fortress
into which the insurgents had converted the terrace of the Tuileries,
developed their plan of action with great circumspection; two strong
columns were sent out to right and left that, skirting the ramparts,
should first seize Montmartre and the Observatory and then, wheeling
inward, swoop down on the central quarters, surrounding them and
capturing all they contained, as a shoal of fish is captured in the
meshes of a gigantic net. About two o'clock Maurice heard that the
tricolor was floating over Montmartre: the great battery of the Moulin
de la Galette had succumbed to the combined attack of three army
corps, which hurled their battalions simultaneously on the northern
and western faces of the butte through the Rues Lepic, des Saules and
du Mont-Cenis; then the waves of the victorious troops had poured back
on Paris, carrying the Place Saint-Georges, Notre-Dame de Lorette, the
_mairie_ in the Rue Drouot and the new Opera House, while on the
left bank the turning movement, starting from the cemetery of
Mont-Parnasse, had reached the Place d'Enfer and the Horse Market.
These tidings of the rapid progress of the hostile army were received
by the communards with mingled feelings of rage and terror amounting
almost to stupefaction. What, Montmartre carried in two hours;
Montmartre, the glorious, the impregnable citadel of the insurrection!
Maurice saw that the ranks were thinning about him; trembling
soldiers, fearing the fate that was in store for them should they be
caught, were slinking furtively away to look for a place where they
might wash the powder grime from hands and face and exchange their
uniform for a blouse. There was a rumor that the enemy were making
ready to attack the Croix-Rouge and take their position in flank. By
this time the barricades in the Rues Martignac and Bellechasse had
been carried, the red-legs were beginning to make their appearance at
the end of the Rue de Lille, and soon all that remained was a little
band of fanatics and men with the courage of their opinions, Maurice
and some fifty more, who were resolved to sell their lives dearly,
killing as many as they could of those Versaillese, who treated the
federates like thieves and murderers, dragging away the prisoners they
made and shooting them in the rear of the line of battle. Their bitter
animosity had broadened and deepened since the days before; it was war
to the knife between those rebels dying for an idea and that army,
inflamed with reactionary passions and irritated that it was kept so
long in the field.

About five o'clock, as Maurice and his companions were finally falling
back to seek the shelter of the barricades in the Rue du Bac,
descending the Rue de Lille and pausing at every moment to fire
another shot, he suddenly beheld volumes of dense black smoke pouring
from an open window in the Palace of the Legion of Honor. It was the
first fire kindled in Paris, and in the furious insanity that
possessed him it gave him a fierce delight. The hour had struck; let
the whole city go up in flame, let its people be cleansed by the fiery
purification! But a sight that he saw presently filled him with
surprise: a band of five or six men came hurrying out of the building,
headed by a tall varlet in whom he recognized Chouteau, his former
comrade in the squad of the 106th. He had seen him once before, after
the 18th of March, wearing a gold-laced _kepi_; he seemed by his
bedizened uniform to have risen in rank, was probably on the staff of
some one of the many generals who were never seen where there was
fighting going on. He remembered the account somebody had given him of
that fellow Chouteau, of his quartering himself in the Palace of the
Legion of Honor and living there, guzzling and swilling, in company
with a mistress, wallowing with his boots on in the great luxurious
beds, smashing the plate-glass mirrors with shots from his revolver,
merely for the amusement there was in it. It was even asserted that
the woman left the building every morning in one of the state
carriages, under pretense of going to the Halles for her day's
marketing, carrying off with her great bundles of linen, clocks, and
even articles of furniture, the fruit of their thieveries. And
Maurice, as he watched him running away with his men, carrying a
bucket of petroleum on his arm, experienced a sickening sensation of
doubt and felt his faith beginning to waver. How could the terrible
work they were engaged in be good, when men like that were the
workmen?

Hours passed, and still he fought on, but with a bitter feeling of
distress, with no other wish than that he might die. If he had erred,
let him at least atone for his error with his blood! The barricade
across the Rue de Lille, near its intersection with the Rue du Bac,
was a formidable one, composed of bags and casks filled with earth and
faced by a deep ditch. He and a scant dozen of other federates were
its only defenders, resting in a semi-recumbent position on the
ground, infallibly causing every soldier who exposed himself to bite
the dust. He lay there, without even changing his position, until
nightfall, using up his cartridges in silence, in the dogged
sullenness of his despair. The dense clouds of smoke from the Palace
of the Legion of Honor were billowing upward in denser masses, the
flames undistinguishable as yet in the dying daylight, and he watched
the fantastic, changing forms they took as the wind whirled them
downward to the street. Another fire had broken out in an hotel not
far away. And all at once a comrade came running up to tell him that
the enemy, not daring to advance along the street, were making a way
for themselves through the houses and gardens, breaking down the walls
with picks. The end was close at hand; they might come out in the rear
of the barricade at any moment. A shot having been fired from an upper
window of a house on the corner, he saw Chouteau and his gang, with
their petroleum and their lighted torch, rush with frantic speed to
the buildings on either side and climb the stairs, and half an hour
later, in the increasing darkness, the entire square was in flames,
while he, still prone on the ground behind his shelter, availed
himself of the vivid light to pick off any venturesome soldier who
stepped from his protecting doorway into the narrow street.

How long did Maurice keep on firing? He could not tell; he had lost
all consciousness of time and place. It might be nine o'clock, or ten,
perhaps. He continued to load and fire; his condition of hopelessness
and gloom was pitiable; death seemed to him long in coming. The
detestable work he was engaged in gave him now a sensation of nausea,
as the fumes of the wine he has drunk rise and nauseate the drunkard.
An intense heat began to beat on him from the houses that were burning
on every side--an air that scorched and asphyxiated. The carrefour,
with the barricades that closed it in, was become an intrenched camp,
guarded by the roaring flames that rose on every side and sent down
showers of sparks. Those were the orders, were they not? to fire the
adjacent houses before they abandoned the barricades, arrest the
progress of the troops by an impassable sea of flame, burn Paris in
the face of the enemy advancing to take possession of it. And
presently he became aware that the houses in the Rue du Bac were not
the only ones that were devoted to destruction; looking behind him he
beheld the whole sky suffused with a bright, ruddy glow; he heard an
ominous roar in the distance, as if all Paris were bursting into
conflagration. Chouteau was no longer to be seen; he had long since
fled to save his skin from the bullets. His comrades, too, even those
most zealous in the cause, had one by one stolen away, affrighted at
the approaching prospect of being outflanked. At last he was left
alone, stretched at length between two sand bags, his every faculty
bent on defending the front of the barricade, when the soldiers, who
had made their way through the gardens in the middle of the block,
emerged from a house in the Rue du Bac and pounced on him from the
rear.

For two whole days, in the fevered excitement of the supreme conflict,
Maurice had not once thought of Jean, nor had Jean, since he entered
Paris with his regiment, which had been assigned to Bruat's division,
for a single moment remembered Maurice. The day before his duties had
kept him in the neighborhood of the Champ de Mars and the Esplanade of
the Invalides, and on this day he had remained in the Place du
Palais-Bourbon until nearly noon, when the troops were sent forward to
clean out the barricades of the quartier, as far as the Rue des
Saints-Peres. A feeling of deep exasperation against the rioters had
gradually taken possession of him, usually so calm and self-contained,
as it had of all his comrades, whose ardent wish it was to be allowed
to go home and rest after so many months of fatigue. But of all the
atrocities of the Commune that stirred his placid nature and made him
forgetful even of his tenderest affections, there were none that
angered him as did those conflagrations. What, burn houses, set fire
to palaces, and simply because they had lost the battle! Only robbers
and murderers were capable of such work as that. And he who but the
day before had sorrowed over the summary executions of the insurgents
was now like a madman, ready to rend and tear, yelling, shouting, his
eyes starting from their sockets.

Jean burst like a hurricane into the Rue du Bac with the few men of
his squad. At first he could distinguish no one; he thought the
barricade had been abandoned. Then, looking more closely, he perceived
a communard extended on the ground between two sand bags; he stirred,
he brought his piece to the shoulder, was about to discharge it down
the Rue du Bac. And impelled by blind fate, Jean rushed upon the man
and thrust his bayonet through him, nailing him to the barricade.

Maurice had not had time to turn. He gave a cry and raised his head.
The blinding light of the burning buildings fell full on their faces.

"O Jean, dear old boy, is it you?"

To die, that was what he wished, what he had been longing for. But to
die by his brother's hand, ah! the cup was too bitter; the thought of
death no longer smiled on him.

"Is it you, Jean, old friend?"

Jean, sobered by the terrible shock, looked at him with wild eyes.
They were alone; the other soldiers had gone in pursuit of the
fugitives. About them the conflagrations roared and crackled and
blazed up higher than before; great sheets of white flame poured from
the windows, while from within came the crash of falling ceilings. And
Jean cast himself on the ground at Maurice's side, sobbing, feeling
him, trying to raise him to see if he might not yet be saved.

"My boy, oh! my poor, poor boy!"

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