An Englishman In Paris Part 31

Meanwhile, patriotism was kept at the boiling point, by glowing reports of the heroic defence of General Uhrich at Strasburg. The statue, representing the capital of Alsace on the Place de la Concorde, became the goal of a reverent pilgrimage on the part of the Parisians, though the effect of it was spoiled too frequently by M. Prudhomme holding forth sententiously, to his sons apparently, to the crowd in reality.

These discourses reminded one too much of Heine's sneer, that "all Frenchmen are actors, and the worse are generally on the stage." In this instance, however, the amateurs ran the professional very hard. The crowds were not hypercritical, though, and they applauded the speaker, who departed, accompanied by his offspring, with the proud consciousness that he was a born orator, and that he had done his duty to his country by spouting plat.i.tudes. It is not difficult to give the general sequel to that amateur performance. Next morning there is a line in some obscure paper, and M. Prudhomme, beside himself with joy, leaves his card on the journalist who wrote it; the journalist leaves his in return, and for the next six months the latter has his knife and fork laid at M. Prudhomme's table. The acquaintance generally terminates on M. Prudhomme's discovery that Madame Prudhomme carried her friendship too far by looking after the domestic concerns of the scribe, at the scribe's bachelor quarters.

The men who did not spout were the Duruys, the Meissoniers, and a hundred others I could mention. The eminent historian and grand-master of the University, though sixty, donned the simple uniform of a National Guard, and performed his garrison duties like the humblest artisan, only distinguished from the latter by his star of grand-officer of the Legion d'Honneur; the great painter did the same. The French shopkeeping bourgeois is, as a rule, a silly, pompous creature; very frequently, he is mean and contemptible besides.

Here is a story for the truth of which I can vouch, and which shows him in his true light. In the skirmish in which Lieutenant Winslow was killed, some damage had been done to the inn at Schirlenhoff, where the Baden officers were at breakfast when they were surprised by General de Bernis and his men. The general had his foot already in the stirrup, and was about to remove his prisoners, when Boniface made his appearance, coolly asking to whom he was to present the bill for the breakage. The general burst out laughing: "The losing party pays the damage as a rule," he said, "but France is sufficiently rich to reverse the rule.

Here is double the amount of your bill."

A second story, equally authentic. A cable had been secretly laid on the bed of the Seine between Paris and Havre, shortly before the siege. Two small shopkeepers of St. Germain revealed the fact for a consideration to the Germans, who had but very vague suspicions of it, and who certainly did not know the land-bearings; one of the scoundrels was caught after the siege, the other escaped. The one who was tried pleaded poverty, and received a ridiculously small sentence. It transpired afterwards that he was exceedingly well paid for his treachery, and that he cheated his fellow-informer out of his share.

The contrast is more pleasant to dwell upon. There were hundreds of obscure heroes, by which I do not mean those prepared to shed their blood on the battle-field, but men with a sublime indifference to life, courting the fate of a Ravaillac and a Balthazar Gerard. History would have called them regicides, and perhaps ranked them with paid a.s.sa.s.sins had they accomplished their purpose, would have held them up to the scorn of posterity as bloodthirsty fanatics,--and history, for once in a way, would have been wrong. In their reprehensible folly, they were more estimable than the Jules Favres, the Gambettas who played at being the saviours of the country, and who were only the saviours of their needy, fellow political adventurers.

Apart from the former, there were the inventors of impossible schemes for the instantaneous annihilation of the three hundred thousand Germans around Paris,--inventors who supply the comic note in the otherwise terrible drama,--inventors, who day by day besiege the Ministry for War, and to whom, after all, the minister's collaborateurs are compelled to listen "on the chance of there being something in their schemes."

"I am asking myself, every now and then, whether I am a staff-officer or one of the doctors at Charenton," said Prince Bibesca, one evening.

"Since yesterday morning," he went on, "I have been interviewed by a dozen inventors, every one of whom wanted to see General Trochu or General Schmitz, and would scarcely be persuaded that I would do as well. The first one simply took the breath out of me. I had no energy left to resist the others, or to bow them out politely; if they had chosen to keep on talking for four and twenty hours, I should have been compelled to listen. He was a little man, about the height of M. Thiers.

His opening speech was in proportion to his height; it consisted of one line. 'Monsieur, I annihilate the Germans with one blow,' he said. I was thrown off my guard in spite of myself, for etiquette demands that I should keep serious in spite of myself; and I replied, 'Let me fill my pipe before you do it.'

"Meanwhile, my visitor spread out a large roll of paper on the table. 'I am not an inventor,' he said; 'I merely adapt the lessons of ancient history to the present circ.u.mstances. I merely modify the trick of the horse of Troy. Here is Paris with its ninety-six bastions, its forts, etc. I draw three lines: along the first I send twenty-five thousand men pretending to attack the northern positions of the enemy; along the second line I send a similar number, apparently bent on a similar attempt to the south; my fifty thousand troops are perfectly visible to the Germans, for they commence their march an hour or so before dusk.

Meanwhile darkness sets in, and that is the moment I choose to despatch a hundred and fifty thousand troops, screened and entirely concealed by a movable wall of sheet iron, blackened by smoke. My inventive powers have gone no further than this. My hundred and fifty thousand men behind their wall penetrate unhindered as far as the Prussian lines, where a hundred thousand fall on their backs, taking aim over the wall, while fifty thousand keep moving it forward slowly. Twelve shots for every man make twelve hundred thousand shots--more than sufficient to cause a panic among the Germans, who do not know whence the firing proceeds, because my wall is as dark as night itself. Supposing, however, that those who have been left in the camp defend themselves, their projectiles will glance off against the sheet iron of the wall, which, if necessary, can be thrown down finally by our own men, who will finish their business with the bayonet and the sword.'

"My second visitor had something not less formidable to propose; namely, a sledge-hammer, fifteen miles in circ.u.mference, and weighing ten millions of tons. It was to be lifted up to a certain alt.i.tude by means of balloons. A favourable wind had to be waited for, which would send the balloons in the direction of Versailles, where the ropes confining the hammer would be cut. In its fall it would crush and bury the head-quarters and the bulk of the German army.

"The third showed me the plan of a musical mitrailleuse, which would deal death and destruction while playing Wagner, Schubert, and Mendelssohn, the former by preference. 'The Germans,' he remarked, 'are too fond of music to be able to resist the temptation of listening. They are sure to draw near in thousands when my mitrailleuses are set playing. We have got them at our mercy.' I asked him to send me a small one as a sample: he promised to do so."

Another evening I was induced to go to the Alcazar. I had been there once before, to hear Theresa. This time it was to see an "Exhibition of Engines of War," and to listen to a practical lecture thereon. The audience was as jolly as if the Germans were a thousand miles away--jollier, perhaps, than when they listened to "Rien n'est sacre pour un sapeur;" because they were virtually taking part in the performance. The lecturer began by an exhibition of bullet-proof pads, by means of which the soldier might fearlessly advance towards the enemy; "because they render that part of the body on which they are worn invulnerable." A wag among the spectators made a remark about "retreating soldiers," which I cannot transcribe; but the exhibitor, an Italian or Spanish major, to judge by his accent, was in no way disconcerted. He placed his pad against an upright board in the shape of a target and began firing at it with a revolver at a distance of four or five paces. The material, though singed, was not pierced, but the spectators seemed by no means convinced. "You wear the pad, and let me have a shot at you," exclaimed one; at which offer the major made a long face. "Have you ever tried the experiment on a living animal?" asks another. "Perfectly," replied the major; "I tried it on my clerk," which admission was hailed with shouts of laughter. There were cries for the clerk, who did not appear. A corporal of the National Guards proposed to try an experiment on the major and the pad with the bayonet fastened to a cha.s.sepot; thereupon major and pad suddenly disappeared behind the wings.

The next inventor exhibits a fire-extinguisher; the audience require more than a verbal explanation; some of them propose to set the Alcazar on fire. A small panic, checked in time; and the various demonstrations are proceeded with amidst shouts, and laughter, and jokes. They yield no practical results, but they kill time. They are voted the next best thing to the theatre.

By this time we were shut off from the outer world. On the 17th of September, at night, the last train of the Orleans Railway Company had left Paris. The others had ceased working a day or so before, and placed their rolling stock in safety. Not the whole of it, though. A great many of the third-cla.s.s carriages have had their seats taken out, the luggage and goods vans have been washed, the cattle trucks boarded in, and all these transformed into temporary dwellings for the suburban poor who have been obliged to seek shelter within the walls of the capital. The interiors of the princ.i.p.al railway stations present scenes that would rejoice the hearts of genre-painters on a large scale. The washing and cooking of all these squatters is done on the various platforms, the carriages have become parlor and bedroom in one, and there has even been some ingenuity displayed in their decoration. The womankind rarely stir from their improvised homes; the men are on the fortifications or roaming the streets of Paris. Part of the household G.o.ds has been stowed inside the trucks, the rest is piled up in front. The domestic pets, such as cats and dogs, have, as yet, not been killed for food, and the former have a particularly good time of it, for mice and rats abound, especially in the goods-sheds. Here and there a goat gravely stalking along, happily unconscious of its impending doom; and chanticleer surrounded by a small harem trying to make the best of things.

Of course, the sudden and enormous influx of human beings could not be housed altogether in that way, but care has been taken that none of them shall be shelterless. All the tenantless apartments, from the most palatial in the Faubourg St. Honore and Champs-elysees to the humblest in the popular quarters, have been utilized, and the pot-au-feu simmers in marble fireplaces, while Gallic Hodge sees his face reflected in gigantic mirrors the like of which he never saw before. The dwellings that have been merely vacated by their tenants who have flitted to Homburg and Baden-Baden, to Nice and elsewhere, are as yet not called into requisition by the authorities.

From the moment we were cut off from the outer world, the spy mania, which had been raging fiercely enough before, became positively contagious. There is not the slightest doubt that there were spies in Paris, but I feel perfectly certain that they were not prowling about the streets, and that to have caught them one would have had to look among the personnel of the ministries. For a foreigner, unless he spoke French without the slightest accent, to have accepted such a mission, would have been akin to madness; and there were and are still few foreigners, however well they may know French, who do not betray their origin now and then by imperfect p.r.o.nunciation. Besides, there was nothing to spy in the streets; nevertheless, the spy mania, as I have already said, had reached an acute crisis. The majority of the National Guard seemed to have no other occupation than to look for spies. A poor Spanish priest was arrested because he had been three times in the same afternoon to the cobbler for the only serviceable pair of shoes he possessed. Woe to the man or woman who was ill-advised enough to take out his pocket-book in the streets. If you happened to be of studious habits, or merely inclined to sit up late, the lights peeping through the carelessly drawn curtains exposed you to a sudden visit from half a dozen ill-mannered, swaggering National Guards, your concierge was called out of his bed, while you were taken to the nearest commissary of police to explain; or, what was worse still, to the nearest military post, where the lieutenant in command made it a point to be altogether soldier-like--according to his ideas, _i. e._ brutal, rude, disgustingly familiar. You might get an apology from the police-official for having been disturbed and dragged through the streets for no earthly reason; the quasi-military man would have considered it beneath his dignity to offer one.

Of course, every now and then, one happened to meet with a gentleman who was only too anxious to atone for the imbecile "goings-on" of his men, and I was fortunate enough to do so one night. It was on the 20th of September, when the feelings of the Parisians had already been embittered by their first and not very creditable defeat under their own walls. I do not suppose there were more than a score of Englishmen in Paris, besides the Irishmen engaged in salting beef at the slaughter-house of La Villette, when, but for that gentleman, I should have been in a sore strait. Among the English, there was a groom who, at the time of the general exodus, was so dangerously ill that the doctor absolutely forbade his removal, even to a hospital. The case had been brought under my notice, and as the poor fellow was very respectable and had been hard-working, as he had a wife and a young family besides, we not only did all we could for him, but I went to see him personally two or three times to cheer him up a bit. He was on the mend, but slowly, very slowly. He lived in one of the side streets of the Avenue de Clichy, and had lived there a good while, and the concierge of the house had her mind perfectly at rest with regard to his nationality, albeit that the fact of being an Englishman was not always a sufficient guarantee against the suspicion of being a spy on the part of the lower cla.s.ses. Moreover, they would not always take the fact for granted; they were unable to distinguish an English from a German or any other accent, and, with them, to be a foreigner was necessarily to be a German, and a German could not be anything but a spy. However, in this instance, I felt no anxiety for my protege.

Unfortunately, a few days before the closing of Paris, the concierge herself fell ill, and another one took her place. The successor was a man, and not by any means a pleasant man. There was a scowl on his face, as, in answer to his summons, I told him whither I was going; and he cast a suspicious look at a box I was carrying under my arm, which happened to contain nothing more formidable than a surgical appliance. I took no notice, however, and mounted the stairs.

My visit may have lasted between twenty minutes and half an hour. When I came out, a considerable crowd had a.s.sembled on the footway and in the road, and a dozen National Guards were ranged in a semicircle in front of the door.

The first cry that greeted me was "Le voila," and then a corporal advanced. "Your name, citizen," he said, in a hectoring tone, "and what brings you to this house?" I kept very cool, and told him that I would neither give him my name nor an explanation of my visit, but that if he would take me to his lieutenant or captain, I should be pleased to give both to the latter. But he would not be satisfied. "Where is the box you had in your hand? what did it contain? and what have you done with it?"

he insisted. I knew that it would be useless to try and enlighten him, so I stuck to my text. Meanwhile the crowd had become very excited, so I simply repeated my request to be taken to the post.

The crowd would have willingly judged me there and then; that is, strung me up to the nearest lamp-post. If they had, not a single one among them would have been prosecuted for murder, and by the end of the siege the British Government would have considered it too late to move in the matter; besides, a great many of my countrymen would have opined that "it served me right" for remaining in Paris, when I might have made myself so comfortable in London or elsewhere. So I felt very thankful when the corporal, though very ungraciously, ordered his men to close around me and "to march." I have, since then, been twice to the Avenue de Clichy on pleasure bent; that is, to breakfast at the celebrated establishment of "le pere Lathuille," and the sight of the lamp-posts there sent a cold shudder down my back.

The journey to the military post did not take long. It had been established in a former ball-room or music-hall, for at the far end of the room there was a stage, representing, as far as I can remember, an antique palace. The floor of it was littered with straw, on which a score or so of civic warriors were lazily stretched out; while others were sitting at the small wooden tables, that had, not long ago, borne the festive "saladier de pet.i.t bleu." Some of the ladles with which that decoction had been stirred were still hanging from the walls; for in those neighbourhoods the love of portable property on the part of the patrons is quite Wemmickian, and the proprietors made and make it a rule to throw as little temptation as possible in the way of the former. The place looked quite sombre, though the gas was alight. There was an intolerable smell of damp straw and stale tobacco smoke.

Part of the crowd succeeded in making their way inside, notwithstanding the efforts of the National Guards. My appearance caused a certain stir among the occupants of the room; but in a few moments the captain, summoned from an apartment at the back, came upon the scene, and my preliminary trial was proceeded with at once.

The indictment of the corporal who had arrested me was brief and to the point. "This man is a foreigner who pays constant visits to another foreigner, supposed to be sick. This evening he arrived with a box under his arm which he left with his friend. The concierge has reason to suppose that there is something wrong, for he does not believe in the man's illness. He is supposed to be poor, and still he and his family are living on the fat of the land. My prisoner refused to give me his name and address, or an explanation of his visit."

"What have you to say, monsieur?" asked the captain, a man of about thirty-five, evidently belonging to the better cla.s.ses. I found out afterwards that his name was Garnier or Garmier, and that he was a cashier in one of the large commercial establishments in the Rue St.

Martin. He was killed in the last sortie of the Parisians.

It was the first time I had been addressed that evening as "monsieur." I simply took a card from my pocket-book and gave it to him. "If that is not sufficient, some of your men can accompany me home and ascertain for themselves that I have not given a false name or address," I said.

He looked at it for a moment. "It is quite unnecessary. I know your name very well, though I have not the honour of knowing you personally. I have seen your portrait at my relatives' establishment"--he named a celebrated picture-dealer in the Rue de la Paix,--"and I ought to have recognized you at once, for it is a very striking likeness, but it is so dark here." Then he turned to his men and to the crowd: "I will answer for this gentleman. I wish we had a thousand or so of foreign spies like him in Paris. France has no better friend than he."

I was almost as much afraid of the captain's praise as I had been of the corporal's blame, because the crowd wanted to give me an ovation; seeing which, M. Garmier invited me to stay with him a little while, until the latter should have dispersed. It was while sitting in his own room that he told me the following story.

"My princ.i.p.al duty, monsieur, seems to consist, not in killing Germans, but in preventing perfectly honest Frenchmen and foreigners from being killed or maimed. Not later than the night before last, three men were brought in. They were all very powerful fellows; there was no doubt about their being Frenchmen. They did not take their arrest as a matter of course at all, but to every question I put they simply sent me to the devil. It was not the behaviour of the presumed spy, who, as a rule, is very soft spoken and conciliating until he sees that the game is up, when he becomes insulting. Still, I reflected that the violence of the three men might be a clever bit of acting also, the more that I could see for myself that they were abominably, though not speechlessly, drunk. Their offence was that they had been seen loitering in a field very close to the fortifications, with their noses almost to the ground.

Do what I would, an explanation I could not get, and at last the most powerful of the trio made a movement as if to draw a knife. With great difficulty a dozen of my men succeeded in getting his coat off; and there, between his waistcoat and his shirt, was a murderously looking blade, a formidable weapon indeed.

"'He is a Prussian spy, sure enough!' exclaimed the roomful of guards.

"I examined the knife carefully, tried to find the name of the maker, and all at once put it to my nose. Then I took up a candle and looked more carefully still at the prisoners. 'They are simply drunk,' I said, 'and the best thing you can do is to take them home.'

"'But the knife?' insisted the sergeant.

"'The knife is all right,' I answered.

"'I should think it is all right,' said the owner, 'seeing that I am cutting provisions all day with it for those confounded Parisians.'

"But the guards were not satisfied with the explanation. They began to surround me. 'That was surely a sign you made to the fellow when you lifted the blade to your face, captain,' said the sergeant.

"'Not at all, friend; I was simply smelling it. And it smelt abominably of onions.' That will give you an idea, monsieur, of the life they lead me also. Still, I would ask you, as a particular favour, monsieur, not to mention your mishap to any one. As you are aware, I am not to blame; but we are in bad odour enough as it is at the Ministry of War, and we do not wish to increase our somewhat justified reputation for irresponsible rowdyism and lack of discipline."

I gave him my promise to that effect, and have not mentioned the matter until this day.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The siege -- The food-supply of Paris -- How and what the Parisians eat and drink -- Bread, meat, and wine -- Alcoholism -- The waste among the London poor -- The French take a lesson from the alien -- The Irish at La Villette -- A whisper of the horses being doomed -- M. Gagne -- The various attempts to introduce horseflesh -- The journals deliver their opinions -- The supply of horseflesh as it stood in '70 -- The Academie des Sciences -- Gelatine -- Kitchen gardens on the balcony -- M. Lockroy's experiment -- M. Pierre Joigneux and the Englishman -- if cabbages, why not mushrooms? -- There is still a kitchen garden left -- Cream cheese from the moon, to be fetched by Gambetta -- His departure in a balloon -- Nadar and Napoleon III. -- Carrier-pigeons -- An aerial telegraph -- Offers to cross the Prussian lines -- The theatres -- A performance at the Cirque National -- "Le Roi s'amuse," at the Theatre de Montmartre -- A dejeuner at Durand's -- Weber and Beethoven -- Long winter nights without fuel or gas -- The price of provisions -- The Parisian's good-humour -- His wit -- The greed of the shopkeeper -- Culinary literature -- More's "Utopia" -- An ex-lieutenant of the Foreign Legion -- He gives us a breakfast -- He delivers a lecture on food -- Joseph, his servant -- Milk -- The slender resources of the poor -- I interview an employe of the State p.a.w.nshop -- Statistics -- Hidden provisions -- Bread -- Prices of provisions -- New Year's Day, and New Year's dinners -- The bombardment -- No more bread -- The end of the siege.

I am not a soldier, nor in the least like one; hence, I have, almost naturally, neglected to note any of the strategic and military problems involved in the campaign and the siege. But, ignorant as I am in these matters, and notwithstanding the repeated failures of General Trochu's troops to break through the lines of investment, I feel certain, on the other hand, that the Germans would have never taken Paris by storming it. Years before, Von Moltke had expressed his opinion to that effect in his correspondence, not exactly with regard to the French capital, but with regard to any fortified centre of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. Such an agglomeration, even if severely left alone, and only shut off from the rest of the world, falls by itself. I am giving the spirit and not the substance of his words.

Consequently, there is no need to say, that, to the mere social observer, the problems raised by the food-supply were perhaps the most interesting. Even under normal conditions, the average Parisian in his method of feeding is worth studying; he is supposed to be one of the most abstemious creatures on the civilized globe. And yet, I do not think that he consumes less alcohol than the average Englishman or German. The Frenchman's alcohol is more diluted; that is all. A drunken woman is a very rare sight, either in Paris or in the provinces; nevertheless, there is, probably, not one in a thousand women among the lower cla.s.ses who drinks less than her half a bottle of wine per day; while ladies of high degree generally partake of one if not two gla.s.ses of chartreuse with their coffee, after each of the two princ.i.p.al meals.

_Un grog Americain_ is as often ordered for the lady as for the gentleman, during the evening visits to the cafe. I am speaking of gentlewomen by birth and education, and of the spouses of the well-to-do men, not of the members of the demi-monde and of those below them.

So far, the question of drink, which, after my visit to the wine-depots at Bercy, a.s.sumed an altogether different aspect to my mind. I began to wonder whether the plethora of wine would not do as much harm as the expected scarcity of food. My fears were not groundless.

Frenchmen, especially Parisians, not only eat a great quant.i.ty of bread, but they are very particular as to its quality. I have a note showing that, during the years 1868-69, the consumption per head for every man, woman, and child amounted to a little more than an English pound per day, and that very little of this was of "second quality," though the latter was as good as that sold at many a London baker's as first. I tasted it myself, because the munic.i.p.ality had made a great point of introducing it to the lower cla.s.ses at twopence per quartern less than the first quality. Nevertheless, the French workman would have none of it.[83]

[Footnote 83: Goethe, in his journey through France, noticed that the peasants who drove his carriage invariably refused to eat the soldiers' bread, which he found to his taste.--EDITOR.]